Teen Talk

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Learn everything there is to know about The Future is US! The magazine explains TFIU's founding, it's work in the Galveston community, and the future of TFIU. Please check it out and share with your friends and family.

Thank you all for your support!

We are celebrating with the Nia Cultural Center as they were named a BANF Houston Cultural Treasure grant recipient. The innovative program will provide essential multi-year operational and technical support grants to a cohort of 11 under-recognized BIPOC art organizations in Houston. Nia is more than deserving to be one of those organizations. 

1000 Books Before Kindergarten!

Did you know that by reading and sharing stories with babies and young children not only helps their brain development, but strengthens your relationship with them? Research has found that reading and story telling:

• Helps in developing children's brain development in concentration, focus, social skills and communication

• Expands children's vocabulary! A 2019 study found that children that were regularly read to the 5years leading up to Kindergarten were exposed to 1.4 million more words.

• A 2008 study found that children feel secure when read to and can support a solid parent-child relationship.

Sign up today for Rosenberg Library's Reading Challenge!

Baltimore & Israel

A Global Gang of Colonizers

From Haiti to Puerto Rico and from the Congo to Baltimore, African (Black) people suffer from colonialism. Current atrocities happening to the people of Gaza and the West Bank clearly show the colonial reality of life and death in Palestine. What we see daily in Palestine is a project to completely replace the indigenous population with a settler population. The attempt to exterminate the Palestinians is being carried through collusion between Israel, the U.S, the European Union, and all western powers. This is nothing less than a genocidal campaign to occupy Gaza, and slaughter Palestinians trapped in the world’s largest open air prison. Clearly  Palestine is a colony born of a Zionist imperialist project. What is not so clear are the ways that Zionism extends into African (Black) communities like Baltimore.

Zionism is a political movement with a racist western imperialist ideology. The Zionist movement was initiated with an 1895 pamphlet entitled Der Judenstaat written by an atheist Jew named Theodor Herzl. Herzl was a Jewish Austro-Hungarian journalist and political activist, known as the father of the Zionist movement. Herzl’s objective was to obtain a land base that could be utilized as a “Jewish” state with political and economic power.  In 1897, Herzl convened the first Zionist conference in Switzerland to launch the official program of Zionism, the Basel program. By 1917, the global Zionist campaign manifested in Switzerland as the Balfour declaration, named for the British Secretary of State for foreign affairs, Arthur Balfour. This declaration designated Palestine as the place for Jewish people to escape anti-Jewish fascism rising across the European continent.  

The establishment of the Zionist colonial state in Palestine was championed by Britain after World War II. The Zionist movement co-opted Judaism and used it to justify the theft of Palestine from the Palestinians. By 1948, the occupation of Palestine by Western European Jews had become solidified with the Nakba (the great catastrophe). During the Nakba, 750,000 Palestinians were violently removed from their lands and homes. Today, large segments of Palestinians are displaced in a global diaspora (more Palestinians live in Jordan than Jordanians). Palestinians who remain are relegated to specific territories within occupied Palestine; primarily the West Bank, Golan Heights, and Gaza Strip. These Palestinians are prisoners in their own land, living in the racist, settler colonial, murderous apartheid state of Israel.

USA & Israel: Policing the World

Sharing Police Tactics Between the U.S. and Israel

In Gaza, Palestinians are subject to over policing, constant surveillance, indiscriminate beating, incarceration, unjust killings, and unusable water. Baltimore and other U.S cities align themselves with these practices, they fund the Israeli occupation by paying Israelis to train the Baltimore Police Department (BPD). The Original Americans (Indians) are locked on reservations. They are subject to over policing, constant surveillance, indiscriminate beating, incarceration, unjust killings, and unusable water. They are directly policed by the FBI and live the legacy of millions slaughtered by this settler colony called the United States of America. Reservation is another word for Open Air Prison, Concentration Camp, Gaza or Bantu Stand. It is all the same thing.

Policing in the U.S. has a history of racial bias against the colonized people within its borders. Anti-Black racism in this country still reigns in local, state and federal institutions. Like the obscene incarceration rates of the Palestinians, the U.S. prison industrial complex incarcerates African (Black) people at over five times the rate of white people. Today, militarized state violence practiced by the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) on the people of Baltimore is the the Deadly Exchange Program, which brings together ICE, FBI, police, border control and Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF), to share and promote discriminatory and repressive tactics and policies in both countries. Thousands of cops participate in security conferences and workshops with Israeli law enforcement, the IOF, and security officials in the U.S. Baltimore law enforcement officials, along with hundreds of others from Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Georgia, Washington state, as well as the DC Capitol police continue to travel to Israel for training. 

There is a solid partnership between the U.S. and Israeli governments to exchange methods of state violence and control over civilians including mass surveillance, racial profiling, and suppression of protest and dissent. Training through the Deadly Exchange Program places Baltimore police in the hands of racist systems that have racked up human rights violations for years. Last May, Baltimore City State’s Attorney Ivan Bates welcomed Israeli Police and thanked them for their annual police unity tour, with the promise to “strengthen” their “partnership.” 

To read more, click here.

TFIU School Board Watch Doc!

The Future is Us’ critical goal is to effectuate policy change in GISD, so that black students, and ultimately, all children receive a quality education. However, institutional power can be adversarial at times. Therefore, it is compulsory to us as parents, youth, and Galveston community members to hold our local institutions and Board of Trustees accountable.

Through a collaborative effort, TFIU created and is making available our The Future is US SCHOOL BOARD WATCH Document. With this self-explanatory document, any interested community member can attend or watch a school board meeting, and record detailed notes and minutes, as well as assess, in real time, the quality of content in the meeting.

Once completed, please e-mail the document to info@thefutureisus.co. We will compile the information so that we can become better equipped and more effective in our advocacy for positive change and creating better GISD schools.

Thank you all in advance for your support and dedication to making sure all of Galveston’s students get the best education possible!

Upcoming Board Meetings: 

Check here for all GISD Board of Trustees meetings!

More Upcoming Dates!

There are lots of ways you can make a difference in the community! 

• Take our Survey (QR Code below) and let us know what you think will make change in the school district.

• Join the TFiU/NIA Book Club.

• Become a TFiU Member!

• Visit TFiU's Youtube.

• Visit TFiU's Website