Chicago City Wire

Latin School of Chicago students will learn about breakdancing and rapping Wednesday as part of the school's “annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of commemoration.”

“The theme for this year is ‘From Awareness to Action,” says an email to parents provided to Chicago City Wire. “Students in all divisions will have opportunities to engage in activities and workshops that explore the intersection of identity, equity, inclusion and activism.”

Six of the “workshops” will be led by Latin students, the email says.

Aysha Upchurch and a “breakdance group” will lead grammar school students in “community activities,” including “spreading knowledge of ‘breakin’ culture’ to Latin School students, who have limited experience with it.

“Aysha, the ‘Dancing Diplomat,’ is an artist and educator who creates, facilitates and designs for social change,” the email says. “She works as a dancer, choreographer, teacher and speaker.”

“Aysha is making moves and demonstrating how to be ‘D.O.P.E,’” which Latin says stands for “dismantling oppression and pushing education.”

Upchurch is a “U.S. State Department cultural envoy” as well as a “lecturer and artist-in-residence” at Harvard Graduate School of Education. She teaches classes on “hip hop culture” and “the importance of movement in education.”

As part of the Boston-based "Cultural Equity Learning Community," Upchurch works to "amplify the voices of artists, community organizers, and QTDBIPOC+* leaders for equity within the arts and culture sector," which she says is "white supremacist."

"The arts and culture sector reproduces institutional and systemic oppression through upholding and centering white supremacist structures, often unconsciously. This manifests in predominantly white-founded, white-led and white-funded arts and culture organizations and institutions in Boston," the group's web site says.

"Many of us are still waiting for white Americans to bring some value"

Latin Middle and High School Students will hear a lecture from “author, attorney, rapper, speaker and storyteller” Gyasi Ross, a “member of the Blackfeet Nation” and the host of a a weekly breakdancing podcast, “Breakdances with Wolves.”

Ross is best known as an outspoken critic of Thanksgiving, which he says was actually about "genocide."

"'Instead of bringing stuffing and biscuits, those settlers brought genocide and violence. That genocide and violence is still on the menu,' Ross said on MSNBC, calling upon America to "return the land" to descendants of Native American tribes and calling for reparations.

"Many of us are still waiting for white Americans to bring some value — still waiting for white Americans to match the mythology of Thanksgiving," he said. "Freedom, justice, equality, reparations for two and a half billion acres of stolen Native land – reparations for 246 years of stolen labor – reparations for stealing Native children. Stop the killing – it’s still happening. Stop the theft — it’s still happening."

In 2018, Ross called for a boycott of the NFL, which he said was "going the way of NASCAR."

"We’re not wanted—patriotism is the excuse, but white supremacy is the reason," Ross tweeted.

After their respective lectures, students will be ‘invited’ to purchase from “a selection of books that connect to our theme of awareness and and action” that it says are “appropriate for middle and upper school youth and adults.”

They include New Kid, the story of a 12 year old black boy who "witnesses micro aggressions" at his new private school and Parable of the Sower, a "post apocalyptic science fiction novel" in which "the United States has grown unstable due to climate change."

Written in 1993, it is set in the year 2024.

The books will be provided by the Semicolon Bookstore and Gallery, which Latin says is owned by a black woman.

Tuition at the Latin School is $40,970 for students in grades 5-12. It currently has 1,190 students.