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Monday, March 5, 2012

Spread the word from Selma Alabama's Education Summit

Sunday Bloody Sunday: the cost of freedom should not be forgotten


At the Education Summit at the Selma Jubilee a simple, but powerful truth emerged: Civil Rights is education, and education is Civil Rights! 
The history not on that Race To The Top test is "Sunday Bloody Sunday". 
Walking on the Edmund Pettus Bridge yesterday March 4 2012 I stood on that sacred ground, that place where a people said enough is enough. Where Black Americans demanded the right to vote. Selma is a people's legacy to democracy.
A rich noble American legacy where people stood up, spoke up, and marched into the history books.  Where Jimmie Lee Jackson a 26 year-old Deacon was fatally shot by an Alabama State Police officer as he protected his mother his mother from being beaten at Mack’s CafĂ© by the police. A legacy of non-violence met with brutal violent racism, a legacy written in the blood of an innocent people. In Education they test what they want children to remember. Jamie Lee Jackson is not on any NCLB/RTTT test, Sunday Bloody Sunday is not on the test, Civil Rights is not on their test. 

The Selma-to-Montgomery March for voting rights was actually three marches. They represent the  Blood Cost of the modern civil rights movement. On "Bloody Sunday," March 7, 1965, 600 civil rights marchers marched six blocks to the Edmund Pettus Bridge where state and local lawmen brutally attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas and drove them back into Selma. The vote is paid for in blood. 
This legacy bridge is not on their test, but it is Sacred Ground in Civil Rights movement.
Spread the word Civil Rights is education, and education is civil rights. Race To The Top is a lie. No matter how many times you tell a lie it is still a lie. 
School equity is not a lottery,
A school choice where some children win, and some children lose is not equity,
Equity is not a race,
Equity is not schools competing.
Equity will not be found in a Secretary of Education who wants us to join his Race To The Top.
All children deserve equity not just the lucky few. 
Someone tell the Secretary of False Equity Arne Duncan, that the Walking Man Jesse Turner is coming to occupy the DOE in DC this March 30, 31, April 1 & 2. 

Spread the word from the Selma Jubilee Education Committee Sunday Bloody Sunday is more important than the test. The sacred is embedded into our memory not because it's on some test, but because it is sacred. 

In my younger days when I ran the streets we use to say two from the heart. Here are two short real clips from the heart from the Walking Man at the Slavery Museum in Selma Alabama:

Children should be more than Test Scores
60 seconds


  School equity should not be something children compete for!
59 seconds  

 Want to know what the Walking Man is listening to: Ain't no body gonna turn me around:
Still marching,
Jesse The Walking Man Turner

3 comments:

  1. In Selma the message is when you pray move your feet. Thanks Walking Man for blogging about Sunday Bloody Sunday. You are right children and parents should not have to compete for equity.

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