"People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state on innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster." ~James Baldwin
Dear Policymakers and Legislators, we see your cowardice.
You dance and sing those old minstrel lies:
Testing will save Black, Brown, Special Education, and Poor children,
Charter schools will save them,
Magnet Schools will save them,
School Choice will save them,
Teach for America will save them.
Schools for profit will save them.
The song you dare not sing is about quality and equality for all children.
This tune would make you moral heroes to all; you run from, hide from, and dare not imagine it.
Justice is too costly in your world.
But, our nation's dreamer Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., spoke from his Birmingham prison cell in
"Justice too long delayed is justice denied."
Heroes speak the truth; they never run from it or deny it.
We see you.
You can't do equity,
Your minstrel dance of lies,
Reveal your lies, and they damn you.
They expose your cowardice,
They show us,
Monsters of injustice.
We see you,
Dr. Jesse P. Turner
Uniting to Save Our Schools
Badass Teacher,
If you like to hear the tune that inspired my walk this morning? It is Pete Seeger's version of We Shall Over Come https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gmTxc2wGTI
Bishop John Selders is an academic who TURN UP! |