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 Café 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:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kN6iEr7O9U

Still marching,

Jesse The Walking Man Turner

Ain't No Body Gonna Turn Me Around, Keep on Marching, Keep on Talking, Someone Tell Arne We Are Coming To Occupy His DOE

The word from the Selma Jubilee Education Committee is they are not buying RTTT. Equity is not something schools should have to be competing for. Over and over again speakers at the Education summit has said NCLB/RTTT has left schools more segregated than ever.

Spread the word far and wide the people in Selma Alabama where Martin Crossed that Sunday Bloody Sunday bridge do not buying Secretary Arne Duncan's Hype. The call here is to support ALL schools.

I'll be marching across that bridge Sunday at 11:AM with Ceresta Smith from SOS, Morna Mcdermott McNulty of United Opt, marching with all those beautiful Civil Rights Activists.

Tell it in DC, in Florida,

In New Orleans,

In Chicago, in Tucson,

In California, in Boston,

In New York, in Wisconsin,

In Colorado, Oregon,

In Texas, in Michigan,
Tell it in Connecticut, in Indiana,
Tell it in Maryland, in New Jersey.

Shout it on every mountain top in America that School equity cannot be achieved through testing.

We are marching in the light of God here in Selma, and ain't no body gonna turn us around, keep on walking, keep on talking,

Tell Secretary Status Quo Aren Duncan we are coming to Occupy the DOE in DC,
Still walking, Still marching,
Jesse The Walking Man Turner

I have seen the enemy, the enemy is not a homeless mother

Let's keep truth simple, a homeless mother should not go to jail for trying to get her child a better education in a public school system rooted in inequality.  

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are." 
Is this the America we want? An America where schools are places where the quality of a child's education depends on their zip code? Tanya McDowell is not a criminal she is a mother trying to beat a system that is rooted in inequality. The people are tired of education reforms based on competitions, lotteries, and zip codes. I have seen the enemy, and the enemy is not the homeless, but a system that goes after a homeless mother. 

I have seen the enemy,

Tanya McDowell is not the enemy,

Parents are not the enemy,

Children are not the enemy,

Teachers are not the enemy,

The enemy is education reform that reduces children to data,

The enemy is education reform that shames teachers,

The enemy is education reform that claims equity is a lottery,

The enemy is education reform that closes schools rather than supports them,

The enemy steals from the poor to give to the rich,

The enemy promises hope by making schools compete,

I walked against the enemy,

I marched against the enemy,

I will conduct Teach-Ins in Selma Alabama this coming Saturday at the Selma Jubilee, 

I am holding a Save Our Schools Town Hall meeting in Connecticut this March 31,

I will occupy the DOE in DC that house of the enemy on April 1 & 2,

The enemy is not homeless American mothers,

The enemy is the 1% who believe public education is a competition, not a system rooted in equality.

Still marching,

Jesse 

You can read Savy Sister's blog telling it through her tears in the link below:

http://www.the-savvy-sista.com/2012/02/tanya-mcdowell-sentenced-to-12-years.html

If you are wondering what the walking man is listening to on his walk this morning it's I hear them all by Old Crow Medicine Show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD3jsS-sL1Q