When I feel like my words matter least in the face of overwhelming odds against justice, perhaps that is when it is most important to keep saying it aloud. To say the names of people who have been lost to guns, to incarceration, to poverty. To describe the realities of the strengths of teachers, the gifts of our children in our public schools, the knowledge we have of how to provide education in public schools. To tell the stories of micro-management and mandates that come from people who don’t do the work but dream up how others should do it, of for profit charter chains across the country, of children walking down hallways in lines with their hands clasped behind their backs as if they’re handcuffed, of first graders in detention, of chanting, of humiliation as a means of discipline and control, of skewed data interpretations……the particular stories and the general trends.
Whether you would want Bernie Sanders for president or not, here is a story of the late Sandra Bland’s mother meeting him by chance in a diner where “He simply made space for a sacred moment, and then let it pass without trying to gain anything…”
And then he kept his promise. At Tuesday’s Democratic debate, Bernie Sanders said her name.
“The African American community knows that on any given day some innocent person like Sandra Bland can get into a car, and then three days later she’s going to end up dead in jail, or their kids are going to get shot.”