From The Homefront, Vol. 13
Dear Leading Ladies,
As always, we hope this finds you and your loved ones healthy and surviving these trying times with some strength and hope intact. We understand that the horror of George Floyd’s death and the ensuing violence in our city’s streets, on top of the pandemic, are almost too much to process.
The national League of Women Voters issued a statement that read, in part, “all who live in this country must contribute to and participate in organizations actively working to achieve full liberation and inclusive freedom. We must all advocate for anti-racist policies at every level of government...Finally, we echo the call of our partners at the NAACP: we must all vote in November - the road to change lies at the ballot box."
Last week, a group of us gathered online to discuss the importance of education in this country being equal for all children. We talked about the inequity of the quality of schooling being tied to a child’s zip code and property taxes; of how a poor elementary education can consign a child to the same poverty of his or her parents. We talked about how everyone loves to point to the exceptions, to the children who make it out of poverty and to great success. In this way, we implicitly blame the millions who don’t succeed, rather than expose the unfair system that perpetuates poverty by giving too many children substandard opportunities.
At the end of our 90-minute discussion, we realized there was a lot more we wanted to know and to talk about. We wanted to know why we hadn’t heard more from the candidates on the issue, for one. We found Elizabeth Warren’s “A great Pubic School Education for Every Student” and Joe Biden’s “Plan for Educators, Students and our Future.” But that begged the question: How can we make our politicians address this issue more? Please join our next discussion on Thursday, June 11, at 7:30 p.m. on Zoom. This link will take you to the discussion, the password is: ladieslead
In advance, you might also like to watch Anna Deveare Smith’s one-woman show that premiered at the A.R.T. in Cambridge and moved to New York. “Notes from the Field: Doing Time in Education,” which exposes the school to prison pipeline, will be streamed on HBO today, June 2 at 6 p.m.
In the meantime, we leave you to consider the heartbreaking reality of a young African American boy with his mother at a peaceful rally in Boston's South End on Friday evening. He carried a sign that read, “At what age do I go from handsome to a threat?”
Warm wishes,
Therese
Judy
Mary
Kim
Leading Ladies Executive Team
LeadingLadiesVote.org