How can a community not be outraged when libraries are being closed, teachers are being laid off, sports programs are being cut?  I am angry, bewildered, confused and full of rage.  I look into the eyes of my students and ask myself what is going to be stolen from them next?  The time is now to stop this colonization of our school system.  This fight is long overdue. 

I joined the March 4 Education committee and the fight for equal education because this is a crisis situation. This is not a simple thing of missing a few books here and there.  The desecration that is happening in our schools is going to negatively affect a whole generation in a very big way.  When students are not able to reach their full potential because the funds are not there, because the system is lacking, that right there is unfair.  When jails are valued more by our government, you know that there is something fundamentally wrong in their belief systems.  This is where our children are being tracked into, away from higher education and straight into the trenches of the jails and prisons that are being paid for by taxpayer money.

On this crusade for justice I learned so much more than I could ever have learned from any textbook or classroom.  I learned from my peers, the elders, but most of all, I learned from the youth. Yes, from Kenneth, a fourth grader at Downer, to 11th grader Santy, a leader in her Oakland community.  They gave me the energy to keep going, their energy healed my aching knee, their spirit lifted me and allowed me to transcend this thing called exhaustion. The youth took over the leadership and guided us adults.  They put into perspective what we were fighting for. 

One of the most powerful images during the march was when we as individuals - young, old, male, female, black, red, white, brown, yellow - locked elbows and crossed the road over to the side of the Solano State Prison and became one: one people with one common cause.  We as a community took over for that moment in time and reclaimed something that we (without our consent) pay for. They told us we could not cross over to the other side of the road.   We stood up to “authority” and said this is enough. We are not going to take your power trips anymore.  As we crossed the street, I could feel the power of the people coming together. They did not stop us. They could not stop us.   How ironic that the guards and the director of the prison came out within minutes to meet us when the Governor knew for so long that we were going to the Capitol and he refused to meet with these children that marched 70 miles to bring up their concerns about the horrible education that they are receiving.   What message is he sending there?  Does he want our children to end up in prison and not in schools?  How can someone be so cold, so uncaring?  What is wrong with our society when the prisons are more welcoming than the schools?

For those eight days I laughed, I cried, I learned, I became a child, I became an elder, I fought, I truly lived and was proud of myself.  I was advocating for our children and demanded that these children be given the type of education that should be given to them.  The fight is far from over.  I have dedicated my life to the struggle and I will do WHATEVER it takes to get what these children need.