An Open Letter to Citizens

Citizens,

After the 2004 election, I posted the following collection of thoughts on this blog:

“Clearly, things didn’t go the way many of us hoped last night. That said, I would argue the work ahead of us today is the same irrespective of who won the election. This campaigning season and election last night stand as a stark indictment of our education system and the nation’s inability to think about issues, critically….

”Nonetheless, I have hope. Not a post-election-maybe-next-time-grin-and-bear-it sort of a hope. But, a critical sort of hope. Voting is not the only way we participate in democracy. It may, in fact, be the smallest factor in it (although, we are certainly led to believe it is our highest, if not perhaps our only, duty). Democracy requires the kind of day-to-day action towards transformation/revolution/liberation similar to Freire’s dialogical action….

”As [my friend] Milton points out frequently and quite provocatively, we need to begin to define our successes. We, now more than ever, need to have voice and we need to be visible. We can no longer allow the oppressor to define success for us. As transformative agents, we can and will make change. My commitment to this change and to you and our community is steadfast. I look forward to our community growing ever closer and ever outward.

”Our struggle has been defined
Its re(s/v)olution is up to us.”

Now, a couple days removed from, what I would consider, better results in our 2006 election (locally—the ouster of a long term Republican Congresswoman who voted the president’s wishes nearly 100% of the time; nationally—that the house and senate are no longer Republican complicating the ability of the president to spend his political capital so easily and categorically; and internationally—the world might have some idea, now, that we are human beings aware of more than just the US, maybe) and the long-awaited news that Secretary Rumsfeld has been fired/retired, I still come back to the same thoughts as two years ago: “We, now more than ever, need to have voice and we need to be visible.” A democratic victory hardly spells relief for the poor and disenfranchised. These democrats need to be held accountable for our support. Nothing less than:

• a significant raise in the minimum wage toward or above a living wage (37 million US citizens live in poverty);
• universal health care for all our citizens (46 million now without, 9 million of these children—and 90% of these children are in families who are working);
• a more diplomatic plan for Iraq that brings the world and Iraq’s citizens to the table to discuss the way forward;
• the complete dismantling of NCLB and serious attempts (with input from educators, not bureaucrats or corporations) on how to close the black-white achievement gap;
• signing on to the Kyoto protocol (as most sensible countries in the world have done); and
• a renewal of our commitment to human rights here in the US and abroad

will be viewed by me as a significant failure of will and courage—and will not garner my vote in the future.

Toward this end, I plan to continue my part in this battle (well, war, really) for justice, directing my resources (spiritual, educational, emotional, financial, physical) to these ends. Indeed, the poor/dispossessed/oppressed/disenfranchised in our classrooms and communities need us now more than ever. Our middle class sisters and brothers need better options than the media and our education systems are feeding them. They need models of hope, examples of humility, and options from the consumer life-style. And, the rich need to be freed of their oppressive ways. It is only us, in concert with the oppressed, that can humanize them.

This dispatch is my siren call to you, friend, citizen.

In peace and solidarity,

adam (from a blue dot in a red state, wishing it was green)

P.S. I wonder if we need to begin humbling ourselves to follow the lead of mass democratic movements in other countries. Perhaps we need some help in developing our own ideas about democracy, since Title IX withstood a recent challenge, Affirmative Action (which has helped white women the most) is under a tight time limit now, and the Prison Industrial Complex is exploding (as more and more private prisons make more and more money by filling more and more beds in poorer and poorer communities)

P.S.S. I should have added the dismantling of NAFTA to my list above, working for fair, not free trade.

P.S.S.S. I’ve got someone in mind for 2008…