School Segregation Podcast and Action Items

I hope you’re enjoying the last few weeks of summer!

One of our members suggested this wonderful podcast episode called “School Segregation in 2018 with Nikole Hannah-Jones.” I highly recommend it.

Another member shared this article about a Center for American Progress (CAP) proposal to increase federal funding to high-poverty schools via teacher pay.

There have been a few suggestions of doing themed meetings, like a book club, but around shorter content like podcasts or articles, to help shape our conversations. I may have enough bandwidth to put something like this together at some of our small group meetings once my kiddos are back in school, but I’m also completely open to having any of our members host these conversations and/or choose the content and/or lead the discussion.

I also had a great conversation with Integrated Schools again and I’m going to set up a presentation with them for early November, mostly geared towards families heading into choosing a school for their Kindergartner, but also for anyone interested in school integration issues. We’re considering Thursday, November 1 or Sunday, November 4. Please let me know if you’re interested and if you have a date preference (or an opinion about which date you think might work for the most people). Once we choose a date, I’ll need your help getting the word out.

I have a few events to share:
(1) Black Lives Matter DC and SURJ DC are holding an event on Thursday, August 23 called “Black Lives: They Matter Here” to share stories of the movement.
(2) A reminder that Embrace Race is holding a webinar on “Addressing Racial Injustice with Young Children” on August 28 at 8:30 pm. Remember that you can register even if you can’t attend live and they’ll send you a link to the recording.
(3) VACOLAO has opened registration for the 9th Virginia Immigrant Advocates Summit on November 15.

And some recent articles worth sharing:
(1) This article about teacher diversity from the Brookings Institute was quite insightful.
(2) Washington Post article by Theresa Vargas about lead poisoning of children in DC.
(3) Washington Post Retropolis article about deportation of a million Mexican-Americans during the Great Depression.

I have ordered postcards from the ACLU for their election postcard writing campaign, so please let me know if you’d like to complete some by October 1. The goal is to encourage people to vote — we write a personal message and send them back to the ACLU and they send them along to potential voters. Here’s the campaign page and yes, they had so many people requesting them that they far exceeded their expectations and ran out. A great problem to have!

Listen, Amplify, Follow.