SOCIAL
MOVEMENTS
War in Ukraine. Lessons From A Century Ago
I have a friend who is Ukrainian and Russian. We never talked politics. I have not heard from her since the war began. I write today with her in mind. Never have I known so many good people with such opposing perspectives, as those on the war in Ukraine. Unlike...
Educator Rooted in Love and Solidarity
https://turtleroad.org/2022/07/17/rachel-schmitt/
Calling up the Nineteenth Century to Understand our Own Times. Annette Gordon-Reed’s On Juneteenth, Barbara Kingsolver’s Unsheltered and Tony Horowitz’s Spying on the South
Annette Gordon-Reed, and Barbara Kingsolver are writers grounded in history, science, and Tony Horowitz was a writer steeped in evidence, yet reading On Juneteenth, Unsheltered, and Spying on the South together, felt like a mystical retreat with three mediums,...
Literary Pairing #2: We are Meant to Rise & The Sentence
The Twin Cities are rising. Teachers in Minneapolis and St. Paul are wearing each other’s colors in solidarity as they prepare for a two-city strike, demanding raises for their lowest tier educational support professionals, retention of teachers of color, mental...
Super Spreading Social Justice
I have been thinking about super-spreader events.
Not the kind that makes hundreds of people sick, but the kinds that transform lives in a good way.
An early one that changed me was the 1979 Take Back the Night March in Minneapolis. The event consisted of a rally in Loring Park and a march down Hennepin Avenue. I was scared to go. I thought we would not be safe marching down Hennepin. My experience with that thoroughfare had been a gauntlet of taunts and grabs.
I was scared, but I went, by myself.
At the rally, organizers circulated with sashes for us to wear, screen-printed with the words, “I survived a rape,” or “I survived an assault.” We chanted slogans and heard speeches that preached that it is never our fault, that we don’t deserve to have these tortures happens to us, that we are strong, that we deserve to walk and dance and sit and be in the night without fear.