Our State of the Union: Unarmed Truth. Unconditional Love.
I am writing this having just watched President Obama’s State of the Union speech. I’m an educator. A teacher. A union activist. And so I was listening for his messages on education and students and schools and the men and women who work in them. And he had words for us. He talked about the good intentions of No Child Left Untested and the new work to do under a new law. He talked about preschool for all children; science and technology opportunities; recruiting great teachers; and affordable college that should include free access to community colleges.
It was all good. It was good to hear him talk about strengthening Social Security and Medicare as the foundation of a dignified retirement. It was good to hear him remind us that millions and millions of people who had no hope of health insurance now have coverage. It was good for him to state so clearly that it wasn’t a middle-class worker’s right to collectively bargain their salary and benefits that caused the economic crisis – it was the under-regulated greed of Wall Street.
Success, boundless opportunities & the American Dream are within reach of our kids. #SOTU https://t.co/A8zFGeZQrJ pic.twitter.com/LvM0eHSGi4— Lily Eskelsen GarcÃa (@Lily_NEA) January 13, 2016
There were tears in the vice president’s eyes and tears in my eyes and maybe tears in your eyes when the president called for a new moonshot: Curing Cancer. Tears come when you have watched your loved one suffer and die of cancer as I watched my father die. It is a worthy goal to walk on a planet free of that plague.
It was good. And then the president ended in a place I had not expected. Because he didn’t focus on his last year or the next election cycle as is the natural focus of most politicians. He didn’t call on Congress to act. He called on us. All of us. Tea Partiers and Green Partiers and Democrats and Republicans and all of us to be the citizens that demand a democracy that encourages healthy debate without demonizing the opposition. He called on us to use the power of our voices to speak up for those who struggle to be accepted; those who are vulnerable because they are not the majority. He asked us to push back against those who would suppress a person’s right to vote and to change the system that allows voting districts to be gerrymandered to the extent that politicians choose their voters instead of the voters choosing them.
This was the unarmed truth of the president. But he ended with unconditional love. He ended by naming us. The teacher who comes to school early and buys extra supplies so her students won’t go without. The person in trouble who gets a second chance. The passionate protestor. The police officer who decides that to protect
In 1983, Congress passed and President Ronald Reagan signed the law honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. with a federal holiday. That’s a historical fact. But that single fact doesn’t acknowledge the complex, multi-level, multi-year strategy and activism that achieved that victory.
As the 30th national holiday approaches, it’s a good time to remember what it took for us to get here and to consider – in light of the ongoing challenges to equal opportunity – our continuing obligation to “stand up for the best in the American dream.”
The campaign for the holiday began only days after Dr. King’s assassination. Legislation was introduced in Congress on April 8, 1968 by Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, but that bill and several others were consistently derailed by lawmakers who resented both Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement. After a long campaign that included the largest petition drive in history, the law passed. The holiday was observed for the first time on Jan. 20, 1986.
Back then, my suburban Salt Lake City school district did not close for the holiday. That first year, I Martin Luther King, Jr. His Legacy in Our Classrooms
