Happy (Not My) Presidents Day!

Happy (Not My) Presidents Day!

Anti-Trump protesters come out for ‘Not My Presidents Day’ rallies

A broad range of activists opposed to the month-old Trump administration were using Monday's President's Day holiday to hold “Not My Presidents Day” rallies nationwide.

With most government workers, school employees and students enjoying a day off due to the federal holiday, events were underway in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and as many as two dozen other communities, organizers said. In Atlanta, more than 600 protesters were expected at an “ImPEACH Now” march — the group's Facebook page featured an image of a cut peach with Trump's face in place of the pit.

In Los Angeles, about 4,300 people were expected to rally at noon at City Hall, according to the group's Facebook page. Protests were also taking place in nearby Pasadena and near Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif.

In Philadelphia, protesters were marching in a "Counter the Executive Orders" rally, according to the group's Facebook page.

In Ann Arbor, Mich., about 600 marchers were expected to attend a "Bad Hombres and Nasty Women" event Monday night, featuring "uncensored performances" and benefiting Planned Parenthood.

“While we acknowledge that Donald Trump holds the current title, the policies he’s trying to put in place are not the beliefs shared by the majority of the people,” said Nova Calise, a television production manager and one of the organizers of New York event, which was expected to draw about 15,000 people to Trump International Hotel near Manhattan’s Central Park, according to a Facebook group. Expected speakers included Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and Sonia Ossorio, who runs the New York City chapter of the National Organization for Women.

Monday's rallies come days after several weekend events in New York, Dallas and Los Angeles that called for the establishment of "sanctuary cities" in order to end immigration raids, NBC News reported. In Boston, hundreds of scientists marched to urge Trump to recognize climate change and tackle environmental issues. The rally coincided with the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

On Sunday in New York, more than 1,000 people rallied in New York City in support of Muslim Americans. The "I Am A Muslim Too" rally was organized by, among others, hip-Hop mogul Russell Simmons, who said last week, "We are living in a time when unity will make America great. This is a special moment for all Americans of goodwill to band together to promote the kind of compassion and equality for others that we want for ourselves."

Rabbi Marc Schneier, FFEU's president, co-organized the first "Today, I Am A Muslim Too" in 2010, ABC reported.

In a statement, Rabbi Schneier said: "We must join together at the most famous crossroads in the world to make a collective statement that, 'Whenever my Muslim brothers and sisters are demonized and vilified, discriminated against or victimized by hate crimes and violence, 'Today, I am a Muslim too.'"

NYC 'I Am A Muslim Too' rally protests travel ban

One of the organizers of Monday's Chicago rally, business professor Laura Hartman, said the event has an overarching theme of unity. Hartman said Trump’s early moves — from attacking journalists to imposing limits on immigration — could splinter the public.

“We don’t want to pick an issue,” said Hartman, who also attended the massive Women’s March in Washington last month. “By embracing a broad umbrella, we can show this administration that the numbers against it are broad."

Contributing: Fredreka Schouten; Follow Greg Toppo on Twitter: @gtoppo

Anti-Trump protesters come out for ‘Not My Presidents Day’ rallies

Keep DeVos Away From Our Public Schools! - Action Network

Keep DeVos Away From Our Public Schools! - Action Network:

Keep DeVos Away From Our Public Schools!

 Tell the National School Boards Association, The School Superintendents Association, and The National PTA to keep DeVos out of our public schools! Her goal has been, and always will be, to liquidate our public school system.  BATs will deliver this petition to the NSBA, SSA, and Nat. PTA on March 20th! Let's get a million or  more on this petition!Keep DeVos Away From Our Public Schools! - Action Network:

Betsy DeVos Had an Awfully Difficult First Week on the Job | Diane Ravitch's blog

Betsy DeVos Had an Awfully Difficult First Week on the Job | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Betsy DeVos Had an Awfully Difficult First Week on the Job

Teachers who teach children with multiple disabilities and children who are homeless may think that they have a tough job, but consider what a very hard time Betsy DeVos had in her first week as Secretary of Education, very likely the first paying job she has ever held. She visited a public middle school in D.C., where protestors harassed her and tried to keep her out. When she eventually entered the school, she said nice things to the staff, but after she left she insulted them as being in a “receive” mode. She gave a few interviews and said she hoped to launch more charter schools, more vouchers, more cybercharters, and presumably shrink the number of public schools as she opens up opportunities for students to go anywhere other than public schools.

In one interview, she told syndicated conservative columnist Cal Thomas that she did not think the protests against her were spontaneous. The implication was that those evil teachers’ unions had plotted against her. The other implication was that parents and teachers would welcome her noble presence in their public school, even though she was unimpressed with what she saw. Someone, she said, was trying to make her life “a living hell.” No matter what the plotters do, she pledged she would not be deterred from her mission of “helping kids in this country,” by enabling them to leave public schools for privatized alternatives.

She suggested to Thomas that it might be a good idea to bring tens of thousands of children to the Capitol to demonstrate for charters and vouchers. She said it had worked in Florida. Of course, this is now a standard part of the privatization script, using children as political pawns to demand more public funding for private choices, thus disabling public schools by diminishing their resources.

She pledged to support alternatives to public schools, without citing a scintilla of evidence that these choices would help kids and without acknowledging that the proliferation of choices harms the great majority of children who don’t choose to leave public schools. Her mindset is purely ideological. She did not offer any suggestions about how to help the vast majority of children who attend public schools. She has one idea, and she is sticking to it: choice. The absence of evidence for that one idea from her home state never comes up. Michigan has tumbled in national rankings as choice has expanded.

When Cal Thomas asked what could be done for children who had an Betsy DeVos Had an Awfully Difficult First Week on the Job | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Activist, politician Tom Hayden is remembered at UCLA memorial - LA Times

Activist, politician Tom Hayden is remembered at UCLA memorial - LA Times:

Activist, politician Tom Hayden is remembered at UCLA memorial

tomhayden.com - The Democracy Journal - http://tomhayden.com/

When Robert Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, the senator’s family picked Tom Hayden to be an honorary pallbearer at the funeral because the young antiwar activist embodied “the great hope that my father had in the future of our country,” Robert Kennedy Jr. recalled Sunday night at a memorial for Hayden.

Hayden, who died in October at the age of 76, had been one of the first white students from northern states to join blacks in Freedom Ride protests against segregation in the South. He’d gotten beat up by police in Mississippi and “gone to jail for his beliefs in Georgia,” Kennedy told the audience at UCLA’s Royce Hall.

Now, he said, Hayden had joined those in heaven “who spent their lifetime fighting for justice, fighting for the poor.”

“He’s there with my father, and with Martin Luther King, and they are right now exhorting that when we leave this hall, we go out into the streets, and onto the barricades, and we fight to reclaim our country from these very, very bad people,” Kennedy said to a round of applause.

Hayden died just over two weeks before Donald Trump was elected president. But none of the roughly 1,000 people who gathered to remember him doubted how vigorously he would have fought Trump’s administration.

The service opened with one civil rights march song, “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize,” and closed with another, “Ain’t Nobody Going to Turn Me Around.” Joining a four-person choir in the final number were singers Bonnie Raitt, Holly Near and Barbara Williams, Hayden’s wife, along with the couple’s son, Liam Hayden, and Hayden’s ex-wife, Jane Fonda.

Hayden was in the vanguard of the 1960s counterculture movement, a radical who led civil rights and antiwar protests and later became a prolific author and member of of the California Legislature.  

Hayden was the lead author of the Port Huron Statement, a 1962 student manifesto that served as a foundation for protests against the Vietnam War.

President Nixon’s Justice Department prosecuted Hayden in the raucous “Chicago 7” trial after violent clashes between police and protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. (Two of his codefendants, Rennie Davis and John Froines, attended the service.)

Hayden and Fonda were a major force in California politics in the 1970s and ’80s, and Hayden went on to represent the liberal Westside in the state Assembly and Senate for 18 years.

“Tom was our friend, and boy, could we use his voice right now,” said Father Greg Boyle, the Homeboy Industries founder who worked with Hayden on efforts to rehabilitate gang members.

One former gang member, Alex Sanchez, paid tribute to Hayden for leading him away from a life of crime and violence.

“He believed in me,” Sanchez told the audience as tears rolled down his cheeks. “He believed in change. He didn’t see my tattoos. He didn’t see that I was from the most infamous gang. He saw the real me.”

Hayden’s critics — and there were many — were given voice in a couple of video snippets, including one that focused on his three years of community organizing in poor black sections of Newark in the mid-’60s.

“He was a bum,” Hayden critic Anthony Imperiale of the Newark Citizens Committee was shown saying to a burst of laughter and applause in Royce Hall. “He was a troublemaker, and to this day he’s a troublemaker.”

Troy Garity, the son of Hayden and Fonda, told the crowd it was “slightly difficult being the son of a communist radical and Hanoi Jane, and having our house lit on fire — well, not really, but almost.”

He choked up about video  footage showing cops beating up his father and paid tribute to “everybody in the movement who lost somebody.”

“Don’t mourn,” he said. “Organize.”

Fonda recalled meeting Hayden at one of her slide presentations against the Vietnam War. Activist, politician Tom Hayden is remembered at UCLA memorial - LA Times:

The Importance of Asking the Right Policy Question: Technology in Schools | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

The Importance of Asking the Right Policy Question: Technology in Schools | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

The Importance of Asking the Right Policy Question: Technology in Schools

About a century ago, electronic technologies entered the classroom. Initially  as the film (1920s), radio (1930s), and instructional television (1960s), these devices derived from the entertainment business. The hype surrounding each promised that teachers would have access to the world beyond the classroom and the library. Teachers would have engaging tools that turn on students to what had to be learned. And students would be able to learn more, faster, and better.

The policy question driving these entertainment-oriented devices was: How can these new media help teachers do better what they ordinarily do in conveying to students new knowledge and skills?

Both teacher and student access to these electronic devices, however, was limited by costs of film projectors, classroom radio sets, and television wiring and equipment. Districts parceled out equipment to schools and established audiovisual departments. Consider further that finding the best film for a unit took much time as teachers scoured public libraries and district audiovisual departments. Teachers competed for the projectors, available films,radio sets, and television monitors so classroom use was seldom regular but occasional or none at all. Limited access for teachers and students–say once a month–kept this question front and center.

Now enter the desktop computer in the early 1980s. The hoopla surrounding its launching in schools (who recalls the TRS-80, and Apple II?) when teachers would get one computer for their classrooms and the school would have a set of devices for a lab.

As competitors entered the education market and the price of these desktops fell, what became clear was that these devices were far more powerful in teaching the young about both academic subjects and the world than earlier generations of film, radio, and instructional TV. These devices were interactive, drawing students into responding to what was on the screen. The entry of these devices and subsequent generations of more powerful and sophisticated hardware and software occurred simultaneous with the push by  federal and state officials to The Importance of Asking the Right Policy Question: Technology in Schools | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Experience Matters | EdCentrist

Experience Matters | EdCentrist:

Experience Matters

The new Secretary of Education, Betsy Devos, is receiving quite a bit of slack for this recent interview. Although the interview covers a variety of education-related topics, I want to focus solely on the question and answer regarding her visit to Jefferson Academy Middle School, in Washington, D.C. Full disclosure, I have the privilege of working at this school and alongside a talented group of school leaders and teachers. Now, as much as I can take offense to her unfounded critiques of my colleagues, I rather focus my attention on the question and response, itself, through the lens of a five-year, public middle school teacher.

Before I analyze her response, I want to first evaluate and unpack the interviewer’s question.

Question: “There have been many programs to improve public education through Democrat and Republican administrations. And yet American students continue to lag behind in areas like math and science. Why haven’t those programs worked? What has been the missing piece in these noble and sometimes very expensive efforts?”

This question is dependent on the following assumption: there is a single missing piece or simple solution to “fix” the American public education system. Unfortunately, the interviewer is not the only person who suffers from this logical fallacy. In my professional opinion, both political parties fall victim to the silver bullet narrative in education reform. For liberal leaning education reformers, this assumption is often promoted by the “teacher as savior or superhero” narrative, where we (wrongly) celebrate the teacher who works 100 hours a week or until they “burn out” and leave the profession, altogether.

For conservative leaning education reformers, this fallacy is used to promote the idea and policy of school vouchers and/or school choice. Even though this policy makes for great campaign rhetoric and talking points, school vouchers and/or choice, albeit a parent’s right, is not a strategy for “improving” public education. Think of this policy “solution” as more of an “out,” than a evidenced-based approach to improving a “failing” public school. In fact, this Experience Matters | EdCentrist:

The problem with special education in Illinois is not over-funding or over-identification of students with special needs. Amend HB 2808. | Fred Klonsky

The problem with special education in Illinois is not over-funding or over-identification of students with special needs. Amend HB 2808. | Fred Klonsky:

The problem with special education in Illinois is not over-funding or over-identification of students with special needs. Amend HB 2808.

State Senator Andy Manar told the Gov. Rauner’s School Funding Reform Commission on January 17 that there was “drastic over-identification.”

-By Bev Johns

On the surface Illinois is engaged in a debate on how to fund Illinois schools. But Illinois House Bill 2808 includes a completely different system for special education.

Is our vision IDEA, the Federal special education law, or House Bill 2808?

Special education or RTI (MTSS)?

Disability or (temporary) differences?

Special Educators or General Educators that do it all?

Continuum of Alternative Placements or full inclusion?

Differing outcomes as individual as an IEP or one outcome for all?

Dedicated funding or funding based on general education?

Special educators or interventionists?

Under-identification or over-identification?

There are some saying students are over-identified for special education in Illinois. State Senator Andy Manar told the Gov. Rauner’s School Funding Reform Commission on January 17 that there was “drastic over-identification”. 

NO STUDY confirms that.

A January 23, 2017, study says Chicago UNDER-identifies African-American AND Hispanic students for special education.

Parents, teachers and disability rights advocates say new oversight protocols keep kids from getting services they need, while BGA analysis raises questions about Chicago Public Schools’ claims that minority students are over-identified for special ed.

HB 2808 assumes the problem is over-identification, and offers two solutions:

(1) Special ed funding based on a fixed number of GENERAL education students.

(2) Funds for Interventionists (RTI or MTSS: Response to Intervention or Multi-TieredSystem of Support).

HB 2808 now includes INTERVENTIONISTS based on the assumption that Response The problem with special education in Illinois is not over-funding or over-identification of students with special needs. Amend HB 2808. | Fred Klonsky:

The Mile High Promise, And Risk, Of School Choice : NPR Ed : NPR

The Mile High Promise, And Risk, Of School Choice : NPR Ed : NPR:

The Mile High Promise, And Risk, Of School Choice

Why does a reporter doing a story on the Denver "reform" model for schools use a charter lobby group as main source? https://t.co/cM6CE7JJnF

— Jeff Bryant (@jeffbcdm) February 20, 2017

Choice here, he charges, represents "hope and ideology not supported by current evidence" that closing low-performing schools really improves outcomes.

During Betsy DeVos' bitter confirmation hearing last month for education secretary, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet pointed to Denver as a potential national model of a big city school district that's found an innovative, balanced approach to school choice.

"Without exception," the Colorado Democrat told DeVos, "we demanded quality and implemented strong accountability" for the mix of traditional, charter, innovation and magnet schools in the 92,000-student district.

Bennet invited DeVos to come see the Mile High city's choice program first-hand. DeVos said she'd "love to."

We don't yet know if she plans to take up Sen. Bennet's invitation. But NPR Ed did.

In Denver we found a generally popular, user-friendly program — one application for any school — that has boosted academic growth rates, improved on-time graduation and lowered dropout rates.

Denver Superintendent Tom Boasburg says at its core, choice in the city is focused on leveling the education playing field — or as he puts it, "How do we promote greater equity for our highest-need families?"

But there are still big gaps in access to quality schools; choice has done little to narrow achievement gaps by income and race; poorer families point to on-going transportation challenges; and choice in Denver includes some painful choices about re-booting and closing under-performing schools, mostly in neighborhoods with some of the most vulnerable students.

It all raises important questions about the promise and limitations of choice to bridge stubborn access and equity gaps in education.

Closing underperforming schools

Color codes matter in Denver's schools. And Gilpin Montessori, a public elementary school in the city's Five Points neighborhood, got a "red" ranking — or probation. That's the lowest category in the city's school performance rankings.

And in Denver, chronic red can get you closed.

Just before Christmas break, parents got word that the school board and district had decided to shutter Gilpin.

"My disappointment turned into shock and a little bit of anger and frustration as I realized how they're using closure as a tool to deal with reforming schools instead of actually trying to transform them," says Cameron Ward-Hunt, one of the many Gilpin parents who's outraged at the closure decision and at the way it was rolled out and communicated.

Choice here, he charges, represents "hope and ideology not supported by current evidence" that closing low-performing schools really improves outcomes.

Once a thriving area known as the Harlem of the West, Five Points went into a decades-long decline.

Today, the area is gentrifying fast, with pricey new condos, a café, fitness center and a few new eateries. But it still has deep pockets of poverty. Public housing projects are visible from the Gilpin Montessori playground bench, where parent Beth Bianchi sits.

"They're really in turmoil over everything that's happening," she says of the students The Mile High Promise, And Risk, Of School Choice : NPR Ed : NPR:

Rough First Week Gives Betsy DeVos a Glimpse of the Fight Ahead - The New York Times

Rough First Week Gives Betsy DeVos a Glimpse of the Fight Ahead - The New York Times:

Rough First Week Gives Betsy DeVos a Glimpse of the Fight Ahead

By the end of her first full week as the secretary of education, Betsy DeVos had already sparred with a middle school and a former schools chancellor in Washington, accused some of the school’s teachers of passively awaiting instruction and said she would be pleased if the department she currently runs did not exist in the future. She encountered an immediate display of the type of fierce resistance she will face as she tries to set new policies for the Education Department.

On Sunday, she received a somewhat warmer welcome from the New York City schools chancellor, Carmen Fariña, who said in a radio interview that she was ready to work with Ms. DeVos. Even as she urged Ms. DeVos not to cut funding for the city’s public schools, Ms. Fariña said that despite their ideological differences, the two could make sure that children are properly educated. “I work with everyone,” Ms. Fariña said. “I will have conversations with anyone and everyone to ensure that the work we’re doing here is being celebrated and recognized, and we’ll see what time will bring.”

In interviews with two online news organizations, Ms. DeVos began laying the groundwork for her approach. “It would be fine with me to have myself worked out of a job,” she told Axios, adding that she expects there will be more public charter schools, private schools and virtual schools under her leadership. She told Townhall, a conservative outlet, that she doubted the validity of the demonstrations against her and that her critics and protesters wanted to make her life “a living hell.”

“I don’t think most of those are spontaneous, genuine protests,” she said. “I think they’re all being sponsored and very carefully planned.”

She said in the Townhall interview that she planned to focus on rolling out the Every Student Succeeds Act, a policy signed into law by President Barack Obama, while also pushing for controversial school choice policies like voucher programs.

It was her visit to Jefferson Middle School Academy in Washington, where protesters briefly blocked her from entering, that set off several days of online bickering. After speaking to teachers at the school, she called the visit “wonderful,” only to tell Townhall that she saw problems with the teachers.

“I visited a school on Friday and met with some wonderful, genuine, sincere teachers who pour their heart and soul into their classrooms and their students,” Ms. DeVos said. “But I can tell the attitude is more of a ‘receive mode.’ They’re waiting to be told what they have to do, and that’s not going to bring success to an individual child.”

The school posted 11 tweets in rapid succession defending its teachers, saying of Ms. DeVos, “We’re about to take her to school.”

The school said that one of the classrooms Ms. DeVos visited was led by two teachers who serve students whose reading levels range from first grade to eighth grade, and who “maintain a positive classroom environment focused on rigorous content, humor and love.”Rough First Week Gives Betsy DeVos a Glimpse of the Fight Ahead - The New York Times:

Big Education Ape: U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos' Very Busy First Week - Illustrated - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2017/02/us-secretary-of-education-betsy-devos_18.html

It’s a Terrible Time to Be Secretary of Education, Especially If You Don’t Understand the Job - Education Law Prof Blog

Education Law Prof Blog:

It’s a Terrible Time to Be Secretary of Education, Especially If You Don’t Understand the Job

Even if Betsy DeVos understood her job, she could not have taken over the Department of Education at a worse time.  The busiest and most complex process that any Secretary of Education will likely see over the next several years is beginning.  States are set to submit their brand new implementation plans for the Every Student Succeeds Act.  They have been operating under No Child Left Behind plans since 2002 and are now transitioning to entirely new schemes.

These plans include lots of moving parts and policy choices within a much larger regulatory structure.  The people who understand those parts just exited the Department of Education building.  New staffers are coming into the building and, as evidenced by the confirmation hearing, their boss does not understand the basic rules that have been in place for decades, much less the new ones.

To make things worse, DeVos just added to the confusion.  On February 10, DeVos sent a letter to states telling them that the timeline for submitting their implementation plans remains in place, but everything else is up in the air.  In November, the Department enacted final regulations outlining what should be in those plans, but DeVos indicates states should not worry about complying with those regulations.  She points to a letter from White House staff and the possibility that Congress might disapprove the regulations.  In such case, "these regulations 'shall Education Law Prof Blog:

 

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES:

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison

This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal. -- The Nation

Rick Ayers

Threats and bluster might work when you are building a casino but they don’t really work on the world stage. -- Huffington Post

Betsy DeVos

"Critics want to make my life a living hell." -- Washington Post

DeVos flees D.C. school protest

“I said I’d like to visit a public school with her, and then I’d like her to visit a choice school with me,” DeVos told Axios Thursday, recounting a recent phone call with Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). -- The Hill

Former WaPo Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein
 “Trump's attacks on the American press as 'enemies of Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES:

Schools Matter: Yolie Flores Aguilar email colluding with charter school executives

Schools Matter: Yolie Flores Aguilar email colluding with charter school executives:

Yolie Flores Aguilar email colluding with charter school executives

“PLEASE don’t forward this email. simply state it in your own words.”—Yolie Flores Aguilar

This email was addressed to some 60 individuals, including myself, on February 4, 2017. While its authenticity is not absolutely certain, I have researched the email addresses in the email body and they all seem legitimate. The content is consistent with the language that these charter school executives use both in public and internal conversations.

Yolie Flores Aguilar was an employee of the infamous Gates Foundation (of ALEC and Discovery Institute donation fame) while she sat on the LAUSD Board. She brought a resolution to give away new schools built with taxpayer dollars to privately managed charter school corporations.

Here Flores colludes with several well paid charter executives to avoid public mention that her resolution (inappropriately named Public [sic] School Choice) was essentially a real estate bonanza for the lucrative charter school sector. Marco Petruzzi and Ben Austin of Green Dot/Parent Revolution, Judy Burton of Alliance, Mike Piscal of ICEF are the big names in this secret missive. The lot of them have been plagued by scandals, but most of them are still profiting mightily from the charter industry.

Flores is currently running for U.S. Congress. If she's capable of this sort of duplicity and malfeasance while on a school board, Schools Matter: Yolie Flores Aguilar email colluding with charter school executives:

Married teachers, their children, and President Trump’s supporters | Reclaim Reform

Married teachers, their children, and President Trump’s supporters | Reclaim Reform:

Married teachers, their children, and President Trump’s supporters

My friend Darcey Addo and her husband, Dan, are teachers on the Space Coast in Brevard County. They have two young children in the public schools. They are sweet and loving people. Here is Darcey’s own account of one witnessed incident that occurred to them during President Trump’s “campaign” stop in Melbourne, Florida on February 18, 2017.

Last post about 45’s visit, but I feel compelled to share some reflections:

* Dan and I raise our kids to know the importance of civic engagement and, when necessary, political dissent. To us, that’s American. To those who judge us as parents for raising kids who understand their Constitutional rights to assemble, to speak, to petition…I cannot understand your logic. I’m glad that my children will be able to defend their rights. One day you may silently thank us as we defend your right, too.* To the grown man Trump supporter who thought it was acceptable to get inches from my eight year old daughter’s face with your rally sign and shout at her nearly nose-to-nose: you give the word “deplorable” a whole new meaning.* To the 40 or 50 Trump supporters who stood and watched this grown man invade the personal space of my little girl, watched him get down in her face and shout at her: is this the GREATNESS that you talk about? Or maybe it’s OK because it wasn’t your child…?* To the protestors who saw the same interaction and saw Dan (and the cops) spring into action, thank you for rallying around my family. I didn’t know most of you, but humanity and decency is a compelling force that binds us.Today I saw division like I’ve never seen before. We are far beyond simple political disagreement. When a man can do to a child what he did to my daughter and EVERYONE – literally EVERY SINGLE PERSON from the Trump side stood watching in support, we are in a really bad place. I am so Married teachers, their children, and President Trump’s supporters | Reclaim Reform: