Timid Political Action

I have never been very politically savvy, much less politically active, almost intentionally so for most of my life. My social work program certainly challenged me in this area, educating me about how impacting policy issues are to individuals and groups of people. While in the program, I did attend Lobby Days, an event put on by the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) to educate us about policy and lobbying for the issues that impact the clients we provide direct services to. While at the event, I went with a group to speak to a councilman to advocate for some policies impacting seniors and foster youth and was encouraged that our issues were going to likely be supported because we'd voiced support for them. I even went to a rally. I was pretty impressed with myself for all that political action and how much I learned and even had fun in the process - but haven't done all that much in this arena since then.


Last week, I revived my political energies with 2 activities in a matter of days.


The first activity: Last Tuesday, I attended a San Diego USD school board meeting in support of City Heights Prep, a charter school my friend, Dr. Marnie Nair is in the process of trying to start up. I met Marnie when she was a post-doc at Berkeley and have had fun reconnecting with her down here and finding little ways to support her exciting venture to bring innovative college preparatory resources to a low-income, largely refugee community that has to send between five to 6,000 children outside of their community in order to get a safe and sufficient education. She's going to make it possible for people to take pride in their own community, for children to stop spending 3 hours a day on a bus that they could be spending learning or developing relationships with their family or local community members, and for children to have great academic opportunities that will grow their talents and enable them to return to their community to re-invest in it.


As I walked into the district building for the first time, I did not feel like I belonged. But I soon found some people I knew who were also supporting Marnie's efforts and was soon comforted by a whole host of familiar, smiling faces. Our friend Mo, our moving angel who showed up the day we arrived in San Diego to help us unload our truck without having ever met us before; our pastor, Stephen, who had sent Mo to us that day; and a handful of other people Marnie or Mo or Stephen has introduced me to. Before Marnie's presentation, I had to sit through about an hour of other people speaking. The first presenters were school counselors and school social workers [that's what my professional certification is in] begging the board not to further cut funding for their positions in schools. It was both stressful to think about their funding being cut, my own field being undervalued, my friend's job opportunities being further narrowed, but also exciting to see that there were brave women fighting for the mental health resources of public school students. I hope their arguments were effective with the board! The next presenters were another group petitioning for a charter to start a new school. There were about 5 or 6 people there from that group all together. They gave a decent presentation about special programs or innovations they would involve in their school design, but spent a large amount of time talking about the "American Dream," a concept I feel increasingly skeptical and concerned about, so I had mediocre feelings as they wrapped up their case.


When their presentation ended, Marnie and her co-presenters approached the podium as something like 50-80 blue signs raised and rustled with great gusto, reading "City Heights Prep." The faces of the board members reflected incredible shock and most heads in the room darted around, finding that almost the entire auditorium was filled with supporters for these presenters - we all beamed with pride to be part of the effort together.  Marnie and her presenters gave a well-rounded case for City Heights Prep, from Marnie's incredible resume of experience in educational leadership and research, to a high school community development leader's articulate imploring for bringing this much needed resources to his neighborhood, to a financially savvy guy with respect-inducing grey hairs articulating the professional economic and strategic efforts made by the school's board already, to my favorite, the young man who would be a student when the school opens its middle school, who brought tears to my eyes (and warm smiles to the board members' faces) as he spoke about how Marnie, who serves as his tutor, taught him to know himself as a reader by reading Narnia books with him. As these presenters walked back from the podium, there was a massive racket as nearly the entire room stood and shuffled out of the room in a mass exodus. Again, the faces of the school board members was priceless, this time both shocked and smiling at the apparently unusual show of support for this community-responsive effort. All I did was show up and hold a little sign, but it felt like a pretty powerful experience to be one of so many making a big impact together.

The second activity: The DREAM Act passed in the House last week, and is up for vote in the Senate. Here's a recent article about it, if you're interested. It is somewhat controversial, but this is about kids who have been brought to the US, who we've invested in by already providing several years of education to, it seems like we could all benefit by giving them an opportunity for legal citizenship. I hear the point about this providing a slippery slope, encouraging illegal activities, but I encourage you to try to get your hands on a copy of "Which Way Home" and watch it, to consider who it is we might be criminalizing in not passing this bill, and what we're sending these children back to. For maybe the first time in my life, I actually called my Congress-person to express my support. This was a pretty tiny effort, as she's already in support of the Act herself, but it still made me nervous to make the call - hopefully the ease and pleasantry of doing it this once will make it easier in the future. Here are some phone numbers if you'd also like to make a call:

ARIZONA

Senator McCain and Kyl can be reached at:  202-224-3121 

INDIANA

Lugar: (202) 224-4814

UTAH

Bennett: (202) 224-5444

Hatch: (202) 224-5251

KANSAS

Brownback: (202) 224-6521

MAINE

Collins: (202) 224-2523

Snowe: (202) 224-5344

ALASKA

Murkowski: (202) 224-6665

MISSOURI

McCaskill: (202) 224-6154

LOUISIANA

Landrieu: (202) 224-5824

NORTH CAROLINA

Hagan: (202) 224-6342

OHIO

Voinovich: (202) 224-3353

FLORIDA

LeMieux: (202) 224-3041

TEXAS

Hutchison: (202) 224-5922

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Gregg: (202) 224-3324

MASSACHUSETTS

Brown: (202) 224-2315

SOUTH CAROLINA

Graham: (202) 224-5972

MICHIGAN

Stabenow: (202) 224-4822

VIRGINIA

Warner: (202) 224-2023

Webb: (202) 224-4024

WEST VIRGINIA

Manchin: (202) 224-3954