March The Second

 I went for a walk downtown this Saturday. Most of it was in the middle of otherwise busy streets. The fact that I was carrying one side of a banner and periodically raising my voice in unison with a crowd that surrounded me is probably what kept me safe and free from arrest and/or prosecution. 

Once again, I fell in love with my constitutional rights. Freedoms of speech and assembly, specifically. Police presence was at a minimum, perhaps because we were a group of educators, parents and students. We were wending our way through the streets of Oakland in broad daylight. We carried signs, pushed strollers, and some brought their little dogs on leashes. Our intent was to disrupt, not destroy. We wanted to keep our public schools open to the public. The traffic we impeded was generally supportive with their honking horns as hundreds of us streamed past, hollering and chanting and shuffling our feet. 

There was a certain familiarity with the crowd, some of whom I had taken to the streets with a few weeks back, making some of the same loud points but in a different corner of town. The message, "Save our schools," was still the same as well. There were also plenty of faces that I recognized from hanging around the same district for all this time. This time we weren't there for a training or professional development. We were there to raise a fuss. 

In the months since the list of schools the Oakland Unified School District decided to close, things had gone from bad to worse to worser. Not only are they continuing with plans to close our school, they decided to cancel our playground repair and upgrade and give it away to a school they have designated as a "welcoming site" for students who will be displaced when our school shuts its doors. In the days and weeks since that announcement, I have found it hard to stand out on our school yard and look at the cracked pavement and imagine that somehow this is the playground these kids deserve. On top of this came the school board's decision to extend still more leases to charter schools so they can use the buildings they are currently seeking to empty. 

So I walked a few miles with like-minded individuals and hoped for a future in which all those people who honked their horns or were handed a flyer will find a way to join us for whatever happens next. Because no matter how big the march is, somehow I ended up feeling very alone.