know your rights

Know your rights.

If you're planning to be part of the coordinated student walkouts March 14th and April 20th, know your rights.

If you are a student, a parent, a teacher, school staff, or an ally it's important that everyone learn about their rights.
This Thursday, March 1st at 8pm ET, the ACLU will host a Know Your Rights Training call. Because of the disciplinary threats from certain schools and districts, everyone should learn about students' rights.

Download your own Know Your Rights card.

In addition, know your history: the history of teens organizing for justice.

Here is what I have so far from Larry Ferlazzo:

Children have changed America before, braving fire hoses and police dogs for civil rights is from The Washington Post.

High School Students Demanding Gun Reform Join Rich History of Teen Resistance is from YES Magazine.

The Parkland Teens Are Part Of A Long Line Of Kids Who Led Social Change is from Fast Company.

Students Calling for Gun Control Can’t Vote Yet. But Age Hasn’t Stopped Young Activists in the Past is from TIME.

The Other Student Activists is by Melinda Anderson.

How Four Teenage Girls Organized This Week’s Huge Silent Protest is from Chicago Magazine.

Finally, know what 18 years of gun violence in U.S. schools looks like (from the Washington Post).

Called "Generation Columbine", students currently in high school have never known the U.S. to be a place free from school shootings. The 1999 school shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, took place before today's high school students were born. Today's students have grown up with active shooter drills, locker searches, locked school doors and gates, bulletproof backpacks, and armed officers in their schools. 

It's no wonder students are organizing for change.

we call BS

As you know, on February 14th, Valentine's Day, another school shooting occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Seventeen people were killed and fifteen more were taken to area hospitals.

I haven't been able to wrap my head around yet another mass shooting, another school shooting, another weapon of war purchased legally... it's a circle of despair, horror, and anger. But this time there seems to be a spark, the call to action by America's youth, to finally change our collective reality around guns, gun violence, and our assumed right to weapons of war. 

I am not sure what I will do to fan this spark. But I know I can vote; I can march; I can support the young people who are pushing back on NRA funded politicians; I can do so much more than send thoughts and prayers.

We have to elect candidates that are not funded by the NRA this November and beyond. You can register to vote now, as long as you will be 18 by November 6th. Check out vote411.org to find out about voting in your state.

We can support Everytown for Gun Safety, a movement to end gun violence and build safer communities, at everytown.org

We can read Brene Brown's book, Braving The Wilderness, especially chapter four "People Are Hard To Hate Up Close" and "Speak Truth to Bullshit".


We can watch Emma Gonzalez's speech and be inspired:

These will redefine what official portraiture will look like.

This morning, Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery unveiled the official, highly anticipated portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama, painted, respectively, by Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald. 

The portraits, beyond capturing the first black President and First Lady, represent the first-ever official presidential portraits executed by black painters.

The two portraits will be on view at the National Portrait Gallery beginning tomorrow, Tuesday February 13th. While Kehinde Wiley’s portrait of President Obama will join the institution’s permanent exhibition of presidential portraits, Amy Sherald’s portrait of Michelle Obama will hang in its corridor of recent acquisitions through November 2018. 

Check out this wonderful video of Kehinde Wiley and his art. It contextualizes some of the elements of his portrait of the president.