Who will tell the children that we have allowed the water they need to live to be poisoned by fracking?
Who will tell the children that the beaches on which we used to loll and get sun-tanned were wiped out by the oceans rising because we would not control carbon emissions?
Who will tell the children that they cannot expect a decent job because we allowed transnational corporations to ship them overseas?
Who will tell the children that their votes mean nothing when corporations can buy politicians, elections, policies and anything else that enriches the few at the expense of the rest of us?
Who will tell the children that once upon a time we had schools and teachers that actually taught, not just doing test prep, and that they were paid for by the taxes of all of us?
Who will tell the children that they or their friends or their family might be placed in a fr-profit prison far from home for failure to pay court fees for trumped up charges, a way of enriching those who run those prisons?
Who will tell the children that the tolls they pay to drive on the highways used to go to maintain the highways, not to the profits of foreign corporations, not answerable to our government or our citizens?
Who will tell the children that the government is no longer there to protect and support them, but to enrich the few?
Who will tell the children that what they are taught about American government in textbooks produced by a British Corporation (which also produces the tests that are used to find them wanting in their education) describe a government that no longer exists, no longer works for them?
Who will tell the children that for them there is no longer an American dream, but rather an American nightmare?
You can add to the list if you want.
You can tell me I am being a worry-wart, or worse.
That does not bother me.
What bothers me is what is happening, and how few of "our" political candidates are willing to speak to this, to make it an issue that can rouse the people.
I will acknowledge that I obtained my refrain by slight modification of the title of the important book by William Greider.
I think of the children, because I teach.
That is my commitment to the future, even though biologically we are childless.
But is there still time for them to learn and to take control, before America is lost for good, to the greedy, the corporatists, the privatizers?
I do not know.
I know only this - that we do not have that much time, that many election cycles, left, before the democratic republic is gone forever.
When I see a Democratic administration justifying what the NSA is doing to Americans, I am not shocked, because it was under Democratic president Thomas Woodrow Wilson that the Palmer Red Raids, which I think massively violated the rights guaranteed to all persons, took place.
That there is historical precedent does not assuage my fear and anger about what is happening.
If Democrats want people to vote for them, give them a reason.
Stand up for something.
Call for overturning corporate personhood.
Call for overturning Citizens United.
Call for reinstating the principles of the Voting Rights Act.
Call for constitutional protections for all persons, as the text of the various amendments states.
Oppose privatization of public services and institutions - prisons, roads, libraries, water systems, and especially schools.
Argue for rehabilitation of first time offenders rather than punitive sanctions that permanently exclude people from full civic participation.
Call out the various 'isms' for what they are - hate speech:
- racism
- sexism
- homophobia
- agism
- and yes, even extreme nationalism
When I am depressed or worried, to keep going I turn to music.
As I now write I listen to the Dona Nobis Pacem of Bach's B Minor Mass.
I want to believe in a future that goes beyond my own conscious existence on earth.
What I do, in work, in private actions, must be in conformity with that goal.
How I vote.
How I purchase.
How I travel.
How I eat.
How I write and speak.
Most of all, how I teach.
Who will tell the children?
I will try to help them understand what is happening.
I will also remind them that even as young people they can make a difference.
Thursday and Friday all my students, even those in STEM classes, heard about the Civil Rights movement, and listened to speeches by Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis on August 28, 1963.
King was only 34. At the time of the Montgomery Bus Boycott he had only been 26.
Lewis was only 23.
The young men from North Carolina A & T who began the sit-ins in Woolworth's were freshman.
Children younger than my high school students got themselves arrested in Birmingham.
We are supposed to leave the children a better world than we received.
If we do not, who will tell the children?
So what will we do now?
People ask why I returned to teaching.
Perhaps I did not fully understand it.
Perhaps I still do not fully grasp all of it.
Part of it is selfish - I like teaching, I get energy from being with young people.
Part of it is a moral commitment to something beyond myself, beyond my own existence.
Do we have the will to stand up for what is right, to take the actions now that will make the difference for the future?
If not, who will tell the children?