As an organizer in California I recognize some tragic realities that include;
Before the missionary, fur trapping, and gold rush era migrations, California’s Native American population was estimated at about 200,000, between 1840 and 1870 that population declined to 12,000 due to disease, removal and death[i] [violence]. To this day, the Gabrielino-Tongva Indian Tribe of the Tovaangar region (Palos Verdes to San Bernadino, from Saddleback Mountain to the San Fernando Valley) is still struggling to achieve federal recognition.[ii]
· California has an incarceration rate of 581 per 100,000 people – with Black and Latino people overrepresented by population[iii]
· Unauthorized laborers in California and across the U.S. are being exploited with poor wages and poor working conditions[iv]
· Immigrant families have been and are still horrifically separated along the Mexico border[v]
· As of June 2020 ~66,433 people live on the streets in Los Angeles county[vi]
· Since 2001 in Los Angeles specifically at least 923 people have been killed by law enforcement…nearly 80% Black or Latino[vii].
Against this societal backdrop, every day in our Burbank schools, students suffer in explicit and implicit ways from the dehumanizing effects of these conditions – built on colonial power and white supremacy.
When our students, particularly our Black students suffer abuse in school, when day-in and day-out Black people are not represented or uplifted by the curriculum, when police murders of Black people are incessant and highly visible, there is often little recourse, no safe space, no trauma-informed counselors, no accountability, and no proper means for students to feel protected, to heal or feel seen. Speaking up has often been grounds for academic retribution, which has created a climate where internalized abuse and trauma are commonplace.
With two elementary-aged children of my own as students in the Burbank Unified School District, my primary goal as a co-founder of The Destiny Education Project is to use my family’s enrollment in the district and place in the broader Burbank community to inspire growth and change. I am excited to continue to work with BUSD administration, teachers, parents, and students to provide the much-needed resources and imagination to protect and uplift students and families.
In place of the individualistic/heteronormative/ableist/racist/greed-based/white supremacist values that have stripped so many students and community members of their dignity and ability to thrive, I seek to help cultivate a curriculum and a learning community built on positive identity formation/diversity/equity/cooperative economics/ gender-affirming/ body affirming/environmentally just/culturally responsive and sustainable values.
Following the leadership of my extraordinary co-directors, I seek to substantively re-invent our institution of public education; curriculum, policies, teaching approach, culture and mindsets. Our schools should be the place where we collectively strategize for racial, social, economic and environmental justice, where we devise ways to dismantle the stronghold of white supremacy, where we become fully and whole-heartedly anti-racist, where we commit to the protection and celebration of Black life, Black Joy, Black Excellence and liberation for all Black people, where we do everything we can to develop authentic relationships and informed action supporting Native sovereignty and cultural rights for our indigenous communities, where we stand for the rights of immigrants, make accommodations for our disabled community members, protect and affirm all gender identities, and where we denounce all forms of bigotry and hatred.
Let’s Go!
Polly
[i]https://www.courts.ca.gov/3066.htm#:~:text=How%20many%20Native%20Americans%20reside,identified%20themselves%20as%20Native%20American.
[ii] https://www.pasadenanow.com/main/tongva-nation-continues-fighting-for-federal-recognition/
[iii] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/profiles/CA.html
[iv] https://www.epi.org/publication/labor-day-2019-immigration-policy/
[v] https://www.kqed.org/news/11797878/zero-tolerance-an-ongoing-history-of-family-separations-at-the-u-s-mexico-border
[vi] https://www.npr.org/2020/06/12/875888864/homelessness-in-los-angeles-county-rises-sharply
[vii] https://www.latimes.com/projects/los-angeles-police-killings-database/