Defend Black History with Rashad Robinson

Transcript

Transcripts are auto-generated.

Rashad : Racial justice is one of our most powerful force multipliers for change because it really motivates people to action. It's also one of our most powerful evaluation tools to help us really understand if what we want, if what we fought for is worthy of the fight.

Natieka : Hello and welcome to School Me, the National Education Association's podcast dedicated to helping educators thrive at every stage of their careers. I'm your host, Natieka [00:00:30] Samuels.

Defending the right to learn about our country's full history naturally includes defending the right to learn about Black history. As certain politicians seek to ban books by Black authors and ban courses that teach the truth about Black experiences in America, we are fighting back to ensure all students have access to an honest education. One of NEA's partners in this work is Color of Change, a racial justice organization committed to building power and making justice real for Black people. Today's guest, Rashad Robinson, [00:01:00] is the president of Color of Change.

All right. Thank you so much for joining us today, Rashad.

Rashad : Thanks for having me.

Natieka : So let's start off with just a little bit about you and how you came to Color of Change.

Rashad : So the work of Color of Change, the work of racial justice is so connected to my life that this journey that I've been on with Color of Change just feels in many ways so natural. But I was an activist very early on. I led protests from middle school [00:01:30] and high school. I had a local public access show growing up where we talked about issues from education to racism to [inaudible 00:01:40] and I hosted and produced the show once a month on public access and we had callers. And I really had a real interest in what did it mean to be engaged and connected with community and what it meant to be part of making change. And from a very early age, that was very much part of just something that I was connected to.

But my immediate sort of connection [00:02:00] before coming to Color of Change was a number of years I spent leading the programmatic and advocacy work at GLAAD in the height of so many of the fights to change the federal legislative rules that impacted LGBT lives. And the fight in particular, the work that I did was around representation and narrative and the ways in which people view LGBTQ people and did a lot of work behind the scenes in Hollywood, a lot of work in the news industry and a lot of work challenging the forces that were standing [00:02:30] in the way of progress and working to change perceptions. And the transition to Color of Change felt in so many ways natural. My niece had just been born. And I was really thinking about this low Black girl and thinking about the world for her and thinking about what was I doing around my advocacy to make things better for her. And in some ways, feeling like so much of the work that we were doing at GLAAD felt like a rock rolling downhill, especially in terms of some of the perception.

Now [00:03:00] a lot of that has proven itself to be untrue. You take so many steps forward and you can see so many steps backwards, but at the time I really felt compelled to be more connected to racial justice and it was this small scrappy organization, Color of Change, with five staffers that was looking for someone to lead it. I had a lot of respect for the founder, James Rucker, who I was just in deep relationship with, kind of in the movement abroad. And the opportunity to come to Color of Change was something in 2011 [00:03:30] that just felt so right. This was post President Obama being elected, but pre the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement, pre the murder of Trayvon Martin, pre so many of these moments that have animated our current understanding of racial justice in this country.

Natieka : And for those who aren't familiar, can you describe Color of Change's mission and sort of quick overview of the work and the priorities of the organization?

Rashad : Color of Change runs [00:04:00] campaigns. We change the policies and the practices that hold Black people back. And we champion solutions that move all of us forward. And the work at Color of Change really goes back to our founding in 2005, hurricane Katrina. Black folks are literally on their roofs begging for the government to do something and left to die. And Katrina illustrated so many things we know about geographic segregation, generational poverty, the impacts of what we've done to our planet and so many other things. But at the heart [00:04:30] of that moment, no one was nervous about disappointing Black people. Government, corporations, media. When institutions are not nervous about disappointing your community, it doesn't matter what kind of research report you have that illustrates all the facts and figures. You need narrative change and people power change and Color of Change with a single email that went to about a thousand people that welcomed people into a new movement.

Times change in many different ways. Times change in terms of that first email, the subject line said [00:05:00] Kanye was right. It came right after that Katrina Benefit where Kanye West and Mike Myers were on stage together and Kanye said, "George Bush doesn't care about Black people." We even had T-shirts made at the time that depending on what news cycle you're in, you probably don't want to walk around with that "Kanye is right" t-shirt because you may not be knowing what you're cosigning yourself to. But what hasn't actually changed is this real deep understanding that we have to make those in power nervous, that we have to build people power and unleash [00:05:30] it to sort of advance strategic change, and that we have to focus our energy in very targeted ways. So from that first email of a thousand people, we have grown to a movement of millions, millions of Black folks and allies of every race all around the country that join with us, that take action and that work to make their voices heard.

Natieka : You've alluded to a lot of different reasons that this work might be important to you, but I want to ask outright why was it so important to work in this organization [00:06:00] and move it forward? You've been there for many years at this point, so why is this work so important to you even today?

Rashad : I think I'm a short Black gay man in America. And the ways in which power and opportunity works are so clear to me every single day, sort of what we can get and what we can't get, what doors are opened up and what doors aren't opened up. I say this a lot about our work at Color of Change, is that we can never mistake presence for power. [00:06:30] Visibility, awareness, retweets, shout-outs from the stage are incredibly important, but power is the ability to change the rules. Sometimes it's the written rules of policy and sometimes it's the unwritten rules of culture. But every single day working to change the conditions. And that for me, when I see all of the sort of challenges in the world, when I see all of the things that can sometimes give us pause, give us pain, make us angry, make us activated, I [00:07:00] get to do something about it. I get to be part of doing something about it and it's an incredible gift.

The thing about not mistaking presence for power, which for me is so clear and so essential to the work of Color of Change, is that we mistake presence for power. We can think we've done something that we haven't done. We can think that a Black president means that we're post-racial. We can think that the internet stopping when a Black celebrity announces that she's pregnant or has a new album coming out means that America loves Black people [00:07:30] as much as America loves Black culture. And we know that America can love, monetize, celebrate Black culture and hate Black people at the same time. And those two things don't actually have to be in conflict.

So this sort of really precise sort of understanding of not mistaking visibility, awareness, retweets, shout-outs from the stage, not mistaking that presence for power is so incredibly important to the work we do. And that is one reason why working at Color of Change, doing the work at Color of Change, building power [00:08:00] at Color of Change has been such a gift in terms of an opportunity and a moment of so much power and so much strife to be able to do this work in this moment.

Natieka : So let's talk about NEA and Color of Change. So we've been in partnership for a while. Why do you think that that's a natural fit or why has the connection between NEA and Color of Change been so important?

Rashad : Because we both care about Black students. We both care about Black communities. And we both recognize the role [00:08:30] that education plays in unlocking opportunities and removing barriers. Education alone doesn't mean that everything changes, but it is a key ingredient to the type of change that we want to see in the world. And NEA's understanding of that, the journey that NEA has been on over the years, both in terms of its leadership and the policies and the ways that it shows up in the world has been actually very important.

Moving and transforming [00:09:00] and changing organizations is not an easy task by any stretch of the imagination, but the work that NEA has been doing to bring its members and its teachers into conversation and into change for me is the hard work. It's the messy work. It's the work that doesn't always get celebrated and doesn't always feel easy and can sometimes feel like you're taking a step forward and some step backwards sometimes. But if we don't do that work, we're not actually leaning into the commitment to [00:09:30] have the type of measurable and meaningful change that our people, that our children, that our families and our communities deserve. And so the partnership is rooted for me in both a belief that things can change and a willingness to do the work to actually make that a reality.

Natieka : And why do you feel like schools are so important to focus on when we talk about racial and social justice in particular?

Rashad : Schools shape [00:10:00] our understanding of the world around us. I have so many personal memories of growing up on Eastern Long Island. My family got there through the great migration. My great-grandparents moved up there from farm fields in southern Virginia to farm fields on Eastern Long Island. My grandfather was a sharecropper in Virginia and never had a formal education. I remember him bringing me to my local elementary school to vote. I remember him putting me on his shoulders and letting [00:10:30] me pull the lever. It was back when they had those lever machines and you could pull the lever. He would ask me to read the names to him in the school gymnasium. And the names weren't always phonetic. We lived in a community and that had a large Polish population that sort of had a lot of the political offices. And so the names weren't always phonetic in terms of how I was learning English at the time. And so I would sound out the names and he would correct me.

It wasn't until after my grandfather died that I found out that he couldn't [00:11:00] read or write. That the time in that voting booth was us being able to have a moment of him still teaching me. But I'm always reminded of that intersecting power of democracy and education and the role that Black people have constantly played in both. And the power that schools as a place of engagement, of intervention, of opportunity, of access has been part [00:11:30] of Black people's story in this country and part of the story of social change. And so, schools are incredibly important. They're incredibly important because when they work well, they provide us with so much opportunity and space, but they're also a meeting ground for us for so many other things that happen in our community. And so I constantly believe that when we think about and we have conversations about power, we think about what does it mean to [00:12:00] have control and self-determination in those spaces and places that sometimes weren't necessarily built with us in mind, but are absolutely there for us to be able to sort of engage and fight.

Natieka : This might be a large question, but how would you describe the landscape of threats, I suppose we should say, that we're seeing to Black students in America's schools right now?

Rashad : The kind of space [00:12:30] to provide access for people to move forward has always been under contention. The fight over who gets to learn is fundamental. Black people were not allowed to read. Black people not really allowed to go to schools or the schools were segregated. When they become desegregated, we see all sorts of ways in which funding and other things and becomes sort of part of the story, right? Racism is like water [00:13:00] pouring over the floor with holes in it. It is always going to find the cracks. And so what we are absolutely dealing with is the role that racism plays and how it shows up in education and education structures and what we're dealing now in terms of the kind of equal access and funding to education, what we're dealing with the attacks on coursework and what gets taught, what we're seeing in terms of what we get to read and what type of [00:13:30] material we have access to. All of those are interconnected into creating a type of control over what the future looks like.

And this is not just about Black kids, this is about all kids. Because when young people learn about redlining, when they learn about Jim Crow, when they learn about other aspects of inequality, they're more willing to want to fight for something different. And that sometimes means restructuring [00:14:00] the power dynamics that currently exist, restructuring the sort of rules that allow some people to constantly win and some people to be on the losing end all the time. Making things more fair means that for some they're going to lose an unfair advantage. The ways in which privilege works is that it's not just about giving unearned opportunity and unearned access to folks. It is also about closing the door to opportunity to others.

And that is really what the fight [00:14:30] that we are in is about. And it is about doing that as the country becomes more diverse, doing that after we experience this height of activism and engagement in 2020 where many people thought the best we could do in terms of activism was clap outside of windows or uplift investigative journalism and it was racial justice that got people to the streets. It was racial justice that led to the uptick in voter registration. It was racial justice that motivated people to action. Racial justice is one of our most [00:15:00] powerful force multipliers for change because it really motivates people to action. It's also one of our most powerful evaluation tools to help us really understand if what we want, if what we fought for is worthy of the fight, does it actually get us closer to the place we want to be? And so I think it is not just what our opponents are attacking in terms of schools. In essence, they are attacking the very heart of racial justice [00:15:30] because what they're trying to do is bench our best player.

Our best player is racial justice because it's not going to be a true democracy that gives us racial justice. It will be racial justice that gives us a true democracy. And that power that racial justice has is at the heart of the attacks that we are seeing to education, the attacks that we are seeing to making the playing field more equal, the attacks that we are seeing to what we get to read, the attacks that [00:16:00] we are seeing to what gets taught, the attacks across the board. And once again, this comes back to my beginning point around power and the role that power has and the reason why we can never mistake our presence and visibility for power because power is the ability to change the rules. And just like we have to change the rules, our opponents are constantly trying to change the rules as well.

Natieka : So one of the issues to put a finer point on this that lives in the intersection of NEA's and Color of Change's missions [00:16:30] is defending Black history being taught in schools, which is wrapped up in some of the stuff you were just talking about. So can you talk about Color of Change's campaign to defend Black history just overall?

Rashad : So our work to defend Black history goes back a number of years. We have engaged with a number of the private education companies, whether it be the college board or international Baccalaureate or others that are making real decisions about what type of things get taught in our [00:17:00] schools, what type of coursework is held up. We're also doing a lot of work to fight back against the banning of books, the attacks on what gets taught. And it happens for us in a number of ways. One, it's about taking on the enablers. We recognize that someone like a Governor DeSantis, no matter how many people sign a Color of Change petition, he's probably not going to listen. But there are all sorts of people that want to play see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil, or sometimes [00:17:30] just benefit from a relationship that should be held accountable. And if they want to be in relationship, they're not going to be able to do that in the dark of night. We're going to expose it and highlight it.

We want to make sure that the companies that are making decisions recognize that it's not just about whether or not they see a point to a right-wing political actor, but that they will hear from a community and that we will push back and that we will hold them accountable. But it's also in our work to defend Black history. It's also [00:18:00] about uplifting Black history. And so we put together programs like Black History now where we're elevating issues around Black history and telling stories and celebrating the current champions who are fighting for Black history and fighting for these stories.

Celebrating people like Becky Pringle, the president of NEAs who's pioneering a path-breaking leadership has been such a key piece of our partnership and the work that we've been able to do together and celebrating other leaders, being in conversation [00:18:30] publicly and advancing the voices and elevating the voices of people like Dr. Kimberly Crenshaw and Nicole Hannah-Jones and other folks who are helping to both advance or introduce ideas that are critical for us, both understanding the role of Black history, the role of Black thought and the role of our stories in the broader American landscape.

And so for us, it is absolutely connected. We've done everything from bringing books to young people in communities through children [00:19:00] carnivals. We've done work to celebrate leaders and we've done work to run campaigns and take on those who are standing in the way of progress. And all of those things for us are incredibly important in creating this ecosystem that takes on this fight head on and gives everyday people, our members, Black folks and allies of every race, an entry point to make their voices heard and helping people recognize that we're not just going to be under attack, but we're going to take these issues on.

Natieka : [00:19:30] Thanks for listening to School Me. And a quick thank you to all of the NEA members listening. If you're not an NEA member yet, visit nea.org/whyjoin to learn more about member benefits.

I recently did an episode about the AP African-American Studies course that has been piloted and starting soon. There was a lot of controversy around that course that I think was unexpected for many people, it seemed pretty natural to a lot of people. I think [00:20:00] that there would be an African-American Studies course offered at the AP level. But how has Color of Change interacted with college board and other educational organizations that sort of hold the key to almost access to higher education if you think about it with their offerings and their decisions over time?

Rashad : Well, this is an important role for a racial justice organization. When College Board First let us know that they were introducing this course and working to let it develop it in the early days and we were [00:20:30] in conversation with them very early on, I think I may have been the first person to tell them how controversial this would be. I think the first thing I said was, "Who is your PR firm?" And I was like, "I do think that... Them and others thought that we've introduced all sorts of other courses. We're doing this work." And I think that they had kind of an optimistic, hopeful view of being able to introduce this course. But to understand African-American history and to understand [00:21:00] African-American studies is to understand that every bit of progress we have made in this country has been controversial.

We tell a very false story now about the change that has happened that is not a bloody story, that is not a painful story, that is not a story of death and destruction of pain, two communities of ripping apart communities. And I know that may feel like a lot for folk, but I think we have to actually be honest about those things because [00:21:30] when we just tell a story of hopeful change, I think what we do is we don't prepare ourselves for the kind of organized, concerted opposition to fundamentally dealing with one of the deepest structural stains on our country. Sort of the role of genocide on indigenous people and forced servitude of Black people has made this economy, has made this country. And we can't celebrate that with actually [00:22:00] being in conversation.

There's also a story in African-American studies and through this work of multiracial coalitions of people coming together to fight for better tomorrow, of pushing ourselves to reach our higher ground, of overcoming some of those obstacles and still having more obstacles to overcome. But you have to tell both stories. When you don't tell both stories and when you only want to tell a story that is kind of falsely patriotic celebrating [00:22:30] these tenants of democracy and don't tell a story of how we got here, then you actually don't help us stay here. You don't help us continue to make things better and you're actually selling us something that isn't something that we can actually use in this moment or any moment in our future.

Natieka : And so how can educators, community members or anyone listening take action or get involved in a concerted, hopefully multiracial, multiethnic group of people who want to [00:23:00] change this and want to make sure that Black history and Black people feel safe in schools?

Rashad : Well, you can go to colorofchange.org and you can join us. We have more events coming up in cities around the country with NEA. We have more work. I'll be showing up at some NEA events over the coming months. So shout out to my friends at NEA. I'm looking forward to seeing you all. And we're going to continue to engage in the fights that are ahead in coming down the pike. And so looking forward to all of that work. But [00:23:30] you can come, you can visit us at colorofchange.org, sign up. There's also a whole feature on the Color of Change platform where you can start your own campaign and it walks you through the steps.

So if you're in local community and you're seeing some of these issues play themselves out at the school board or other places, and part of the work we've been doing with NEA, which has been so incredibly exciting is these school board trainings. We've been doing them virtually and now in person and we've been training primarily Black parents and students and teachers on [00:24:00] how to go in and advocate in the school board, how to introduce resolutions, how to raise issues, how to fight back against these attacks, being in the room and being empowered to sort of take these issues on as part of that. And so I want to welcome folks to join us in those efforts as well. All of this is part of how we sort of collectively come together to build the type of power that changes rules.

I talked earlier about my grandfather and I think about him a lot as I think [00:24:30] about the Black people who show up. I think about my grandmother. I think about my family. I think about people who have, even when they couldn't taste it or touch it or feel it felt like there was something better for them and wanted to fight for that. I think about that piece in one of Nikole Hannah-Jones chapters in 1619 Project where she talks about newly freed enslaved people basically creating public education in South Carolina and creating it in a way that wasn't just for them [00:25:00] but newly empowered during reconstruction created so that four whites also had access.

It was really some of the early beginnings of what sort of free public education looked like, and people who were under so much attack, who were so excluded created systems that in and of themselves sought to include the very people that excluded them. And so as a storyteller, I think a lot about the role that Black people play in this story. And my invitation to [00:25:30] people, whether you're Black, brown, white, regardless of who you are and where you come from, is that why would you get involved in a Black organization in this work if maybe you're not part of the community?

And I say that because in the story of public education, in the story of democracy in this country, Black people are the protagonists. Because what is a protagonist if it is not the person, people who face a lot of obstacles, that face a lot of struggle, that barriers are put in front of them? [00:26:00] In a book or a movie with a protagonist, they're the people facing a major question and they're working to overcome it. And along the way, there are all sorts of barriers, but they take risks. And they put themselves on the line. And they sometimes put themselves in danger all to be able to win not only for themselves but to win for something larger, win for a larger group of people or a larger set of ideas.

And so if a protagonist are not people who could have faced literal death to be able [00:26:30] to read, then face soldiers and all sorts of opposition to be able to enter the school doors, but even in the face of that, still wanted to be there, people who face threats of death and all sorts of rules in order to express their will for a better future to the vote, if those are not protagonists in the story, then I don't know what is. And so my invitation to people who want to get involved is join the protagonists. Join us in this fight. Join us in this struggle. And join us in this partnership [00:27:00] that we have with NEA as we work to fight for better tomorrow.

Natieka : I wanted to come back to the school board trainings. I think that's a really interesting concept. So can you talk a bit more about the genesis of these school board trainings and what someone could expect if they were to pursue that with you?

Rashad : Well, the genesis was a lot of folks were saying, "We need more Black parents to run for school board." And as an organizer, I think a lot about the ladder of engagement. And so [00:27:30] getting someone to run for school board is a great and admirable thing. I hope more Black parents run for school board. But you got to start with more Black people being at school board meetings. You have to start at more people feeling comfortable and engaged in those spaces. And over time, more people will run for those offices and those seats. And so we have to introduce this space and give people the tools they can have to feel powerful. Spaces like that can, by design feel, exclusionary, can feel like that they have a lot of barriers [00:28:00] for entry, that there is language being used in the room that may not always be accessible, that there are protocols and processes that can make the space feel unwelcoming or feel like the bar of entry is too high.

And so we wanted to remove some of those barriers, make people feel like insiders. And so what people get in the training is sort of a background on how those meetings work, how resolutions work, and then tools on how to tell your personal story [00:28:30] and connect it to the things you care about. Just really helping to demystify how those meetings work.

And the goal is to make outsiders insiders, but insiders with a purpose, insiders with a feeling of representing something bigger than themselves. And so along the way, we've really built out a training module that does that and gives people both hands-on tools to take their personal story and translate it to the moment, kind of background and understanding of how these meetings work and then tell [00:29:00] people do what they need to do in those rooms. I continue to be really excited about this work of giving people the tools they need to go into the spaces that they belong and to be able to do the work that is so critical.

Natieka : Yeah. And I think that's a really powerful tactic because I think more than ever, we're seeing videos from inside of school board meetings and yelling and all kinds of things going on and the politicization of the school board. And so I think it's really important [00:29:30] that people know whether they're educators or parents or community members, that it's important to know how to navigate those.

Rashad : These spaces are our spaces. We belong there. Our voices belong there. Our fight for our young people has so much to do with what happens in those spaces. And so from my perspective, getting more of us to be there is critical.

Natieka : So nothing important is happening this year, like an election or anything, but I [00:30:00] wanted to ask-

Rashad : Oh, there's an election.

Natieka : Yeah, maybe. What is ahead and what are some of the big priorities for Color of Change for the rest of 2024?

Rashad : Well, continuing to recognize the role, this overreach that has happened around these attacks on education, the attacks on books and courses and being able to make those stakes very clear for people in this election. There are a lot of elections happening up and down [00:30:30] the ballot. It's not just about the president. Our literal democracy is on the ballot in so many ways.

Color of Change will be engaging in District Attorney elections. We'll be engaging across the board in a lot of places and spaces that are deeply meaningful and valuable for Black people. And we're going to be inviting our members to be in motion with us, to be able to help us reach out and engage and be in conversation with their friends, families and neighbors. I like to think about most of the Color of Change members are highly active [00:31:00] voters, are highly active in our democracy. But we're all part of networks where people are trying to figure out what they're going to do in this election and how they're going to participate and sometimes if they're going to participate. And that's an important point for all of us to be able to be in conversation with those in our lives, to be able to fight past the mis and disinformation that can make us think that this election doesn't matter or that the stakes are different than what they actually are.

And so arming our people with the right information and being able to engage [00:31:30] them in the right set of dialogues is deeply critical and important. And so all of those things from my perspective are just part of what we're doing. And then there's a lot of key issues beyond the electoral work. Obviously the ongoing work to fight for safety and justice in our communities and safe communities and the sort of interplay that that has with schools, education, every other way that we live, the role of economic justice and tax policy and jobs and all those things have been very much [00:32:00] part of the work that Color of Change has done for years.

And then there are other sort of major things that we're facing, the attacks on diversity that we are seeing that have weaponized our progress in this country absolutely have so much to do with our education systems. And so we are taking on those fights and we are taking on the new neo segregationist, the Chris Rufo's and Kovacs and Millers and those and their funders and others who are putting [00:32:30] so much money behind trying to turn us backwards. And then there's the questions about technology and AI, both in terms of our elections, but in terms of our future as a country and a democracy where all of us get to participate. And yes, this new technology can open up so much opportunity, but we don't want the technology that can move us into the future to drag us into the past and to allow the technology to avoid civil rights laws and other things that have been won and fought [00:33:00] for. So we're making sure we have strong anti-discriminatory practices in the use and the leveraging of those tools.

And so there's just nothing easy right now when it comes to fighting for racial justice, but all of it is so critically important and so critically valuable. And Color of Change is the only national Black racial justice organization in the country that doesn't take direct corporate contributions. We are really powered by our friends. We're really powered by the support [00:33:30] of foundations and individuals and resources, but it allows us to run corporate campaigns. And so sometimes when corporate textbook company wants to ban certain types of things from a book, we can run a campaign because we have no ties to corporate power and corporate interest. And so over and over again, the ways in which we show up as a member-led organization with millions of folks ready to take action, willing to take action combined and coordinated with, I think, [00:34:00] a deep and fundamental belief that change is possible. Those things all connected are part of how we do our work.

Natieka : And you just mentioned so many things that we are talking about all the time, book bans, the attacks on DEI, degradation of Brown versus Board of Education, AI. And the issues there, but getting the racial justice spin there of AI not being colorblind, let's say. All of those things come [00:34:30] up in all our work. And so I think it just makes so much sense why NEA and Color of Change have been such good partners.

So we talked about all of that. That's a lot. And as we said, the election is coming up too, but what are you personally looking forward to as you look into the future?

Rashad : I'm looking forward to continuing to be able to advance policies and culture change that makes our lives better, that opens up more opportunity. I am looking forward to [00:35:00] winning in a lot of places around the country. I'm looking forward to seeing a surge in turnout. And I'm looking forward in many ways to the accountability work that comes after because elections are not just about politicians getting jobs, they're about making people's lives better. And our work on accountability has to be as strong and as focused as our work in the election. I don't think about our politicians or our political leaders as our saviors. I think about them in some ways as the tactic or strategy. We pick the person [00:35:30] that will help us get as close to the thing that we need. And sometimes it's not as close as we want, but it's closer than the alternative. And then along the way, we do all the other work.

I think about it in an exercise kind of a metaphor. Voting is like the stretching of civic engagement. Just like stretching, voting and stretching probably won't get you everything that you actually want in terms of your goals, but if you don't vote or you don't stretch, you're going to probably hurt later. And in both of those situations, [00:36:00] we connect our voting. And so I'm also looking forward to being outside of the stretching and the voting period of time and into the sort of deeper civic engagement time of working to change laws, change rules and change practices that will unlock more opportunity and more progress.

Natieka : Thank you for joining us today, Rashad.

Rashad : Thanks for having me.

Natieka : Thanks for listening. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss a single episode of School Me. And take a minute to rate the show and leave a review. It really helps us out and it makes it easier for more educators to find us. [00:36:30] For more tips to help you bring the best to your students, text POD, that's P-O-D to 48744.