Social Justice Event : The Matthew Shepard Story

            I watched the film The Matthew Shepard Story (2002) for my social justice Event. Matt Shepard was murdered in 1998 at the age of twenty one in Wyoming. His murder was motivated by anti-gay hate and Matt, who was an openly gay college student, became a symbol for gay rights and equality. 
          This film made me very upset. I knew the story so I expected it to be bad, but I was much more affected by it than I would have imagined. The film starts out with the murder scene and then skips around to tell the story of Matthew Shepard's life and his parents struggle to come to terms with his violent death. The violent initial scene was really disturbing that human beings did this to another human being for absolutely no reason is almost impossible to believe. Then during Matthews funeral there were people picketing outside with horrible hateful signs. Below is a real sign from his funeral service in 1998!!!I cannot imagine his parents having to attend their sons funeral with this kind of hate present.

          In the movie Matthew's parents are engaged in the legal battle to get the death penalty for his murderers. As they go back through his life remembering him the movie shows various stages of Matt's life as he realizes he is gay. In the movie his mothers says that it must have been so horrible for him to not be able to tell anyone, and to think how he felt about his sexual orientation is wrong. He also experiences rape and abuse and suffers from depression and anxiety. I connected this with Johnson, and how he says that being heterosexual is a privilege that we don't even think about or talk about. People are just assumed to be heterosexual and anything else is not normal. Being a white, heterosexual, female I have privilege that Matthew Shepard didn't. 
          In Safe Spaces, August says " Youth who struggle with Lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender identities, or are bullied for the mere perception of being different, often feel as if they have no where to turn. Death should never be an option. Unfortunately, for many young people suicide feels like a better alternative than living with rejection or abuse from peers, family members, or community leaders. This was certainly true for Matthew Shepard in his short life. 
          In the end, his parents decided to not accept a deal without the death penalty because they thought it was time to heal. Having two boys this movie really affected me. The fact that you can be completely unsafe and hated because of your sexual orientation is something I cannot understand. It made me feel afraid for them.

          Matthew Shepard was just finally laid to rest in The Washington Cathedral twenty years after his murder. There was so much hate and controversy surrounding his murder that his parents were afraid that his resting place would be vandalized. The Washington Cathedral is a safe place for Matt, and a place where people can go and visit him. When speaking at the service in the Washington Cathedral his father, Dennis Shepard said the following; " Just like this beautiful house of worship, he did not see skin color: He did not see religion. He did not see sexual orientation. All he saw was a chance to have another friend. Just like this beautiful home we have here for Matt right now."

                Dennis and Judy Shepard 

This is the link to the New York Times article describing the ceremony at the Washington Cathedral.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/us/matthew-shepard-burial-national-cathedral.html      

Matthew Shepard's mother, Judy Shepard, started the Matthew Shepard Foundation the year of his death. The foundation's goal is to erase hate crimes and increase awareness of social justice and equality.

https://www.matthewshepard.org/ 

  

She was also instrumental in lobbying for and the passing of the Matthew Shepard Act, a hate crimes prevention act of 2009.

The United States Department of Justice Website describes the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, JR., Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009.

https://www.justice.gov/crt/matthew-shepard-and-james-byrd-jr-hate-crimes-prevention-act-2009-0

Tracking: Why Schools Need to Take Another Route By Jeannie Oakes

Argument and Quotes

This author argues that tracking students by ability only benefits gifted and " higher students" but is damaging to students performing in the middle and lower areas in school. When students are stereotyped as being " less able" she says, they have fewer opportunities to learn. The students in the higher groups are exposed to more critical thinking and problem solving skills, the author argues. These are skills that need to be developed in all groups I believe, and are more important than memorization of random facts. One thing in the article that really stuck out for me was how she said that teachers of low ability classes are more likely to use ridicule and strong criticism than high ability teachers. This really bothers me, if this is true. It does in my opinion make for self fulfilling prophecies. The author says that " without a positive classroom climate students spend considerable energy interfering with the teachers agenda, and teachers must spend more of their time and energy just trying to maintain control." Given this it seems that creating this positive classroom environment would be beneficial to teachers as well as students. A very significant quote in this article was " It seems that tracking is both a response to significant differences among students and an ongoing contribution to those differences." I agree with this, tracking just accentuates the differences in students and does nothing to help them in my opinion. Another quote from the article is that " Unless teachers and administrators believe and expect all students to learn well, they will be unlikely to create school and classroom conditions where students believe in their own ability and exert the effort it takes to succeed." 
          In discussing alternatives to tracking the author explains the importance of a curriculum that is rich in content and related to real life. Active learning tasks are better than passive ones. Real world problems should be used which are no doubt more relate-able to all students than something they cannot imagine. All students benefit, I think , from working with students of varying levels. I have worked in a special education preschool classroom for many years and I have seen this work there. The special education students are mixed with typically developing peers for all activities. The peers learn important skills like patience and tolerance as well as the important lesson that there are many differences in people and they should be celebrated. The children with disabilities learn a great deal from the peers and everyone is part of the group, no one is better just different. If these programs work so well at the preschool level, I can not imagine why they would not work with older students.
          Another important point that is mentioned in the article is in regard to poor and minority students. These students are placed in low-ability groups much more often. Below is the link to an interesting article about schools in Seattle that made an effort to dismantle tracking in their schools and some of the results. They did this in an effort to reduce the racial achievement gaps there.

https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/an-effort-to-raise-achievement-by-dismantling-de-facto-segregation/ 

The Question that I would want to talk about is how teachers can change the grouping by ability and differentiate instruction ? It seems like a huge challenge to me for them to have the time and resources to do this even if they really want to.

The Problem We All Live With, Separate and Unequal, Brown vs. The Board of Education

                                             

                Argument

          I decided to summarize the arguments from the two articles and the website, and then connect them all together at the end of the post.

The Problem We All Live With:
          I found this radio podcast to be very interesting. I listened to it several times. Nikole Hannah Jones is speaking about the achievement gap between black and white students and integration. Her argument is that with all of the different things that schools try to close this gap, there is one thing that they don't try that is proven to work. That thing is old fashioned integration like what happened after Brown vs. The Board of Education. She says that it works because it gets black kids in the same classes with white kids which gives them quality teachers and quality instruction. This part surprised me. I know that there are some bad teachers out there, but I was very surprised at the idea that there would be so many. My opinion is why would people teach, if they don't care about it and are going to do a bad job? I mean it isn't like a high paying, easy, or low stress job, I don't think. I think most teachers want to educate kids and love kids or why would they be doing it? That's just my personal opinion though. Not only does she say that segregated schools have the least qualified teachers, She also says the students have more stress and greater educational needs due to the high concentration of poverty. This I can imagine is very true. The stresses of poverty and all that goes with it must make learning much more of a challenge.
          Nikole talks about a situation that happened five or six years ago which forced the issue of integration in the Normandy school district in Missouri. The school district had horrible scores, and had been on probation for 15 years. She interviews a mother and daughter, who were desperate to get out of the school district. Then the Normandy School District lost its accreditation completely. This made a state law called a transfer law go into affect. The law was not a desegregation law but it did say that the district had to pay to send the students to an accredited school if they wanted to go to one.
They chose a school called Francis Howell which was very far away and had mostly white students. The parents at Francis Howell were not happy with the decision and said horrible things at the town meeting. This didn't surprise me that much. They made sure to say that it wasn't a race issue but they were concerned about the test scores going down and violent students coming into the school. They didn't want those people coming over to their school. The student being interviewed for this radio show was successful in the new school but then they changed the accreditation of Normandy and said all the kids had to go back. Normandy became non accredited instead of unaccredited which is really just as bad, but the transfer law no longer applied anymore. Some of the parents filed lawsuits because they wanted to stay at the better schools. The judge sided with the parents and said " every day that a child attends an unaccredited school, the child could suffer harm that could not be repaired." The argument of this radio show, is that when integration was forced, it was working. Below I attached a link to a very interesting article about The Normandy School District in January of 2018, and what the parents thought about it.

 http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/parents-still-wary-normandy-schools-despite-upgrade-academic-standing#stream/0

Brown vs Board of Education :

This website is an overview of Brown vs. The Board of Education. In May of 1954 the court declared segregation by race illegal. It made equal opportunities in education the law. A quote from the website says " Today thanks in part to the victorious struggle in the Brown case, most Americans believe that a racially integrated, ethnically diverse society and educational system is a worthy goal, though they may disagree deeply about how to achieve it." This really stood out to me as the problem which is explained so well in The Problem We All Live With. While most people feel this way, when it comes down to integrating schools or other things that effect them directly they don't want to do it. In my opinion, in order for equality in education to exist people have to make changes on the personal level. This seems to be where we are falling short.

Separate and Unequal:

Author Bob Herbert has this very same argument in his New York Times article about integration.He says " One of the most powerful tools for improving the educational achievement of poor black and Hispanic public school students is, regrettably, seldom even considered." He is talking about integration. He writes that there is a great deal of evidence to show that poor kids of all ethnic backgrounds do better academically when they attend school with peers who have more wealth in their families. He argues that even though schools are not legally segregated, they still are segregated today. 

My question is, if school desegregation is proven to work how do we get the people in the affluent communities to get on board with it? What kind of incentives could there be, to make it more attractive? How would we as a society erase or minimize their fears so they would try it. I think although the parents in The Problem We All Live With are wrong it is because they are afraid. How would we counter that?

In The Service Of What? The Politics of Service Learning by: Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer

In this article the authors argue that while the importance and value of service learning cannot be disputed, there needs to be more discussion about the goals and types of service learning. This article poses four questions that need to asked in regards to service learning.
(1) "What values do service learning and curricula models seek to promote?'
(2) "What kinds of social and political relations do they ask students to imagine?"
(3) "What kinds of relationships develop between students and those they serve?"
(4) "What kind of society does service learning lead students to work toward?" 

The authors argue that there is a difference between service learning that focuses on charity as opposed to service learning that focuses on change. The difference is that charity focused service learning helps people by emphasizing giving and change focused service learning focuses on caring. I agree with the authors that while there is a difference the two can definitely be intertwined. I thought of the example of making Thanksgiving pies for people in need which I do every year. It makes me feel good, and I am sure that the people enjoy the pies but it does not really connect me to the people or inspire any change to their circumstances. So while they both have value I can see where service learning that inspires real change has more lasting value. The authors say that " Those oriented towards change embrace the importance of political activity." and also that " Service activities should develop students ability at critical thinking." I agree with this. Helping is good but learning how to think critically can create the changes needed to solve some of the problems in society.  The authors say that " to be critical thinkers students must be able to consider arguments that conflict with their own ideas and self interest." If the service project helps people directly through charity that is good too, but real change I think should be the objective of service learning.  In the link below, Soledad O' Brien of CNN talks to a group of University students about creating change and the importance of critical thinking, She says," We can't shut out those we disagree with-that is not being a leader, that is being an obstacle." https://csl.uchicago.edu/feature/creating-change-your-community

The question I would like to ask is: What kinds of service learning do you think would inspire students to learn and employ critical thinking. What kind of service learning creates real change? 

Five Things to Consider About Donald Trumps Border Wall

The projected wall is 30 feet high and 6 feet deep

1)   The Cost

• A report from The Government Accountability Office ( A nonpartisan Group) said that the wall " Will Cost more than projected, take longer than planned, and not fully perform as expected".
• Department of Homeland Security estimated the cost to be 21.6 Billion + 150 million a year to maintain.
• Senate Democrats Report put the cost at about 70 Billion not including maintenance.
• These costs are too high because undocumented workers + drugs will still find their way across.
• The wall is irrelevant in regard to people overstaying their visas which is the most common way people cross the border.
• A percentage of the land along the border does not belong to the federal government! The legal fees for seizing this land by eminent domain will be huge and the resulting lawsuits will hold it up in court indefinitely which will waste all that money!
• Remittances are when undocumented workers send money back to their families in Mexico. This is one of the largest cash flows that Mexico has. They enable economic development there and reduce the incentives for people to try to migrate here illegally. If we seize these it will increase illegal migration here.    
  

2) Drug Smugglers

• Most illegal drugs do not come across the border where the wall would be! People almost never walk across the border with a back pack full of drugs.
• Most drugs come through tunnels ( which are usually 70 feet deep and will go right under a six foot down wall) or legal ports in boats, cars,trains, and carried by people.
• Also firearms are going from US to Mexico most often through legal ports.
• 70% of the firearms seized in mexico in the violent drug wars came from the US.
• Much progress was made under President Bush and President Obama and Mexico regarding the stopping of drug trafficking on the border. They collaborated with Mexico.
• In retaliation for the US building the wall, or trying to make Mexico pay for it, the Mexican Government could stop sharing terrorism intelligence and give up on working with the US to secure the border.   

3) Crime

• There is no evidence that undocumented immigrants are responsible for a rise in crime rate anywhere.
• In fact most violent crimes are committed by native born Americans.
• The Trump administrations insistence that state police hunt down undocumented workers and fines on sanctuary cities will make communities more dangerous.
• It will result in immigrants not reporting crimes and strain the resources of the police.

4) US Economy

• There is no evidence that undocumented immigrants affect employment levels.
• They usually do unpleasant back breaking work that others are unwilling to do.
• Most undocumented workers also use fake social security numbers so they pay into the tax system but do not take anything back out.
• They also pay sales tax and all other taxes but do not get a tax return or tax credit.
• 
  
• 5)  Environment and Human Rights

• The wall will damage the Native American Communities along the border.
• There are 26 Federally Recognized native American Nations in US + 8 indigenous people in Mexico on the border.
• Wall will cut through their land and separate tribal members. It will also separate them from the rivers that they depend on.
• Wall will negatively effect environmental protection agreements between Mexico and the US.
• The Colorado River and the Rio Grande run along where the border wall would be and effect some 40 million people.
• If Mexico retaliates and stops cooperating ( which they will if we build a wall) all these ecosystems will be endangered.
  

Jill Soloway on Donald Trump, Locker Rooms and Toxic Masculinity

Jill Soloway argues in her article very convincingly about gender inequality and the election. She is discussing the much publicized interaction between Donald Trump and Billy Bush. The above video was played all over the media as an example of what Donald Trump supporters called "typical locker room talk" at the time. Jill Soloway argues that what men call "classic masculinity" or the talking about women in a derogatory way behind closed doors is actually " toxic masculinity". This toxic masculinity is the division in our society based on gender that causes inequality and violence against women. She says that this " toxic masculinity" can be changed and does not have to be this way.
Allan Johnson, in his article Privilege, Power, and Difference, also talked about this need for change.He explains how both whiteness and maleness are sources of privilege that people do not want to recognize. Unless we recognize them as privileges in our society that make things unbalanced and talk about them we cannot change them he says. This is exactly what the supporters of Donald Trump did in regard to this video, I think. They brushed it off as common place locker room talk, that did not have a negative impact on women. Both Jill Soloway and Allan Johnson stress the need for this division in gender to be changed. Johnson says" We are not prisoners to some natural order that pits us hopelessly and endlessly against one another. We are prisoners to something, but its closer to our own making than we realize. And we therefore, are far from helpless to change it and ourselves".Jill Soloway talks about how men won't call out other men out on this behavior because they want to be part of. Men divide women into two types, good ones like mothers and daughters, and the bad ones that they get to talk trash about or worse. Women, she says, also go along with it. White, able bodied, educated males from the ruling class have all the power. In order to access this power you must marry one of these men, she says. Johnson says that the trouble we are in privileges some groups at the expense of others. This demonstration by the President and his supporters sure does give an example of this problem. The elections coming up are a opportunity to change this as well. Hopefully the American people will pay attention to this, and become educated about gender inequality and vote accordingly.  

Gender Variance Christian, Marian, and Christopher

Pansexual- person who experiences sexual, romantic, physical and or spiritual attraction for members of all gender identities. Called Pan for short.
It is also called Omni sexuality. It is attraction regardless of gender identity. Often call themselves gender blind. Gender and biological sex are not factors in their attraction to others.This is different from Bisexual because Bisexual suggests that there are just two genders. Pansexuality means being open to a relationship with all genders.
Miley Cyrus calls herself Pansexual. She says she is "gender fluid". She says being Pansexual means "I don't relate to being a boy or a girl, and I don't have to have my partner relate to being a boy or a girl".

Queer- An umbrella term to describe individuals who don't identify as straight. This term means different things to different people. Some LBTQ people refer to themselves as queer but others consider it a slur because it used to be used in a negative way. It should be a personal choice for people to refer to themselves as Queer or not. One should never identify someone that way who doesn't identify themselves as queer.

Ellen Page

In the article linked below Ellen Page, who identifies herself as queer talks about being victimized for it. She talks about the director of X-Men and how he publicly outed her as gay and sexually harassed her. She is a spokeswoman in support of the queer community.

https://wearyourvoicemag.com/lgbtq-identities/ellen-page-giving-queer-survivors-support-deserve


Questioning- someone who is not sure or exploring their own sexual orientation or gender identity.
When a person who identifies as heterosexual or homosexual has curiosity about the sex that they do not favor they are said to be Questioning. Also if they feel like a different gender than the gender they were assigned at birth but are not sure which gender they identify with. 
The link below is to an article that has resources for teens who may be questioning. It gives questions to think about and other resources for further information. The most important thing ,it says, is to not rush or feel pressured to arrive at the answer. Confusion is normal and it will become evident in time or even may change over time, it says.

https://www.algbtical.org/2A%20CURIOUS.htm-

Poly-amorous-having open relationships, multiple honest and consensual relationships.

Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith have been rumored to have a poly-amorous relationship or open marriage. She was quoted as saying " He is his own man and can do whatever he wants". This statement caused the media to publish that they had an open marriage.She addressed this several months later by saying they can both do whatever they want because they trust each other. She has never specifically said that they have an open marriage.