A Change the World Playbook
How to bring people from all walks of life to your cause, create a new source of common good and fall in love with your work while doing it.
Sometimes everything comes together, like when your orchestra has put everything into a piece of music for performance. You sit on the stage, you take out your instrument, with which you’ve nearly become one, and the conductor lifts the baton. You take a breath along with the musicians all around you, poised to leap into the order you’ve all brought from the chaos of twenty lines of music on the score. The audience, the light and sound people, the musicians, your loved ones all have this collective moment where the world goes away, and for just that moment you’re one.
I have no idea if that was quite the right metaphor, but I have to tell you what happened. Thanks to Facebook, the time and date are remembered. It was April 2, 2013 at 4:21 p.m. when, after a day of lamenting the sheer numbers of job rejections I’d received with the latest a particularly painful blow, the journalist and filmmaker Bill Lichtenstein sent me a private Facebook message: “Amy, I’m not sure, but I might have a job for you. Will you send me your resume?”
It took another month and a half before I really knew what was going on with the Keeping All Students Safe Act, but when I found out, it wasn’t from dry legislative reports — it was from the story of Sheila Foster, whose son, Corey, was killed by restraint from five staff members at his school. It was from Bill, whose recounting in a New York Times op-ed of staff locking his daughter in a seclusion room when she was in kindergarten set off a firestorm of families coming forward to share their stories.
A group of parents, advocates and experts had gathered. They needed a writer. I had my own story: my son was not restrained or secluded at school as far as I know, but there was a time I stood up for his special needs when he was mistreated and a district retaliated against my family.
This is where the pace of the music picked up. A half dozen of us played our parts furiously as this took off. We weren’t sure what, exactly would galvanize citizens to call Congress about this bill. In May, Representative George Miller of California introduced the bill in the House; his passion echoed through the chamber as he exclaimed, “You don’t have to take this to the abstract! What if this was your child, your grandchild, your next-door-neighbor child!” We have to speak for these children, he said. They can’t do it themselves.
In September, two of the parents were able to attend a protest at Leake & Watts, the school where Corey Foster was killed. It was well attended, and a representative from Governor Cuomo’s office came, opening the possibility that the investigation (which thus far has resulted only in an “oops” from the school) would be reopened, or at least they’d look into it.
This winter, we disbanded our action group. This does not change anything about our relationship with the four other parents who have journeyed with this movement; anyone can help . By abandoning the “six parents who…” model, we opened up to a community of citizens across the nation. Ellen, Scott, Sheila and Debra bring amazing gifts and advocacy experience to the cause, and I know they will continue their efforts to pass this bill. Each one must do only what’s possible for them to do. That looks different in everyone’s life, time, capabilities and level of commitment.
Senator Harkin was reintroducing the bill on Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, February 12, and the Senate HELP Committee wanted to feature a young adult who had been restrained and secluded in school. We found Robert Ernst, 19, through news reports from Lexington, Mass. in 2012. Diagnosed with Asperger’s when he was a young boy, Robert detailed how elementary school staff dragged him into seclusion rooms and restrained him in various ways. “There are better ways,” Robert says with passion and conviction. There are better ways to deal with students with unconventional behavior and needs.
“There are better ways,” Robert says with passion and conviction. There are better ways to deal with students with unconventional behavior and needs.
Morning came on Lincoln’s birthday. The livestream began. They waited a few minutes for Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a key cosponsor of the bill, to arrive. That’s when we saw it. The Twitter hashtag #KeepStudentsSafe — that’s our hashtag. To be more accurate, it’s the hashtag that converges everyone who cares about this issue. We coalesced the stakeholders in this issue: parents, former students, organizations, activists, and citizens who want what Rep. Miller calls the “abuse and torture” of children in school to end.
Twitter lit up with weigh in from Shut Logan Academy, The ARC, the Autism Society, the National PTA, Easter Seals, NAMI, Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, Social Work Unplugged, SIA Organization, the Children’s Mental Health Network, and Anonymous. That’s right. The hacktivists showed up in the form of their various Twitter handles at the courtesy of the young activists seeking to close Logan Academy and other abusive troubled teen schools. Aside from Robert’s talk, the moment I thought, “Well, hello, Anonymous,” was perhaps my biggest grin of the day.
It’s hard to decide; there were so many.
How did we do it? How do we continue doing it? A highly regarded, much awarded journalist and filmmaker, who’s most of all a loving and dedicated parent to his daughter, and a writer, creative mind, parent and activist laboring in obscurity ask questions, wonder “in what ways,” search and crowdsource to deliver what’s needed.
“Sometimes all it takes is having a little faith and working your ass off,” Bill Lichtenstein texted me that night.
Up next: we roll out an app made by Revolution Messaging, the people who brought us Drunk Dial Congress. What will make the difference in keeping kids safe at school is an informed, engaged citizenry willing to call their congressional offices and say, “I want your vote on this measure.” Never forget the Capitol belongs to all of us, and Congress represents us.
Off to strengthen my faith and work my ass off some more.
If you want to be part of it, join us on Twitter at #KeepStudentsSafe and on Facebook: facebook.com/keepstudentssafe.
We’ll know success when a law is passed with the Senate HELP Committee’s recommendations: chiefly that seclusion rooms should be abolished completely.
The last note will come when the President raises his pen to sign his name.
Then, finally, a rest.
