A couple of weeks ago we had the opportunity to stand on the steps of City Hall with AQENY as the conducting a protest/press event. As we approached the front gates, people from the organization and parents were already gathered in the area by the steps. They were handing out signs to be held up at the event and talking to other parents they had met through the organization. We went through some brief security before circling up inside the bigger circle of AQENY. Our main contact person within AQENY, Maria Bautista, came to greet us. She introduced us to Reuben, who would be in charge of our bus on a later trip to Albany, and gave us signs with the organization’s logo on it. Soon everyone was gathering on the steps. We joined them, standing in the further row. There was a small podium in front of our semi circle. Two microphones were slotted into cup holder like things on the podium, NY1 and and another local news station. There were two news cameras, and some very bored looking operators. There was also a man from City Hall press. I wondered if they realized that this routine procedure of taping what was to them, an small insignificant thing that happened every day, was actually the fight of somebody’s life. They were standing around on their phones as people poured their hearts out in hope of reaching someone. But the protest didn’t make it anywhere, it never reached beyond that day because it would never be deemed “newsworthy.” What makes something newsworthy anyways? Does a celebrity need to be there in a weird dress, does it need to be some large scale crime. The reality is, it is a large scale crime. It’s the crime of taking away futures, of depriving millions of children of their right to as opportunistic an education as their peers. As the speeches went on I was able to read some of the other signs that people were holding. Some said things in Spanish, others stated how much money their district was owed. One that particularly wowed me was a sign that one man was holding saying that his district was owed over 79 million dollars. With that money you can provide important materials to every school in his district, that money could mean the difference between success for hundreds of children. A handout given touched on the subject of some of the speeches. It mentions a poem by Langston Hughes,
“What happens to a dream deferred?
