What the Post-Inaugural March Signage Signals
There are and will continue to be books providing images of the myriad of post-Inaugural signs that were worn, carried and posted on January 21, 2017. These signs show creativity and spirit and message powerfully about the need to protect the rights of people across the globe. They are reflective of deep intrusions on our freedoms and the need to insure that we protect the values we hold dear -- for ourselves, our families, our children and their children. We need to leave the world a better place than we found it and that goal is in jeopardy.
I, with my co-author Debbi Wraga, have completed one of those books (and it was the subject actually of an Amazon giveaway). See:
https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/dc8dff2fade7ab79.
For us, the goal was more than showing the actual signage although the signs are hugely important, and they can be displayed with impact and seen and re-seen, each time providing new insights and feelings.
It was our goal to reflect on the power and impact of those signs to enable us to teach our children well about what matters to a civilized society. And, because it feels as if our world has fallen off its axis and taken its moral compass with it, it is all the more important that we recognize that the march signs are a beginning and not an end. How do we move forward in this strange new world in which we are living, where each day challenges our belief systems and our capacity to determine what constitutes truth? It is no wonder that there are protests on campuses, some even producing unexpected violence and/or outrage.
There is no single pathway forward but we have very intentionally selected positive signs. Our book is not against the current President; it is a book for something -- namely, preservation and enhancement of the civil rights and civil liberties that have been the foundation of our nation since its inception (although to be sure, our history is far from uniformly positive in terms of these issues).
We can lament what has been and what is in present day politics. We could complain ad nauseum. And, that would be understandable. We can comment on how government has changed and how it feels as if the bottom of a pot has literally fallen apart. But as cathartic as complaining is, it is not enough. We need to take actual steps forward --- action steps. They can be varied. They can take many forms. They are a myriad of ways in which we can improve our world; it is a matter of wanting change enough.
Teach Our Children Well is an effort to message this: we need to help our children see the value of civility, the value of human rights, the value of personhood, the value of a world in which men, women and children have equal opportunities and a pathway to a better future. We need to make sure our children know that they have the power to make changes in their world as they age, and we can role model for them how to make positive change. We need to do this as parents, as educators, as global citizens. We need to do this to make sure we too remember that the power of a better future rests in our own hands. Our future isn't dictated to us; we can guide it and shape it and we must. That is our message and one that we hope will enable adults and children to talk and work together to better the world we inhabit.
The post-inaugural signs can't, as inanimate objects, produce change in and of themselves, glorious and creative and bold though they are. But, those signs, in the hands and minds and bodies of people, can be a powerful force. Use that force well. It is a privilege to have the power to make change. Let's message that.