Happy new year, AFIE!

Lets make 2024 the year we join together to build a more just, inclusive, and equitable 21st century society, comprising ALL Americans.

We have big plans for 2024 and we’re excited to undertake the joyful work. 

But first we want to share the essential vision: where we are, where we want to go. We heard Heather Cox Richardson on a podcast the other day. She made the point that the United States of America has held two rival and contradictory views of society and governance since before the Declaration of Independence. 

In one view, some people are superior to others and have the right to rule over them. 

In the other view, all people are created equal and deserve equal protection, equal rights, and equal status under the law.

AFIE stands squarely, resolutely, and indomitably in the view that all people are created equal and deserve equal protection, equal rights, and equal status under the law.

That conviction informs everything we do, all our advocacy for vibrant public schools, our focus on ALL children in our community, our certain knowledge that ALL families can find a home here and expect an outstanding education for their kids. 

But not all of us share that view. Some of us believe that:

• Some parents know better than others what kids should read and ought to have the right to restrict reading from other people’s kids.

• Some people know better than others what aspects of American history ought to be presented in the classroom and they ought to have the right to restrict what appears in our textbooks or what our teachers may discuss.

• Some people know more about what gender someone is than the person themselves and believe they ought to determine what sports teams a child can play on, how they can refer to themselves, and what their teachers can call them.

If we look nationally, we see this playing out in other issues. Some people feel they can direct who can vote, what health care individuals can receive, and so on.

Some people want to take away your constitutional right to vote or to invalidate your vote or to deny your vote. They have a lot of nerve.

We say no. We say that in a democracy, we tell the truth and we embrace the dazzling variety of human experience. No one has the right to restrict your reading, your learning, your rights, or your identity.

We invite you to examine the controversies in CB and in the US through this lens. Who deems themselves superior and usurps the right to restrict your choices? Who believes they know better than you do how to raise your children? Who wants to create labels and categories and fit people into them, the better to rule over them?

We cannot say this is unAmerican. It’s an impulse we have possessed since the beginning. Ask the Native Peoples who lived here when the Europeans arrived. 

But we cherish the aspirations of our founding fathers:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Here again, we have lofty aspirations voiced by a deeply conflicted and compromised man; a man who knew he sinned against justice by enslaving human people; a man who said, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”

We can build upon Jefferson’s wiser counsel by rejecting his and his supremacist heirs’ cruel moral failings. We can join together to build a more just, inclusive, and equitable 21st century society, comprising ALL Americans.

In November, the CB community rejected the governance of those who sought to constrict what kids could learn and know, what teachers could teach, what books could persuade our kids that reading is a glorious experience.

As we go forward, AFIE will continue to advocate for those freedoms, to make our schools places where children of all races, genders, religions, abilities, and backgrounds are free to learn all that they—and our nation—need to reach their highest potential.

We are AmeriCANS, not AmeriCAN’Ts.

E pluribus unum.