‘I’m not sure we all realize how close we are to danger.’ Richland recall must succeed | Opinion
Three Richland School board members — Audra Byrd, Semi Bird, and Kari Williams — are facing a recall for illegally defying mask mandates. One of them ran for office opposing accurate education of America’s history. And together as a team they have attempted to follow Kennewick’s lead to ban Pride and LGBTQ support via flags and signs in classrooms, and have been performing unethically during their short time on the board.
These actions are just the tip of the iceberg of distractions and dysfunction that these three have brought to the school system this year. Their warped idea of public service has been growing support in our cities like a cancer.
I’m not sure we all realize how close we are to danger, how the empty shelves in Florida schools could easily become a reality here if our recall drive fails. And I get it, as a mom of three littles with my husband and I both working, the common thought tends to be, “When is somebody going to do something about this?”
Not realizing that we are always the somebody that we seek.
There is, however, a big group of local teachers, parents, and community members attending board meetings, making a difference, waiting for us to stand up, show up, and make a change. I think it’s about time that we joined them. There is an extremely large group of Americans in our cities under attack by these actions and so many bystanders, watching, waiting for a savior that is staring at them in the mirror. As an organizer of many protests in 2020 against white supremacy and police brutality, I know how hard it is to sustain the energy that we brought to the streets together. We protested because we understood the history and the nuance of this nation. Now, it’s time to bring that energy into our school board meeting rooms to save our schools.
Oftentimes we feel so far removed from the dark past of the U.S.
Right here in the Tri-Cities, Richland and Kennewick were sundown towns. A “No blacks allowed” sign hung over the Green Bridge in 1950, and Black residents endured segregation and busing from Pasco to work at Hanford from 1943-1945. Knowing these histories of racism and discrimination of these three cities makes it easy to see that we aren’t so far removed after all.
Knowing history also teaches the next generation that they have the power to make positive changes, just as our elders did during the Civil Rights Movement and our generation pushed for in 2020. When we ignore the past, we lose the lessons it has to teach us — a dangerous possibility as our youth grow into our future leaders.
This harmful silencing of our history has already begun. Kennewick School District recently pushed through an “anti-CRT” policy that states students cannot be “indoctrinated into the belief that the U.S. is fundamentally or systemically racist,” and that students must learn “factual U.S. history” — despite the fact that systemic racism plagues our nation. It’s a policy that essentially states that factual U.S. history should be banned in classrooms if it paints white nationalism as a threat to democracy.
This policy poses questions about whether or not the murders and torture of indigenous people here in America will be discussed. Will the realities of the Atlantic slave trade through segregation be taught? Will accurate histories simply be excluded to appease an agenda to hide the truth? Our youth deserve the chance to choose a different path forward of America and in Washington State from the one that history has shown us. The actions taking place in Richland and Kennewick school district are a dam waiting to break that will flood our school districts with bigotry.
During previous protests, we stood up together because we knew what could happen, and what has happened before, as a result of bigotry and discrimination. We’ve seen in recent generations the impact of these actions on the mental health of our communities and our youth. Our issues with the school board may not prompt marches over the Cable Bridge, but the passion to show up and stand up is still just as important.
To the readers: I urge you to wake up, to decide for yourself what realities our children will face in these cities that we all grew up in. Where all of us of every skin tone swam in the Columbia, watched the boats fly by with our cousins and friends at the races, danced at Out and About with our arms up smiling and free with our loved ones, and watched the fireworks ring out in the blackened night sky on the 4th of July.
The cities that belong to ALL of us, the cities where the direction should be forward, and forward only, never backward. Our home sweet home. We have a responsibility right here and right now, to control our own realities. Where do you stand?