My city is on fire. I'm finding it hard to focus on college or, well, anything else.

I am living in a city that is on fire. 

Applying to college and taking the ACT test seems very distant to me, even though I believe in education and I love what I do. I am finding it hard to focus on the future when the now seems so important.

When I went to a protest at the corner of 38th and Nicollet, near the intersection where George Floyd was murdered by four of our city’s men in blue, the buildings were still smoldering. People were sweeping up glass and giving out water and chanting peacefully.

The National Guard was present at the protests that my daughter Hannah and I attended at the state capitol. I left the protest at the capitol before Hannah did. Hannah was among those who walked onto Interstate 94. I am both proud and very glad that I didn’t know about it until it was all over. My friend’s 13-year-old daughter was on the freeway, too.

The strength of the response to George Floyd’s death was a long time coming. I was wondering when it would happen. I guess the video of George Floyd’s murder, the COVID-19 pandemic, unemployment, and years of trying to drown government services in a bathtub have led us here this summer. 

May we finally get the change we all deserve: our schools are underfunded, police violence goes unpunished, our social services are underfunded, and going to college requires parents and students to go into enormous debt. All of this is being driven by stagnant wages and corporate robber barons. 

I am a member of InEquality, a group that works for juvenile justice reform: https://oyatehotanin.org/in-equality/. I have been aware of police brutality against people of color since I was an AVID tutor in the St. Paul Public Schools (https://www.avid.org/). My teenage students gave me the 411. 

I remember tutoring the day after Trayvon Martin was murdered for “walking while black.” We abandoned Algebra and “The Great Gatsby.” We talked about what had happened to Trayvon and how it could have been any of them. We all knew it was going to happen again.

One African-American student told me about how she was driving in the car with her mom and dad when a St. Paul police officer pulled her father over in front of their house. It was never clear to her why her dad was pulled over. She and her mom had to watch while he was slammed up against his car and handcuffed. He told the officers, “That’s my house. Can I go home? I didn’t do anything. That’s my house. Right there. I own it. Can I just go home?”

My recommendation to young people is to join the revolution. Volunteer. Donate. For a list of places in the Twin Cities, go to https://www.thecurrent.org/.

We can talk about college, too, but I want college to be affordable and for public schools to no longer accept scarcity as acceptable. How is one guidance counselor for four hundred students acceptable? It is not. 

Enough. 

Revolution. 

Reform.