Breakfast Club: October 17, 2018

breakfast club

Illegitimi non carborundum

Good morning!

Perhaps the most difficult moment I ever had as a teacher was on November 9th, 2016, the day after the political center collapsed in America. 

I was teaching at Berkeley in classes of mostly community-college transfers, many from underprivileged and intensely precarious socio-economic backgrounds.  I was exhausted, having canvassed voters late into the previous evening across the border in Nevada.  As expected, things got rough. 

The class discussion was never going to stay on track.  Nor should it have.  Students openly expressed their fears.  Two admitted to being Dreamers.  One woman started to weep: "My parents are undocumented, my cousins are undocumented, my aunts are undocumented.  Where will they go?  What should I do?"  I simply had no answer.

I think about that day a lot.  I thought about it last Saturday morning, as I folded flyers and assembled clipboards for a voter canvass I was helping organize in Berkeley with the East …