Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough

Today's a big day for me. More than any other person living or dead, I draw inspiration for my life's work from Martin Luther King Jr. Every year on this day, I watch his incredible speech, and every year I hear something a little different. This year I was particularly struck by the portion where he talks about how, 100 years from the emancipation proclamation, we still had so much farther to go to get to true freedom for blacks:

"100 years later -- the negro is still not free. 100 years later the negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. 100 years later the negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. So we've come here today to dramatize the shameful conditions. In a sense we've come to our nation's Capitol to cash a check -- when the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the constitution and the declaration of independence they were signing a promissory note... this note was a promise that all men -- yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as its people of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given its people of color a bad check -- a check that has come back marked insufficient funds..."

Though we've made some progress since 1963, we need look no further than Milwaukee Public Schools' dropout factories (large high schools that have failed to prepare thousands of poor black children for anything other than underemployment and prison) to see that we're still writing the same bad checks fifty years later.

Like Martin, I "refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt" -- and I refuse to believe we can't do better for our kids. For decades now, we've allowed teachers whose performance demonstrates that they do not have high expectations for themselves or their students, particularly students of color, and they do not have what it takes to educate these kids and give them an opportunity for something other than joining the generational cycle of poverty. It takes a lot -- most of all -- a belief that giving these kids a great education it is not only possible, but necessary -- our moral obligation. Is it the fault of ineffective teachers that poor blacks remain oppressed, particularly in large, segregated urban areas like Milwaukee? Of course not. Is there something we can do to deliver on America's promise that we're not doing by allowing them to stay in the classroom? Hell yes. Now is the time to change that.

Martin's words almost don't need a song, but the one that popped into my head as I fired up the speech today was MJ's Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough. How much is enough?

Martin says: "We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream."

With the largest and most persistent achievement gap between blacks and whites in the country, I think it's safe to say that here in Wisconsin, we're falling far short of that mighty stream. I, for one, am going to take Michael's words as a mantra -- won't you join me?

Keep on with the force don't stop

Don't stop 'til you get enough