Hello John,

Welcome to our brand new Children's Defense Fund column: For Our
Children.

Every week, CDF President and CEO Rev. Dr. Starsky Wilson will share
his thoughts on the issues most crucial to advancing the well-being of
our nation's children and youth. As always, we appreciate your
passionate support of CDF and this nation's young people. We
hope this column inspires you to find new ways to fight for our
children and youth in your own communities each and every day. If you
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Rev. Dr. Starsky Wilson's For Our Children Column

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For Our Children

When young Black and Brown children and youth see their stories in
books-when they read about families like theirs, from
neighborhoods like their own-they learn more effectively. Yet, a
disturbing trend is developing in classrooms across the
country.  

Many local school boards and state boards of education, under pressure
from so-called parents' rights groups and calculating
politicians, are voting to take young people's learning in the
wrong direction. They are curtailing the teaching of Black history,
banning books, and hardening the discipline measures used on students
when they make mistakes. 

This alarming reality encouraged our team in California,
Children's Defense Fund-California, to devote the focus of our
upcoming advocacy symposium, ChildWatch 2023, to discussing ways to
end these harmful practices.  

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Receive CDF's new column: For Our Children every week!

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The August 23 event in Los Angeles will feature Dr. Khalil Gibran
Muhammad, the?Ford Foundation Professor of History, Race and
Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is widely
regarded as a thought leader in the modern civil rights struggle to
teach true and complete history. CDF was proud to partner with him and
other national civil rights organizations in the #FreedomToLearn
campaign and Day of Action, which focused on connections between
efforts to suppress the teaching of history in K-12 curriculum and
attacks on our democracy.? 

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Muhammad's concerns align with my own. In May, he pinned an
op-ed for CNN.com that summed up the issue perfectly: "Americans
are losing the freedom to learn."  

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We cannot let that happen.  
 
As I said during the Freedom to Learn Day of Action, when we
don't tell the true history of Black and Brown people in
America, we're not telling America's true history. 

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If we don't share the stories of ALL our foremothers and
forefathers with our children, they will be led down a path of
ignorance that could cause them to repeat the mistakes of the
past. 

The threat to our students and to our democracy is real and pervasive.
A recent report by the UCLA School of Law's Critical Race
Studies program found lawmakers in every state but Delaware introduced
at least one "anti-Critical Race Theory" measure on some
level in 2021 and 2022. School leaders in a community just 90 minutes
south of our

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ChildWatch 2023 site voted in July to ban an elementary school social
studies book that mentioned Harvey Milk, gay rights advocate and
history-making former member of the San Francisco Board of
Supervisors. 

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Meanwhile, Children's Defense Fund-Texas is actively fighting
classroom censorship before a new bill goes into effect in that state
that could risk the removal of vital books from school
districts' shelves. Our team will soon send an advisory letter
to more than 1,200 Texas school board superintendents informing them
about the "Dos and Don'ts" of that new law to make
sure unnecessary censorship does not occur.  

What's clear is that certain people in power are afraid of
a rising generation of diverse, educated citizens, learning their own
stories.  

At Children's Defense Fund, we are committed to making sure all
young people grow up with dignity, hope, and joy whether it be at
home, outside in the community, or in the classroom. 



For our children,

Rev. Dr. Starsky Wilson
President and CEO

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