Hey John, it's Team Sunrise.

Trump has stated that his goal is to run the Department of Education out of existence, and his Education Secretary has backed that up.

This is ridiculous. All young people deserve an education, regardless of their family’s wealth, regardless of the zip code they grow up in, and especially regardless of their race.

That’s why today, we’re outside the Department of Education, demanding that our government fight to fund our schools, not dismantle them, and to expand the protections students have, not destroy them.

Email your representatives today and urge them not to let Trump and his administration of billionaires destroy public education in America.

Why is this happening? In 1954, Brown v Board of Education ruled that racial segregation in schools was illegal, and conservatives have been fighting that ever since. Every fight about states rights since has been aimed at one goal: reinstating conservative white people’s ability to racially segregate America, starting with schools.

The uber wealthy have been more than happy to stoke this social division in order to push their economic agenda (and many of them also share those racist beliefs, like Elon Musk who was born and raised in apartheid South Africa).

Now, they think they have the power to succeed in this goal, and they’re moving fast. They want to control what you can learn in schools and who you can learn next to. That’s why they moved to arrest Mahmoud Khalil, and that’s why they’re trying to shut down the department that enforces non-discrimination policy in schools.

But there’s one thing they weren’t counting on: Americans are not going back. We’re not going back to segregation. We’re not letting Jim Crow come back. We’re not letting the loser Confederates resurrect their worldview.

History has spoken: racial segregation is wrong, and a quality public education is a right for all. And right now, the voices that are speaking loudest and proudest are young Americans. 

Email your representatives today and tell them to say no to Trump’s billionaire agenda by protecting our public schools.

We’re looking forward, towards the real problems facing America: rising inequality and the climate crisis. We know our enemies aren’t people of a different race, religious, gender, or sexual orientation. 

Our enemies are the billionaires who want to privatize and own every element of our society, from the media companies where we get our news to the schools where we learn about math and history. But our schools are not for sale and our civil rights are not up for debate.

In Solidarity,

Team Sunrise