What if you knew the biggest threats to your child were the people in power? What if those people were the ones in charge of public education, civil rights and justice?
If you or anyone you love — especially your child — is LGBTQ, Black, an immigrant, poor or disabled, you already know this fear. If your child lives at the intersection of any of these identities, you acutely know this fear. Though, for the majority or perhaps the whole of your child’s life, things had gotten better. There had been in place an administration, an Education Department, an Office of Civil Rights and a Justice Department that at least recognized the threats to your children and tried to ameliorate them.
President Obama and Attorney General Loretta Lynch listened to parents and students and educators and began to address social and emotional development of children in U.S. public schools. They began to work with us to change the trend to downward of over-disciplining and over-criminalizing in schools. This worked with us to pass guidelines protecting transgender children from discrimination in public schools.