The dots ran out at 11,000.
That was one tale of Saturday’s Save Texas Schools rally Downtown, as at least 11,000 teachers, students, and supporters (confirmed by the official paper “dot count,” with at least 1,000 more folks without dots) marched up Trinity from Waterloo Park, west on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to Congress, and down Congress to the south steps of the Capitol. There they gathered to hear music, speakers, and the sound of solidarity – in six weeks they had come together as Texans to express their grievances and to tell their legislators and their governor to fully support public education in Texas.
It was quite a day in the spring sunshine, and amid those thousands of inspired and inspiring citizens, one could believe that this would be the seed of a movement, to press for their constitutional rights as Texans to “a system of efficient free public schools.”
Reading is Fundamental
It was a bright-minded crowd, reflected in the astonishing range of their signs, telling their own tales:
The Straightforward
• Keep Texas Smart!
• Will work for children
• Public education created the middle class
• Hands off our kids
• Save a Teacher – Educate a Politician
• If you can read this sign, thank a teacher
The Ironic
• Education never helped anybody!
• Those who can, teach – those who can’t, legislate
• Fund schools not sonograms
• Fund schools now (or fund prisons later)
The Angry
• Rickonomics Robs Kids
• Teachers Unions now outlawed in Wisconsin and Communist China
• Perry’s throwing Texas right under the bus
• Rick Perry Report Card: F F F F (see me after class)
• Texas: Last in education, first in executions
• Move Ricky-Baby into a portable
• Our ancestors left Europe to get away from this crap!
The Comic
• Laid off – will teach for food
• MPEECH PEREE (this is the future)
• An educated state is a sexy state
• Charlie Sheen makes more sense than Rick Perry! Duh.
The Foreboding
• I’m too cute for my dad to lose his job [held by an infant in a stroller]
And finally, two brothers from Jose Riojas Elementary in Pflugerville, Matthew and Jacob Kelly (with their mother Sheila), made sure a reporter saw their twinned signs: “We may be little – but we’re important!”
This article appears in March 18 • 2011.
