The 2019-2020 school year has been a year of firsts for our Seattle students. Despite the challenges, students and teachers have risen to the occasion and worked hard to make the best of this unique time in history.
Graduation for the Montlake Elementary 5th graders took place virtually last night on Zoom. Tonight, we will celebrate our graduates “in-person” by having a Montlake neighborhood car parade. The parade route starts at 6:00pm at the Montlake Community Center parking lot. Cars will proceed to Montlake Elementary School via E. Lynn St and E. Calhoun St. Once at the front of the school, teachers and Principal Pearson will greet the graduates and present them with their diplomas.
We encourage everyone in the neighborhood to walk outside for a few minutes, find a spot on the route, and cheer these kids on! We have encouraged students and their families to honk, cheer, and let out some wolf howls. It would be amazing to have the whole neighborhood join in. Let’s make some noise for these kids!
Parade Route
Kathy Smith-DiJulio says
Really, a car parade? Perhaps the principal and teachers could rally and recognize this unique opportunity to talk about environmental justice and reinforce the fact that we’re destroying our earth with pollutants, car emissions being a major contributor. And when us white privileged folks cavalierly hop in our cars the effect of our emissions disproportionately affects low-income people and people of color! We have to change our behavior folks if we want a difference. Why can’t all those who are able walk??
MontlakeESParent says
I really struggled with whether to reply and call this out or not as I kept thinking about it, it was making my blood boil…My wife said I shouldn’t respond because it would fall on deaf ears, but I tend to give the benefit of the doubt and hope that you really are actually open enough to truly listen and be objective even if some of the feedback may be pointed. I guess by your response or (lack thereof), we’ll find out whether my wife or I is right…whether you are genuinely concerned about your acknowledgement of your own white privilege or if you’re some kind of an “anti-Karen.”
“…cavalierly hop in our cars?” There was nothing cavalier in any of these decisions! Do you have any idea how many parents teared up trying to figure out how to give our kids a few minutes of FUN in the environment of despair?! A bunch — I know because we were on video calls trying to figure out what to do and crying together. Have you forgotten what it means and feels like to be a kid?!
Are you seriously knocking this? Really?!!! Do you have any young children? (And I don’t mean do you have children in general, but do you have any young children *right now*?). If you do, do you have children in this school? Do you have any idea how much Anti-Oppression, Anti-Bias, Discussions about Social Inequity, and “green” conversations are had (and actions taken) at this school? They are built into the curriculum. If you can’t answer yes to these questions, then, respectfully, you have no idea what you are criticizing…and, frankly, no clue who you are lecturing. I’d be willing to bet you expend more of a carbon footprint driving for “retail therapy” over the course of a couple “normal” weeks than this parade took.
And if your point really is that this is an opportunity to teach a lesson…don’t you think, after 6 years, for 30mins we can stop being teachers and just *BE* with them in a place of enjoyment given what I just told you about the Montlake ES curriculum?
We are in pandemic, right? This is unprecedented in our lifetime. Most of our kids haven’t been out of their houses for weeks at a time. They have been together through 6 years of school at one of the most demanding elementary schools in SPS…and as a result of COVID-19, they have lost nearly all connection to the key people in their social development. The parents of Montlake have decided to take a 5 block parade in their cars to reconnect and celebrate, arguably, the biggest accomplishment of their lives in a “make the best of a bad situation” kind of way before they separate and go off to different schools and potentially say goodbye forever — At the very least, they are forever changing their way of life and interaction of the most critical people in their social and emotional lives. Do you have any idea what a 10-11 year old kid is *really* feeling *right now* and the thoughts they are having during a time like this? Are you spending hours a day, every day, helping them to deal with fears and anxieties and outright depression as a result of COVID-19?
Your suggestion to walk it is, again, so far out of touch with what is realistic that it’s almost insulting..Do you have any idea how long it would take to walk my 4 kids around the .6 mile neighborhood route staying socially distant? Now multiply that by the 40-ish families that had siblings of all ages in tow. I’m 100% sure this would not been nearly as happy, fun, meaningful or practically and efficiently successful an experience if we were walking that .6 miles trying to stay socially distant.
Practically speaking, your point about carbon foot print is ridiculously weak, IMHO — the average car contributes about 411 *grams* of carbon footprint per mile. The route was .6 miles. There were at most (I didn’t count exactly) 40 cars in the lineup (but probably less). So call it 10 KG of carbon in the atmosphere: 20.2 lbs for the whole parade. Carbon offsets are $4.99 for 1000 lbs. When I was at Lowe’s buying some stuff for a home repair, my wife noticed that there were *scores* of dying plants tossed into a pile of stuff going to compost/landfill. As you know, this would contribute methane which is 26x more damaging to global warming than the carbon dioxide coming from our cars. We took maybe 3 dozen of them and planted them in our garden and all of them came back and are contributing to cleaning the air. Over the life of these plants, they should be able to cover the 10KG of carbon dioxide this parade put into the air. That’s how little impact this event had on the environment.
Sorry if I’m unleashing, Kathy, but, I was just appalled and insulted when I read your comment — it’s just another example of what honestly sounds like another “enlightened” white savior motivated by white guilt who gets on their high horse to proclaim their enlightenment by “educating” their white brethren and save all of us minorities, and in the current climate, it pushed me over the edge. As a person of color with 4 persons of color children who are the 5th generation to live and grow up in Seattle Central District, I get particularly frustrated with people using “white privilege” online as some sort of badge testifying as to how intune they are.
If you went to the Children’s March last weekend, you’d have heard a diatribe from a young black man yelling into the mic, specifically calling out how “middle aged white women have no idea what we’re going through!” That’s because of privilege — the basic goal of BLM is being taken by mostly white people and diluted — “elevating” the overall cause and proposing sweeping systemic change like “abolish the police” “defund the police and invest in social equity programs” and having heady discussions about systemic change in systems way outside the police force with a focus on overall socio-economic equality when BLM is much more basic than that. They want to boil the ocean when BLM, at it’s core is, literally, “How can we stop black people from dying at the hands of police RIGHT NOW?” Not in months or years after privileged people like you “educate” and “have conversations” and figure out how build a new utopian world. Those may be good conversations to have toward a long term solution, but it’s not going to stop the next black person from being murdered. The solutions to immediately stopping black deaths by police are much easier and more tactical than solving all the society’s problems around inequality…but instead of respecting that and focusing tactically on solving the murder problem in the near term, *privilege* shifts the focus into something different…a “bigger” movement because people of privilege can concern themselves with funding education, mental illness, homelessness, and other social services. Black parents are just trying to stop their kids from being shot by police and want “The Talk” with their 10 year old sons to be about sex education instead of being about how, when you encounter police, to your raise your hands over your head, and yell, “I’m unarmed! while they kneel to the ground. It’s disrespectful to blacks and people of color (because crap like this happens all the time — like this post of yours speaking up for the people of color and protecting us from global warming)…
And if you try to argue that your comment is somehow different, I’d ask: If BLM were a feminist movement instead of a racial one, how many *men* would be spokespeople for the movement? What would the reaction be if a bunch of men got up proclaiming women-protection themes when there’s a bunch of women in the audience?
This hypocrisy seems to be the biggest manifestation of white privilege I see. It’s so subconsciously internalized and justified by your good intentions that you don’t realize it’s the exact perspective that can, when internalized and distorted within some other white people who have badges, result in black people being murdered.
I diverge into that topic because it is representative of the same sort of self-aggrandizing that seems to be the motivation of your comment. These “big discussions” you are talking about are much further up on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs than where the solution for the people impacted (these 10 and 11 year olds and their parents who are just trying to keep them sane and happy) resides. You’re talking societal and educational self-actualization when we’re struggling just above the food, clothing and shelter levels. The simple fact that you felt it was appropriate to drop a great big deuce right in the middle our parade (a “belonging and love” level action) to lecture us about carbon footprint and protecting people of color demonstrates that your privilege is actually not as understood as you think. Your comment implies that on montlake.net, the only audience is “us white folks” — that people of color don’t live in Montlake or go to Montlake ES? Why you gotta make it about being white and white privilege? Even in your language attempting to call your neighbors out, “educate” them and proclaim your acknowledgement your white privilege, you prove that you take your privilege for granted…There are a lot of minorities that live in the neighborhood, but your comment assumes that they don’t — why? Why not say, ‘us rich folks?” Though still a generalization because I know of a lot of people who rent in the neighborhood to go to this school, it would be more accurate than “us white privileged folks” when addressing the Montlake community. For that matter, why put the whole “white-thing” in there at all? Just to make a point? Or because somehow making it a race privilege thing will keep the socially conscious people of Montlake from calling BS on your comment?
In case you don’t realize it, though most of the families at Montlake ES are white and are from privileged backgrounds, there are of a lot of people color at this school, and many of them come from outside of the Montlake neighborhood.
Our children — whom we have to drive 20 minutes each day to get to and from Montlake ES in order to go to this school, have been so alone and frustrated since the lockdown.
All my 8th grader got for “graduation” was a 17 minute video from Meany Middle School with no interaction to send him off to high school. He’s been stressed about the world, and, at times, depressed about his future and the fact that he’s so disconnected. His twin brothers who were being celebrated in this parade for moving to 6th grade felt bad for him and actually said, “I feel bad for you because you didn’t get any celebration for graduation.” He also went through Montlake for 6 years before moving to Meany MS, and riding in our car, seeing the community he was so connected to during such critical and formative years, and seeing teachers he had in K-6 cheering, even though it wasn’t for him directly, he felt connected to his childhood and things didn’t seem as bad for a little while.
My wife, an immigrant (and not like most of the educated immigrants who will be reading this — is of the “American dreamiest” tradition: two parents, 4 kids, 1 suit case and didn’t speak English and got off the plane, lived in poverty for decades, built a life, started businesses, bought homes and made their American Dream) and I teared up driving our boys watching them be cheered by the younger students and their families — and even families that don’t have kids who made signs — standing in the streets cheering, and we felt welcomed by all these “white privileged folks” you took the time to criticize and part of the greater community. And we weren’t the only family of color that comes from the other side of the 98122/98112 tracks that felt welcome…
How much is that worth to any feelings of white guilt that motivated the “white privilege” vocabulary in your post? Is that worth $0.15 of carbon offset? Is this practical, visceral and loving support of a few “poor ol’ minority families” enough for you to get real, get practical, take a step back, really take a another objective look at your own privilege in society, and perhaps realize that your comment served no realistic purpose other than for you to feel enlightened at the expense of some really stressed out parents and teachers working really hard to recognize all the hard work their kids have done for the last 6 years under the limitations of the first global pandemic in our life time? As I started out, let’s see who is right, me or my wife.
SSandall, and all the other parents reading this that have welcomed us into the Montlake community (and teachers who have welcomed us into Montlake ES), supported, taught, educated or coached my kids over the years, those who have watched out for them on the playground, at field trips and anytime you could, objectively looked at your own kids’ behavior and not acted like your kids are not perfect, commiserated with us during these unprecedented times and worked so hard to put this together, I thank you for taking the most sour lemons, creating a few minutes of genuine happiness for all of my kids, and making the sweetest lemonade possible. 🙂
much love.
mike.