Beloved urban flowers

These children attend the very fine Childpeace Montessori School, for which tuition is greater, per child, than my current annual income. (Mind you, my current annual income is below poverty level in the USA, but still, it's all I have, and many have much, much less.)

When I encountered these children as I was doing errands this morning, at first I was delighted. My eyes lit up as if I'd suddenly stumbled into heaven. It's not quite sunny, but the clouds have abated enough that some of the children were peeling off their coats. They were walking next to the flowers and it made me sing to see them. And then I wondered why can't we provide excellent education at this level for ALL our children? Because all the children ARE our children. There is not one child in the world that is not our child. We are responsible for all of them, if we are responsible for any of them. And so as I watched them, my heart grew heavy. If Bella, my beloved grandchild, still lives in Portland when she is this age, I wish her to have the choice of such a fine school. My son may be able to provide it for her; I don't know. But I certainly wasn't able to provide it for him, and even if he is able to provide it for her, that would not be enough for me. I want a world where all the children have access to enlightened education. That's the world I want. That's why I exhaust myself working for Occupy.  I am not such a wild-eyed optimist that I believe I will see that happen in my lifetime. But I will do all I can while I'm here to work for it.

P.S. Less than ten minutes after I posted this blip, my friend JoAnn Hardesty posted an article about "budget cuts" closing down forward-thinking predominantly-Black schools in Portland. I cannot attend the press conference tonight, but I would love all of you who read this blip to get the complementary story here.