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Welcome to shout your cause with Sally Hendrick, a digital magazine where you can get found, get heard, and get inspired with content that challenges us to be globally minded. Our focus is on raising awareness around social justice issues, cultural differences, and to bring you the people dedicating their lives to tackling challenging topics as their way of giving back. Let us be your advocate to make your voices heard around the world.
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Hey everybody. Welcome back. We are starting up again with shout your cause podcast, and I've got a wonderful guest here, so I'm so excited to have met today. And her name is Megan Geha. You got it right?
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Yep. Good. Okay. Now, Megan, you live in Iowa. I do not, not, not Texas,
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Not Texas. That's right.
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They don't know. I'm
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Still curious as to how, where that happened.
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Yeah. I think Texas has been in the news a lot lately, so I'm sure it was an easy mix of similar stuff. Yeah. Now here's the funny part. I meet people in the most in conspicuous places that you could ever imagine. I've met some of my best friends on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. And now I'm meeting people on TikTok as well, which is where we met. And you just happened to show up on my feed one day. And I was like, oh, she's talking about some topics that I really want to understand so that we can dispel any myths about this and make sure that this is the direction that we want to be going with learning and teaching and so on and so forth, because guess what? It's become a hot, hot, controversial topic. So you are who on TikTok?
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I am Ms.McGill and my backup is Ms.McGill.2 My account was targeted by people and mass reported and taken down and TikTok reinstated at recently.
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Yeah, that's a common theme going on over on TikTok is a lot of controversy basically for our audience. If you want to understand what happens on TikTok is that people are basically given their own little internet show when one minute and one minute segments, sometimes up to three minutes, depending on if TikTok has given you that permission yet. And a lot of people use it for funny entertainment. You think about TikTok as being kids dancing, but there's also people like showing funny videos, tripping over this and that. And then there are a lot of controversial topics being discussed as well. And news being explained and broken down by a lot of people who are really passionate about the truth, reaching our people around the world, but also especially in the US especially with the misinformation that is constantly going around online. Yes. So I would love to get a little bit of a background of what you're doing, because I know that critical race theory is the buzz word these days, but I know we're going to go in and dispel what that actually means. And so I want to know what's your background? What are you doing? Sure.
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So I became a teacher later in life. I lived abroad in England for several years. I came back, I'd had an English degree and I decided to go back and become an English teacher. I ended up working my first job at a a boarding school for adjudicated youth from all over the country who were sent there for breaking the law. There was a sex offender program and kids who, you know, grown up three generations deep in gang life and had very hard traumatic lives. And they dropped them in the middle of Iowa to it. It was, it was an interesting place. I, there are a lot of things wrong with it, the longer I'm away from it, but that was the first time that me as a middle-class white girl who grew up in a college town in Iowa, really heard, listened to and learned from people of color, my students, and actually their lived experiences from a young age, I'd always been very passionate about fighting for people's rights.
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I had a social studies teacher in seventh grade named Mr. Clinton, a black man who changed my life. He's still my friend to this day. And he taught us the true history. He, he taught us about the civil rights movement beyond just Rosa parks and MLK. He had a, he was the host of this thing called black history show down, which was a quiz bowl that I was in for four years where, you know, this team of white and Asian kids competed with other teams across the country with black history. And, you know, he was, yeah. So I've been working with, with these kids at, at this adjudicated center was the first time where I'd actually interacted with these kids that had lived these experiences and they changed my life. I then moved on to where I'm working now and was offered a special ed position. And I worked first with kids who had behavior disorders. And now I work with kids who have learning disabilities. They're not a lot of the trolls online are saying, oh, you teach special needs kids. And you're, you know, they're not intellectually able to handle what you're talking about. And one, that's not true on several levels. And two the kids I'm working with are ones that are maybe English, wasn't their first language. Or, you know, there are a couple of grade levels behind. They're completely able to handle all kids are anyway, but
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There's a whole different level of care that goes into that. My mom was a special ed teacher and before she taught in the school system, she taught at a boys prison. Wow. Okay. She did homeschool. She did GED, everything. She did everything you could imagine. She even had one of her homeschool students even broke into her house and she went and had a good talk with him about, I mean, it was, my mom is my role model. That's exactly.
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Yes. That's that's. And so, okay. So then, you know, I've been teaching at this school in, in Des Moines. Every it's out there, but whatever, it's the largest school in Iowa, 51% of the kids are Latinex. I think it's something like 18% black. It's a very diverse school and a couple summers ago. I, and I've always been very close with my kids. And especially those naughty bad kids. I do, I have a special place in my heart because I understand that behavior is communication. And yes, the kids who are the largest jerks are the ones who are screaming out for help. And that's how they do it. So I, they motivate me the most those kids. So I've always been drawn to them.
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Well, my mom always even said, these kids are not, they don't have chromosomal chromosomal problems. They don't, these are not like special education. Like you're thinking of like the special Paralympics or what, you know, right. It's a nurture, not nature thing. Yeah. Yes. She said, these kids are not getting fed until they come back to school. The next morning, these kids are being beaten or left alone or walking streets. Those are my school. This is what's happening to these kids. And they are put in special ed classes and they are completely left out of the regular population and they're isolated and they fight back and they fight each other and they fight the teachers and they are just being completely bullied and beaten into,
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And then they're in the prison system. Right. And then they end up in the, and if you look at it, it's mostly black and brown males that are way more than white put into special ed. And with the high population of, of Latinex kids that we have, I do believe a lot of it is, you know, a lot of our kids, all races are, are poor, have single parent homes, have many siblings are taking care of siblings, their mothers working their little butts off. And can't, you know, they can't can't make
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Pieces and they're not, you know, they're not
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Able to read to their children every night before bed, or they can't read in English or whatever, you know, there's so many reasons why kids end up in my classroom. And I, I agree very, very few of them actually have any intellectual impairments. Obviously there are kids at my school like that, but that's not the kids that I work with. So that's been, that's been a common retort from the trolls. That's really upset me that like, you know, I'm manipulating people, children that can't intellectually grasp this. And, but, but so, so then being with these kids couple summers ago when the stuff at the border really blew up and I think there had been six or seven kids that had died in detention. I had this moment, I was sitting on my back porch and my son who is going to be turning five next month.
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So he was going to be turning three, this playing in the sprinkler in the yard. I was watching him reading about like the sixth child that had died in detention, who was about his age. And I just kept thinking of my students because so many of them are here because their parents made that journey or they did as children. And I just kept thinking about them. And that's when I really, I would say, that's, I always struggled with, I don't want to be a white savior and trying to like, understand that balance of what that means. And I, and I think that was when I made the distinction between I have white privilege. That's not being a white savior. That's, that's using my privilege to amplify shine, a light on them, like saying, Hey, look at me, look at me. And then I jumped out of the way and saying, look at this, you know, so that when I exploded and I became an activist and I, there was a thing called lights for Liberty that happened across the world where it was vigils at detention centers. And I organized one at the jail, the local, the Polk county jail, wherever they detains people here. And I got very involved politically then. And it was in a group called moms against the camps and did sit-ins and offices. And and then I now co mentor a group at east while I can say it, whatever my school called students against the camps and
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In the last year, right before COVID happened, a student of mine came up to me, who is, I say, a student of mine. He wasn't in my classes. He's he does not have an IEP, but he was in students against the camps. And he was an activist and very intelligent. And the motto for my district is becoming the leaders in urban education. And he wanted to challenge that. And he said, I would like to write an anti-racist, but I don't even think he said that. He said I would like, it was a, a racial and equity proposal for the district. And so so we went to spring break. We never came back. I mean, the student continued to talk online, over teams, and he wrote this whole draft. I would give him feedback, edit it and started connecting him with people in the district.
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And we had meetings. And from that came, another student joined this student and the two of them have completely been leading this work. I call myself their secretary. They have done everything. They've gotten new curriculum, new classes for next year racial inequity teams at every school and at the district level, we got, they got rid of school resource officers with our district. They ended the, the, the contract with the police department. And that was all these kids. So we are, you know, I'm following the lead of my students. I say, you know, was thinking earlier, teachers are taught. You know, I went to school later. I became a teacher. I graduated in 20 11, 20, yeah. 2011. And you know, the rage then, and it still is it's student centered. You teach what the student wants. You need to teach, you know, pull the student in with what interests them. And that is what we're doing. That is what
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This is. Right. Well, and I want to go back to the point you made about, you don't want to be this white savior. I feel the same way. As far as the stories that I tell the interviews I conduct and the writings that I do, I'm not trying to be a white savior. However, I do have an audience that is white, that wants to learn things and variants of my own. And it, and I also dig and research and talk to people. And I go in homes. I go in the projects, I go into places,
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That's the difference because what I, what my, when people say that to me now, what I say and I've, and I've said this a lot on TikTok is I am not talking to, or for people of color, I am talking to white people. I am here to have this discussion with other white people, because one, it shouldn't be on people of color to have to educate us right. two, we know a lot of these people, aren't going to go out and educate themselves. But if like you and I are able to present this information to people in a way where they're like, huh, you know, that got me thinking and gets their gears moving. That's good. Right. You know, and I do try very much on TikTok to present that way. I know I can get sassy and condescending, but I usually keep that for the people that really deserve it, that really are being jerks and are not there to learn and are there to, you know and I'm getting better at just ignoring them, blocking, deleting.
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It takes practice, believe me, it also, it also takes editing and it takes going backspace, backspace, backspace, you know, a lot of times, because sometimes you just want to get the feeling out of your body from that, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to land properly.
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You need you. And that's something, you know, you teach in school is if you want to appeal to your audience, that's an English. He wants it. So I'm not, I'm not here to finger you racists and you,
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No, one's going to listen.
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And I have had some great interactions. I had an interaction with this guy. I hope he's still following me. We started following each other. It was on my second account. It was after I was banned on the first one. And you know, he's got this as his, as his profile picture with the red, white, and blue. And he said to me until 60 seconds ago, I didn't believe I would never have believed in white privilege, but you just did explained it in a way to me, that made sense. And that's what I want. Like I, and I know the terminology of a lot of these things, black lives matter, white privilege, critical race theory. They turn people off. They look at them, you know, poor white people who grew up with hard lives. What do you mean? I'm not privileged. I don't have privilege. And it's like, and my response to that, which took some time to get to is I understand that you could have had the hardest life ever, but the color of your skin didn't make it any harder. Right. And that is a way for them. And I, and I have found that response, people are like, okay, I get that. I can understand that
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When I read a white fragility and led a discussion, a book club, if you will, on that, we took two or three chapters at a time to discuss, because it seems like every paragraph is an entire discussion. It covers so much, it's very heavy. And one of the things that I thought was so interesting was that it talked about the difference between white people and black people after, you know emancipation. And how will you enter into this Jim Crow era? And you can correct me on timelines. I'm not perfect at all of this by any means, but you had sharecroppers, which is kind of like where my mother came from in a way. And then you had black people who were just trying to live their lives. Right. And there was still a level of control by the wealthy who happen to be white. So you have the wealthy over everyone and the sharecropping side of things, the white people were the ones they were just as oppressed as the black people, but they knew that they had at least the advantage of being white. And so then they could use that to have a little step up. But, but there were all sitting down here.
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Yes. Oh yes. And that's the thing there's so much intersectionality with classism or class privilege and racism and my sister. I've never been to Atlanta before, but she said, Atlanta is like, you know, you see, you see that sphere in the black world too, that there's very wealthy black people and very poor. And, you know, and that Atlanta's a very black city and I've, and that's something in, you know, I've lived in London, which was very diverse, but it wasn't like that. So it's just, it's, it's interesting. Cause that's something so foreign to me too.
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There's, there's like a caste system everywhere
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Matter. Right. But the thing with even a poor white person, maybe, maybe they have an accent or the way they speak that might give away their class, but they could still, you know, change their closing and, you know, move to a different, you know, can escape that. So to speak
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Also, what is the term code switching code switching as something that you know, you've got a black person who will go into the workplace and they will the code switch over to the white way of speaking if you will. And, but then it's, and it's the same for me, for example, I live in Nashville, but I grew up in a small town in west Tennessee. And when I get on the phone with someone from home or I go home and I'm there for a few days, I come back and my husband's like, you've been right. Yeah, totally. Yeah. He can totally hear it in my voice, the phrases that I say every day, because I I've been having my own code switching in a way within my realm of experience.
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All right. So I love that we're talking through this and I wanted to touch on a couple of things because I want to really understand that. I want people to understand that really, when it comes to teaching children about the full history, we've been doing it in a way, but we haven't expanded it completely. We do it in literature class. We do it in history class, but I have to say that I remember for example, and this is a big one. The only thing I learned about the Holocaust was blank million Jews were killed during the Holocaust and I had to put six.
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And so you brought up some really good points. So, so I'm a special ed English teacher. And the class that I teach is a class that kids who have in reading have to take. So it's a supplemental class. And we use like this computer program that if it's where we get the progress, monitoring data for their IEP and see how they're doing, but, and the, and the, the good thing about it is I have a lot of freedom with what I use in the class and what I teach so I can teach about a lot of things because of that, there's not really a curriculum for my class. I just, you know, it's, it's fluency, comprehension vocabulary and writing
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With anything. Yes. I have those
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That I need to monitor them on. Okay. And so a couple of years ago I had a student say to me, we were talking about, Anne Frank, I think, and I don't remember why, if it was the computer program that brought up an article about her or what I don't think. Oh, I remember why. So we were reading the freedom writers diary, which there's a lot of mixed opinions about Erin grew well, the writer or the teacher. But anyway, I think she was, I liked her and I, and I liked that book kids. A lot of kids love the movie and the book is a little controversial, a little, a little, you know, kind of, it's interesting, they're interested because it's all diary entries by kids, their age going through hard things. Right. And so we were reading about that. And in that book, they're reading the diary of Anne Frank for class. And there's a lot of entries in the book about it. And I had a student say to me, who's Hitler. And I was like, so I asked the class who knows, who can tell me what the Holocaust is?
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They didn't, and I've had so many
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Black students refer to segregation as back in slavery times, but they mean segregation. And it just, I was like, wow, they don't even know their own history. They're not being taught these things. And any time I would teach anything about black history or, you know, Mexican history or anything. Oh my gosh. They just perked up. They were so cool. And so that, that pushed me to use those things and to even go so far as to like saying, what do you want to learn about what should we focus on? So like, you
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Know, and to be able to go back and pull those objectives out of those pieces. Oh gosh,
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Yeah. Kids took, turns, reading it out loud, they're practicing their fluency. They wrote their own diary entries. That's, you know, that's the thing too. I've gotten a lot of stick to teaching maths and science and I'm like, okay, what about his English? They don't understand how English is so meshed with history, teach the diary of
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Anne Frank or night, or to kill a Mockingbird, or, you know, any of these things, you have to have these discussions. Yeah.
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And those, those are the ones that are the most compelling. And here's another one, and this is completely different in a different direction. But when you look at like William Faulkner and you're talking about the sound and the fury and how the craziness that's coming out on the page was all about the thoughts that were going through someone's mind who was insane or considered insane, but maybe, you know, having brain, you know, like brain function challenges or, or just something, you know, maybe, maybe someone who had suffered from abuse and, and all of their hauntings come up in the mind and it's all out on the page and you're looking at it going, if you don't tell the story behind what's happening there, people will never really understand exactly exactly. This has to do. This is like an analogy for what was really happening in the world. Right?
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Animal farms, things like that. You have to have
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Love animal farm
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You know, fair and great for you. You can't not. So yes, yes. And those, and those are all by old white men. So like, even those, like,
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So one of the things that I kind of want to bounce back to is that it's not like we are trying to change anything or trying to enable people to stay in their situations. What's happening is the whole reason for doing something like this and for exploring is to dig out the poison and to examine it and to sure that you have a better way forward. And whenever you've got politicians or public figures who are saying something to create divide, what they're doing is they're trying to put you on one side or the other, because they know that the majority of people are not being educated on the full picture, the big perspective, the high level view. And I've always been about the high level view, which is the whole reason why I even have shout your cause is, but I want people to be able to see all the pieces, one of the things, and this gets us into politics, which is such a sticky, sticky topic.
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But I do want to mention that whenever you bring forth these topics and you're fighting for the education and fighting for the information to be put out there, whenever it's being tamped down and swept under the rug or shoved into the closet with all the other skeletons, it keeps things the same. Yes. And it actually makes this boil faster, even more and get bigger and bigger and bigger. And it's not until that starts to reach the wealthier community that how do I want to put this? It starts to reach the wealthier community and it starts,
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Things will change well, or that
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Starts to mess up their lives.
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Yes. That affects them. Yeah. Right.
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And it messes up their children's lives. And so what they do is they say, oh, you can't bring this out because it's going to ruin my life and my kids' lives and my future and my children's futures. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, you don't understand if we don't bring it out and clean up this mess, it's going to mess.
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So what I have, what I have noticed, if you talk about white people having privilege or having inherent biases or racism, they get very, very defensive and very angry. But the thing is like, we do have these things and it's impossible not to, if you are white in this society, people of color have inherent biases and prejudices against themselves because they grew up in this society. And it, and the thing is, nobody is saying, you know, Hey colonizer, or like, I love him, but they're saying
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It on TikTok, but I love modern warrior.
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I just have to give him a shout. But, but you know, like nobody is sitting there. I'm not saying you are guilty for your ancestors misgivings or what they did. And they take it that way. And the thing is, that's not it it's, it's saying, yeah, America did some pretty messed up things. And guess what? Those things are still affecting people to this day. And unless us, the people who have the power in this country step up and do something about it, it's going to keep going. And I don't know if they don't get that or they don't care, or it's the fear of losing that privilege and power. The more that I see all this hate, I really cause, cause I do on TikTok. I try not to be political. I try to say, this is a human rights issue. It's not political. I try not to talk about Trump or Biden. Like everybody tries to bring up Biden. And I'm like, I didn't, when have I mentioned,
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We're not even talking about that. We're not even talking about Democrats
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On both sides. Like both sides are guilty, you know? And I always bring up 13th because I think everybody, I think that should be mandatory viewing for white people. And people say that's liberal propaganda. And I'm like,
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Go read the 13th amendment.
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But they just, you know, they just, they ha that's liberal propaganda is their answer when they just want to keep burying their heads in the sand and not, you know, or I don't look at MLM. I had to figure out what that meant or not MLM. That's, multi-level marketing mainstream media. I had
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To Google all that too. And I thought they were just messing up on trying,
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I didn't know what it was. I had to figure it out. And I was like, oh, it means mainstream media. It's like, okay. You know, so it's just, it's it's and it's like, I, I truly think a lot of these people, and this is my catch phrase catch phrase, but what I say all the time too, is listen to and believe the lived experiences of people of color. Why do you have to like, see video proof? Why do you have to have proof that it happened? Why can't you just believe these people they've been saying this for hundreds of years, it's true. It's happening?
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And guess where it's coming out right now, literally right now in the news where somebody is finally listening free Brittany. Right, right. Okay. How many years has she been in this conservatorship?
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I know, I know.
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Right? Because she was a, basically a child.
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It was a child and she wasn't mentally sound and she's all that.
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Well, either that, or she was being pushed so hard and her weave was too tight and she said, save it off, shave it off. How many, how many of us want to shave it off? I mean, come on women right now. I want to just put my hair up.
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Know, I know. I know. It's I know it love it. And it is sad. I mean, it's, it's good and bad, but like, you know, it's taken the invention of this and being able to film everything for white people to kind of start believing. I need people still just still talk that, that maced the guy in the army fatigues that did nothing wrong in this car, you know, with this dog.
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Right. Well, but there's been a trained, inherent fear put into people about. Yes. Specifically. And it goes all the way back to exactly how the laws were created. As soon as emancipation happened, you literally go to the laws that happened right there in the courtroom about who was categorized as who and the loitering laws. I mean, you think about it.
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You might help to criminalize them and, you know, blames the black father, the missing black father for the breakdown of the, of the black, whatever it's like.
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Made that was done on purpose a while. Yeah. We can sit here and we can talk about, well, China China's having problems because they never would let you have girls or more than one child or boys are treated like they're, they're the ones that are the best child to have. And look at the problems they're having. Now today they've had to change their policy about how many kids you can have. And then you see all the corruption with the adoption agencies and so on and so forth and all the problems they're all over the world, not just in China, but in Guatemala where kids were literally stolen and sold to the American family, all of these things, it's just, wow. So, so, so many things.
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But I do want to get back really quickly so we can kind of wrap this up about some of the things that have happened in the last couple of days with you personally, because I think that a lot of people who want the truth to come out about things who truly want to help people, even the ones that are calling us names, that we really want people to have good lives and good relationships and to move forward in life and to have all the things that, that we worked so hard to get. Absolutely, it's getting harder and harder and harder to get them. And the politicians that are creating the divide just so they can win the contest to be the mouthpiece for whoever's putting money in their pockets. That's not going away. However, it's really hard to be the smaller voice lifting up and trying to say, but wait, you're missing this, you're doing it. I'm doing it. Lots of people are doing it, but there comes a time when you've got people threatening our lives. You've got people who are putting, saying yes, congressmen, who were saying things about us that are untrue. They certainly haven't given you a call. So if you would mention, what is it? I know that a couple of days ago there was a blogger who said this Texas teacher, you know, is, you know, going crazy on TikTok about this. And I was just like, the video you're talking about is not even anything.
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It's, it's not that big of a deal. And then you had Tucker Carlson's blog, if you will. Also picked up the story, at least they corrected it and said you were in Iowa, not in Texas. And really the, what they said in the article I thought was just kind of like
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My video. Basically. It wasn't even that bad. I didn't even think it was that bad because it was like, I was like, they're quoting things as if it's bad. And I'm like, oh, I think what I'm saying
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Sounds pretty good, actually. You know, I was like, I thought so too. But the funny thing is, is that people associate well, if Tucker Carlson, his people put it on his blog, then that means that she must be an enemy of some sort. And that is what triggered Steve king to pick up the thing and to tweet about you.
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And then there's been multiple other blogs, the sky turtle, which word was terrible. There was one, you know, there's that website. I think it's like my analytics or something where you can look up people and it gives you like, oh, they live in this state. They're this age. Right when I looked myself up on it before, like months ago, cause I saw it. I was like, oh, well what do they say about me? And it says, I make $90,000 a year on that I'm Muslim. And neither of those things are true. I barely make thousand dollars.
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Right.
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Like this teacher who makes $90,000 a year and I'm like, oh my gosh, wow.
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You're like news. Right. Well, I wanted to go back to the tweet that Steve King said, because that's something that is so inappropriate for somebody at that level in our country to be doing. So would you speak to what he said? And yeah. So he feel, yeah,
(42:06):
He, he said my name I don't, do you want me to read it? I don't.
(42:11):
Well, and he, who is he? He's the Iowa. So she was,
(42:15):
He was the, he, he was a Congressman from Iowa, but he did not get he lost the last election. So he was a Congressman in Iowa for years. And he's been in the national media a lot because he was very, very, very right wing, conservative, very much a Trump fan and would say really inflammatory things on Twitter a lot. So he is, this is not something new for him.
(42:45):
Right. But she call you out specifically based on an, a blog, right?
(42:50):
Like, you know, he said, Megan Geha is utter poison for our kids, Iowa law now prohibits her from brainwashing, other people's children. She is ticked. I would give her a permanent time out. Anybody thinks he's pro-life, which I've never talked about abortion, but whatever. And so at first I kind of chuckled and thought, okay, I've made it to the big time Steve king is roasting me. And a couple, I put it on my, my personal Facebook and a couple of my friends were like something about him saying a permanent timeout. Doesn't sit right with me. Yeah. That feels icky. And the more I thought about it, I was like, oh, and you know, he's got the people that like him are just as maybe, you know, not okay as he is. So I did call and file a police report after talking to my union. And they talked to their lawyers and the district and everything. So my district and my union have been wonderful. They have been very supportive of me. Their main concern is that I'm safe.
(44:04):
Well, I hate to end on a note like that, but I do want to mention that I understand how that could make you feel, but I don't want you to, you know, be shoved behind a door because of that. It's almost like I know you're going to come out and you're going to be fine. And you're going to say, look, this is happening. And this is a little bit scary, but this is not what I'm about. And it's unfortunate that someone with such a large platform would put a spotlight on me like that. But I mean, it's just
(44:48):
It's, it's a nasty thing to do to a person.
(44:52):
You, the, it gives you that much more clouds and it gives you that much more of a platform that you can keep going, because you're always going to have enemies out there that are that have their own agenda.
(45:09):
I have, my school has been contacted about me many times before this because I do a lot of local activism with immigration and I have had I had a actual hate as we're talking, another email comes up from my school email. That's like hate mail. Anyway, they keep emailing my school or my school email. But a woman actually typed out and mailed a letter to my district about me when I was actually, it was when I was protesting outside of Steve King's office. And I was located
(45:51):
I was interviewed by the local newspaper that came out and I have it framed
(45:56):
On my wall. So, you know, I feel bad. I've talked to my secretaries at the school and I feel really bad because they have to deal with all the phone calls they're getting and the school's Twitter is blowing up. So I feel bad for them having to do that, but they've been wonderful. Good. You know, and, and I wanted, you know I have been used to this on a local level to a degree. So this is, yes, this is a completely new
(46:26):
Can of worms, but yes, I'm not going
(46:28):
To be quiet is my, is my working with teenagers for years has given me quite a thick skin. So, and, and working with teenagers for years has also, you know, I always say I have learned far more from them. I thought that I was this woke liberal, you know, woman activist before I met them. And my kids are who woke me up. They are the ones, this is why I do it. I do it for them.
(46:59):
Don't, we all, I mean, we're all doing it. That's the, we don't do this for ourselves. We do this for other people and we're doing it to shout the causes of people who were very much unheard. And I really appreciate you coming on with me with this. And I will get this put together and put out there on the interwebs for everybody and fighting me.
(47:25):
The other thing I just wanted to touch on is I, I, as I was saying that, I said, my kids, and that's the other biggest thing I've had from trolls. They're not your kids, they're not your kids. They're not your kids. And they are my kids. I just want to say that because I love my students. Like, they're my own children, that's I, you know, I'm putting myself out there because, because this place, you know, we can make this country great for the first time. If we all fight together to make it equitable for everybody.
(48:00):
And that, that's what we have to do because yeah. The, again, part of the making it great has not happened yet.
(48:08):
The majority on people of color to change to fix this mess, we're the ones who made it.
(48:14):
Right. Right. And that doesn't mean we have to lose what we have.
(48:25):
You know, it's, it's, it's a good thing. It's not a bad thing. Like don't you want this to be, you know. Everybody watched 13th,
(48:37):
13Th, Kalief Browder's story. Go read. As my fin men read Mississippi 1955, read to kill a Mockingbird, read the cliff notes. The extra reading.
(48:51):
How would it be in the anti-racist?
(48:54):
Yeah. I don't know that one, but I
(48:57):
Can do that. Is that is, that is the, yes. That's the one he says we can't. He says you can't simply be not racist to be not racist is to be passive. You have to be anti-racist. It involves action. You can't, if you're not, if you're just saying I'm not racist and you aren't doing anything about it, you're being racist because you're not fighting against it.
(49:22):
All right. Thank you very much, Megan. I really appreciate it. And we'll talk soon.
(49:28):
Thank you for listening today. My name is Sally Hendrick. Be sure to visit our website for show notes and more information on how you can inspire others. If you would like to contribute content to our magazine, please apply on our website at shoutyourcause.com.
