Like many Bostonians I was watching the mayoral debate last night. There were lots of issues discussed and at the end of the day I am not sure who really won. However, there is something that happened last night that I was still thinking about this morning. I started a blog about the crisis in DC, but this issue was more pressing to me.
So I want to start by being transparent. I have decided to support Marty Walsh in this final round for mayor. Because I knew that might make me biased, I almost didn’t write this blog, but I have to speak my heart.
For the majority of this race John Connolly has been talking about his experience as a teacher. Within the teacher and youthwork sector there is some controversy about that because he only spent 18 months in the classroom; but I am not going to wade into that debate.
I take Connolly at his word that he became invested in the youth that he worked with and that he, like many teachers and youthworkers, wanted to see his students succeed. However, last night I was really disturbed by the fact that in the middle of his talk about education he cited the first and last name of a student who dropped out of school and had a child as a teenager.
I was shocked that he had named this young person. I imagined what that young man would think if he was watching that show. How his family would feel if they happened to be tuned in? Then I wondered what it would have been like to have my own life story reduced to a political point for a bunch of people who don’t know me.
The reality is that this was just an obvious case where a politician had crossed the line. Yet everyday our young people get reduced to statistics. A blip on someone’s graph or a data point lost within someone’s analysis. The poorer you are, the black you are, the less “educated” you are, the more it becomes okay for people to reduce you to a caricature.
The other day I had to sit down with a young man who has gone from being a superstar to unraveling before my eyes. He has been through so much in his life, but for months I watched him be fueled to excellence by the thought of overcoming what people thought of him. Then a month ago I saw his world start to come crashing down. We talked about how there were two versions of him in a struggle to see which one would win out. He looked me in the face and said, “What if the bad side is who I really am.”
The reality is that so many of our young people have given up any hope that they can be more. They see that so many people have written them off and they figure that so many people can’t be wrong. As a youthworker, a minister and a person who believes in transformation, I always hold out hope that even in the darkest of places that young people can be transformed. That God’s plans are always better than my own and that until we are stone cold in the grave, that our story isn’t over.
I have long ago come to realize that I can’t “save” everyone. I have seen young people laid in the ground before they realized their potential. And yet, I will never reduce any of my youth to their mistakes. I will honor their lives, keep their confidence and hold out hope that the best is yet to come. That is what it means to be a youthworker or a teacher. I ask that if Mr. Connolly is going to call himself one of us, that he hold to this sacred code.
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