1,000 signatures reached
To: West Linn Wilsonville school district
Require anti-racism curriculum in WLWV high schools
I am asking West Linn/Wilsonville School District superintendent Kathy Ludwig to require curriculum into all US History classes that teaches about the current anti-racist Black Lives Matter movement and why it is necessary. Show documentaries like 13th to demonstrate how the prison industrial complex is a loophole to maintain slave labor. Assign critical personal essays asking students to examine how their privilege has afforded them the life they currently live and how they can use that privilege effectively in the fight for black lives. Educate students about redlining and Oregon’s racist past that has made communities like west linn and wilsonville as predominantly white as they are today. Teach seminars on impactful activism and create assignments that involve petitioning their elected officials for creating change in their community. Assign readings written by abolitionist authors like Angela Davis and bell hooks so students can better envision a world without police or prisons. Train teachers to be cognizant of not tokenizing their black students in these conversations and centering change-based discussion instead of racial trauma-based discussion by limiting violent imagery against black & brown bodies.
Why is this important?
All sophomore high school students in WLWV schools are required to take a US history class. In this class, I remember learning about the civil rights movement as if racism was a thing of the past. This is far from true, and students are often shielded from this reality in insular white communities like West Linn and Wilsonville. We must do better to educate our students on the realities of racism in the country today, ask them to examine their own privilege, and teach them how to effectively join the movement against police brutality and the prison industrial complex as a whole.
How it will be delivered
I plan to gather alumni and teachers from the district in order to plan a detailed curriculum, and present this curriculum to the school board