Tag Archives: Mark Epstein

Voices

OPINION | Civil Rights Reflection: Medgar Evers Pool and the Naming of Public Places

by Mark Epstein

Over the past 50 years, tens of thousands of people have learned to swim, recreated, and cooled off in the waters of Medgar Evers Pool, located at 500 23rd Ave., just north of Garfield High School. How many of them thought about the name of the pool and its namesake? How many have learned that the pool’s construction was the site of a significant battle in the effort to fight desegregation in Seattle? Why is this important to think about?

Continue reading OPINION | Civil Rights Reflection: Medgar Evers Pool and the Naming of Public Places →
Voices

OPINION | SPS Faces Crucial Equity Decisions That Impact Our Communities

by Mark Epstein and Michael Dixon

Seattle Public Schools (SPS) is once again at a crossroads. The issues affecting our education system are a mirror of those affecting our neighborhoods, our city, and society as a whole. It is a time of great potential, but also great danger. A time of increasing inequality: growing wealth for a small minority and an increasingly precarious existence for many. To decrease this kind of inequality, SPS faces crucial decisions about equity, integration, and differentiated learning that meets the needs of each student. These educational decisions cannot be separated from the issues facing the community in general. 

Continue reading OPINION | SPS Faces Crucial Equity Decisions That Impact Our Communities →
Voices

OPINION | A Reflection on Gun Violence and Some Questions for the Shooters

by Mark Epstein

Cornel West, speaking in the Rainier Valley last month, used the analogy of a musical ensemble for the expression of the beauty and the sorrow and blues of the human experience. Yet throughout the Valley, our city, and the country as a whole, the song has been punctuated in the last month by the discordant sound of gunfire. West decried the insufficiency of identity politics, declaring that pharaoh comes in all colors, and called for meaningful, substantive discussion and social and political change. His presidential candidacy is intended to spark that discussion. 

The gunshots provide a strong exclamation point to the socioeconomic, political, and moral crisis which confronts our society at this time. Like the COVID pandemic, the omnipresence of gun violence is affecting all of us, whether we realize it or not. I myself was witness to one of the episodes, ducking for cover for 40 seconds while bullets soared overhead and on both sides. 

Continue reading OPINION | A Reflection on Gun Violence and Some Questions for the Shooters →
Voices

OPINION | Using SPS Budget, We Must Support Students

by Mark Epstein and Michael Dixon

“In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now.” —Wangari Maathai

Continue reading OPINION | Using SPS Budget, We Must Support Students →
Voices

OPINION | ‘Power Anywhere There’s People’

A youth-focused reaction to Fred Hampton’s 1969 speech.

by Michael Dixon and Mark Epstein

Our youth today are in an extremely fragile state. There is no movement they can look to be a part of that is guiding them to a better place. Whether we are a member of a group based on ethnicity, religion, gender, or gender preference, we are vulnerable to attack. The greatest threat to oppressive power today is that people will get out of their individual identity issues and unite. This is particularly troubling since the power of a people depends on the vision and power of its youth.

Continue reading OPINION | ‘Power Anywhere There’s People’ →
Voices

OPINION | We Must Listen to the Students

by Mark Epstein and Michael Dixon

Almost 60 years ago, in the middle of two decades of civil rights activism that changed our country,  James Baldwin delivered a speech to teachers, in which he declared that the purpose of education is for students to look critically at their society and to have a vision of change they are willing to fight for. Without such a perspective, he says, we will perish, or follow the worst example of a Nazi youth movement.

Continue reading OPINION | We Must Listen to the Students →