A jury of Derek Chauvin’s “peers” found him guilty on all counts of murder: unintentional second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. Millions reacted to this conviction in their homes, in the streets, on social media, on their own, in the company of others, or perhaps not at all. As the judge read the charges, perhaps many reacted with a sense of excitement, but folks in my circles reacted with a sense of relief and exasperation. George Floyd isn’t back so we’ll never get justice, but accountability was crucial here. Surely, this trial and the conviction would send a signal to the world that we’d find some form of accountability for these agents of the state whenever they performed as judge, jury, and executioner on a person’s life.

Then we found out that a police officer killed Ma’Khia Bryant only 800 miles away from when the conviction came down a short time after.

Therein lies the structural and deeply personal part of this conversation we need to keep having in America. Too many of us believe that simply changing the faces and phenotypes of the people entrusted to keep the social contract is enough. Too few of us see the ruse. In my heart of hearts, I do believe that much of the work we must do to make a better world rest in us doing so collectively, regardless and because of these differences that stratify us. However, the persistent lies and obfuscation we see play out in front of us lead me to believe we need a more urgent conversation than incremental solutions. Concurrently, words like “equity,” “woke,” and “anti-racist” have been diluted, not yet to the point of obsolescence, but sometimes I do wonder.

I get that the current dialogue asks us to “rethink” what struggle would look like. School administrators have even taken up the language, asking us to “reimagine” what school looks like. Whose thoughts and imaginations got us here in the first place? Who’s being asked? What’s the context for this new set of thoughts?

Concurrently, the New York State budget finally includes a path towards fully funding public schools, a fight that’s heaved and ho’d for the last three decades from a broad coalition of parents, educators, lawyers, and activists. Even after the case and the eventual appeals won in court, legislators – particularly Governor Andrew Cuomo – dragged their feet to ensure fiscal equity for our schools. Now, a new yet similar coalition has demanded more than equality, but a redistribution of power through initiatives including police-free schools and true integration. It’s taken about 30 years for the New York State legislature to ensure some form of funding to public schools across the state for three years with nothing guaranteed after that period. How long will our demands take to get met on issues as ostensibly simple as safety, mental health, and taxing the wealthy?

We’re not even at equality yet, much less equity. We don’t even have the same conceptualization of what it would mean to be fully free, no matter how many times an individual from an oppressed group becomes famous and/or wealthy.

If education is a function of society, then what messages are we handing down to future generations? That we need to stage racial uprisings for decades to get even a semblance of accountability? That we need to organize thousands of parents, educators, students, and other citizens to upend a whole legislative branch and force our governments to do the right thing? That the sort of small bandages we’ve offered in the form of language and items were no match for the structural, cultural forces that continued to enforce separate and unequal processes, no matter what this country’s founding documents said?

Yes, hope is a motivator for me because it’s the only way we carry on with this American experiment. But hope without grounded theory is just flailing in the winds of society, aerial waves shoved along usually by the powerful and those who benefit from that status quo.

So being from the projects (Lower East Side, the Ave, if you must know), I’m equally skeptical when governments and the actors who hold power within it actually do what they say they’re going to do. I’m technically in the business of picking off bricks from buildings and making meaning from why those bricks exist, but I’m also about determining what buildings were set afire and examining the ashes. Generally, we see progress that moves people forward and creative and evil ways to dial that progress backward. We should be in the process of expecting that our governments get accountability right even when justice isn’t done.

Yet, as a teacher, I’ve learned to meet people where they are. It’s more than “We have a long way to go.” It’s also the abject resistance towards making concrete commitments to forward movement. It’s more than “change is slow.” It’s that change is urgent and necessary.

None of us are exempt from committing to this work. All of us have our role to play, some explicitly more than others. Until we see that level of change, then I give myself permission to hold these multitudes: that we can see these wins and that we’re not even close to seeing those wins because part of what our national imagination does. Please.