U is for Urgency #AtoZChallenge #BookReview
My 2025 A to Z Challenge theme is activism. I’ve been a Black Lives Matter activist for over a decade. I’m not an expert. I do have experience to share and I’m hoping to learn from your experiences, too. We’re all in this together.
For me, urgency is often in a creative tension with sustainable action and, occasionally, with self-care.
Urgency propels action and limits damage and speeds progress. Sometimes, an urgent action fixes something before it becomes a problem that requires sustained action. Urgent action requires a lot of energy, but over a short amount of time.
More often, though, we’re dealing with problems that have been around for decades or centuries. Two things have to be true at the same time: Our schools need to be fixed urgently and I need to be prepared for it to take a long time. Burning out isn’t an option.
My focus for the past ten years has been on education. The kids who were in Kindergarten when I started are now in high school. I’ve always felt a sense of urgency about children. They only get one chance at those crucial early learning years. If they are treated as if they don’t belong by the people who are supposed to be teaching them, then those years are lost forever.
There are benefits from being an outsider in education activism. My organization can make bold and pushy statements about the importance of policies that implement diversity, equity, and inclusion, with or without the approval of our local school districts. But a downside of working from the outside is that I have few ways to measure the success or failure of our community’s organizing efforts.

One of many Saturday meetings I’ve attended to figure out how to support schools as community members who care about equity
From anecdotal evidence, I’m convinced that our efforts aligned with others to change adult attitudes and behaviors in schools in ways that brought more children into a state of belonging in their classrooms. There were policy and practice changes that reduced suspensions of the youngest students (a practice that disproportionately impacted students of color and students with disabilities and boys and all the various intersections of those three things). That required rethinking how classrooms worked for students and adults.
At the same time, I also have anecdotal evidence that while racism got bolder in our society, it also got bolder among students so that hallways and cafeterias and playgrounds are even more fraught for students of color and other populations that are too often targeted by bullies. That’s a failure by our society for both the bullies and the bullied. I am discouraged by this development.
Okay. I’m rambling. I know this is hard for everyone. I think my contribution, here, is to share a recent video from Dr. Kira Banks that talks about how to navigate the times that we’re in, find our lane, and don’t forget about self-care.
I really enjoyed Dr. Kira Banks video. I totally agree that we need to be ready to have our own libraries, Saturday Freedom schools etc. And that we all need to start with our own families – do the young people know they need to register to vote, are they registered, did they vote. etc. It’s not all about the big movements.
I am a teacher and have seen how diversity, equity, and inclusion change hearts and minds. Showing kids how to treat each other and how to stand up for others bears fruit even though they may be seeing and hearing something completely different at home. It’s a battle we have to keep fighting. Right now my granddaughter is in kindergarten and we are already seeing how religious and political propoganda is creeping into school as a result of the current situation.
I agree that Black Lives Matter! A few years after we moved where we live now, a family moved in next door. We knew someone had moved in but hadn’t seen them yet. The next morning my son and I were outside at the garage going through things to donate to our local church.
A man came walking through our yard and when he got to us he said “Are you guys moving?” My son told him no, we were going through things to give to the church down the road because they have a thrift shop and food pantry. He thought we were moving because him and his wife had moved in. That hit me hard. I can’t imagine having to live my life thinking things like that. So sad!
Urgency is such an essential topic. You are so right – so many things are urgent but take a long time to change. And too often, it becomes urgent because we have not addressed it sufficiently. Whatever the case, urgency is very much part of making change in the world.
Thinking about urgency seems especially useful right now, as we’re being hit from so many different directions with needs that are so great. So it’s helpful to take a breath and remember to find ways to settle into more sustainable action modes. I enjoyed Dr. Banks video – thanks for sharing.
I see the ideas espoused today in America espoused in the times I read about in the past, and I realize this is something that seems to recur. I find some sense of hope in knowing that this is a fight many have been working against for centuries.