#everygenerationhasitsstruggle

[ameliaslunchbox]

"Movement building comes from building yourself first." - Zachie Achmat, Political Activist and Speaker at the Equal Education Congress Equal Education is a movement of learners, parents, teachers and community members working for quality and equality in South African education, through analysis and activism. I had the opportunity to go to the opening day of the #EECongress and I was blown away. The majority of the people in this room are students under the age of 18 who have mobilized and begun to demand a dismantling of the reality that richer learners have access to better education, a reality which serves to perpetuate the status quo and maintain the gap between rich and poor. They are doing this through focused, sustained campaigns directly demanding accountability from government, such as the recent sanitation campaign, during which students used photography, demonstrations, writing, and legal advocacy to demand sanitary school facilities for all schools. They are consciously identifying themselves as a class movement and I heard young people saying things like "education is not a consumer good, it is a right, so it should not be delivered through a market system." They even had international observers attending as a show of solidarity, such as young people from Chile's students movements. These young people have seriously made me ask myself what I am doing to help activate students in the states around these same issues, especially in the context of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, of which education must be an integral part. There's work to do. #EqualEducation #Everygenerationhasitsstruggle