A little story about charity, adjacency to privilege, and structural change.

Recently, one of my students was featured in a national news story. The reporter did a great job showing how she and her family were struggling to pay bills in a pandemic. 1/10

As a result of the story, a gofundme was set up for her, and people from all over the country donated money to help her with her bills and her future college plans. It was heartwarming and touching to see strangers reaching out to her. 2/10

How did this happen, though?

Well, 4 years ago, this reporter reached out to me to do a story on teachers working to resist trump, based on my angry tweeting. She interviewed me and kept my name. 3/10

She contacted me this summer about a story about high schoolers who have to support their families, based on another one of my tweets. I reached out to 2 students to see if they'd talk with her. 1 student responded, 1 didn't. The one who did now has $, the other one -- none. 4/10

How did I become a source to begin with? I have a few guesses: I am a white woman whose academic training allows me to tweet/communicate in ways that are probably appealing to reporters. I do so without fearing for my job. I do not fear that I will be targeted by racists. 5/10

I do not have to measure my words for my safety. I have received online harassment, but not to any of the degree many teachers of color -- especially WOC -- have received. I can be angry without being labeled crazy. White supremacy allows this. 6/10

So my students are adjacent to, and, to some degree, benefit from, this privilege. I have received classroom grants because I went to grad school and spent time studying writing. I've had DonorsChoose projects sponsored easily because of monied college friends. 7/10

And, my one student was featured in an article and had a minor, unexpected windfall, and my other student, for not picking up the phone, did not. The random awesomeness almost cancels out the pit-in-stomach woulda coulda shoulda feeling about my other student. 8/10

These piecemeal one-off lovely gestures (gofundme! donorschoose! randomly cashapp-ing people in need!) rely on a fickle adjacency to class privilege and white supremacy. 9/10

What our students, our young people, and, well, everyone, really need is obvious: an economy that is fair to all, that does not rely on having a privileged white teacher who will talk to reporters.

TL; DR: Tax the rich. Destory white supremacy. Keep pushing. 10/10