MY TERRIBLE TERRIFIC 2020
After a year of so much loss, I am thinking more and more about the short time we have on this earth, and the messages we are sending to the future.
This year I said goodbye to Allison Ranelle Brown, a pioneering education civil rights lawyer who has been my best friend since 1988. I posted a quick tribute to her on Facebook, but there will be many more celebrations of her life to come in 2021 from her wide circle of advocates and friends — the “A.B. Hive” as we call them.
Allison loved Black children as fiercely as she attacked the injustices against them. She left behind two remarkable teenagers. The same month Allison passed away, a second college classmate (a tad more famous) shocked us by also succumbing to colon cancer. Neither had reached the age of 45. They both did so much with the time they had. …
Build Banneker in Shaw as a Living Monument to Black Excellence
May 10, 2019
From: John Settles Jr., Natalie Hopkinson, and Lee Granados
Parents, Benjamin Banneker Academic High School
To: Members of the Washington, D.C. City Council
Re: Build Banneker — A Monument to Black Excellence
Dear D.C. Council Members,
We respectfully ask that you to vote Tuesday to fund Mayor Muriel Bowser’s plan to build Benjamin Banneker Academic High School at the site of the long-vacant Shaw Middle School.
As DC residents, we share the concerns raised by our neighbors in Shaw about the history of carnage against our schools of right throughout this city. Like them, we have long been advocates of public education, and we fiercely defend not just the neighborhood system in Shaw, but all parts of the city East of Rock Creek Park that have been devastated by budget cuts, school closures and privatization in recent years. …
