“It’s not just about me, it’s about parents that want their voice to be heard.”
Sarah Carpenter of the Powerful Parent Network recently joined Dr. Charles Cole III on the 8 Black Hands podcast for an in-depth conversation on last week’s demonstration at an Elizabeth Warren rally in Atlanta.
In the episode, Sarah Carpenter shares her story as a grandmother to 15 and the story of how a coalition of parents throughout the country organized and ultimately got a meeting with the presidential candidate following the event.
Mrs. Carpenter shares that she’s been focused on education since the 1990s and her message has never changed: “Our kids deserve a quality education, too.”
“Nobody ever comes to low-income communities, especially presidential candidates. So we felt like we had to go and educate her about what’s going on in our community. All we want to do is be able to choose where our kids go to school.”
The conversation debunks a variety of myths that spawned on social media and in the news in the aftermath of the demonstration.
While plenty of (mostly white) critics on Twitter attempted to paint the Black and Brown parents, grandparents, and guardians as nothing more than a billionaire-funded, faceless crowd of paid protestors, Mrs. Carpenter made it clear that this was a self-organized trip, paid for via GoFundme, which saw parents journey from all over the country to make their voices heard.
In fact, Sarah Carpenter is clear about the fact that the “billionaire funders” weren’t interested in funding the trip in the first place. When the parents decided on making the journey, Sarah asked funders to fund the trip and was turned down.
In the conversation, Sarah Carpenter makes it clear that she doesn’t care about the traditional schools vs. charter schools debate and is only concerned with fighting for more options and quality schools in general.
Listen to the full episode below:
