Speech by Michael Charney in Salem

June 2023 Teach Truth Day of Action in Salem, Ohio

It’s a pleasure to be here today and to hear all the inspiration from the Sojourner People, especially the young people. I’d like to begin by thanking three groups. First, I’d like to thank Heather [Smith] for putting this together, Penny [Wells] for doing the organizing, but all of you who are willing to come out and say, “We must stand up to white supremacy, and teach the truth.”

We at the Zinn Education Project began these Days of Action to Teach the Truth in response to the racist backlash developed by white politicians to say to students and teachers, “you can’t learn about racism,” because they were so fearful that the millions of people who took to the streets in response to the murder of George Floyd would change the way young people would look at how society works. And those tens of millions of people — and there were that many in protest, where 96% were really non-violent — began to change the narrative, not only pointing out that the murder by police of Black people was not an anomaly, but it took place throughout history. It opened up people’s eyes. It wasn’t just police violence, it was day to day institutional racism in housing, in education, [and] in the way people treated one another.

So, we at the Zinn Education Project decided we had to fight back, and we organized these Days of Action. I remember going to a swimming pool in Youngstown, where these beautiful young people told the story of the fight against segregated swimming pools in Youngstown in the early 1960s. This is in the north. And I still tell people that inspirational story. I remember last year coming here for the second Day of Action right here in Salem. This year, beginning next week, there will be fifty separate events across the country, these Days of Action. And they’re much bigger this year, because this year the National Education Association, the largest union in the country, got on board saying “we were wrong not to get on board right away, but we are beginning to organize this year.”

Now, these protests against the murder of George Floyd changed so much, including the fact that I’m wearing this hat. You know, five years ago I wouldn’t wear this hat because it was the Cleveland Indians. Now it’s the Cleveland Guardians, a small little change. But all across the country, students looked at their teachers and said, “we want you to teach the truth,” but not in Ohio. Because in Ohio, there was immediately a bill that said you couldn’t teach about racism because some people might feel uncomfortable, forgetting the fact that maybe Black people have felt uncomfortable for decades by the lies that came out of the mouths of teachers. This lawmaker said people didn’t like being divisive and when asked about her bill, she said it was important to teach both sides of the Holocaust. Both sides! It’s okay to murder 6 million people. And what’s the other side? That’s a good thing? So that’s the kind of people we’re against.

But running up to 2023, and I’ll close here, there is now a bill in the Ohio legislature, not yet passed, that will change the way Ohio social studies standards are set up. Bill 103. And this was what it says: The social studies standards need to be totally rewritten. The standards as you well know, tells teachers what they’re supposed to teach and also the books they’re supposed to use. So pretty, pretty powerful. And then it says not only are we going to change the standards, but the new standards are going to be based on the American birthright curriculum. That’s a coalition of right-wing white supremacist groups that basically says the only thing in the history of the world is what Western civilization has done. In other words, what white people have done.

When Gandhi was asked what he would think of Western civilization, he replied, “That would be nice.” Because the tens of millions of people who are murdered by the power behind Western civilization, now, according to these new standards, they need to be praised in the new social studies standards. Not only that, but usually social studies standards are implemented and created by educators. In other words, people who know how to teach. Not this bill; the people in charge of the standards will be appointed by the governor, the Speaker of the House, and the leader of the Ohio senate. Not only do they prescribe the content that glorifies white supremacy, it totally marginalizes Black resistance to white supremacy and ignores the horrors of the internal slave trade, where people were sold from Maryland and Virginia to go be slaves on cotton plantations, and the liquidation of Native American life.

But it also does something truly amazing: It prescribes how you teach. You can’t teach anything [or] force students to think. For example, many teachers use something called Project-Based Learning. That is [when] you have the kids do a project, they figure out all the parts of the standards, and they ask themselves all these questions. No more! It forces students to think. And no more will teachers be allowed to teach current events because that makes students think! So this is what they’re trying to do. It hasn’t passed. But if it passes, I don’t think that they would implement it. I’ll tell you why. Once standards are produced, they have what’s called a roll out. That means they get together the teachers [and] explain what the new books are. Can you imagine all the social studies teachers going and saying, “This is what you want us to do?” I can’t swear, but you can imagine what they’ll say, with the f-word. There willll be dissent and disruption and disobedience.

So they don’t have a chance. Why are they doing this? Because they think that this is the way to win elections — to play on the fear of a few imaginary white parents that their children will learn the truth about history, and then they’’ll get votes. In the last year, they’ve added something else. It wasn’t enough to say “Don’t teach about racism,” we’ve got to go attack gay people and trans people and pass all these laws that basically say, “You can’t do that” because that’s against what we want to have happen in schools. But there’s a way to challenge that.

It’s our challenge to create what is called a counter-narrative, a different story of American history, a different story of the history of the world, a different story of what students need to learn so they can grow up and function in a multicultural society. If the white Republicans have their way, students won’t be able to function. They’ll just be able to learn all these lies and think you can actually live in a society where everyone isn’t white, where everyone isn’t committed to, that white people aren’t always right. So it’s our job to create that counter-narrative through young people, through Days of Action, through study, but most importantly, to speak out and resist! We can only change this by a powerful group of collective struggle. Thank you very much.

Can I just add one thing? We need to do our part about getting people out to vote, and particularly getting people out to vote in August, where the Republicans want to change how we add amendments to the Ohio Constitution. Since the early 1900s, we’ve been able to change the constitution by a vote of 50 percent plus one. And now they want to make it 60 percent, saying this is fairer, while it’s really not. So it means we need to get those of us who can vote, are old enough to vote, we need to get out and vote and we need to bring about 100 people with us. So we need to beat the bushes. If you are underage, then you need to get your parents, your neighbors, your teachers, and everybody you know out to vote this down.