Project Description
In response to the question “If You Had A Trillion Dollars…
Page May submitted “I’d Choose Us”
“I’d Choose Us”
That’s all it takes
Every two four
We’re closer to ignorance one second more
Cus every twenty four more another kid walks out the school door
And we can’t even afford
The books we need for
Our education
But the legislation can manage to provide their authorization
For 9 0 million dollars for a stadium
When they should be payin
to fill my cranium
We bank higher on our students going to prison
Than going to college
How can we succeed
When they roll the dice
And the dice they roll are fixed
We’ve got a yellow brick road set in front of us leading into prison or to dropout factories
They take us to school but half of us end up clicking our heels and crying the way home
We think ourselves
To be a Utopian society
But we’ve got a high notoriety
For neglecting the things we need most
Declaring “Youth are the future” does not mean that today has no consequences.
When you add up climate change and asthma, poverty and prisons.
How many of us will be left?
When guns, weapons, and war get 60% of the money
And my education gets 6 there’s something wrong
Imbalanced and distorted
How can we go on if our next generation can’t make it past high school
If the funding only lets teachers fit the quotas for standardized testing
How can we even be expected to learn
If every day 7,000 students drop out.
How many of us will be left?
Someone tell me how this is sustainable
When “success” in this system isn’t meant to be attainable
How can we be expected to succeed
When the system doesn’t allow us to leave
What is the purpose of the people paralyzed in this public school prison
Convicted because we have dreams of something better
How is that fair
when we’ve judged private prisons to be a better investment than public schools.
I know there’s something wrong
When we use tax dollars to send men to wars we didn’t need to fight.
We spend trillions on guns and wars
But if I had one,
Just one of those trillion dollars,
I could change this world
for you for me for we
Education for all could be the light
At the end of this never ending tunnel stained with the blood of soldiers and the lost hope of our students
Just a trillion dollars
Redirected towards something positive
Sustainable schools that believe in me and my future and my power to change it.
I’d invest in my belief that public education matters.
If I had a trillion dollars,
I’d chose us.
We ask youth ages 23 years old and younger, “If YOU had the power to choose, how would you spend 1 trillion dollars? What could that money do for your family, for your community, for your nation, or for the world?”
We are the ACE Climate Action Fellows: a diverse group of young people from across Chicago Public Schools. We work together to build an alliance for climate education and sustainable schools. Our approach to sustainability recognizes the intersections between environment, academics, violence, school-to-prison-pipeline, poverty, and public school closings. We believe sustainable schools are not just green, but also healthy, safe, smart, and supportive communities.
~ www.acespace.org
