Julie Cavanagh: The Truth Behind Won't Back Down
In our film, we featured several parents and teachers who actually took a stand against the corporate reform movement. Whether it was parents and teachers who joined together to stop a charter school from being forced into their building against the will of the community, or to fight budget cuts that were ravaging their school, to beg the powers that be to stop the closing of a beloved neighborhood school that was long under-resourced and undermined, or begging for policy makers to prevent ballooning class sizes or stop wasting precious funds on high stakes testing when they could be diverted to culturally relevant and rich curriculum; they all shared real, true, authentic stories about how they, together, would not back down. There are thousands of real won't-back-down stories out there (I have shared my school community's here and you can too), not based on actual events, but are actual events. Most of them involve fighting the very forces folks like Philip Anschutz fund.