| From the Black civil rights movement in America, | | | | was moved. Segregation in schools was ended. A |
| we can learn something very important about the | | | | new era of school reform slowly took place. |
| prospects of the environmental movement. | | | | Every year since, the idea of tolerance has been |
| While the movements are obviously fighting for | | | | more engrained in the mind of every student in |
| very different subjects, the parallels are easy to | | | | the United States. Our generation in New York |
| see. The green movement has powerful | | | | has had this idea (correctly) brainwashed into us: |
| champions, such as Al Gore, Agnes Denes and | | | | we are all equal. The result is a society with less |
| Amy Balkin. Some of the most extraordinary | | | | racism as more generations are born. |
| people who have ever existed fought for civil | | | | People become hard set in their ways with age. It |
| rights, like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. | | | | is during youth that ideas and preferences for life |
| Neither movement has simply sprung out of the | | | | are fixed. The green movement needs to |
| ground, but instead were a culmination of | | | | understand this. Changing the minds of adults is |
| centuries of work, of abolitionists such as W.E.B. | | | | very hard, although necessary. Teaching kids if |
| Dubois or conservationists such as Henry David | | | | the most effective plan for the future of the |
| Thoreau. | | | | movement. |
| So what can we take away from the fact that | | | | From elementary school, kids need to learn how |
| the movements are similar? One is that we need | | | | plants grow. There should be community or school |
| fighters (you can call them artists, if you like) with | | | | gardens where children can experience this act of |
| bold ideas. African Americans waited long enough | | | | Creation on their own. They should learn the taste |
| for Whites to hand them their rights before bold | | | | of their own fresh fruits and vegetables. |
| people stepped up the plate with bold ideas. | | | | They should be taught in easy lessons how, with |
| Boycotts, sit-ins, marches, and other creatively | | | | these gifts, a responsibility is given to them to |
| organized resistance delivered justice to Blacks in | | | | take care of the earth. We can teach them to be |
| America in the end. | | | | disgusted by the idea of pollution. Their world will |
| Their efforts succeeded in convincing government | | | | be cleaner than we can imagine and they wouldn't |
| to see their point of view. Black leaders did not | | | | even understand how anyone could live another |
| end racism, though. Martin Luther King Jr. was | | | | way. Can you emphasize with a slave owner, or |
| assassinated before he saw his vision of the | | | | understand why people would discriminate against |
| world. The American Government did not end | | | | a soft-spoken, well dressed black man? The idea |
| racism. It was not until our modern era, the 21st | | | | is absurd. |
| century, that race issues have finally started to | | | | This is my art project. It is in our schools that |
| fade. Why now? | | | | change must come. While we adults must do our |
| It started with an idea. A genius government | | | | best to lead a good example, it will all be for |
| official took a doll of white girl and a doll of a black | | | | nothing if we don't start, today, teaching children |
| girl and asked little black girls, "Which is better?" | | | | how to love the world, and how to love the smell |
| When the girls chose the white dolls, the world | | | | of growing life on a spring morning. |