Photo Courtesy of Alex Garland Photography, used with permission.

Dear Bill and Melinda,

In the summer of 2011 the seeds of this protest were planted when I read Bruce Levine’s book “Get Up, Stand Up:  Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite”.  Bruce Levine and I talked on the phone and exchanged emails that summer.  He spoke and wrote about the need to take our grassroots’ protest to the corporate elite vs the politicians — because that is where the real power seat is held.

Yet that July, I found myself taking the message to the politicians instead at the Save Our Schools March in DC, where I was fortunate to meet educator/activist/author Anthony Cody, Jonathan Kozol, Diane Ravitch, and so many of my activist friends.  During that meeting the plans for this protest were hatched.  We convened again in DC the following year.  It…