Excerpt
April 28, 2011
Parental Choice ``is the difference between empowerment and enslavement,'' (Polly) Willie told a gathering of the group Black and White Men Together, in February 1990, in what was fast becoming a stump speech. ``We gotta fight. I'll be the one leading the revolt to destroy the system.'' Early in the effort, Willie recalls, she looked around one public meeting and assessed her troops, many of them mothers or even grandmothers scraping along on AFDC. ``This is my army,'' she thought; as a group, they were not the kind of people adept at fighting City Hall. Yet as she moved from meeting to meeting, Willie began to see her audience differently. These mothers were animated by a simple and strong desire to do right by their children. The fact that they had little, that the system treated them as outcasts, simply served to highlight the righteousness of their cause. There was a power, Willie came to see, in their very powerlessness. ``I've always said there is quality in poverty--people with heart and character.''
