Episode 9. Monique Newton
In recent years, public schools across the United States have closed their doors. In addition to student and teacher performance challenges, funding concerns loom large for municipalities that are grappling with revenue losses and budget shortfalls, pushing local governments to make decisions that emphasize the imperative of economic growth over and above an investment in neighborhood schools. In many places, these decisions disproportionately harm black and brown communities.
Such was the experience of Monique Newton, who watched first hand as a high schooler while her home city of Sacramento, California, made the decision to close several neighborhood schools to build a new sports stadium for the Sacramento Kings, the city’s professional NBA team. In this episode, Monique recalls this development as her first exposure to the idea that politics—specifically local politics—matters. Now a Ph.D. student at Northwestern University in the Department of Political Science specializing in urban politics, Monique crafts a compelling narrative from these formative experiences as a high school student to her burgeoning research agenda and work as an educator. Monique shares the transformative experience she had conducting research with Black residents in the city of Cleveland, and how she came to understand how deeply embedded systemic inequities and a lack of responsiveness to the needs of these communities shape their decisions to not participate in electoral politics. Monique and Mara talk about the tensions that can exist between descriptive representation and substantive representation, and Monique graciously offers words of wisdom for all of the students, teachers, and professors who are grappling with how to discuss police violence against Black bodies and challenge white supremacy culture. Ultimately, Monique shares her deep appreciation of the right to vote—a right that was so fiercely contested and fought for—but also recognizes it is only one step in bending the arc of the moral universe towards a more just and equitable world.
