 JUNE 18 • 2020 | 5

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Jewfro
Commencement Address to the
Elementary School Class of 2020
G

reetings and hearty 
congratulations to all 
the graduates and their 
human nurturers. Thank you, as 
well, for your ongoing support 
and presence 
here today, Siri, 
Alexa and Hal; 
what would we 
do without you? 
Please don’
t answer 
that.
I would be 
remiss if I didn’
t 
begin the remarks of this aus-
picious, unsolicited address 
to all graduating fifth graders 
with a comment about spacing. 
Standards may appear to relax 
in the foreseeable future, but you 
must proceed with a generation-
al vigilance that may even defy 
your parents’
 practice.
Do not be swayed by soph-
istry and moral relativism. 
Emphatically and unequivo-
cally — lest virulent tribalism 
run roughshod over our social 
contract — always put one space 
after a period. Always.
Like most of your parents and 
grandparents, I was taught to 
put two spaces after a period. 
Through repetition and rein-
forcement, seated at an Apple 
IIGS, that successive striking 
of the space bar as though our 
hearts beat as one.
I was also taught that Pluto 
was a planet. That Columbus 
discovered America (three 
ships!) That there were four 
co-equal food groups. That Rosa 
Parks was a nice lady who was 
too tired to move seats on the 
bus. That gay people could serve 
in the military as long as no one 
knew they were gay. That Detroit 
was a panacea prior to 1967. 

That voting is a fundamental 
right and every vote is equal.
As much as we want you 
to learn, what we really need 
is your help unlearning. 
Unlearning, with the possible 
exception of the quadratic for-
mula, is harder than learning. It 
requires us to confront our privi-
leges as the result of and cause of 
others’
 oppression.
You’
re not immune to the 
implicit biases that we inherited 
from your grandparents and 
they from theirs — what justifies 
someone as other, lesser, some-
how deserving of the particular 
consequences of structural ineq-
uities — but you are better inoc-
ulated than anyone before you.
That’
s not because we geneti-
cally engineered you to be more 
enlightened. Yes, you have access 
to a greater diversity of hypoal-
lergenic pets and freedom from 
the burden so many of us carry 
of growing, we were assured, a 
watermelon in our stomachs. 
Nor do you ride facing back-
wards in the trunk of station 
wagons or get your tonsils out 
just for yucks.
Your advantage is that others 
sacrificed their livelihoods and 

lives — some in the spotlight, 
most in anonymity — not to 
solve the problems of racism, 
sexism and ableism, homopho-
bia, transphobia and xenophobia 
for you, but to give you a shot at 
justice.
Do not throw away your shot.
I got you a graduation pres-
ent, Class of 2020. No, it’
s not a 
Nokia 3310 brick phone. But I 
wish it were, so you could learn 
how to text the old-fashioned 
way and experience dropping 
your phone as low comedy rath-
er than high tragedy.
Alas, I have but one Nokia 
3310 brick phone to give, and 
I give it to my son Judah, your 
fellow graduate, that he may 
realize 3G is plenty of Gs, come 
to appreciate the abundance that 
surrounds him and not let the 
snake from Snake eat its own 
tail.
My gift to you, like the 
time-honored savings bond, is 
one that will take some time 
to mature, but unlike YouTube 
comments, will ultimately 
mature. In 2018, I was one of 
2,519,975 voters to support 
Proposition 2, amending the 
Michigan state constitution to 

create an independent citizens’
 
redistricting commission.
This spring, I was one of 6,000 
residents who applied to serve 
on the 13 member commission 
that will erase current gerryman-
dering and redraw state congres-
sional and legislative boundaries 
to make them compliant, com-
pact and competitive.
The odds of me being ran-
domly selected as one of your 
commissioners, then, are slightly 
better than being deemed to 
be possessed by Satan (7,000-
to-1, though that’
s bound to be 
skewed by middle school exor-
cisms).
The process, in any case, will 
be nonpartisan and guarded 
from special interests — com-
mission reporting would prob-
ably be more succinct without 
me — and the result will be that 
you get to choose your elected 
officials and not vice versa.
Indeed, you will be among 1.5 
million eligible new Michigan 
voters over the next eight years. 
That’
s approximately how many 
votes it took total for Democrat 
Megan Cavanagh to win a seat 
on the Michigan State Supreme 
Court. Why do judges run as 
political-party candidates? Good 
question, Graduates.
I will say to you, in closing, 
what the playwright Tony 
Kushner said to me at my com-
mencement:
“Seek the truth; when you find 
it, speak the truth; interrogate 
mercilessly the truth you’
ve 
found; and act, act, act. The 
world is hungry for you, the 
world has waited for you, the 
world has a place for you. Take 
it. Mazel tov. Change the 
world.
” 

COURTESY OF BEN FALIK

Judah Falik (Bob 
Ross) and his 
classmates

Ben Falik

