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