A biography for Clint Smithhasn’t been written yet.
“In many ways, the very notion of school choice operates under a false pretense - an assumption that every child has the same set of choices to make and the same places to choose from.”
“Education is a human right - a recognition of dignity that each person should be afforded.”
“To be an Arsenal fan is to convince yourself that you can no longer support a team that disappoints you, only to be drawn back in by the ever-flickering promise of something better.”
“So often, our sporting allegiances are shaped by family tradition, passed down like heirlooms.”
“America's economy cannot be disentangled from the free labor that built it, just as America's culture cannot be unbound from the black artists who cultivated it.”
“When you sing that this country was founded on freedom, don't forget the duet of shackles dragging against the ground my entire life.”
“The U.S. prison system, over all, disproportionately affects black and brown people, but people of color are overrepresented to a greater degree in private prisons.”
“People create the sort of myths they want to believe about themselves.”
“This idea of shared humanity and the connections that we make with one another - that's what, in fact, makes life worth living.”
“Sometimes a poem should just be about a girl jumping rope. It doesn't have to be something that is imbued with more despair.”
“Schools shouldn't have to choose between serving a student with special needs or cutting an art class, laying off teachers or using outdated textbooks. But these are the positions that far too many schools have been placed in, and only a meaningful acknowledgment of the problem can begin the process of getting them out.”
“When the power of private prisons is diminished, so, too, is their ability to engage in back-door political lobbying that has an impact on public and private prisons alike.”
“Oppression doesn't disappear just because you decided not to teach us that chapter.”
“Silence is the residue of fear.”
“My poetry is me trying to reconcile my own life and opportunities I've had with opportunities my students aren't given and how profoundly unfair that is.”
“In my home, guns were not something to be earned or celebrated. Water guns and Nerf guns were not allowed outside. B.B. guns were not even a part of the conversation.”
“If our principles are only our principles when it is convenient for us, when they align with our visceral emotional responses, then they are, in fact, not principles at all.”
“Do those serving life sentences deserve access to educational opportunities never having a future beyond bars? The answer is yes and necessitates that in-prison education serves additional goals beyond reducing recidivism.”
“I want to live in a world where my son will not be presumed guilty the moment he is born, where a toy in his hand isn't mistaken for anything other than a toy.”
“Empathy should not be contingent on our proximity to suffering or the likelihood of it happening to us. Rather, it should stem from a disdain that suffering is happening at all.”