Sideaner Walker - My Son Carl 

 

I have four children. One of them is not with me right now, but my oldest is Dominique, she's 17. My oldest son, Carl, was 11 years old. And my younger son Charles is 7 and my youngest daughter, Gloria, 6 years old. 

 

My son Carl was what you would describe as a mama's boy. He always was with me. Well, all of my children are always with me. We always did so many things together, fun things, like Harry Potter movies and just hanging out and watching DVDs together. We did everything together. When he started middle school, I knew almost immediately that something was different and something was wrong. And I asked Carl, I said, "You know, how's school going, Carl?" He told me that there were some kids at school that were calling him names. And I asked him, I said, "What are they calling you?" He said that they were calling him gay. "You act like you're gay, you act like a faggot." Those were the names that they were calling him. 

 

I was so outraged and mad, because this was my baby, and I knew that he was going to school where kids were picking on him, and I wanted to do something about it. You have to understand, I'm a single parent, I have four children, all four of my children are involved in sports and Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts. And so, even though I have a hard time juggling it all, I still made time to join the PTO at Carl's school, because I realized that the school needed my help. It was a charter school, and it was disorganized. They didn't start meetings on time. They looked like they needed a lot of help, and I'm a type of go-getter and I wanted to give them that help. 

 

Then one day on April 6th, as I was cooking dinner-- well, before I was cooking dinner, Carl came to me and he told me that there had been a fight at his school. He got into a fight with another student who happened to be a girl. She threatened to kill him. She called him gay. He told me that the mediation was that they had to sit together at lunch for the rest of the week, and that he had been threatened, they both had been threatened, with a five-day suspension. He was very upset, because Carl is very smart. He is an honor-roll student. He takes pride in all of his projects, he always got an A in all of his projects. He didn't want to disappoint me, because he didn't want to be suspended from school. And of course, he agreed to sit with the girl, and the girl didn't want to sit with him. 

 

I was so upset that night. I kept trying to tell Carl that they cannot suspend you from school if they don't contact your parent. Nobody from your school has called me today. “They have my email, they have my cell phone, they have my work phone, they have our home phone. Nobody from the school has called me today.” On April 6th, 2009, I was cooking dinner, and I was upset, and I was telling Carl that, "You can't be upset. We're going to figure it out. We're going to work through this. I'm just upset. Carl, I was making cheeseburgers, and I make a salad, because we're all trying to eat healthy. 

 

Carl went upstairs to his room. I told my mom, I said, "I'm going to take Carl tonight to the PTO meeting, because I'm going to get to the bottom of this." Because that's what usually happened. Carl would say one thing, the school would tell me something else, and somehow the truth was somewhere in the middle. I called Carl's name from the back hallway, "Come on down to eat," and he didn't respond. But he and Dominique were on the third floor, so sometimes when I call them, they don't respond to me, so I wasn't alarmed or anything.

 

I went upstairs, and that's when I found my Carl. Somehow, he had managed to take an extension cord and tie it around the railing upstairs, and that's how I found him. Horrified that I found my baby like that. [sobbing voice] What do you do? What do you do? I tried to hold him up, but he was so heavy. I tried so hard. The next day, I received a phone call from the superintendent. He offered his condolences. The mayor of our city and the city council president offered their condolences, but nobody really wanted to help me to understand why this happened to me. We had overcome so many hardships. I was a victim of domestic violence with Carl's dad. I was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was pregnant. We lost our home, and we moved into a hotel, and we were homeless.

 

But somehow, I had lost my baby to a school that was unsafe. I cried, and I cried, and I still cry. I didn't want people to think that there was a newspaper clipping that said, there was a suicide on our street and it gave our address. Then people would come up to me and they're saying, "Well, was he depressed? Did he seem sad?" Well, when you look back, Carl's personality had started to change. He was playing, roughhousing with his younger brother and sister, and he would interact with them and he would be, I think, unnecessarily rough. Maybe he was acting out because of what happened to him in school. I knew I couldn't get any support on the Massachusetts level, because everyone was politically connected and the charter school was politically connected. So, who could help me?

 

So, someone said, "Call the Massachusetts Charter School Association." And they told me, they said, "Well, if there's a policy in place, that's all we'll do is review their policy." Nobody cared. No one cared. But what could I say, who would listen to me? A single parent who has so many issues and problems, and now I have a child that's no longer here. I started receiving cards and letters from across the country. People started telling me that their child had been bullied, or that they were bullies themselves, or victims themselves when they were growing up. What could I do? 

 

I wanted to share my story and Carl's story to anyone that would listen to me. I had the opportunity to testify before Congress. I told them about my beautiful boy, Carl, and how they would be proud to have him as their son. I told them how, when President Obama was elected a president that we stayed up past Carl's bedtime, because he was so excited. When President Obama, the election results came in, I said to Carl, "You see, Carl, you can do anything you want to do. President Obama was raised by a single parent, just like me, and look how he turned out." 

 

I talked to the school with my concerns. Nobody cared. But I started finding my voice. I found my voice through being an advocate for safe schools, for being an advocate through the Safe Schools Improvement Act, trying to talk to anybody that had any kind of power in America, so that they could talk to their representatives and their senators and plead to them the importance of this important legislation, so that all of our children could be safe. No matter what I did or what I do, it will never bring Carl back, and I felt like I had failed Carl in life, and I vowed I would never fail Carl in death. 

 

So, I started talking to my representative. Shortly after the testimony, Representative Neal said, "What can I do, Sirdeaner, to help you?" I said, "Representative, you can sign on to the Safe Schools Improvement Act." And he said, "I'll do that." I've had a chance to talk to Senator Kerry's staff. Senator Kerry signed on to the Safe Schools Improvement Act. As I think back over my life these past 18 months, I never asked God, "Why? Why me, God?" I see now that Carl was part of a bigger plan, and I was just a part of it, also as his mother.

 

Carl's legacy will be that we will have safe schools for all of our children, regardless of their economic levels or backgrounds. Regardless. I reflect back on a mom that I met who's so very different from me, who lives on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. She said to me, "I wish that I could have your voice." And I said to her, "I will be your voice. I will speak for you, and I will speak for all of the families that are suffering right now and whose children are not safe in their schools." So, where are we today? Through strength, through hope, we have the victory. 

 

As of December 31st, of this year, every school in Massachusetts will have a plan in place. And every person, bus driver, bus monitor, teacher, janitor, cafeteria worker, will have to report any incidents of bullying. And parents will be notified. Not only the parents-- [audience applause] Not only the parents of the child that is being bullied, but the parents of the child that is doing the bullying. [audience applause] That's the law. That's the law. And I know that Carl is so very proud of me, and I miss him so much, and I thank you for listening to my story.