Be Like the Little Hummingbird

Why I joined the lawsuit against SB10

There is a children’s picture book called The Little Hummingbird that I absolutely love. It’s based on a fable by the Quechuan people of South America and tells the story of a forest ravaged by fire and the response of the various animals who reside there.

All of the animals were afraid and fled from their homes. The elephant and the tiger ran. The beaver scurried and the frog leapt away. Above them the birds flew in a panic. The creatures huddled at the edge of the forest and watched. All except for one.

In thinking about my experience of traveling back and forth to Austin to testify against various bills during the 89^th Texas Legislature I am reminded of this book.

Some of our elected representatives have gleefully set fire to the forest we share. Time and again—whether on school vouchers or putting a state-sanctioned version of the Ten Commandments in every classroom—when these representatives were pressed to put these issues to a vote, they responded “that’s not how a representative democracy works” and lit another match.

This spring, I traveled to Austin more times than I can count and frequently it was with Texas Impact’s Public School Defenders team. My last trip there was to testify against SB-10 which mandates that a King James Bible-version of a curated list of “Commandments” be posted in every single classroom. I and others waited 22 hours to testify against the bill.

As Austin-based composer Alex Shawver noted in his testimony:

I have to question the faith and motivation of anyone who wants to use the full power of the state to force a chunk of King James text to hang over ever public school student’s head in every classroom across the state and when our last opportunity to testify against it is at 6 a.m., it doesn’t feel like democracy is out in the open as it should be.

During my own testimony, I broke down in tears. It was clear by that point that the House Education Committee’s right-wing intended to send the bill out of committee and nothing anyone said meant anything. So I ditched my pre-written remarks and instead spoke from the heart:

I’m a Baptist. I believe in the separation of Church and State. I know the whole point of this as Rep. Leach has made clear is to get it to the Supreme Court and nothing anyone says tonight will actually matter. So I’ll just tell you what I said to my daughter before I got on a plane yesterday morning. She asked why I was going and why I do the work I do. And I said, “Because you have friends at your school who are Muslim and who are Hindu” — because she goes to a very diverse school — “and there are people in our Legislature who want to make them feel bad by putting this up on the wall because they don’t believe the same things we do.” And she couldn’t understand why. And, as a Christian, that’s my question to you. Why would you do this? Sure, you can. And I will tell you, as a very proud Baptist, I will be the first person signing up for the lawsuit.

Which brings me back to the story The Little Hummingbird:

Little Hummingbird did not abandon the forest. She flew as fast as she could to the stream. She picked up a single drop of water in her beak. Little Hummingbird flew back and let the water fall onto the ferocious fire.

As the other animals watched in horror, Little Hummingbird flew back and forth from the stream to the raging fire dropping water drop-by-drop. When the other animals asked her what she was doing, she replied, “I’m doing what I can.”

Like the Little Hummingbird, I, too, am doing what I can as our forest burns.

In this moment, that means joining with fifteen other families in the lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP serving as pro bono counsel.

If, like the Little Hummingbird, we each do what we can do—whatever that might mean for each of us—then together we can preserve the fragile democracy we all hold dear.