There comes a time when you have to stand up for what you believe…even if that means sitting down.

Let me explain.

I’m arranging to home school my children after Labor Day so we can travel across the country to stay with family. I’ll be using my wheelchair, on doctor’s orders, sitting because the recent and triumphant trip to New York did flare my Lupus a bit. But not enough to keep me down.

We plan on arriving in North Carolina just after Labor Day, resting with family and spending time at our first visit to a military base.

I will then charge up my body as best I can and charge up their minds as best I can so we can head to Charlotte on Thursday, September 6th to attend President Obama’s nomination speech at the Democratic National Convention.

The kids understand the Affordable Health Care Act is something President Obama did that helps their Mom with her Lupus. They don’t understand HAMP 2.0 and ACA also have saved us from foreclosure, but that’s not something we want to worry them with.

The kids understand President Obama wants everyone to be equal, including friends they love of Mom and Dad’s who have spent holidays in our home. They agree it’s wrong to keep those friends from marrying who they love. They also agree it’s wrong to keep women from being paid the same as men. Everyone should be equal. Always.

The look on my daughter’s face when I told her there has never been a women President said it all.

We’re coming to Charlotte. We’re going to witness history. With my doctor giving me all the medication and treatment I need to get across the country, rest, and then strict orders to give some media interviews and only attend the speech…followed by MORE rest before we are allowed to fly home, we’re COMING TO CHARLOTTE.

Because it is that important. 

Because it is once-in-a-lifetime for my children to see the first African-American President speak to the American people as he seeks re-election.

Because they attend a public school charter that allows them the flexibility to learn outside the classroom. They will learn about government, media, social issues, activism, and how to form their own opinions on what they believe.

Because in this election, our family is literally the billboard for what this administration has accomplished for those who NEED help in this economy.

No one should lose their home because they get sick.

No one should be worried more about how much their treatment will cost, instead of which treatment their doctor prescribes in order for their survival.

No one should have to be forced to stay in a school that kills and drills, and only awards children based on standardized tests.

No one should be a pre-existing condition simply by being born a woman.

No one should have control over a woman’s body but the woman herself.

No one should tell anyone they can not marry the person they love.

No one should take a mother from her children too soon because she couldn’t afford her medication, her hospital bill, or that IV she gets every few weeks.

No one should be content to watch this November.

We’re getting on a plane, we’re showing the country there is nothing that will keep this family down and we will fight for those who fight for US. 

We’re headed to Charlotte, North Carolina to support President Obama and Vice President Biden because it matters too much to our family NOT to.

Thank you to family and Obama For America for making this possible. 

There has never been a moment where my family or my children have fit inside the box.

I’ve talked before as to why we have chosen to send our kids to a public charter school, as opposed to our neighborhood school. And I’ve talked a million times about our family’s quirks and progressive attitude when it comes to education.

I am the product of a public school education. It never even occurred to me that we’d consider anything else for our children unless the public schools near our home were failing.

Of course the public schools in our very nice suburb of Los Angeles are nowhere near failing and they excel by every standard used to measure a typical American public school.

Unfortunately, that amazing, typical, American public school nearly sucked the life out of my then-5 year old son as he stood against a brick wall, watching the other children play at recess. His crime? Not sitting still during story time.

But this is how it went with 36 kindergarteners and one teacher. This is what you did in order to make sure everyone could fill in that bubble properly and sit still while doing it. Distractions, such as my son’s pencil twirling, was an offense worthy of punishment. A punishment that forced his tiny body to unnaturally hold in all that energy again, when it should be setting it free on the playground.

After one tearful parent-teacher conference my husband and I knew this was not the education we wanted for our son, or for our daughter who would be following in his footsteps in just a few short years. But what is a middle class family to do when they can’t afford private school and neither parent can home school?

We are not alone. Millions of parents have round peg kids being stuffed into square holes.

So when I had a chance to talk with Former Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council Melody Barnes for a few minutes this week I had a million questions, as any parent would. But I took to facebook and twitter and asked YOU what you wanted to hear and know from this administration.

Some highlights from the conference call (you can see the tweets with the hashtag #edu2012 here): the administration says they understand standardized tests are only ONE way to measure how well a child is learning, a teacher is teaching, and how a school is performing. They are working to measure in other ways.

That idea from Barnes made me very happy. To finally come up with ways to measure how the WHOLE student is learning, not just the bubble filling in, memorizing and then forgetting portion of the child.

Barnes said they aren’t talking about ditching tests all together, but also assessing critical thinking skills and supporting teachers in trying to make those assessments. Of course none of this is easy to do.

And I understand entirely. We get those STAR test results at our house and stomachs churn. But then our teachers remind us this is just ONE way they can tell if a student is learning. Just one.

And then of course there was discussion about the differences between what an Obama 2nd term would do (and what the first term has done) and what a Romney-Ryan administration would do. Let’s just say they are worlds apart. WORLDS.

President Obama has expanded Head Start, he has used savings from student loan reform to fund and expanded Pell grants. Romney/Ryan would roll all this back.

One of the questions I asked was about teachers in this country, and how we save their jobs. So many seem to have been laid off, when what we need are MORE in the classroom. The Obama administration has fought to SAVE  hundreds of thousands of teacher jobs across the country, while Mitt Romney has been quoted (and his surrogates have since defended) saying he would slash funding for teachers, firefighters, and police officers.

And of course I had to ask if there was anyway Congress might be provided basic biology and sex ed courses, given the idiotic and entirely uneducated statements by Rep. Todd Akin on rape and the female reproductive system. I was glad to have gotten a chuckle from the Obama team, but also a very serious answer, reminding those of us on the call that the choice for women and families could not be more clear come November.

If you want more information on the Obama/Biden education plan you can find plenty over at BarackObama.com – and if you have any questions for the Obama/Biden team, I have been given the ok to send over a few more questions so please, ask away in the comments below and I will do my best to get you answers.

There is just no way this would happen to Laura Bush or Hillary Clinton.

First Lady Michelle Obama is not welcome at a local high school in Miami by its Republican school board members.

The campaign stop went on as planned at Barbara Goleman Senior High in Miami Lakes despite “Miami-Dade School Board member Renier Diaz de la Portilla has called for the event to be cancelled and board member Carlos Curbelo has asked the board attorney to reconsider his opinion that the event meets legal muster.”

As it so happens, REPUBLICAN Diaz de la Portilla is running for state House and Curbelo has worked as a political strategist for the REPUBLICANS. Shocking, I know.

Curbelo wrote in a letter to the school board attorney:

“Allowing the first lady of the United States to use one of our schools explicitly to benefit the president’s reelection campaign is inappropriate and sends the wrong message to our students, employees, and to taxpayers – even if the president’s campaign is willing to pay for all costs resulting from the event.”

I’m wondering what wrong message that is, exactly…considering Republican candidate Mitt Romney held a town hall meeting right around the same time at Central High School in Grand Junction, Colorado. Apparently their school board members didn’t freak out that his campaign rented the school for the event.

That’s how these things work…the campaigns rent out the schools or halls or wherever for their speeches (the kids are on summer break) and it is all paid for by the campaigns, NOT taxpayers or the schools.

Funny how this never seemed to be an issue before if then First Lady Laura Bush attended a rally for her husband. Or if then First Lady and now Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fired up a crowd to re-elect her husband.

Dare we even ask why First Lady Michelle Obama is met with such disrespect when doing something other First Ladies and surrogates have done for campaigns for decades?

I want badly to play the race card here. But it’s almost too easy. And over done. At this point it’s so obvious it almost no longer needs to be brought up. What is equally as important, I’m afraid, is the total lack of respect shown to this Administration – be it East or West Wing – from the other side of the aisle on inauguration day and the meeting and handshakes held binding the GOP to make sure the black man does not get another term and leaves their White House.

Disrespect. A party that tolerates outbursts of ‘YOU LIE’ during our country’s most honored traditions. A party that tolerates actual questioning of just how ‘American’ this sitting President really is…and if he truly loves his country. A party that encourages the First Lady not be allowed to speak on behalf of her husband…as EVERY FIRST LADY HAS DONE, simply because the other side…well, why is it then…because the other side didn’t want her to speak? Because they were afraid of what a strong, black woman would have to say to hundreds of supporters?

Or because they couldn’t stand the thought of this happening in ‘their’ school? In ‘their’ district? Heaven forbid the Obamas campaign, legally, on ‘their’ turf?

This is the woman who intimidates them simply by eating right and wearing a sleeveless shirt, obviously they can’t handle her on stage in their territory.

I guess we should expect nothing less from the party that wants women back in the kitchen and out of the board room. Who wants to legislate us from controlling our own reproductive fate. Who have spent the past several years waging war against our gender on everything from equal pay to access to health care.

They certainly can not handle this First Lady, who stands for everything they can not comprehend and wish to destroy- an educated, accomplished, strong, mother who can kick ass and take names while she and her husband proudly call themselves feminists.

Add in that she is a woman of color and most of the old guard faints…and hits the floor for lack of their ‘man’ being their to catch them. You see this President, and his amazing First Lady, have provided programs and opportunities for that ‘man’ so he no longer need wait on Mr. GOP Greed White Male.

So go ahead and continue these weak attempts to block our First Lady from speaking across this great nation of ours, and you, sad, sad Republicans, will continue to fail. And our First Lady will continue to bring the roof down as she gets people FIRED UP and READY TO GO for FOUR MORE YEARS.

And if you must, continue to show your true colors by disrespecting our President and First Lady. We have watched it go well beyond politics and we all now know what this is about, and it’s time for the old guard to change. As we know, change is hard. Change takes hard work. But change is here.

Get used to it.