Hi friends, today's episode is hosted by the poet Shira Erlichman.

Don't worry, I'll be back on October 30th.

I'm Shira Erlichman, and this is The Slowdown.

I attended a large public high school in Brookline, Massachusetts.

On the top floor of the four-story building, there is a 53-year-old program

called School Within a School, or SWS. It is a participatory democratic alternative program

for 120 sophomores, juniors, and seniors.

My introduction to SWS came one day in a vegan restaurant.

At the time, veganism was not normalized in our cultural lexicon,

so when I shyly followed a friend into the hole in the wall restaurant to meet his friends,

I felt like I was attending a secret basement punk show.

Around a long table was a gaggle of short-haired girls and long-haired boys.

I later learned that three of them were dating, that most of them were queer,

and all of them were vegan and artists. Paper cutouts were scattered on the table.

They were collectively working on a scene.

Because SWS was on the fourth floor, SWS kids were affectionately called upstairs kids,

the mainstream students downstairs kids.

I was a downstairs kid, bored to death by mainstream education, longing for risk and intimacy

in the classroom. Upstairs, they called teachers by their first names,

had Tuesday town meetings, with all 120 students weighing in on issues from the curriculum to where

the couch should be in the lounge. SWSers had their own lounge with posters, cubbies, and a boombox.

I started to tag along with the artists and vegans to protests against the US invasion of Iraq,

...