Tinker, at left, with her mother

During yesterday’s marathon D.C. Council hearing on Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson’s plan to shutter 20 schools, residents, parents and activists waited patiently to tell their elected representatives where they stood on the idea. One, though, stood apart—her name graces a famous Supreme Court ruling that established how far public school students can go in expressing themselves, after all.

That was Mary Beth Tinker. When only 13 years old in 1965, Tinker joined her older brother and his friend in wearing black armbands to their Iowa public school to protest the Vietnam War. After the school district banned the armbands, the case eventually reached the Supreme Court, which in 1969 handed down the landmark Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, in which a 7-2 majority said that the First Amendment does not stop at the schoolhouse doors.

Tinker moved to D.C. about four years ago, coming as a volunteer for American University’s Washington College of Law Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project, which teaches students about their constitutional rights. Given her own part and work with the project, she felt compelled to become engaged in local schools advocacy, and now to oppose Henderson’s plan to close 20 schools.

“I spend a great deal of my time encouraging young people to stand up for the issues that affect their lives, and to be involved in their democracy,” she told us yesterday. “Of course, I wanted to engage in the local education situation myself, and encourage local students to speak up.”

“As I go around the city to different organizations or groups that have youth in them, I hear kids saying, ‘Our classes are very crowded, I thought we had a right to education.’ All of these kids are speaking up and standing up for themselves. That’s my interest—students having a voice.”

Tinker, who is also a nurse, isn’t only opposed to closing any more D.C. schools, but she sees it as part of right-wing agenda financed by the likes of the Walton Family Foundation and Bill Gates. She’s joined forces with Empower D.C., a local advocacy group, in drumming up opposition to Henderson’s plan.

“There are other ways to deal with these budget problems other than disrupting neighborhoods and schools. We should ask the kids, ‘Half your school isn’t being used, what do you think we could do to help the kids in your neighborhood? Are there things they need? What are your ideas?’,” she said.

And just as she stood up to that Iowa school district almost 50 years ago, yesterday she faced down Councilmember Marion Barry (D-Ward 8), who pointedly asked Tinker if she had kids in DCPS (she doesn’t) and then dismissed any claims that local school closures could be tied to a national trend.