This week’s This American Life by Ben Calhoun tells the heart-breaking story of a group of people taking control of a school district and methodically grinding it to a halt, at the expense of everyone else in the community. It’s a very complex and interesting story you should really go listen to.
As a person who went to school and was raised in a centrally-managed wellfare state, this is a really hard situation to wrap my head around of. Public institutions and services are not meant to serve a simple majority, they are meant to serve everyone. Justice, education, police, transportation, defense – those should be shielded from the whims of 50% + 1 people. Other parents in that district, mostly black and Latinos, keep attending the board meetings, worried sick about the future of their kids and powerless to change the course of history:
They’re not shooting our kids with guns. They are stealing their education. And we are acting as if it is normal. We are acting as if it’s OK. We are allowing them to sit in another room and let the men then come out and speak. Who is the problem? We are the problem! We need to get angry about what’s happening with our kids!
To that frustration, the head of the board throws replied with accusations of generalized anti-semitism and suggests they should go away – all in the name of democracy:
To suggest that we lack the moral authority to sit in these seats? Let me tell you right now, you don’t like it, find yourself another place to live. Because this is the United States of America.
Sickening.