Re: St. Louis Schools Taken Over

[aburke5054@aol.com]

 The state takeover came under the authority of the St Louis desegregation agreement. Desegregation is not usually considered a racist activity, but in the wacky world of ARN you never know. 
   
 Art
  
 -----Original Message-----
 From: campbellp@mail.montclair.edu
 To: ARN-state@yahoogroups.com; arn-l@interversity.org; arn2-strategy@yahoogroups.com; ndsgroup@yahoogroups.com
 Sent: Sun, 25 Mar 2007 2:32 PM
 Subject: [arn-l] St. Louis Schools Taken Over
 
  The publicly-elected school board for the city of St. Louis has been completely stripped of power. A three-member board will take over the schools on June 15th. Of the three members, one is appointed by voucher-loving and pro-privatization Republican governor Matt Blunt. Another is appointed by voucher-loving and pro-privatization Republican mayor Francis Slay. 
 
 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070322/ap_on_re_us/st__louis_schools 
 
 Current St. Louis Public Schools Board member Peter Downs wrote an eloquent history of the current situation and a powerful defense of the democratically-elected board. Find it here: 
 
 http://www.stltu.org/readmoredownsletter.html 
 
 A lot of people framed this issue as one concerning a dysfunctional board, i.e., it was largely a matter of personalities and people not being able to get along. What they forget is that the board was in the middle of regaining control from Mayor Slay. They forget the havoc that Slay had created in bringing in Bill Roberti and his crew and dismantling the board once before. (Roberti and his company are now at work in New Orleans - http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_14/b3978082.htm - doing to it what they did to St. Louis) They forget that it was going to take a long time to undo what Slay and Roberti had done. But they were making slow, steady progress. Had the board not been rendered powerless by the state's usurpation, the elections in April would doubtless have completed the process. The people of St. Louis spoke last year and kicked two of Slay's candidates off the board. They would have completed that work this year, leaving Slay with no more puppets on the board. 
 
 Rather than risk this, Slay helped to orchestrate this coup d' etat. This is naked political aggression, pure and simple. It's framed as an attempt to help the schools. But when any attempt runs directly counter to the expressed will of the voters, one has to wonder about the real motivations behind these actions. 
 
 What troubles me most about these attempts to "help" -- in St. Louis, in Philadelphia, in Chicago, in Oakland, in New York City -- is the extent to which they mirror the racist prejudices seen in "the white man's burden" typical of colonial rule. The British colonialists of the 19th and early 20th century were not explicitly racist in their beliefs and practices. Far from it. But their actions belied their inherently patronizing and self-serving ideology that consciously and unconsciously framed "the colonial other" as inferior. Clearly, in the eyes of the state board and everyone who supports this take-over, the people of St. Louis are incapable of governing themselves and solving their own problems. It just so happens that the majority of people in the city of St. Louis are black, and the vast majority of students affected by this decision are black. 
 
 Such an act would be literally inconceivable in a district where the majority of students were white. 
 
 Peter 
 
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