Education is being criminalized, especially minorities!!

Edit 05/13/2019: Since I posted this wealthy people have been caught in a massive scandal far bigger than the ones working class people have been caught at. Even though there are far more mitigating circumstances for the poor people trying to send their children to better grade schools, since the economic system is rigged against them, these wealthy people cheating to get into colleges aren't expected to be punished nearly as much.

Felicity Huffman set to plead guilty in largest-ever college admissions scandal 05/13/2019

People are being charged with criminal activities for standing up for their right to an education one way or another and in some cases they’re being threatened with long prison terms in many different states. In addition there are a growing number of states that are trying to slash the funds for education and deprive those that object the opportunity to participate in voter drives to reverse this trend!!

In my previous post I mentioned the incident at Catherine Ferguson Academy in Michigan where pregnant teens were being deprived of there school due to orders from a state appointed bureaucrat that took control of the school system from those that were elected against the wishes of the people.

http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/news/ronnie_dahl/protesters-arrested-at-dps-catherine-ferguson-academy-20110415-wpms

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/rachel-maddow-michigan-high-school-ground

In another incident in Connecticut, Tanya Mcdowell, a homeless mother was arrested and charged with grand theft for enrolling her son in a school that is actually reasonably good. She is being threatened with twenty years in jail which would leave the son in the care of…who knows perhaps even the state that is threatening his mother. They almost certainly won’t go that far but they are clearly already going way too far as it is.

http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/Tanya-McDowell-pleads-not-guilty-to-stealing-1354415.php

A couple of months ago Scanner reported on a similar incident in Ohio where Kelly Williams-Bolar was sentenced to two years in jail; this was suspended and she only had to serve ten days for providing an education to her child against the rules of the ruling class.

http://zacherydtaylor.blogspot.com/2015/03/throwing-school-mom-in-jail.html

Scanner also previously reported on an incident where someone is being threatened with debtor’s prison.

 http://zacherydtaylor.blogspot.com/2015/03/debtors-prison-wtf.html
 
We are currently involved in a major class war and the biggest targets of this war seem to be minorities with the least amount of political power. This is just a small sample of what they’re doing as many of you know; it isn’t all targeted at minorities; in Maine the governor is trying to cut the wages for children and eliminate regulation that prevents them form working excessive hours. These rules were put in place because children were subject to some of the most atrocious working condition imaginable and they were paid little or nothing except what it took to keep them alive, most of the time. In many cases they didn’t stay alive due to working conditions and safety hazard; when this happened it was just considered a minor cost of business since the poor didn’t have rights to compensation at that time nor will they in the near future if this trend continues.

One of the biggest, if not the biggest targets of these cuts seem to be education for the lower and middle classes. The implication to our so called democracy should be considered potential devastating. In order to have a sincere democracy the public needs to participate in the system based on a reasonably good understanding of how it works. This requires a good education that is available to all not just the children of privileged parents. Many people are kept in the lower class due to a complex system that is controlled by the wealthiest that benefit from it. The poor have a hard time challenging it since they don’t even understand it; and if these cuts stand they may never understand it. By relying on property taxes to fund schools they ensure that only those who live in wealthy areas will have good funding for their schools which is one of many ways to maintain class differences. The poor generally do the majority of the labor yet due to a complex system controlled by the rich they don’t keep the majority of the benefits and if they dare try to get an education in a corrupt system they’re threatened with jail.

Those in power are more than willing to spend an enormous amount of money on prisons which only provide short term fixes at best but they won’t allow money to be spent on schools which will be much more effective in solving social problems. On top of that they have been creating increasingly extreme copyright laws that are also driving up the cost of education for everyone and enable those in power to control how information is distributed in a violation of the first amendment.

Obama isn’t doing much if anything to address this problem regardless of what color he is. He is using this silly birther movement to make him look like a victim; the truth of the matter is that the real problem with Obama is that he is so heavily involved with corporate corruption. They may have picked a minority partly so that they could gain some support from people that think this is a true sign of fairness. In some cases it would be, if the candidate or appointee actually pursued policies that stood up for the best interest of the majority. Thurgood Marshal may be one of these examples but it is becoming increasingly obvious that Obama is not.

Update Edit: According to the Rachel Maddow show Catherine Ferguson Academy has been saved at the last minute by being turned into a charter school that is being run by a private company. This is at best a mixed blessing. This school is providing needed education for the poor which can go a long way to reducing long term social problems. The most effective way to reduce crime and other social problems isn’t to increase prisons as the government has been trying to do in the past; it is to increase the education of the poor and address the social problems caused by violence and other issues early in life before they escalate.

What they seem to have done is threaten to close the school then when there was an enormous amount of protest they saved the day at the last minute presenting the charter school as the savior. This is almost certainly going to come at a bigger long term cost. This appears to be a Trojan horse solution. They’re putting it in the hands of a private institution and their primary objective is to maximize profit which in the long term involves cutting costs as much as possible and increasing the amount they charge if at all possible.

That doesn’t mean this is what they will do here though. There is another possibility; they could hold this up as a high profile success to champion the cause of other charter schools. This could involve providing a good education for one high profile school to encourage many other institutions to reform as charter schools; then when people are paying attention to the one example being highlighted by the corporate media as a result of the attention they received others could be subject to fraud that comes at the expense of the students and the taxpayers. This is similar to the Shock tactics described in Naomi Klein’s book “The Shock Doctrine.” They have set the stage for panic then at the last minute someone from the corporations comes and says, “I’m from the private sector and I’m here to help you.”

I wish these students the best; however I’m skeptical of this “solution.”

They came for the blacks but I’m not a black so I did nothing.

They came for the Jews but I’m not a Jew so I did nothing.

They came for the gays but I’m not gay so I did nothing.

They came for the Catholics but I’m not a Catholic so I did nothing.

They came for the atheists but I’m not an atheist so I did nothing.

Oh no, they’re coming for me some one help me; where is everyone? Someone help me; what’s wrong with people?

Heil

We are desperately in need of an Educational Revolution that will include Election Reform! (For more information on Blog see Blog description and table of context for most older posts.)

The following are the original replies when this was first posted on Open Salon.

Great Post Zackery. Thanks for mentioning my links. I could write one of those everyday, thats how bad it's getting. I cannot for the life of me see why poor ignorant conservatives are voting people into office that are going to take away their Medicare, Medicaid and want to screw with Social Security. The unions that made the middle class in this country are now in the weakest position since the fighting and killing the poor did to implement them. I am having a hard time believing that this country will not be a third world nation in the not to distant future!

scanner April 28, 2011 03:19 PM

Parts of this country is already essentially a third world nation and that part is growing. Most of my posts are more detailed, and made to apply to any time present or future, but this was happening so fast that i thought it was important enough to put something out quickly once in a while. You posted things that were worth citing which is why I mentioned them. why should I type it up if you do it for me. ;-)

zacherydtaylor April 29, 2011 09:22 AM

Great! Just great ! It is about the ruling classes and both the political parties that allow themselves to be used... Thx! SGH...

Stephen Guy Hardin April 29, 2011 03:29 PM

Scanner says it all for me and the others...all I can say is OMG and it is really great of you to post this.

Algis Kemezys June 17, 2011 03:30 PM

I'm just an echo; however if there are enough echos then the public will pay attention and perhaps it will lead to change in the right direction.

zacherydtaylor June 18, 2011 10:41 AM