by David Safier
I'm not going to try and guess the motivations behind TUSD Board President Mark Stegeman's op ed in today's Star. But the sad fact is, the piece does nothing to further the Ethnic Studies discussion and is likely to lead to more, not less, distrust between the people involved in the local MAS debate.
The op ed divides into three parts.
The first part explains how moderate, reasonable and rational Stegeman believes his proposal is to make half of the MAS courses into electives. It's very self serving, more self-justification than an attempt to bridge divides.
Then Stegeman transitions to what he calls the "wildly out of proportion" reaction to his resolution. He uses the highly charged phrase, "political convulsions," to describe the protests against his resolution. After loading the dice with inflammatory language, Stegeman makes his only perceptive comments in the piece:
Those convulsions originated partly in Tucson's history of overt discrimination and the decades-long struggle to end it. TUSD's desegregation court orders are a painful part of that history. The current ethnic tensions in Arizona have unfortunately helped to reopen these historical wounds.
We who did not experience historical discrimination must respect the wounds it created and cannot claim to understand all of its consequences. We must respect the passions that it has fueled and listen to the concerns of the passionate.
It's an important insight, even if the tone is patronizing (saying, in essence, I have to accept there are reasons you overly emotional people are acting so irrationally and not accepting my perfectly logical resolution). If Stegeman had focused on this issue and showed some understanding and insight, this could have been a better piece. Instead, this section reads like a reluctant concession sandwiched between his self-justification and what comes next — a slap at the behavior of the MAS supporters leading up to and during the contentious board meetings.
This is the most tone deaf statement of the entire piece, and that's saying a lot.
In a democracy, those who spread misinformation, harass and vilify opponents, and aggressively disrupt public meetings should not determine the final outcome.
Stegeman's finger is clearly pointing at the MAS supporters, not realizing the charges he is throwing can be applied to him and Pedicone as well. Stegeman himself can certainly be accused of spreading misinformation — or at the very least, disinformation — in the "facts" he used and the points he made defending his resolution. Pedicone certainly villified the students and their supporters by saying the students were being led astray by manipulative adults. And harassment? What do you call 100 police at a board meeting? That's an attempt to both intimidate and harass MAS supporters who showed up.
Here is how I see what happened at the board meetings. There was a confrontation between those who hold the power and those who don't. The Board, whose votes make TUSD law, was very likely going to pass Stegeman's resolution which MAS supporters, including me, believe would have decimated the program. I was told Pedicone had said privately he had the necessary votes, and Miguel Cuevas' later statement that he would vote for the resolution showed he did. The MAS supporters had two options: roll over and play dead or do whatever they could to delay the vote. They decided to do the latter, employing peaceful, disruptive tactics which have been used successfully by the powerless all over the world. And they were successful. The resolution is now on hold.
Was the reaction "wildly out of proportion," as Stegeman wrote? Was it a "political convulsion"? In my opinion, no.
Let me make an analogy which, while not perfect, gives a sense of the justifiable outrage MAS supporters felt when Stegeman claimed he was helping them by doing something they despised.
Here's the analogy.
A group of racists take over the state legislature and governor's office in some southern state. Together, they pass laws that threaten to turn back the clock to the days of legal segregation.
The African American population and its civil rights supporters are both enraged and frightened by the actions and vow to do whatever they can to fight the loss of any rights they fought for so long and so hard.
A well meaning white city council member proposes a resolution that in every public bathroom in the city with more than four stalls, one of the stalls will be labeled "White Only." "Listen," the council member says to the African American community, "you can still use those bathrooms, all except one stall. I'm really not taking anything away from you. This small concession just might be enough to stop the racists at the state level from implementing their far more drastic proposals. I'm doing it for your own good."
Does anyone in their right mind think the African American community and its ardent supporters are going to shake that city councilman's hand and thank him for his kind and helpful resolution? What they're more likely to do is exactly what the MAS supporters have done. They're going to use every tactic they can think of short of violence to protect their hard-earned rights and stop the council from enacting the wrong-headed, insulting resolution.
Stegeman gives an all-too-brief nod to history in his op ed. It's time he tries to take an emotional step back from his position on the TUSD Board, read the history of struggles for minority rights in this country and all over the world, make an effort to listen to the voices in the MAS struggle here and try to understand the reasons people reacted so strongly to his resolution. It's not enough to say, as Stegeman does, "We who did not experience historical discrimination must respect the wounds it created and cannot claim to understand all of its consequences." It's time for him to make a concerted effort to walk a mile in someone else's shoes.
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Mark, I don’t understand why you are focusing on what your resolution does not change. Making the MAS social studies courses electives would undermine half the program, and that assumes it would not have a spillover effect on the other half. It doesn’t give me comfort to think that only half the program would be disassembled and most probably wither if your resolution was to take effect.
I agree with most of what you write, less so toward the end. Obviously there is no black-and-white line which determines what is appropriate protest. I still don’t know why you think my resolution would do serious-to-irreparable harm to the MAS literature courses, which are about half the program and which are unchanged by the proposal (unless you think staff study in itself does serious-to-irreparable harm).
“There are two types of laws, just and unjust. One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
-from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail.
“Dr. King inspired people to march, sit in, and face the wrath of angry crowds, knowing they could be subjected to threats on their lives. Maybe you have to be a minority to understand how intimidating the situation was for his followers. A small group being threatened by a larger group that has raw force on its side, plus the weight of authority. And yet this small group willingly took huge risks to change the future, not necessarily for themselves, but for their children and their children’s children. To me, inspiring such behavior is leadership at its finest. The results show the power of sacrifice at work.”
-from AT&T Mobility CEO, Ralph De La Vega’s book Obstacles Welcome
“Arizona is the epicenter of the struggle for human rights—especially educational rights.”
-from Cornel West’s Letter to UA: Supporting Divestment, Ethnic Studies
Mark, in a “taking things to their logical extremes” argument, dissent and disruption against the power structure will lead to chaos and a breakdown of democratic order. That seems to be the basis of your argument. But the same “logical extremes” argument validates Santorum’s fear that gay marriage will lead to man-on-dog sex. Similar arguments were made when the legal barriers to inter-racial marriage were removed. And the “logical extemes” approach also leads to an absolutist anarchist view that governmental power will inevitably end in brutal dictatorship and repression.
In the real world, there is a middle ground. We accept the concept of the rule of law and the legislative process, such as the right for the TUSD Board to hold a vote and make a ruling. But we also accept the idea that sometimes the rule of law can lead to injustices and must be fought against for the greater good. In the messy world of a free society, it’s always difficult to decide when either side is stepping over the line. You apparently think the disrupters at the Board meetings went too far, but I’m guessing you would argue that the active dissent of the civil rights movement was just. I don’t know where you would stand on some of the actions of anti-war or anti-nuclear activists, like chaining themselves to the gates to stop people from entering a building. It’s often a judgment call on each specific action, but the idea that those who are not in power are obliged to sit on the sidelines when they feel they are being abused by those in power or those in power are putting us in danger is not part of the country’s history — all the way back to the Declaration of Independence.
Discussion-by-comments-on-a-blog is not an ideal way to carry on a coherent argument. I’m sure you would add subtlety to your statements if you were writing something longer, as would I. But the real question for me is, do the MAS supporters have reason to believe the passage of your resolution would do serious-to-irreparable harm to the program, to their rights and to the Latino community? If so, their actions at the Board meetings are justified. If you think your resolution is a small, reasonable tweak to the program which could help save it from complete obliteration, their actions are not justified. As I have made clear, I believe the former, which is why I support their actions.
And, as a final comment, there is no question in my mind that in our society the disrupters had the right to take the actions they did. The only question is whether they were acting appropriately or overreacting.
You make my point, in analogy to the Board meeting. Voters are not powerless in a democracy. So the argument of the original column must be that the students are powerless because they are not old enough to vote? That this is what justifies occupying the Board room?
YOUR COMMENT STATES- 536 people have power and 200 million don’t. Uh Wrong!! In the national legislative process which is representative legislators 536 people represent 200 million people.
Then you go on and state that two groups of otherwise powerless citizens should reasonably battle outside the legislative chambers to see which group of citizens can get in and control which votes occur. Well this isn’t exactly how or correct wording because again, citizens are not powerless ever if they can vote. They can though sway their legislature in many ways one being civil disobedience, others being by voting and employing lobbyist etc. This is how the national legislative process works. If it strikes you as strange than you clearly have no knowledge of Civics and have no place in any publicly elected position.
David, in the national legislative process, 536 people have power. The other 200+ million of us are powerless. On each contentious national issue, there is a winning side and a losing side. Your analysis seems to suggest that when the Democrats are afraid of losing a vote, otherwise powerless citizens should occupy the legislative chambers to prevent that vote from happening; when Republicans are afraid of losing a vote, a different group of powerless citizens should do the same thing. Taking that recommendation to its natural implication, it suggests that two groups of otherwise powerless citizens should reasonably battle outside the legislative chambers to see which group of citizens can get in and control which votes occur. That all strikes me as a strange conception of democracy.