On Saturday, October 22, 2011,
Friends of Valdosta City Schools are
planning a “Vote No for School Consolidation March”
at 9:00 am. The March
will begin at 9:30 am at the Old Tommy Griner Parking lot (across the
street from the Lowndes/Valdosta chamber of commerce – Ashley Street)
and end at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Monument at the corner of MLK
and Ashley. We will have several speakers to encourage our Community
to band together for a Common Cause. Please plan to attend and
invite
everyone that you know to join us as we tell cuee and chamber that we
will not fall for their untruths and misleading ads. Please join in the
March for the Cause. Keep in mind that at the end there is no Runoff.
Keep in mind that the Ballot Question does have “Consolidation” on it now,
but the answer remains the same. NO! NO! NO!
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final
word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger
than evil triumphant.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Mario Bartoletti stood up at the Martin Luther King Jr. Monument in Valdosta and said to Occupy Valdosta:
I’m just shy of 79
and I’ve been out here marching all the way today,
and I’ll tell you why.
When I was your age, we were marching for civil rights.
We made it.
Now we’re marching for another kind of rights,
and I guarantee we’re going to make it!
I want you to promise, when you’re my age,
you’re going to be leading a demonstration
for those who march for those kinds of rights.
Marching for rights —Mario Bartoletti @ MLK Monument Occupy Valdosta
We are the 99%,
Marching to Occupy Valdosta, Occupy Valdosta,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 14 October 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
Tony Daniels and Freddie Richardson carry the Occupy Valdosta banner
They marched more than
three miles from Drexel Park to Bank of America, where they noted
BoA got bailed out and we got left out and recommended withdrawing
your money.
Then to MLK Park, where many people spoke on a variety of subjects
ranging from stand together, to make the Industrial Authority be accounted,
to vote No on School Consolidation on November 8th,
to if MLK was alive he would be here today,
to marching for rights for a lifetime,
to no private prison,
to tax the rich,
and and of course
come back here (MLK Park) tomorrow (Sat 15 Oct) at 11AM!
Then to the VDT (where the Assistant Managing Editor was surprised by a cheer) and the Chamber (where the President didn’t care for a thesaurus lesson); more on all those stops later.
Marching to Occupy Valdosta, 14 October 2011:
Drexel Park, Bank of America, MLK Park, VDT, Chamber of Commerce.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman and John S. Quarterman
for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
Videos are still uploading, so check back later.
I’ll also blog more about specific events along the way.
The first question Kent Bishop asked at the Chamber’s Candidates Forum,
where he got eight minutes to speak for school consolidation while
each of the candidates for Valdosta Mayor only got five,
still hung in my mind at the end:
What qualifies you to come talk about education?
Like so many CUEE speakers, he isn’t an educator and he hadn’t done his homework.
You know, what I hear is that, from the other side, is that our taxes would go up
because of consolidation.
The facts just don’t point to that.
Generally what you’d see is some blending of the costs.
And if we do that and average it out, we’re gonna find the two
millage rates will come out somewhere in the middle.
It makes total sense.
Well, maybe it makes total sense if you like just making stuff up.
Or you can see, hear, and read
the extensive research by the Lowndes County Board of Education
that demonstrates if consolidation passes taxes will go up and public
school services will go down.
The speaker went on about ongoing white flight,
without ever mentioning that consolidation would cause
bright flight to head out of the county to Lanier and elsewhere.
He did come right out and admit something I’ve been saying:
Continue reading →
Videos of the Candidates Forum put on last night by the Valdosta-Lowndes County
Chamber of Commerce (VLCoC) are starting to appear in
this playlist.
The three Valdosta Mayoral candidates are there already (in order of appearance):
Candidates Forum, Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce (VLCoC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 11 October 2011.
Videos by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
Chairman Tom Gooding of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce
said that the Chamber was opposed to government adding hidden taxes,
and Roy Taylor can be heard going “Amen!”.
Yet both of them back the Chamber and CUEE’s school “unification” referendum,
which would
raise taxes for everyone in Valdosta and Lowndes County
plus making conditions more difficult for business.
None of the school consolidation proponents seem to see the irony.
Gooding’s talk about the Chamber’s Government Affairs Committee spelled
out the Chamber’s theory of local government, which is all about helping
business, and apparently not about anything else.
He didn’t say a word about government providing public benefits for the
common good.
Which is the tail and which is the dog?
Already more people have signed up to march Friday than showed up
at the Chamber’s event last night.
Here are
some flyers.
There’s an Occupy Valdosta organizational meeting tonight;
more in the blog after that.
The traditional media are starting to flock around, as well.
School consolidation would set up an artificial fiscal disaster that
could force the “unified” public school system to turn to private foundations
for funding, at the price of control of public education by private entities.
This is disaster capitalism, or the shock doctrine, right here in
Valdosta and Lowndes County.
What’s the Shock Doctrine?
It’s been around for a long time, but Naomi Klein researched it for
her book of the same name. It’s
“the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies still reeling from shock”
She was writing mostly about wars, terrorist attacks, and natural disasters.
Locally here we haven’t had any of those.
But we may be about to create a disaster, a shock,
at the ballot box in November,
if voters fall for the school “unification” snake oil.
What’s the next step after CUEE has accidentally revealed that
Continue reading →
People who look like you or people to do a job? —Jerome Tucker @ LCBOE 4 Oct 2011
Why we oppose consolidation,
Community Forum, Lowndes County Board of Education (LCBOE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 4 October 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
Former chair of
Community Partners in Education (CPIE) Jerome Tucker continued:
Three weeks ago, at JL Lomax, I had lunch at Southeast Elementary Community
Partners in Education.
I didn’t see a Chamber […] person there; I didn’t see a CUEE member there.
How in the world are you going to know what’s going on in school
if you don’t go in?
[Applause]
at 9:00 am. The March will begin at 9:30 am at the Old Tommy Griner Parking lot (across the street from the Lowndes/Valdosta chamber of commerce – Ashley Street) and end at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Monument at the corner of MLK and Ashley. We will have several speakers to encourage our Community to band together for a Common Cause. Please plan to attend and
invite everyone that you know to join us as we tell cuee and chamber that we will not fall for their untruths and misleading ads. Please join in the March for the Cause. Keep in mind that at the end there is no Runoff.
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
