Make the Industrial Authority be accounted —Tony Daniels at MLK 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.
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.
In other words, we can offer a great education, provide incentives for
students to perform, make modifications to education to help students
succeed, and provide technical help, but if the child is homeless,
left home alone for long periods of time, living in a high crime area,
living in a home with substance abuse, or just downright defiant, there
is only so much the school can accomplish in helping these students
succeed. Good parental, home and community environments are critical to
the success of underprivileged children.
Therefore, CUEE and the Chamber of Commerce’s efforts are focused on
the wrong methods of improving our school statistics. Unification will
not accomplish any of their stated goals, but will create an enormous
financial burden on the community and its families during this time of
recession and high unemployment. The business community and volunteer
organizations should instead focus on providing educational awareness
and success clinics in low income areas. They should organize efforts
to reduce poverty by bringing in industry with good wages and sponsoring
basic community literacy and vocational training and tutoring. They should
focus on programs to promote the value of education. They should organize
drug awareness and rehabilitation programs in low income areas. They
should focus their efforts in decreasing poverty. They should focus on
encouraging community diversity. If they will do this, the educational
problems will take care of themselves in good systems like Valdosta
and Lowndes.
However, CUEE and the Chamber have insisted on pushing forward with their
unification agenda despite the certain negative effect it will have on
the community and the education of our children. They deny there will be
any negative effect, but they have no personal accountability if they are
wrong. They ignore all relevant studies and dismiss the results as being
misleading. Then they state their own misleading and false assertions
and claim them to be FACTS.
The latest Lowndes County Lunch and Learn
was yesterday, with County Clerk Paige Dukes
answering the top 50 questions the county receives.
Code Red! Road paving! Tax Assessment! CHIP grants!
Some of these things affect all of you, and many of them could help you specifically.
Gretchen was there and videoed most of it, as well as asking some followup questions.
Among other surprising answers was that the new Commission districts
as shown on the maps on the county website have still not been approved by the Department of Justice.
All of the Commissioners and several of the staff travelled to Atlanta
a few weeks ago to tweak the lines.
Paige assured us that tweaking would be completed in time for next year’s Commission elections.
Chris Beckham’s Black Crow show,
WVGA 105.9, about 4PM, will have
Bobbi Anne Hancock,
Jim Parker,
John S. Quarterman,
and
Austin Batchelor Sullivan,
talking about
Occupy Valdosta
and related matters.
And everything is related.
We, the local citizens occupying Valdosta, urge you to assert your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; to nonviolently occupy
public space;
to create an open process to address the problems we face, and to generate
solutions accessible to everyone.
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 →
School voucher proponents argue that kids need a way out of failing
schools, but research increasingly suggests that it would be more
effective to provide them a way out of failing neighborhoods.
Should we consider giving poor families in low-performing school zones
housing vouchers that they could use to relocate in the zone of a school
performing above the area median?
I’d say that’s a bad solution to the problem the study identifies,
and we already know better solutions.
But first,
from the abstract of the the studyContinue reading →
Both the
VDT
and the
Spectator
got the route backwards. Not their fault; although the route has been posted since last Saturday, it hasn’t been easy to find.
This is a peaceful nonviolent exercise in assembly for redress of grievances and celebration of community. Bring a sign or we’ll help you make one. Talking, chanting, singing, and music are encouraged. Stay on the sidewalk except in the parks; no littering; ask for help if you need water or assistance; feel free to discuss and agree or disagree, but please no name calling or the like.
Tony Daniels called for accountability at the MLK monument:
