On February 13, 2004 I wrote: "I will be fascinated to see if a 'small politically connected clique' is going to be able leverage keeping open a small neighborhood school of 80 children while other larger schools all over the city are being closed in the name of efficiency. You might think, 'No way!,' but you have to realize that this is Prospect Park; home to the current and previous city council members, as well as a current school board member, AND a lot of angry politically active White folks."
Well, it has indeed been fascinating to see the politics of this play out. What I didn't anticipate is that it wouldn't be just Prospect Park that was able to keep their school open, but also the other White folks in South. So who loses? The politically unconnected in North, mostly Black folks and as well as all the other children in the city who will have to share even more thinly stretched recourses. This wouldn't have been all that interesting if these hadn't been schools in DFL dominated communities. After all, we expect Republicans to manipulate the political process to represent the "haves" over the "have nots." I have always pooh-poohed the concept of White Privilege, but now I realize that I simply have to live in the right neighborhood and things happen. And, if you're unfortunate enough to be unable to afford to live in these neighborhoods, then things don't. Most interesting to me is that the majority of the people involved in this process consider themselves to be "progressive" liberals. Unfortunately, their progressive politics only seems to apply to causes beyond their own personal self interests. So Mr. Brant, how about a breakdown on school closings based on neighborhoods' median incomes? After all, I could be way off in Right field. Michael Atherton Prospect Park REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
