Forsyth County Copying Watauga, In a Bad Way

 

The disruption that went down at the Valentine Day's meeting of the Watauga County School Board (described by school board member Jay Fenwick here) just got a copycat do-over in front of the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School Board on Tuesday.

One big difference: Whereas the men who rushed the rostrum in Watauga got to stay and dole out their paper accusations to the school board members, the man who "broke the barrier" in Winston-Salem found his face on the floor in a scuffle with security.

On the surface, the commotion was all about mask mandates in public schools (but hold on for the rest of the story):

The tone and tenor of the comments took an unusual, and ultimately disruptive turn, when two speakers, first, Regina Garner and then Deborah Tuttle, began reading from a script that attempted to make a case that the school board has failed to uphold the state and federal constitutions by enforcing a mandate, in this case a mask mandate.

Among other issues, they falsely accused the school board of practicing medicine without a license, committing child abuse because of masking and violating the state’s obscenity law by keeping in school libraries materials “with obscene and inappropriate images.”

Tuttle told the school board that unless these violations were corrected in 72 hours, the school board would be receiving letters of intent to file a claim against the school district’s insurance carrier, Liberty Mutual.

The scene was straight from the playbook of Bonds for the Win, a group that is urging parents and far-right activists to serve claims against school districts, claiming they have broken laws. Bonds for the Win has a website that includes scripts on how to file claims in several states, including North Carolina.

You noticed the demand slipped in there -- right? -- that certain books must be removed or censored from school libraries, which is becoming much more the marquee issue among these disruptors as masking mandates are lifted. The ultimatum that the school board must comply with demands within 72 hours is a curious echo of what was demanded of Watauga board members.

It's a movement, all right, the natural evolution of bullying Trumpism.

And the Beat Goes On

Not to be out-done by the Republicans on the Watauga and Pasquotank County boards of elections, the Republican Chair of the Forsyth Board of Elections is openly declaring that he plans to shut down an Early Voting site on the Winston-Salem State University campus, an historically black campus.

His pretext is that when he was a precinct judge at the campus Early Voting site, he says he overheard students talking about getting class credit for voting.

Now then, that ranks as obvious, opportunistic hear-say, in the vein of comments on this blog that everyone knows there's massive Democratic fraud in this state. No, everyone does not know that, because in fact it doesn't exist.

And if the Republican Chair of the Forsyth County Board of Elections, in his capacity as a duly sworn elections official in a voting precinct, overheard evidence of "vote-buying" by students, why did he not raise a fuss at the time? Why did he not follow-up? Why did he not file a complaint, swear out an affidavit, pound the table top? He brings it up now as an excuse, some sort of eye-witness testimony that's supposed to sweep the field in his favor.

It's weak, it's trumped-up, it's a smoke-screen to cover another instance of the NC GOP's plot to disenfranchise college students, and especially college students of color.

Lies, Assault Weapons, and Public Education in Forsyth County

It passeth understanding.

But the leading Republican contender for appointment to the Republican Board of Education in Forsyth, an appointment to be made by the Republican County Commission, sure as hell got himself off the top of the list as soon as people started asking questions about his Uzis and other toys of that ilk and how he got them.

"Why Are You Such a Dick?"

Meet Forsyth County Board of Education member Buddy Collins. Model public servant, Republican style. When Winston-Salem Journal reporter Travis Fain asked him last Tuesday at a school board meeting for comment on his proposed changes to the board's policy on whether students can opt out of saying the Pledge of Allegiance, Collins told Fain he does not comment to the Journal, "and when Fain asked why, he repeated that he doesn't talk to the Journal and left the room. Fain said to himself, but within hearing distance of several board members and staff, 'Why are you such a dick? How's that for a question?' "

Collins got the attorney for the school board involved, who wrote a threatening letter to Fain saying that using the word dick to describe a dickish member violated the board's "civility" policy by using a vulgar term to accurately characterize an elected Republican.

Fain has apologized to Collins, to other school board members, and to school board staff for (actually) seeing Mr. Collins as in himself he really is.

Meanwhile, Mr. Collins (who was really saying to reporter Fain last Tuesday, "I'm unaccountable, and you can't make me be accountable"), is strutting on his Facebook page for all his Tea Party peeps about how he put the Winston-Salem Journal in its place.

One School System at a Time

What would you say to a liberal think tank conducting a "training" session on budget priorities for School Board members and getting the school system itself to sponsor the "training" on school property and furthermore qualify the "training" to count as four credit hours toward the professional training requirements that school board members in the state of North Carolina are required to complete? And -- oh yeah -- what would you say to that liberal think tank charging the school board members for the "training"?

Sound okay to you?

Flip the "liberal" to conservative, and that's exactly what's going on in Winston-Salem with the Forsyth County School Board. The conservative think tank that has engineered this swell little plan is none other than Art Pope's Civitas Institute.

Art Pope was the power/money behind the takeover of the Wake County School Board in 2009, and that entire city has been in an uproar ever since ... especially with the recent hiring of a pulp-novel-writing ex-general with very little educational experience as the new Superintendent, he whose greatest qualification for the job may be that he thinks Sarah Palin is a genius. Plus in his spare time in 2010, Mr. Pope also took charge of the NC General Assembly. It just came out today that the Republican leadership team in the NC House is busy kissing the Pope's ring by hiring his underlings to run the joint.

"The Good Government State," Art Pope style.