“Hi, thank you. Thank you, school board members, for doing everything that you can do to make Milton schools better for all children. I appreciate the Vermont school board association’s belief that public education is the foundation of and for democracy. I want to share my support for the current draft of the equity policy. Creating a district that is focused on meeting the needs of all children is essential for Milton’s future. The board and the administration’s process of engaging students and the school community in the creation of this policy has been inclusive and thorough. Unfortunately, your inclusive approach has not been respected by all members of our community and the current opposition to the equity policy unfortunately reminds me of the opposition to the federally mandated desegregation of public schools in the 1950’s. You’re probably all familiar with the white resistance movement against desegregation of schools in 1954 and beyond including the stationing of the national guardsmen to prevent black students from entering their lawful school in Little Rock Arkansas not far from where I grew up. It’s far too easy for me to replace the intimidation tactics and harassment used to fight the integration of schools with the comments and actions from some members of our community in response to the Milton school’s efforts to create an equitable education environment that is welcoming to all students. Opponents to this policy are using intimidation under the guise of concerns about academic proficiency and personal values. Similar concerns were expressed by opponents to desegregated public schools. Some parents and politicians claimed that maintaining the status quo would academically benefit students of color. They wanted to maintain the long standing separate but equal status quo where white people remained in power and got the lion’s share of resources. We can all agree that the community members, the school boards, politicians and parents who stood up against integrated schools were on the wrong side of history no matter how loud those segregationist voices were at the time. While voices of opposition to this policy might be loud, by supporting the Milton Town School District equity policy you will be on the right side of history. So, I urge you to please support equity in Milton Schools and please support this policy. Thank you.”
These are the words of Emily Hecker at a school board meeting. On the agenda for this meeting was the first reading of the equity policy. I’m sure the first thing you will notice is the absolute absurdity of her claim. If this is where her mind goes simply because people disagree with her, then there is something far more serious going on in her brain. Obviously, she doesn’t believe this. How could she? It’s insane, but this is what the political left does. They blow everything completely out of proportion to reality.
Let’s just start with her talking like she was there for the desegregation of schools. I’ve seen Emily and she doesn’t look like a 70-year-old woman. So, let’s not pretend this is a first-hand account. Why is it easy for her to replace guardsmen stationed at the entrance to a school so that black students can’t enter, with us politely expressing our concerns about a policy that is divisive, not needed and not required? She claims we haven’t been respectful. We have been nothing but respectful. She doesn’t provide any example of us being disrespectful, because there aren’t any. She just says it. She says it because we don’t agree with her. Those who disagree are disrespectful regardless of how they act. This is the same thought process that led Lonnie Poland to call it “an act of aggression” for us simply to be at the Inclusion Festival even though all we did was hand out cookies, drinks and have pleasant conversations. This is the same thought process that leads Emily to call it intimidation for us to be concerned about proficiency rates. Clearly, she isn’t concerned about them as I have never seen her at a school board meeting nor heard her voice her opinion about anything except this policy at this meeting.
In fact, she isn’t even really voicing her opinion about the policy at all. She says she supports it, sure, but the rest of the speech is about how racist the opposition to this policy is. She says nothing about the policy itself. She says nothing about how it will benefit the students. She says nothing about how it will improve the school. She does not, and therefore presumably cannot, defend it in any way. This is what Critical Race Theory teaches people to do; call everything racist until it is either destroyed or controlled by them. We won’t be destroyed or controlled. Emily can call us whatever she wants and can equate us to whatever disgusting things happened in the past, but that doesn’t make any of it true. Crying racism is the easy button of the political left. More and more people are seeing through this and seeing these people for who they really are.
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