Hello beautiful students, please read the following articles for this comming week. We will talk about them this Thursday. Peace.
January 24, 2006
Flor de Borinquen
Bush's War Viewed from the South
By JORGE MARISCALLast summer when cable news made Cindy Sheehan the face of all those U.S. families who have lost a child in Iraq, communities of color rallied around her but could not help but wonder whether the majority of the American public cared as deeply about their loss. Latinos, for example, are sacrificing not only some of their finest young men to this war but their young women as well, women like Puerto Rican Lizbeth Robles.
When General Nelson Miles landed in Puerto Rico on July 25, 1898 at the head of U.S. invasion forces, his words resonated with the same imperial arrogance we have grown accustomed to hearing from George W. Bush: "We have not come to make war upon the people of a country that for centuries has been oppressed, but, on the contrary, to bring you protection, not only to yourselves but to your property, to promote your prosperity, and bestow upon you the immunities and blessings of the liberal institutions of our Government."
Ever since then the service of Boricuas (Puerto Ricans) in U.S. wars has been tinged with great irony. Passing out of the grip of one colonial power (Spain) to that of another brought rewards for a select few on the island but little respite for the majority. For the majority, the shifting stages of colonialism have meant limited opportunities and inequality for over a hundred years.
Moreover, the primary role assigned by the United States to Puerto Rico from the beginning as a strategic military outpost plagued the island with a hyper-militarized culture that included everything from environmentally disastrous installations such as the one at Vieques to a continuous siphoning off of its youth into the ranks of the U.S. armed forces.
A century after their homeland passed into the hands of Americans bearing gifts, young Puerto Rican men and women are fighting and dying in another war claiming to export democracy. To date over 230 Latinos have lost their lives in Iraq, including 47 Puerto Ricans. Early last year, the first young woman from the island died from injuries suffered in a vehicular accident. The official Pentagon press release read: "Spc. Lizbeth Robles, 31, of Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, died at the 228th Command Support Hospital in Tikrit, Iraq, on March 1."
The story of Lizbeth Robles teaches us much about young women in today's "volunteer" army. The daughter of a working class family, she became a leader in her church and an accomplished athlete. Robles did well academically and went on to college but after one year was unable to pay the tuition at the American University and transferred to Arecibo campus of the University of Puerto Rico where she was able to receive financial aid and complete her degree.
Her brother recalls that after expressing dissatisfaction with the jobs available to her she sent away for recruitment videos and decided to enlist. She told her mother to pray that she would pass the entrance exam. Her mother's response was less than enthusiastic. As quoted by Javier Colón Dávila of the El Nuevo Día newspaper, her mother said: "I thought, Lord, Lizzie has her dreams but if it is not your will and if they are too dangerous, don't let them come true." No wonder military recruiters have admitted publicly that the biggest obstacle to their enlisting Latino youth is the Latina mother.
According to her friend Pfc. Leila Groom, Robles enlisted in 2000 to "help others." Whenever her cousins asked her why she had joined the Army, she replied, "Because I like it." Scholar Gina Pérez of Oberlin College who conducts research on Latinas in Chicago has found that many young women of color believe one of the few ways in which they can gain respect is by joining JROTC and ultimately the military. These sentiments, often heard from working class youth who enlist, are far removed from the life experiences of most of those in the antiwar movement and poorly understood even by some counter-recruitment activists.
Young people with limited opportunities looking to "make a difference" or "to make their parents proud" are the savvy recruiter's primary targets. Middle-class activists whose message is a simplistic "Opt out" or "Don't enlist" but who cannot offer viable alternatives are unlikely to have an impact. As Kimi Eisele wrote on the AlterNet website about a young Chicano in Tucson she tried to mentor away from the military: "What I can't dispute is that the feeling of being wanted and needed is, for a young man like Anthony, more powerful than the fear of death. And much m ore immediate than the ambiguous promise of a middle-class future" (http://www.alternet.org/story/23953).
Liz Robles went on to serve in Korea and Uzbekistan before being assigned to Fort Carson, Colorado. From there she was deployed twice to Iraq, the last time as part of a support unit providing security for trucks transporting fuel throughout the most dangerous areas of the war zone. Although women are not technically given combat arms occupations, assignments such as that of Robles account for many of the killed and wounded. On February 28 of last year the vehicle she was riding in with fellow Puerto Rican Julio Negrón flipped over. She was rushed to the military hospital in Tikrit and passed away the following day.
La hermanas de Lizbeth (Lizbeth's sisters)
According to DoD numbers, women made up about 17% of active duty and 25% Selective Reserve personnel in 2003. Over 70% of active duty women were under the age of twenty-one. Although enlistment rates have fallen for women since the invasion of Iraq, military boosters often invoke the illusion of equal opportunity and fairness in the military as if the one place where affirmative action and even "feminism" have triumphed is the armed forces.
But the situation for women in the military is often dangerous. It is not uncommon to find women in Iraq carrying out assignments that have little or nothing to do with their training. Last summer, for example, three women °©20 year-old Dominican-born Ramona Valdez, a Marine corporal; Navy Reservist Petty Officer and single mother Regina Clark who was trained in food service; and Marine Holly Charette trained in mail handling °©were temporarily assigned to an entry control point in Fallujah in order to search Iraqi women. All three were killed on June 23 by a suicide bomber who attacked their vehicle.
In addition to the increased numbers of women soldiers in harm's way (over 50 have died in Iraq), other short and long-term hazards lay in wait. After conducting a four-year long study of over 2,500 veterans and active duty personnel, Dr. Maureen Murdoch of the VA Medical Center in Minneapolis found that 80% of women surveyed had experienced some form of sexual harassment (15.5% had experienced sexual assault).
In her memoir Love my rifle more than you: Young and female in the U.S. Army, former sergeant Kayla Williams writes: "A woman soldier has to toughen herself up. Not just for the enemy, for battle, or for death. I mean toughen herself to spend months awash in a sea of nervy, hyped-up guys who, when they're not thinking about getting killed, are thinking about getting laid. Their eyes on you all the time, your breasts, your ass-like there is nothing else to watch, no sun, no river, no desert, no mortars at night." According to Williams, the pressure to simply surrender to the sexism is often overwhelming.
Callie Wight, a trauma specialist with the Veterans' Administration in Los Angeles, reports that many women veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan present twin sets of post-traumatic stress symptoms, one stemming from their combat experience and another from being exposed to varying degrees of sexual harassment that range from casual comments to rape.
For young women who discover too late that military life is not for them or that they can no longer support a mission such as the occupation of Iraq there are few good options. Aimee Allison, a resister during the Gulf War and now a counselor with PeaceOut.com, said last November at the press conference for Katherine Jashinski, the first woman resister in the Iraq conflict: "I know many women who are afraid to speak publicly because they do not want to be harassed Some women take drugs. Some get pregnant to buy time. Some just go AWOL." The dire circumstances described by Wight, Williams, and Allison are often more difficult for women of color.
Despite the harsh realities for women in the military, some like Lizbeth Robles decide to make the military their career. Many do so out of the most traditional forms of patriotism. Others find a vocation in the military. Still others discover a sense of agency not afforded them by repressive domestic situations, traditional attitudes that women belong at home, or limited job opportunities on the island.
So for large numbers of young Puerto Rican women and men military service will continue to be an attractive option. But even those who claim to see no contradiction between their participation in military adventures like the one in Iraq and the history of their island cannot escape the irony of their decision to enlist.
As Lieutenant Laura Lopez wrote on a website dedicated to Boricua servicemen and women: "I am a full blood Puerto Rican woman. I am from Guaynabo and graduated from the University of Puerto Rico. I am in the United States Air Force, but very proud of my island and culture." The paradox contained in that "but" begins to explain the robust anti-militarism and counter-recruitment movements on the island.
Apologists for the war in Iraq describe it as a selfless act designed to bring democracy to the Middle East. From the perspective of Latin American history and the history of Latinas and Latinos in the United States, the war in Iraq looks more like another chapter in a long history of colonial exploitation and senseless bloodshed. As Puerto Rican scholar Ana Celia Zentella puts it: "The pain of serving in the imperial monster's war machine in order to further your education and feed your family is the ultimate trickery of colonialism."
When we recall those who enlisted for the best of motives only to lose their lives in foreign adventures with false origins and disastrous outcomes, the verses of the official hymn of Lizbeth Robles' hometown of Vega Baja are especially painful: "Más dulce que la miel es tu recuerdo/cuando lejos estoy, pueblo querido/ Mi alma te la envío en un suspiro/y en viaje hacia el ensueño en ti me pierdo" ("The memory of you is sweeter than honey/when I am far away, beloved home/I send you my soul in a sigh/and as I drift away I lose myself in you"). Whether they know Spanish or not, tonight 2,232 families understand the sadness in these words.
Jorge Mariscal is a Vietnam veteran and director of the Chicano-Latino Arts and Humanities Program at the University of California, San Diego. He is a member of Project YANO (San Diego). Visit his blog at: jorgemariscal.blogspot.com/ He can be reached at: gmariscal@ucsd.edu
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COLUMN OF THE AMERICAS
ROBERTO RODRIGUEZ & PATRISIA GONZALES
JANUARY 30, 2006
A MIGRANT CARAVAN OF JUSTICE1st Person by Roberto Rodriguez
A march and caravan of justice departs from San Diego this week. It's destination: the nation's capital. It's goal: To bring about a humane solution to immigration.
Not a moment too soon. In close to 35 years of writing on immigration related issues, it's difficult to recall a time when the nation's anti-immigrant hysteria was at a higher peak.
The operative word is hysteria.
The tough issues resulting from immigration are difficult, but resolvable, yet the nation's politicians have never had the will to confront their political skinhead colleagues who traffic in fear and hate. It has become fashionable to nowadays link immigration with terrorism, with some even suggesting a 2000-mile militarized wall along the U.S./Mexico border.
The actual issue has been studied to death, literally. Thousands of migrants continue to unnecessarily die on the border. For big business and for the convenience of middle class America, it is desirable to maintain a large, exploitable, unorganized and expendable work force. This guarantees maximum exploitation and cheap consumer prices.
It has long been recognized that the problems related to immigration are primarily of an economic, not criminal nature. As such, that was the promise of the highly flawed NAFTA… that an immigration agreement would be immediately hammered out after it went into effect in 1994.
That nothing has happened is no surprise. It fits the nation's pattern of how it has historically viewed and treated its southern neighbors: goods and capital are welcome, but not human beings.
The truth is, the nation is in a crisis, yet, very little of it has to do with immigration. At the beginning of the year, Howard Dean prognosticated correctly that in 2006, the Republican Party would turn to immigrant scapegoating as a way to distract the nation from the Constitutional crises we face as a result of a myriad of abuse of power and corruption scandals. Most of them from the administration's clearly illegal and immoral war against Iraq.
That's where the brown hordes come in; without Mexicans, who else could these scoundrels scapegoat?
A generation ago, the anti-Mexican hate was very vicious, but mostly private. Today, we have CNN's Lou Dobbs daily anti-immigrant tirades and right-wing radio. All of this is within the context of the administration's constant drumbeat of fear. In the War on Terror, apparently the only two things to fear: Mexicans and Central Americans.
This false terrorism/immigration equation is permitting amoral politicians to push blatantly anti-immigrant and dehumanizing bills throughout the nation. In Arizona alone, aside from the Minutemen militias, there are some 30 anti-immigrant bills pending. In the House, Republican Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin has shepherded a draconian anti-immigrant bill that would criminalize migrants, amongst other things.
Other proposals even include measures to overturn the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which guarantees birthright citizenship.
There was a time when these attitudes were restricted to white supremacists who feared an invasion of brown hordes. But the drumbeat nowadays is so intense that it has spread to virtually all sectors of society, including other people of color. Several weeks ago, while driving to an event in Los Angeles, an African American doctor on “progressive” talk radio was ranting about how Mexicans were not only displacing African Americans from society's worst jobs, but that also, Mexican illegal aliens could effortlessly buy homes anywhere they choose.
It was heart-breaking to hear the rationale. Apparently, he couldn't hear the echoes.
It's all part of the politics of blame. All subterfuge. All a distraction, proving that no one is immune. Even Mexican Americans routinely blame Mexicans for the nation's problems.
Perhaps what the nation needs is a giant mirror to be able to see that it is not Mexicans who are threatening the economic well-being, the security, the rights, freedoms and Constitutional rights of Americans.
One such mirror will be that migrant caravan which seeks to bring consciousness to the nation regarding those anti-immigrant bills.
A solution to immigration is actually attainable, but it must begin with the acknowledgment that all human beings deserve to be treated with full dignity and respect. An agreement -- which both nations can easily hammer out -- can go a long way towards quelling that hysteria. It's time we insist that both governments act upon this crisis, but with the understanding that indeed, no human being is illegal.
For an update on the bills, go to: http://www.nnirr.org/about/about_mission.html
For info re the caravan, go to: www.borderangels.org or Enrique Morones (619) 269-7865.
© Column of the Americas 2006
We can be reached at: 608-238-3161 or XColumn@aol.com or Column of the Americas, PO BOX 5093 Madison WI 53705. Our bilingual columns are posted at: http://hometown.aol.com/xcolumn/myhomepage/
* For a copy of our trilingual Amoxtli San Ce Tojuan documentary, Cantos Al Sexto Sol and the Mud People, or more info re future screenings contact us at XColumn@aol.com - 608-238-3161 - or go to: http://hometown.aol.com/aztlanahuac/myhomepage/index.html
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A New World is Possible
Cindy Sheehan And necessary! This is the theme for the World Social Forum that I (and tens of thousands of people from all over the world) am attending in Caracas this week. I know the idea of a world where everyone lives in peace and with justice is very "subversive" but the theme is very close to my heart and soul.
We need a new world. This one is broken.
Before my son, Casey, was killed in Iraq on April 04, 2004, I never traveled much to speak of. I had gone to Israel and Mexico and that was about it. I had a barely used passport.
Since I began to speak out against the dishonesty and deception that led to this illegal and morally reprehensible occupation of Iraq, I have journeyed all over the United States and now am starting to fill my passport with stamps.
Our world is so beautiful and the people who inhabit it are, for the most part loving, and all they want is a good life for themselves and their children. They just want to feel safe and secure in their communities. They want to be warm and fed. They want clean drinking water and they want to dance and laugh when appropriate. They want to live long lives with their families and they want their children to bury them at the end of their time here. In short, the people of the world want what we Americans want.
It is our governments who want to demonize and marginalize other cultures, religions, races and ethnic groups. George Bush and his coldhearted cronies and his easily misled and willingly blind followers want to "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here!" Who are these "themes" that we are fighting over there? Are they the babies lying in their cribs when a bomb (chemical or conventional) is dropped on their house? Is it the mother who has gone shopping for her family's daily food who is killed by a car bomber who never even thought to commit such a heinous act until his country was occupied by a foreign invader? Is it the grandmas and grandpas who are too old, or too stubborn, to leave their lifelong homes when the coalition troops are illegally carpet bombing civilian centers?
We as citizens of the United States of America must stop allowing our leaders to give the orders to kill innocent people. I almost said: we must stop allowing our leaders to "kill" innocent people. But we all know the cowards don't fight their own fantasy battles or send their own children to fight in the causes that they idiotically and diabolically iterate are "noble." No, they order our children to go over and do their dishonest and destructive dirty work! Our soldiers are taught that "Hajis," the brown skinned people of Iraq who clean their toilets, showers, and wash their clothes are less than people…which enables them to be killed more easily. The dehumanization of the Iraqi people is also dehumanizing our soldiers. Our children.
I got a hate email from a "patriotic American" once who told me that when we see the mothers and fathers of Iraq screaming because their babies have been killed, that they "are just acting for the cameras. They are animals who don't care about their children because they know they can produce another." This is the mentality of General Sherman when he said "the only good Indian is a dead Indian." This wicked rhetoric is the rhetoric that dehumanizes us all.
A new world is necessary and it can only be possible if we believe and live the belief that every human being is inherently the same as we are. They feel pain when they are hurt. They have hunger pains when they haven't eaten. Their mouths go dry when they are thirsty. They mourn when they experience a loss. They shiver when they are cold. They laugh when they are happy. How can we condone, or even allow, are leaders to kill our brothers and sisters like this?
A new world is necessary and it can only be possible if we rein in the depraved corporations that thrive off of the flesh and blood of our neighbors all over the world and here in America. War profiteers like Halliburton, Bechtel and General Electric who are racking up obscene profits and increasing the bottom line of their shareholders while they are running roughshod over this planet. Malevolent companies such as Dow who dump chemicals and other pollutants into the water and atmosphere that kill people, our environment and our future! Companies like Wal Mart that exploit workers in the U.S. and abroad to enrich a family that already has more than enough money to fund healthcare and a living wage for all of its employees and have a little extra left over to pay their country club fees.
A new world is necessary and it can only be possible if we decrease our dependency on oil and use some of the money that we are pouring into the desert sands and sewers of Iraq to expand research on renewable energy sources and expound and promote the renewable sources we already have such as bio-diesel. I have talked to many citizens of Venezuela who are understandably nervous about a U.S. invasion and they know that it is not about the idea that President Chavez is a "dictator" which he is not, he is a democratically elected leader who is very popular in his country. The people of Venezuela are very savvy and they know that if the U.S. invades their country that it won't be because we are spreading "freedom and democracy" to them. They know they already have it.
A new world is necessary but not possible until we Americans get over the arrogant idea that we can solve the Iraq issue and the human rights violations problems alone. We have to reach out to fellow members of the human race all over the world to forge the bonds that are crucial to protecting innocent members of humankind who are impoverished or killed by our government and corporatism that has gone wild and is largely unchecked.
Peace and justice are intimately connected and the world can't have one without the other. True and lasting peace can only occur when we the people force out leadership that is dependent on the war machine for their jobs and for their lives and demand justice for the crimes against humanity that are perpetrated on the world on a daily basis by such "leaders."
A new world is possible and it is attainable. For this new world to become a reality it is necessary for us to take into our beings what Martin Luther King, Jr. said of his own eulogy, but more importantly, the way he lived his life:
"I'd like somebody to mention that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day, that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that day, that I did try, in my life, to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say, on that day, that I did try, in my life, to visit those who were in prison. I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice; say that I was a drum major for peace; I was a drum major for righteousness."
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Tired of the White Left
New America Media, Digest, Roberto Lovato, Jan 26, 2006Editor's Note: NAM contributor Roberto Lovato is attending the World Social Forum in Caracas, where more than 60,000 people, half of them from outside Venezuela, have gathered for the annual event. His impressions will be posted throughout the week.
CARACAS, Venezuela -- Standing proudly beneath the statue of Latin American liberator, Simon Bolivar, located at the center of a Caracas plaza, World Social Forum delegate Dorothea Manuela says she feels more at home here than she does standing near the statues of dead white revolutionary men dotting parks back home in Boston.
"It's inspiring to come here and see people from all over the world leading their own struggles," she says. I ask her about the leadership of struggles in the United States and the beaming smile of the self-described "black woman who is ethnically Puerto Rican" disappears.
"Being here reminds me how very important it is for all of us to change the U.S. But we can't change the U.S. unless we all deal with the white left's racism and privilege" says the statuesque "fifty plus" Manuela. Along with members of her Boston-based Rosa Parks Coalition, Manuela and many of the World Social Forum delegation from the U.S. are delivering a strong message to the thousands attending the global gathering: We (nonwhites/people of color) can lead ourselves. Whites do not speak for all of us.
At a forum beneath a large tent on the Caracas air force base where immigrant leaders and activists from across the continent debate hemispheric migration, Christian Ramirez of the San Diego based American Friends Service Committee reminded the black, Mestizo, Indian and other participants about the kinds of barriers he faces in the progressive movement.
"None of the whites who spoke on behalf of the U.S. delegation at the opening ceremonies of the Foro remembered to mention the more than 35 million immigrants in the US," he says. He later detailed how he and other Latinos in the U.S. are meeting with Senators and House members in order to have the voice of immigrants added to a debate led largely by liberal and conservative whites in the Beltway.
Hearing all this, and observing the impressive coalition of mostly non-white delegates, I'm reminded of how, despite all the sacrifices of Salvadoran exiles and refugees who built the most powerful solidarity movement of the 1980's, most of the recognition for and credit for leadership of the movement was given in the U.S. - and in El Salvador -- to the Norteamericanos, many of whom married Salvadorans. Developments in Caracas seem to hint that another U.S. is possible.
The broadening of the US delegation which now includes more than 1000 participants -- many of whom are black, Latino and Asian -- has not escaped the attention of the very sophisticated leaders of the Foro. Brazilian businessman Oded Grajew, the bearded white haired older statesman of the Foro, who is widely recognized as one of the forum's founders, sees Hurricane Katrina like an x-ray into the issues that divide the U.S. and countries like his.
"The Katrina disaster is a measure of social injustice in the United States. It gave a name, color, and an identity to social injustice there," he says.
But not every delegate understands things like Grajew. At a panel of U.S. opposition to the Iraq war that included peace mom, Cindy Sheehan, lesser known peace papa, Fernando Suarez del Solar and former U.S. Navy soldier, Pablo Paredes from New York, pony-tailed Peruvian delegate Carlos Flores told me that he "expected to hear more North American North Americans instead of Latin Americans living in the U.S. (Del Solar is a citizen and Paredes was born in the sovereign nation of El Bronx).
Del Solar, who shook the audience when he cried as he described the death of his son Jesus in Iraq, had previously told me that he is not distracted by the focus on white leaders in the U.S. peace movement. "Many of us are organizing a conference to bring together the many, many Latino activists organizing against this evil war."
I later found some solace in seeing Del Solar speaking in Spanish to a throng of people at an event advertised as a "Cindy Sheehan" event. And none of the delegates packed into the lobby of the hotel recognized or spoke with Sheehan when I saw her there.
The racial dynamics at the Foro seem more like the dynamics on the field of the World Cup, where the non-white majority exercise leadership concomitant with their numbers, while whites have their place too. The tenor here touches on a shift in the way movements have historically been carried out in the U.S. "Why don't they come here to Latin America to lead struggles here?" asks Dorothea Manuela. "Because they know they can't. Why do they lead struggles in places where they are now a minority? Because we let them - and that has to change. That will change."
Another World Is Possible.
--RL
New America Media is a project of Pacific News Service
Copyright © Pacific News Service
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Teacher Awaits Day in Court
By Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive
January 25, 2006Deb Mayer was a teacher of fourth, fifth, and sixth graders at Clear Creek Elementary School in Bloomington, Indiana, during the 2002-2003 school year.
On January 10, 2003, she was leading a class discussion on an issue of „Time for Kids‰˜Time magazine‚s school-age version, which the class usually discussed on Fridays and which is part of Clear Creek‚s approved curriculum.
There were several articles in the magazine that discussed topics relating to the imminent war against Iraq, and one that mentioned a peace march.
According to Mayer, a student asked her if she would ever participate in such a march.
And Mayer said, „When I drive past the courthouse square and the demonstrators are picketing, I honk my horn for peace because their signs say, ŒHonk for peace.‚ ‰ She added that she thought „it was important for people to seek out peaceful solutions to problems before going to war and that we train kids to be mediators on the playground so that they can seek out peaceful solutions to their own problems.‰
Mayer claims in a pending federal lawsuit that the school chilled her First Amendment rights because of this one conversation in class, which she says took all of about five minutes, and that the school district refused to renew her contract because of it. (The quotes above are taken from court documents.)
I spoke with Mayer on January 24˜more than three years after this incident took place.
„It didn‚t dawn on me that people would object to me saying peace was an option to war,‰ she says. „I didn‚t even think it was controversial.‰
But it sure turned out to be.
„One student went home to tell her parents that I was encouraging people to protest the Iraq War,‰ she says. „The parents called the principal and demanded to have a conference. The dad was complaining that I was unpatriotic. He was very agitated. He kept raising out of his chair and pointing his finger at me and yelling, ŒWhat if you had a child in the service?‚ I said, ŒI do have a child in the service.‚ ‰
At the time, one of Mayer‚s sons was a naval nuclear engineer aboard the USS Nebraska, she says, adding that he‚s now an officer in Afghanistan.
She told the parent, Mark Hahn, that her son also „doesn‚t preclude peace as an option to war,‰ she recalls. „And that made him even angrier.‰
At the end of the meeting, Hahn insisted that the principal, Victoria Rogers, make Mayer refrain from talking about peace again in the classroom. „I think she can do that,‰ Principal Rogers responded, according to Mayer‚s deposition. „I think she can not mention peace in her class again.‰
„I was just floored,‰ Mayer says, „but I said OK because we had a parent out of control, and I didn‚t want to be insubordinate. I thought that would be the end of it.‰
It wasn‚t.
At the end of that day, Principal Rogers circulated a memo, entitled „Peace at Clear Creek,‰ that said: „We absolutely do not, as a school, promote any particular view on foreign policy related to the situation in Iraq.‰ And she cancelled the annual „peace month‰ that the school had been holding.
On February 7, 2003, Rogers also sent Mayer a letter telling her to „refrain from presenting your political views.‰
Mayer and her lawyer, Michael Schultz, contend that this illegally infringed on Mayer‚s First Amendment rights.
At the end of the spring semester, the school district did not renew Mayer‚s contract, and she and Schultz allege that this was in retaliation for her political expression.
„This is a classic First Amendment free speech case,‰ says Schultz. „It involves, for the first time as far as I can tell, the right of a teacher to express an opinion in a classroom while teaching approved curriculum.‰
The school district, the Monroe County Community School Corp., takes a different view.
While neither Principal Rogers nor anyone at the school district would respond to my phone calls because the case is pending, the district is mounting an aggressive legal defense. Represented by the law firm of Locke Reynolds in Indianapolis, the district is seeking summary judgment, asking the judge to throw out the case.
I called Heather Wilson, one of the Locke Reynolds attorneys on the case, but she would not comment, suggesting only that I examine the court documents.
„Ms. Mayer‚s one-year contract was non-renewed after ongoing parent complaints about her and her teaching style, and five students being transferred out of Ms. Mayer‚s classroom at the parents‚ request,‰ says the brief for the school district. And it summons affidavits from parents finding fault with Mayer‚s teaching style.
The brief does not deny the Iraq War discussion took place, or that the Hahns got upset by it. In fact, it acknowledges that Mayer was instructed to refrain from discussing her opinions on the war. But the brief says that during the parent conference on the subject, „according to Principal Rogers, Ms. Mayer was borderline unprofessional.‰ And it states further that the Hahns alleged that Mayer continued to talk about the war in class, a charge she denies.
The gist of the district‚s case, as outlined in its brief, is this: „Ms. Mayer‚s speech on the war was not the reason for her ultimate termination. Instead . . . the motivating factor for her termination was her poor classroom performance, the ongoing parental dissatisfaction, and the allegations of harassment and threats towards students.‰
Schultz, in his court filing in response to the request for summary judgment, rebuts this argument. He says the affidavits about poor performance are pretexts. They „were signed in the summer of 2005, more than two years after Plaintiff‚s termination. . . . Those alleged complaints about Ms. Mayer were not and could not have been relied on by Principal Rogers in making her decision to terminate Plaintiff‚s contract with the school.‰ He also cites an evaluation that Mayer received that had praised her effusively.
Schultz says that Mayer deserves her day in court not only because of what he calls the „wrongful termination‰ but also because her First Amendment rights were violated.
Mayer says at one time the school district did offer to settle˜for $2,500. She had already spent ten times that amount, so she refused it, she says. Plus, she wants to defend the free speech rights of teachers. „If the school prevails on this, teachers have no protected speech at school and can be fired for saying anything,‰ she says.
The case has cost Mayer dearly, she says. „I have lost my house, my income, my health insurance, my life savings, and my prospects for employment.‰
If the judge does not grant summary judgment, the case will begin on March 6.
