If All Are Not Free, None Are Free

You’ve heard that before. It’s become a cliché that does not necessarily convince upon hearing. I would say there is more to it than meets the eye. New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie elaborates to great effect. I want to add my two cents.

Those who follow my writing know I’ve been banging this drum for years now, ever since the Critical Race Theory flap jumped off in Loudoun County. From there it was a short hop to dirty books in libraries and transphobia. Lately it’s the assault on any sort of affirmative action in admissions to Northern Virginia’s selective, elite high schools.

My friend Bruce Bartlett in Great Falls, former Ronald Reagan devotee, remarks that the Republican Party – whom he had forsaken decades ago – focuses its abuse on transgender people because the LGBTQI are the most marginalized, least understood group in America. In other words, it’s the posture of bullies and cowards.

The spark for this fire was the blunder of the Loudoun County Public School (LCPS) authorities in allowing a student arrested for a brutal sexual assault to be transferred to a different public high school just months later. There was blame to spread around to the (Republican) county sheriff’s department, but all we heard about was the Democratic-majority board, which had been targeted for months by Republican operatives masquerading as politically non-partisan parents.

At any rate, once in his new school, the miscreant went back to his old ways and committed another assault, a month before the 2021 election, helping failed account manager Glenn Youngkin become governor. It did not help that the initial report was that the boy was wearing a skirt. There is some ambiguity, in that other reports had him in a kilt. That’s a different vibe, but rape is still rape. There is no doubt about that.

Evidently it must be repeated that persons of any sexual orientation can and do commit crimes, and there is no way to keep student predators of any type out of high school bathrooms, no matter what they are wearing.

The transgender panic quickly spread to join with the slur that any sort of respect lent to LGBTQ people connoted an intention to groom children for sexual abuse. This charge is tantamount to a blood libel, a device historically employed by homicidal antisemites. This campaign has reached its furthest development in Florida with Governor Ron DeSantis’s notorious “Don’t say gay” policies. Here in Virginia the appeal is a bit more restrained, though our term-limited governor, whose career in finance is over, is doing all he can to prepare himself for a spot on a national ticket with either Donald Trump or DeSantis.

You don’t have to have any regard for LGBTQI people to see where this is going. As Bouie makes clear, if the MAGA mob of white racist misogynists is permitted to classify who is and who is not worthy of basic respect, an entire array of additional  constituencies are threatened, including Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Hispanics, Chinese, African-Americans, Mormons, and immigrants in general.

In other words, the campaign is not just inhumane, immoral, and irrational. It is politically strategic. It is aimed at moderate, suburban voters who are apprehensive about the welfare of their children in public schools.

There is big money at stake as well. Public education is one of the two largest public expenditures by U.S. state and local governments. Lots of people are angling for a piece of this action. After the Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954, southern states saw their public schools being emptied of white students, who migrated to all-white private schools. Parents were able to afford this because taxes were reduced, which led to barren funding for the public schools. (Truth be told, racial segregation of a different sort prevailed in the north as well.)

Today we have a similar process. Pressure is on for state government funding of Christian charter schools, private schools, and home schooling. There is also a call for tax loopholes designed to facilitate the switch. The implication is a drain on resources for public schools. This is a replay, in increments, of the liquidation of multiracial “abolition democracy,” in the phrasing of W.E.B. DuBois, following the Civil War.

Two of our leading Republican politicians, Governor Youngkin and unsuccessful candidate for Congress Hung Cao, would have you believe they are champions of public education in Virginia. Alas, Youngkin sends his children to private school in Maryland, while Cao homeschools his children.

What’s needed in Virginia, especially in Loudoun and Fairfax counties, is an upsurge of decency and rationality. Every child should feel respected and supported in school. Schools should be adequately funded, which incidentally includes the Loudoun school board accepting collective bargaining with the Loudoun Education Association. Ignorant people, including those appointed by the governor, should be excluded from influence over public school management, especially in the content of instruction in history and social studies. People who don’t read books should not be allowed to dictate the inventories of school libraries. People who advocate burning books should not be sitting on school boards.

This upsurge of idiocracy is why I decided to run for the Virginia House of Delegates in District 30. You can learn more about my campaign at https://MaxSpeak.net.

You can donate to my campaign here, and you can volunteer by emailing me at delegatemax@maxspeak.net.

The Virginia legislature is narrowly split. Your participation in the 2021 elections can make a difference. We can ensure that restrictions on reproductive rights are blocked, that voting rights are guaranteed, and that the excitement in public schools is focused on football games.

Legislatures draw district lines. District lines determine who gets elected. Who gets elected in Virginia could have a decisive bearing on the outcomes of national elections. Loudoun County matters to Virginia, and Virginia matters to the nation.

Don’t sleep through our 2023 elections.