Monthly Archives: May 2018

Power, Perception, and Pilate

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On May 10, my wife and I attended a matinee performance of Jesus Christ Superstar at the Lyric Opera in Chicago. Coming a month after the Easter evening (April 1) NBC broadcast of this ground-breaking rock opera by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, it allowed some comparison of how the show is staged and presented, which was summed up by a woman behind us at the Lyric: “Never the same way twice.” Composed in 1970 and first presented on stage in 1971, the show’s lasting impact can, I think, be traced, like any other vintage composition, to its versatility, universality, and the way it probes deep themes in the human experience. In this case, that involves a search for the meaning of divinity and exactly where the Gospel stories fit into that experience. What could it possibly mean to be human and divine at the same time? How did those around Jesus relate to him in real life? Rice and Webber gained fame by packing a lightning bolt of musical interpretation into a two-hour show. Curiously, in the 47 years since the show’s debut in New York, this recent run, which ended May 20, was the first time the Lyric had chosen to stage Jesus Christ Superstar.

Seeing this performed twice in consecutive months prodded me to think a little more deeply about a question that has been roaming around in my brain for a while already. As a Christian, a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, I have maintained both an intellectual and spiritual curiosity over many years concerning the life of Jesus of Nazareth and the Bible generally. I am anything but a biblical literalist. I feel strongly that the route to some meaningful truth involves a healthy skepticism and a good deal of reading between the lines, so I have little patience with the fixed and sometimes even cartoonish scriptural interpretations that some people cling to. I do not believe that politics and faith are or even should be completely detached, but I am not an ideologue, either. I am a firm supporter of religious freedom and tolerance because I think Christian faith calls on us to be considerably humbler in our relationships with others than some people wearing the label have sometimes been. And that brings me to my topic.

One thing I noted in the Webber-Rice spectacle is that the narrative hews relatively closely to the core of the Gospel stories of the Passion, Christ’s last week of life on Earth—at least within the broad framework of artistic presentation. One question that has dogged Christianity for centuries concerns how Jesus was delivered into the hands of the Romans, which leads to the question of the nature of his startling interaction with Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea. It is clear enough, according to the Gospel accounts, that Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane by agents of the Jewish high priests, and clear enough that they were upset with his preaching because it challenged the established order in profound ways. After interrogation by both the high priests and King Herod, who ruled Galilee under Roman sovereignty, he was turned over to Pilate. The interactions at this point become much more powerful, given the fate that we all now know awaited Jesus. And this is the point that I wish to explore.

I am not a professional biblical scholar, but my perspective here does not depend on being one. It is rooted more in a lifetime of observing the behavior of the powerful, usually at a distance but occasionally up close. It is an analysis of power relationships in personal interactions. I am not sure most biblical scholars are any better at that, and I will certainly not assert that mine is necessarily the most accurate set of observations possible. I hope only to shed light and spur further thinking by those willing to join me in this search for deeper meaning in one of the more remarkable events in human history.

First, I must note that bad or oversimplified interpretation of these events has led to a good deal of bad blood between Jews and Christians over two millennia. Some of this continues, but none of it is appropriate or necessary. Anti-Semitism, like racism, contradicts the fundamental tenets of Christian morality and respect for others. The fact that Jews were involved in the arrest of Jesus does not change the fact that everyone else in the story is also Jewish, except for the Romans. On the eve of Christ’s crucifixion, Jerusalem was a dangerously divided community. Sympathies ran in all directions. Rome had maintained control for years with unrelenting brutality, including many other crucifixions of real and perceived rebels, and challenging Rome was no one’s route to survival. Jewish leadership was understandably concerned with national and institutional survival (deeply intertwined in their world view), and thus wary of the spiritual challenges this unconventional preacher presented. Christ’s message gained a following in this religious and political tinderbox and thus inevitably triggered a reaction by officials concerned about maintaining control. Ultimately, it was the Roman Empire that maintained control, and Rome was never very subtle in its methods. Crucifixion was a form of state-sanctioned terrorism to achieve such control. It was intended to be both demeaning and terrifying.

We should not be surprised. We need merely look around at the actions of dictators and oppressive regimes in our own time to see how this works. Much of the artistic achievement of Jesus Christ Superstar is to take a story from 2,000 years ago and reframe it with modern music and sensibilities that allow us to reassess its relevance in a modern context. That is the job of any good artist with such a story.

And that is precisely what makes the personal interaction between Pilate and Christ so powerfully intriguing. What I would deem naïve interpretations of Pilate’s reaction and response to Jesus have led over centuries to the unfortunate perception that this Roman governor believed Jesus was innocent but was afraid of the crowds that called for his crucifixion. As many scholars have noted, Pilate had already sent numerous others to their deaths by the time he encountered this itinerant preacher. Assigned to maintain control of a difficult province that most Romans viewed as a backwater, Pilate generally had little hesitation about sending to their doom anyone he saw as posing a threat to Roman hegemony, and such movements persisted for decades until the destruction of Jerusalem by Roman troops in 70 C.E. This history is very clear. As for the crowds and Pilate’s offer to free one criminal for the Passover to placate Jewish opinion, it is not hard to believe that a man like Pilate knew how to manipulate such crowds and play vicious mind games with his opponents. The overriding goal for anyone like Pilate was political survival. Just a generation later, in 66 C.E., notes John Dominic Crossan in Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, the Roman governor Florus sent no fewer than 3,600 of Judea’s leading citizens to crucifixion after mass arrests intended to forestall rebellion, which ultimately led to the Jewish diaspora. Empathy with the oppressed was no more part of the empire’s perspective than it is that of Kim Jong Un in North Korea or Vladimir Putin in Russia. Suppressing and destroying any following of any movement independent of the state is part of the standard playbook for modern totalitarian regimes.

Still, there is this haunting interaction between Pilate and Jesus. We must keep in mind that, in the end, Pilate sent Jesus and two other men to their deaths that day. If he was deeply troubled by his prisoner’s innocence, he could easily have spared him, but at most he went through the empty gesture of washing his hands. It is worth noting the conversation in the Gospel of John, which provides the most detailed report of the exchange between the two men:

Pilate: Are you the king of the Jews?

Jesus: Is that your own idea, of have others suggested it to you?

Pilate: What? Am I a Jew? Your own nation and their chief priests have brought you before me. What have you done?

Jesus: My kingdom does not belong to this world. If it did, my followers would be fighting to save me from arrest by the Jews. My kingly authority comes from elsewhere.

Pilate: You are a king, then?

Jesus: “King” is your word. My task is to bear witness to the truth. For this I was born; for this I came into the world, and all who are not deaf to the truth listen to my voice.

Pilate: What is truth?

Pilate then offers the release of Jesus to the crowd, which demands the release of Barabbas; Pilate then has Jesus flogged, the soldiers place a crown of thorns on his head, and he is mocked and belittled. A further exchange between Pilate and the crowd occurs in which the demand is that he be crucified. It seems obvious to me that Pilate knew how to use the crowd to advance his own ends. Then comes the final exchange:

Pilate: Where have you come from?

Jesus: (No answer.)

Pilate: Do you refuse to speak to me? Surely you know I have the authority to release you, and I have authority to crucify you? (Note that, at this point, Jesus has almost surely been beaten within an inch of his life.)

Jesus: You would have no authority at all over me if it had not been granted you from above; and therefore, the deeper guilt lies with the man who handed me over to you.

What I want to offer at this point is a question that, I think, is often missed or underemphasized in both scholarly accounts and religious interpretations of this powerful dialogue: Why did Pilate take pains to react in this particular manner? Aside from riling up the crowds, why not just sentence Christ and be done with the matter? Surely, Pilate did not take such pains with most prisoners.

But if we take seriously the nature of men like Pilate, we might realize that the horror of the means he would use to eliminate most perceived troublemakers would make most prisoners squirm in terror. He was probably used to, and even enjoyed, making subjects squirm in his presence, the high priests and prominent local citizens included. Absolute power tends to bestow on most human beings a perverse and even sadistic sense of superiority over others.

But at no point in this or any other New Testament accounts does Jesus squirm in the face of political power. He certainly knew what awaited him and was aware of the torture and physical agony involved. Yet here he is, still challenging authority to the point where Pilate may have thought him a madman. Zealots (Jewish rebels of the day) might simply have been defiant in such circumstances, knowing that all was lost once they were captured. They would not have engaged in any philosophical repartee. There is no indication of Jesus seeking mercy or anticipating a way out of his dilemma. Why does this matter?

Because Pilate’s reaction could very well indicate that such a fearless confrontation with his authority, which Jesus even effectively denies, leaves him utterly perplexed. Who does that?

Well, some people do, you may answer, and I suggest this: Jesus’s unflinching insistence on spiritual authority, combined with almost unflappable acceptance of the consequences of his stance, left Pilate temporarily flummoxed, groping for a means to reassert his accustomed sense of psychological dominance over those around him. One does not need even to be Christian to perceive the dynamics of the situation. But it does add some clarity because we know, as Pilate did not, that this nascent religious movement would survive three subsequent centuries of intermittent but vicious Roman persecution. Much of that would occur because of the courage people drew from the story of Christ’s confrontation with Pilate—and, of course, an abiding belief that Pilate did not have the last word.

I will also suggest that the serenity of Jesus in the face of a looming horrific end to his life has become a model that inspired numerous others to challenge unjust power by calling upon a higher morality. These included Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms, who faced potential burning at the stake; Nelson Mandela, who suffered years of imprisonment by the apartheid regime in South Africa; Martin Luther King Jr., who challenged racist violence with peaceful protest and was assassinated; or the Mirabal sisters, who were killed for challenging the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic (the subject of a novel by Julia Alvarez). And then, there is the powerful case of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, executed by the Nazis after challenging their authority. One can name many other examples.

However, honesty demands a recognition of other sources of such profound witness. Jews, for example, may point to a line of prophets who preceded Christ, some of whom faced dire crises of faith and provide inspiration. Mohandas Gandhi used pioneering methods of nonviolence to challenge British colonial rule in India, only to die at the hands of a fanatical Hindu assassin. His primary inspirations arose from Eastern traditions, although he seems to have blended what he considered the best of Christian spirituality into his Hindu practice, even as he expressed distaste for many of the barnacles that had attached themselves to organized religion. But he clearly faced persecution with an equanimity that put his adversaries to shame.

Of course, like all of us, each of these heroic figures had their human shortcomings. But in each case, their serene courage drew inspiration from a deep well of faith. That faith includes a resolute refusal to cede moral authority while acknowledging political authority. It includes the integrity of one’s belief system with a focus on love, mercy, and peace. And it always includes a recognition of the power of one’s conscience, but that conscience must be driven not just by passion, but by compassion, a clear recognition of the value of others. True conscience involves not just a personal set of beliefs but clarity about one’s moral commitments and their potential consequences, and the acceptance of those consequences. That anyone meets that test is a testament to the capacity of the human spirit to unite itself with divine wisdom. How that occurs is a story I will leave to saintlier souls than mine to tell.

Jim Schwab

Author’s note: The lack of images in this post is deliberate in order to maintain a focus on the ideas presented.

Frog-Marching Illinois into the Dark Past

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Photo of Gov. Bruce Rauner, from Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Rauner.

Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, elected in 2014 and up for re-election this year as the Republican nominee, has made manipulative politics the centerpiece of his first term, at the expense of passing a budget through a Democrat-dominated legislature. Illinois has had such split governance before, but other governors at least understood that their first responsibility was to pass a budget so the state could pay its bills, even if that required some compromise. Rauner instead has thrown down the gauntlet repeatedly, often on issues such as right-to-work legislation that were not directly related to the budget but became his bludgeons to get what he wanted. The result was a two-year stalemate that saw Illinois continue many of its programs under court mandates rather than through legislation. Finally, enough Republicans bucked their own governor last year to force the issue and approve some tax increases to begin to pay down the state’s backlog of debts to social service providers, school districts, and state universities, among others.

You might think that, by now, Illinois would have had enough of such counterproductive, divisive politics. Compromise and disagreement always have co-habited in politics, mostly by necessity. Even in the era of Donald Trump, even in a gubernatorial election year, acting like an adult should still count for something.

Instead, Rauner on Monday used his line item veto power to revise a gun law passed by the legislature to attempt to reinstate the death penalty. The gun law would establish a 72-hour “cooling-off” period following the purchase of an assault weapon. Legislators have considered several proposals in response to the recent wave of incidents of gun-related violence around the nation and in the state. Rauner also stated that he believes the 72-hour rule should apply to all gun purchases, and proposed other gun-control measures, but it is hard to take him seriously when he makes the legislation contingent on an unrelated death penalty provision. Rauner understands all too well the political divisions inherent in gun policy, having barely survived a primary challenge from St. Rep. Jeanne Ives, a right-wing Republican from Wheaton, in the conservative evangelical heart of the Chicago suburbs. It is far easier to see a streak of raw cynicism behind Rauner’s move: How desperate are gun-control advocates to get something passed? Desperate enough to split the Democratic base by supporting reinstatement of the death penalty?

It is important to understand just how cynical this is in the context of recent Illinois history. The last Republican governor, George Ryan, placed a moratorium on the death penalty in 2000 because he found himself increasingly troubled by the number of wrongful convictions in Illinois and the possibility that, in denying clemency, he could be signing the death warrant for an innocent person. In 2003, before leaving office, Ryan commuted the sentences of all death row inmates. Despite considerable criticism at the time, Ryan mounted a stout defense of his actions.

This has been no small matter in Illinois. The list of exonerations in recent decades runs on for pages. The City of Chicago has already paid out more than $100 million in reparations for wrongful convictions resulting from forced confessions, extracted through torture, by police detective Jon Burge, subsequently convicted himself in federal court for obstruction of justice and perjury. That is not even close to the end of the story; the overall total of settlements for police misconduct, according to the Better Government Association, totaled well in excess of $500 million by 2014. Thus, the move by Ryan served to open the floodgate of grievances and reservations that finally led the legislature to abolish the death penalty in 2011, signed into law by Gov. Pat Quinn.

In the meantime, Ryan himself went to federal prison on corruption charges, followed a decade later by his Democratic successor, Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who himself seemed intent on proving that one need not be an adult to hold high office. Blagojevich is still appealing a 14-year sentence and hoping for clemency from President Trump. Illinois has had a colorful, but hardly confidence-inspiring, political history.

It is thus small surprise that there is little voter sentiment for what Rauner has now suggested. The notion that it may be better to let a murder convict sit in prison, where at least he or she may still be alive if or when a wrongful conviction is overturned, seems to have become the dominant sentiment among most of the body politic. Illinois does not need to revisit that conclusion so soon after achieving this historic landmark in its long history of criminal jurisprudence. We still don’t know what other innocent persons might be sitting on death row if the state had not ended the death penalty.

Rauner is trying to parse the distinction between potential wrongful convictions and legitimately convicted murderers by limiting the application of the death penalty in his amendatory veto language to those who murder police officers or kill two or more people. Asked why his proposal should not include murder of firefighters or teachers, Rauner declared himself open to expanding the list of victims for which the new death penalty would apply.

And thus, Rauner begins the process of frog-marching Illinois back into its dark past, picking scabs and reopening old wounds from a past that most of us have already chosen to put behind us.

Rauner also introduced in his amendatory veto a new standard of “beyond all doubt” in place of “beyond all reasonable doubt” for such convictions. But in practice, how does a jury, or a judge, truly distinguish one from another? If any doubt exists about convicting a defendant in a murder trial, shouldn’t that doubt be “reasonable” before it is even considered? In light of past miscarriages of justice, who will guarantee a just result before imposing the death sentence? Rauner’s tweaking of language does almost nothing to resolve the manifold doubts that moved public opinion toward the elimination of the death penalty in the first place.

The legislature, as always, has two options. One is for enough Democrats and Republicans, bipartisanly sick of this brazen manipulation, to override the amendatory veto with a three-fifths vote in both houses. The other is to do nothing, in which case the legislation goes nowhere. Legislators are also actively pursuing other measures concerning state licensing of gun dealers. The possibility of approving Rauner’s version of the bill creating the cooling-off period is, in fact, almost nonexistent, and Rauner’s true goal may be to satisfy the Republican right wing by killing the gun-control measure that passed and blaming its failure on Democrats. If so, voters may want to consider just how cynical they want their governor to be.

Jim Schwab

Related links for this article:

“Rauner’s death penalty ploy,” Chicago Tribune editorial

“In Rauner’s gun proposal, politics ahead of policy,” Chicago Tribune column by Dahleen Glanton

“Lawmakers revise plan to license Illinois gun stores,” Chicago Tribune

FEMA Needs to Think about This One

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Flooded property in Lyons, Colorado, after the St. Vrain River flooded in September 2013.

There is that old saying that, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. To that, one might add that, if you’re thinking about fixing it anyway, you may want to clarify exactly how you wish to improve things and why you think the improvement will be better.

In a February 27 notice in the Federal Register, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) proposed a major change in long-standing hazard mitigation rules regarding grants for acquisitions of flooded properties that made almost no effort to meet that test. I wish I had noticed it earlier because the deadline for comments was April 30. I submitted a brief comment on that date and tried to rally others on Facebook, but the truth is that this one got away from me. I was busy on other fronts. I have subsequently spent a few days gathering background information.

I am very glad that a few national organizations like the Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM), American Rivers, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) found time to file substantial objections to FEMA’s notice on Property Acquisitions and Relocation for Open Space (Docket ID: FEMA-2018-0006). Their objections raise profound questions about both the process and the substance of FEMA’s proposed changes. Others have also submitted comments.

Here’s the bottom line: For 30 years since the passage of the Stafford Act, which provides the basic framework of most federal disaster law, federal hazard mitigation grant programs have required that lands being acquired from property owners whose homes have been flooded must be placed into perpetual open space following demolition of the structures. The clear intent is to reduce the ongoing exposure of the federal government and the National Flood Insurance Program to repeated losses by precluding further development in those flood-prone areas. By and large, those grants go through state and local governments, which then maintain those open spaces and must periodically certify to FEMA that the lands remain in that status. Today, those grant programs include not only the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP), a sometimes-substantial source of mitigation funding that is available after a presidentially declared disaster; the Pre-Disaster Mitigation (PDM) program, created as part of the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000, which amended the Stafford Act; and Flood Mitigation Assistance (FMA), part of which deals with Severe Repetitive Loss properties, which make up a disproportionate share of overall flood claims.

In the notice, FEMA has announced a new option to allow owners of flooded properties to retain the underlying land while being paid to demolish the structures, thereby permitting them to eventually rebuild on that same flood-prone land. Because mitigation grants have gone from FEMA through states to local governments, those governments have been responsible for the open space programs that result. This new approach would allow the property owner the option of taking the grant directly from FEMA. In its comments on the proposal, ASFPM noted that, in the 2004 NFIP reform legislation, it supported providing FEMA the option to deal directly with property owners, mostly because some local governments have lacked the capacity to monitor the open space requirements, but it still expected that FEMA would consult with those governments before using that option as a means of maintaining consistency with state and local hazard mitigation policy. The current notice makes no mention of such coordination.

Elevation of flooded properties remains a viable option in many cases.

It is not as if these owners do not have other options for mitigating future flood damage, including elevation of residential structures above the 100-year base flood elevation established on FEMA flood insurance rate maps, or floodproofing the structure. But, the thinking seems to be, some owners will be more willing to demolish if they can retain the land. One possibility for some might be to retain the land, rebuild in due course, and flip the improved property while leaving the NFIP with continued flood loss exposures. How that helps federal taxpayers or other flood insurance rate payers is not especially clear.

The Federal Register announcement does nothing to make that clear. If you follow the link and read the notice, you are likely to experience my reaction, which was that I felt left in the dark regarding the rationale for making this move, which is not explained. Nor does FEMA provide any data to support the idea that this initiative would do anything to reduce flood losses. The opposite could easily prove true.

In an April 26 article in Insurance Journal, former FEMA administrator Craig Fugate offers some support for the new option by noting that placing land in permanent open space through a buyout is often a “hard sell.” That may well be, but it is partly because the solution is meant to be effective and lasting. It is also not as if the approach has lacked success. As NRDC notes in its comments, citing ASFPM case studies, more than 30,000 floodplain properties have been removed from development since 1993, many of them following major cataclysms such as the 1993 and 2008 Midwest floods and various hurricanes.

Perhaps more telling is the question of homeowners’ motivation in making the difficult decision to sell and relocate. The idea that people would necessarily prefer to be able to rebuild in the same location is not as clear or straightforward as some might assume, though there are, no doubt, advocates of property rights who would prefer to create the new option. But this emotional decision contains some factors that should not be ignored. Perhaps straight to the point is this comment from American Rivers:

Our experience working with floodplain managers has taught us that convincing property owners to accept a buyout is an emotional and difficult decision, and many are only willing to accept the buyout offer after they are assured that the property will be preserved as open space for the good of the public. Offering direct grants that allow new construction where a structure was demolished could be at odds with local hazard mitigation plans and efforts to acquire flood prone properties for open space. FEMA should instead be working to support the implementation of open space goals in local and state hazard mitigation grants.

In other words, many of those choosing a buyout, having suffered the damages of severe and repetitive losses from flooding, and aware of the larger issues concerning the public good in these situations, would rather ensure that nothing like this happens again, at least in their community. But what happens to the motivation undergirding their willingness to sell if they become acutely aware that their neighbors now have the option of prolonging the pain by not placing the land in permanent open space? Will they still feel that they are accomplishing anything by pursuing the traditional option? In any event, are these not the people whose choices we most want to honor for the greater good of the community?

City-acquired open space in Cedar Falls, Iowa, near the Cedar River.

The essential reason all this is important is that we have learned much over the years about the natural and beneficial functions of floodplains, which include soil enrichment, wildlife habitat, reduced flood severity, and reductions in erosion and stormwater runoff, to name a few, in addition to the potential recreational functions of waterfront parks and open space. All this is in addition to the fiscal benefits of reducing future floodplain losses in the areas affected. If all that is not reason enough for FEMA to pause, rethink the question, and at least offer some solid scientific and economic documentation of the benefits of the proposed new approach, then I am not sure what is. Otherwise, count me a serious skeptic.

Jim Schwab

When School Reform Falters (if You’re Black and Poor)

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Ashana Bigard. Photo by Jean Schwab

While I was in New Orleans April 19-24 for the American Planning Association’s 2018 National Planning Conference, my wife, Jean, was also there. A retired Chicago Public Schools teacher and retiree delegate for the Chicago Teachers Union, she has remained active on educational issues and in 2014, on a prior trip to New Orleans, interviewed Ashana Bigard, an advocate for students’ rights and leader in the Education Justice Project of New Orleans. Jean decided to interview Bigard again, producing the somewhat condensed interview below. At a time when Paul Vallas, former CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, and the post-Katrina architect of school reform in New Orleans, has recently declared his candidacy for mayor of Chicago, the consequences of that reform take on new importance—not that schools in New Orleans were great before Katrina (they were not), but one hopes that reform is a step forward, and Bigard’s critique suggests serious and troubling issues of racial and social equity remain unaddressed.

I wish here to add a personal mea culpa. Readers may have noticed a more than one-month gap since my last posting at the end of March. Part of that was due to travel. In addition to six days in New Orleans, I spent three days immediately prior to that at a Federal Emergency Management Agency meeting in Richburg, South Carolina. Life was also full of some other turbulence, and this blog is essentially a one-man show. Since launching “Home of the Brave” five years ago, I have always preferred, as a professionally trained researcher and journalist, to put quality ahead of speed, to produce thoughtful commentary and to dig deeper. Sometimes, time does not permit this, in which case I prefer to write nothing than to write hastily for the mere sake of publishing something. There will be much new material coming in May. I guarantee it.

Jim Schwab

 

Interview with Ashana Bigard

What is better and worse about New Orleans since 2014?

Bigard: It depends on from whose perspective. So, I think better for young white people in the city of New Orleans, absolutely.  But if we are talking families and communities of native black New Orleans, no, they are much, much worse because the voices of the community, parents, and students continue to be unheard.  We have been erased. Our mayor talks about how much better New Orleans is doing, how it has recovered, meanwhile child poverty is at 39%, mostly black poor children. The wage gap between white and black families has widened since Katrina.  Of course, we had $76 billion come to the city after the storm, and the native black population has 18% less wealth.  We’ve had a gigantic land grab.  Things are worse in education because our city, just the Parish of New Orleans, has been experimented on.  What is the problem with experimenting? First, no one has been taking data to see what works and doesn’t work.  Second, the experiment was done in the only black parish. That would be a red flag to anyone. We are almost at 100% charter schools except for McDonogh 35. Parents have less choice. Parents apply for pre-school only to find that there are no pre-school spots available. One parent reported that she made eight selections and did not get any of the eight selections. Parents want a school near their homes, so they can catch one or two buses to reach the school, but the schools are not close to students’ homes.  Parents with children with asthma, [who] need epi pens, or [with] special problems are literally afraid because charter schools do not have full-time nurses, or full-time counselors.  Nurses are in the schools twice a week.  The schools are not near their homes, so parents can’t get to them.  We’ve had an epidemic of children traumatized, partly because of the storm. We had problems before the storm, but there were full-time nurses and counselors at the schools. We had children who had nervous breakdowns, and the schools were close to their homes so parents or someone could come and pick them up.

Now with the schools far away from students’ homes, no full-time nurses or counselors, there’s been an epidemic of students’ nervous breakdowns for two reasons. First, our kids have had a lot of trauma which was not  addressed after the storm. Some of this is [former] Governor Bobby Jindal’s fault because, after the storm, he gutted our mental health budget and closed our Adolescent Hospital [a psychiatric facility]. Jindal gutted the mental health budget when people needed it so much. Our new Governor John Edwards is trying to repair that by opening the Adolescent Mental Hospital again. The second reason is that schools are operating like mini prisons as if they could discipline trauma out of kids. A lot of schools have no recess and quiet lunches. During quiet lunch students are not allowed to talk. So, we do the opposite of what children need after being traumatized. These children need a lot more social interaction, talking, touching, art, and music to really deal with their emotions and express themselves.  Our school system is the opposite of what children need, which leads to children that are on the edge, we have mini bombs (explosive), and we continue to reinforce that. Students are in pre-school and not allowed to sing, talk, dance, play and nap. A lot of our children suffer from sleep deprivation because, if you need to be on the bus at 6:00 a.m. and you need to be out there 30 minutes in advance, then you must be outside at 5:30, and if you must be on the bus at 5:05 a.m., [that] means you must be up by 4:30 a.m. That is exactly what happened to a five-year-old girl in kindergarten that we advocated for. She arrived at school at 8:30 a.m. and was back home at 6:00 p.m. Her school had no recess, quiet lunch, and no nap. I bring this up to point out how insane the schools are. We know that children that are in kindergarten need more sleep for brain development.  We know that children need from 13 to 14 hours of sleep. However, apparently schools have decided that they can go against brain development because apparently poor black children do not have human brains. The little girl got suspended off the bus for three days because she ate three crackers on the bus on her way home. We advocated for her by going to the school to discuss the suspension. At first, the school said it was a bus policy, but later admitted that the suspension was a school policy, and they offered to reduce the suspension to one day. We felt like one day was too much for eating three crackers. How about no-day suspension because a five-year-old girl ate lunch at 10:00 a.m. and was hungry on the bus home? They expect our children to be non-human.  This correct behavior is not correct behavior for human beings. I asked, “Should you be running a school? Who do you want to make them into? A person who ignores their personal needs for bathroom and food like that is not healthy.  If a person does not take care of their own needs, how can they have compassion for others?”

(Bigard described going to Science and Math High School to talk to the principal about bathroom privileges. “The students could go to the bathroom during lunch period every day and were given three bathroom passes each month for emergencies. We asked the principal if he had any teenage girls at that school and he answered, yes they did, and that is why the three passes were given.” I told him that three passes a month was not enough for the girls or any of the other students.”)

Why do they feel the need to be so strict?

Bigard: Conditioning and control. If you go into a school district and you believe that the people you are working with are out of control, and that they are savage and animals, the first thing you do is get them into control and compliance.

If a student has a brown belt instead of black, then that student may get a detention or after-school suspension if they have too many violations. If they lose the belt, they can’t just go out and buy another. Kids [in] k-1-2-3 grades don’t buy their own clothes. So, when you hold them responsible for what their parents put out for them, they don’t have any control. You are punishing them for being poor. The response from the school is that they are teaching them to be responsible. How many colleges have uniforms? Are students put out of college for not having a tie or black belt?

We have all these schools where they have 60% suspension rates, and when you start to dig, you come up with things like an A-B student who during tests needed to chew on a straw because he was so nervous and could concentrate better when chewing on a straw. It didn’t bother anyone else, but we had to put him on the 504 program  (accommodations for lesser learning disabilities), so he could chew on a straw during tests. Or the girl that twists her hair or the student that did not track the teacher with his eyes. Many of the administrators want to greet each child with a handshake every morning. A child that was uncomfortable with touch–one-third of our children have been inappropriately touched, and others fear germs and did not want to shake the school administrator’s hand.

(The interview then shifted to the question of how schools handle students who cannot provide money for school lunches, a subject covered by The Louisiana Weekly in a very recent article by reporter Kaylee Poche about state legislation to resolve the issue of “shaming” regarding inability to pay.)

The Senate Education Committee on Thursday (April 19) voted 4-2 to reject a bill that would have prevented schools from punishing students with lunch debt even though the bill had easily passed the House earlier this month. Rep. Patricia Smith, D-Baton Rouge, authored the so-called “lunch-shaming bill,” which also was supported by Gov. John Edwards. It would have prevented students with unpaid lunch bills from being publicly identified, required to do additional chores, or excluded from any school privileges. “I’m just trying to make the change to the law so that we can continue to feed our children in our schools and make sure that the person who is actually responsible for the debt pays the debt,” Smith said. Students who owe money currently eat cheese sandwiches for lunch at school. (Bigard explained that middle school and high school students with a school debt do not receive lunch.)

The bill also would have allowed schools to notify parents that they would have to contact the Department of Children and Family Services if they failed to pay for 10 or more school meals. Also, lunch money could be collected through income taxes and the Louisiana Department of Revenue. The bill would cover only families that do not receive reduced or free lunches. Smith’s bill failed.