By Cliff Willmeng
I’m the dad of a couple of dedicated MPS students who was able to tag along at the student march onto the contract negotiations yesterday at the Davis Center. The group started at North Community High School at the center of one of the most working-class neighborhoods in the city, populated mainly by Black and Brown families but with white students and teachers as well. It was a great time to see the students organizing themselves, having discussions, and talking about their ideas and perspectives surrounding what is shaping up to be a defining struggle in Minneapolis today. The kids led yesterday, and from the perspective of this dad, they had some of the clearest perspective around in their support for the striking frontline educators of MFT 59.
We heard from the District only a day before the tired, repetitive slogan that there is no more money for the educators and schools. They brought their quips about “Fiscal responsibility” and all the other patronizing corporate-speak so common to their office and careers. Of course they told us their obligatory concerns about the students and schools. Ed Graff, the School Board’s most public mouthpiece, held the line for the DFL that in the land of milk and honey there simply wasn’t any more to share to reduce class sizes, support teachers of color, and to provide even a meager raise for the ESPs. There was a good amount of six plus figured salaries at work during that press conference and far more throughout the District backing them up.
This comes as no surprise. The lead argument for all of the capitalist grifters pulling the strings of politicians say the same thing when they want to drive any public resource into the ground before commandeering its resources. Its a routine political requirement to privatize the piles of tax money for everything from social security to housing to healthcare. And make no mistake, the District is being led by these folks dressed in liberal words and phony concerns about the future of students, equity, and all of the other empty talking points. These privatizers aren’t the rapacious gang of GOP ideologues. They are the DFL, hiding in plain sight, and stacked with NGO front groups and political office, and running on point to keep the narrative controlled, powerless, and devoid of any actual context.
“There is no more money”, is one refrain that should be met with widespread mockery at least, and real fury given the harm now being shouldered by teachers, students and families. There has never been money for the poor in Minneapolis, save a few historical movements when people did more than write letters to their representatives in major strikes or outright civil rights rebellions. But one would have to be willfully blind to make this claim with a straight face today. There are luxury condos being built for the monied class all over the city. Multi-million dollar yachts cruise happily over the waters of Lake Minnetonka. $9 billion of surplus tax money sits at the capital today and our local oligarchs, the ten richest people in Minnesota, are worth a combined amount of $26 billion alone. And of course the arms dealers never seem to have problems with fund raising. Over night $800 million fell out of the sky for war while here on the home front the ESPs are asking for just $35,000 a year.
You’re not hearing this from Governor Tim Walz, who crows about his days as a teacher in some attempt to give himself the necessary street cred prior to doing nothing. Mayor Frey, himself now amassing over 1000 local ethical complaints for his racist handling of the city’s Black and Brown population has nothing of substance to add either. It’s no coincidence. If they drew attention to the massive wealth of the city, the intent to drive MPS into the ground and who that effort actually serves would have sudden political contrast. And even though the DFL All Stars love using terms like, “Equity”, that concept comes to a screeching halt as soon as it applies to bank accounts, school funding, healthcare, or any other institution of value to career climbers, fiscal parasites, gangs of consultants, and the other pigs at the trough. It takes almost no effort to pull back the curtain on these people, which is why they have to be obscured and hidden from the debate at all costs.
Far from the Board rooms and mahogany desks, the students aren’t buying it. On Monday they organized themselves, took up the street, and piled into the negotiations without a hesitation and to the cheers of hundreds of striking educators. They made speeches, exchanged contact info, danced in the hallways, and called out the situation with some welcome, unapologetic energy and vision. With a little support they could become a leading force in this battle for public education, and with the families and teachers, form the basis for new decision making so needed in MPS today. It might not have been the Children’s March of the Birmingham civil rights movement, but it had the right spirit and vision.
As one MPS of dad and family member, I wanted to thank the kids for their action Monday. I know that you don’t always get the encouragement you deserve, but you shook the house at a most critical moment. Keep speaking your truth and don’t let too much get in your way. Its your future we are all fighting for and I hope together we can generate the power to rewrite this bottomless system and build something new for us all.
Sincerely,
The Dad Brigade