Brane Space: How Our Local School Board Was Hijacked By Rabid Right Wingers

The dark money ad that cratered voters' brains and let them put in school board barbarians

Can a local school board really be taken over by MAGA crazies? Yes, and it occurred in the most recent Nov.7 election here in Colorado Springs. A hyper-conservative slate of candidates, backed by dark money (COS Indy, Nov. 15-21, p. 7) took over the board sending the last two moderates packing. Also, no chance for the 4 new candidates: Darleen Daniel, Rachel Paul, Kate Singh and Shay Dabney, teachers (backed by teachers) who vowed to bring greater diversity to D-11 District schools.

The group of 4, tarred with "fully promoting the woke agenda", because they vowed to prevent in D11 schools what has happened to schools in Florida and Texas. To remind readers, those states - under the deranged gubernatorial fascists Greg Abbott and Ron Desantis- are now dictating how subjects such as American History must be taught. Again, two crass politicos are dictating terms and content of history education. In Florida, for example, that includes using teaching materials that assert "slaves developed skills which could be applied for their personal benefit."

Yeah, uh, learning the ways (like avoiding eye contact), to avoid Massa's horse whip!

But in the D11 school board district vote - as for the other districts (D20,D 49) -we beheld dark money from the like of 'Our Children Deserve Better' and 'Springs Opportunity Fund') to the tune of over $400k, propping up the radical right extremists. Thus these renegades shellacked viewers' brains with postal flyers warning "critical race theory may be coming to your child's classroom" and "Woke-ism is rotting education and ruining your child's brain."

Is that true? What the D11 school board candidate would tell you is simply hat the template they were advocating was to lift and enhance student consciousness. Charles A. Reich in his book, 'The Greening of America'. Reich envisioned the path past false consciousness to entail evolution through three stages he called "Consciousness I, Consciousness II, and Consciousness III".

Consciousness I identified with the nation’s early self-reliance; Consciousness II associated with the conformism of the New Deal era; and Consciousness III marked an unshackling from the stifling moral constraints of the 1950s, focusing on spiritual fulfillment. In today's context that fulfillment - independent of religious affiliation- would have recognized Trump's total lack of any moral compass and hence his unfitness as a leader.

Reich’s description (op. cit, p. 392) of the unaware or 'unwoke' in the 1960s, :

"He is unable to understand his society, unable to vote in a responsible way, unable to communicate with his own children or to understand their culture. He is allowed to become human wreckage because his mind stopped growing while all the elements around him moved ahead."

totally matches the millions in the same boat today under the spell of Trumpism and GOP- FOXite propaganda, lies (such as spewed out by the misinformation master Christopher Rufo on CRT - critical race theory)

Should this forlorn unwoke citizen be allowed to just flounder and fiddle through his life, misfiring on all cylinders- never enhancing or improving his lot, or his nation's?

Today's conscious citizens sa 'No!'. The unwoke, unaware, and mentally impaired (by ingesting info-feces) need to be helped out of their unconscious state like an anesthetized surgery patient from his own oblivion. But the Right and its useful idiots (such as in FL, TX) don't want this because it's to their political advantage to keep vast numbers unwoke, unaware of how they are being used. That is why the Right's extremists screamed about the four losing D11 school candidate "promoting the woke agenda." Because those sanity saboteurs know that is the way forward to rationality and the nation's general welfare.

As Charles Reich might put it there is simply an ongoing aspiration to increased consciousness, and not allowing one's mind to rot and become "wreckage" - or prey to any vicious memes that might infect it. That must also mean challenging those forces, memes that would inflict such infection and spread it. Hence the necessity for what the Right derisively calls "cancel culture" - but which is actually control of toxic mind viruses via multiple, serial linguistic "mind enemas".

As for losing candidate Rachel Paul, interviewed in the COS Indy, she said she had to rely on "making phone calls and knocking on doors but still couldn't overcome the $388,000 spent on false narratives" i.e. by outside dark money on behalf of the 4 extremists. Clearly, money and power are behind ensuring Americans in large swaths of the nation remain dumb and numb -including their children who will be indoctrinated with the Right's BS.

Meanwhile, losing candidate Kate Singh expressed disappointment in the outcome of the election but vowed to keep working for all children in D11 as a member of the Special Education Advisory Committee for the district.

For her part, Rhonda Herschel - a member of Neighbors for Education which supports teachers in their fight against adopting false curricula - also doggedly knocked on doors and made phone calls. But in the end she believes the lower turnout - 4 percent lower than 2020 - cost the D11 candidates their seats and ensured the right wingers control of the board for at least four more years. Worse, they try every which way to turn our district into another Desantis burg in Florida. From 2020 and likely before, the right wing dark money machine has extolled school board seats - once regarded as the bottom feeder of political office - as the new steppingstones to power. That should not be lost on any of us especially in a bonkers era of authoritarianism.

Let us hope the damage inflicted on schools in our district isn't irreversible and the voters who failed to use their mail ballots this time, do so next time.

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