Policy wonk extraordinaire Jeff Kohut, 2011 mayoral candidate, claims the defeat of last Tuesday’s ballot question designed for Mayor Bill Finch to appoint school board members has lifted voters from their slumber. That sounds like a major stretch, but Kohut raises a question worthy of debate. The irony in all of this is the local ballot question was decided by presidential voters who don’t participate in local elections. They are the brain-dead voters who only come out for presidential elections with no clue how local government impacts their lives. And so it goes. Tuesday’s defeated ballot question would likely have achieved a different result in lower turnout cycles better controlled by Finch’s political operation. Commentary from Kohut:
The people of Bridgeport owe much to the allied proponents of education reform and charter revision who are responsible for the July 5, 2011 Board of Education “coup” and the follow-up charter revision initiative. Those persons/entities particularly deserving of our thanks in this regard are: Mayor Bill Finch; Governor Dannel Malloy; “education-reform” groups Excel Bridgeport and Students First; the plutocratic “education missionaries” (from the Connecticut Gold Coast, and beyond) who sent money and advisers to Bridgeport City Hall to assist in the aforementioned strategy/tactics to “rescue” the Bridgeport public school system from the Bridgeport public.
Indeed, those responsible for the orchestration and execution of the grand (now-failed) plot to usurp the democratic prerogative of the people of Bridgeport to govern their own public school system have succeeded in awakening the 100,000-strong Bridgeport electorate. (While we have never had 100,000 registered voters, or anywhere near 100% voter participation, as the full implications of the November 6 charter revision defeat reverberate through the city, both numbers will be a possibility in future elections. November 6, 2012 was a seminal moment for the City of Bridgeport.)
As it will be recalled, the plot was hatched during the Connecticut gubernatorial election of 2010 by Gold Coast hedge-fund-connected operatives with ties to Bridgeport mayor Bill Finch and then-gubernatorial candidate Dannel Malloy, of Stamford (both, self-proclaimed “education reformers”) who, together, conspired between November 2010 and July 2011 to legally decommission the Bridgeport Board of Education and replace it with a state-appointed board, answerable to Governor Dannel Malloy and the Connecticut Commissioner of Education. This part of the plot was accomplished in a July 5, 2011 “coup” following a flurry of clandestine City Hall-Hartford activity over the Fourth-of-July-weekend. The completion of the plot was to have occurred on November 6, 2012, when a deceitfully presented charter revision referendum item on the Bridgeport election ballot was to have passed, negating the right of the people of Bridgeport to elect the Board of Education, and instead giving Mayor Bill Finch the right to appoint and control the Bridgeport school board and its $300 million budget.
However (thankfully!), as surely as there is a God who protects the people of Bridgeport from the kind of tyrants and oppressors from which so many of us and our parents and grandparents fled in coming to Bridgeport, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled the July 5th coup illegal, and the charter revision initiative was soundly defeated in the November 6, Bridgeport election despite massive spending on propaganda and ground operations by the education “reformers” of the “education-industrial complex” who drove the effort from the inception (in an effort to secure a strategic, high-profile foothold in the highly lucrative, private-education-services market represented by struggling, urban public school systems).
In deciphering an accurate context for consideration of the implications of this Bridgeport-based political drama, it must be appreciated that the bigger picture of what culminated in Bridgeport on November 6, 2012 isn’t the incredible victory accomplished by the unlikely, unprecedented, unified effort of the disparate political factions of Bridgeport in the defeat of the big guns behind the charter revision initiative, it is in the discovery by the people of Bridgeport that they have (enormous) power in numbers if they choose to wield it.
It is in this discovery that the sleeping giant of Connecticut politics–the Bridgeport Electorate–has finally been aroused from its long dormancy. It is in this discovery that true prosperity will be able to return to Bridgeport in time to rescue the present generation of Bridgeport youth.
Now that we have all seen what can happen when Bridgeporters are driven to action by tyrannical measures, we can immediately begin to take the necessary steps to expose and address the ubiquitous tyranny and hegemony from within (and beyond) the Connecticut plutocracy (the Gold Coast/affluent suburbs) that has caused Bridgeport to become and remain a poor, violent, hopeless city surrounded by idyllic comfort and affluence sustained by Bridgeport’s poverty.
It was “education” that was ostensibly pursued on Bridgeport’s behalf by the plutocrats and exploiters; now it will be an “educated” Bridgeport with which the plutocrats and exploiters will have to contend, as we demand–through our superior electoral numbers–the good jobs and high-value development needed to return justice to the long-exploited people of Bridgeport.
Gold Coast/Hartford, be on notice! The Sleeping Giant has been awakened!
Here’s an interesting concept … all of the “YES” proponents who coughed and hacked up money for their “ideals” and education reform, the hospitals, the Arena, the politicians, businesses, hedge funders … everyone, should also show their loyalty and interest by donating the same amount of money every year!
The “NO” voters, THE SAME!
Now, let’s get out there all you involved, altruistic education fans … and take down all the YES and NO signs that are everywhere …
Perhaps all of the local institutions and persons with altruistic and philanthropic motives regarding education of Bridgeport youth might consider some two-handed giving? Along with your check payable to a foundation to be set up to fund extra school projects not currently in the budget, please volunteer at least one hour per week, to read to a class, mentor a youth, or tutor in a subject of your expertise. If you are a parent, please be sure you spend as much time with your own children reviewing their school day, homework and extra reading as some of the YES backers did telling the rest of us it was about the kids and other ‘truth stretchers.’ If you do not have kids, attend some of our City Council and CC committee meetings to keep an idea on the level of public discussion. Who will focus on educating the electorate in a broad and fair-minded way on civic duty? Time will tell.
Along with “un’s” such as “unlikely, unprecedented and unified” ought to be added “unremarkable,” given the amount of money spent to try to convince an essentially conservative electorate (I include the black community in this) that they should give up their right to vote.
The supporters of the yes vote spent a staggering amount of money in a local election to push this through. They flopped.
Next case.
It is time for another charter revision … one that will give city voters the right to recall the Mayor … are you listening state legislators? We don’t want to wait three years to remove Finch!
JML … if I’ve seen and read everything correctly about the Finch administration, or more accurately Mayor Finch, his actions prove stronger than his words, which makes him, and his administration, totally … transparent!
*** More like a sleeping “ZOMBIE,” no! ***