Benjamin Franklin: “Force shites upon reason's back.”

By which he meant I think; if the demands of Reason and Power conflict, Power prevails. It is true, still.

In what must be among the oddest of ironies, the laws supposed to protect us from the abuse of power, do not apply to the powerful.

Next Thursday night, the APS School Board Policy Committee is going to rewrite its Policy on the Public Forum. They will rewrite the rules to legitimize their previous misconduct; to dodge accountability for violating their own policies, and to limit the exercise of free speech.

The record shows deliberate and repeated misrepresentation of the truth. They have removed the public forum from their agenda, and from the public record. No longer can a stakeholder speak on the record, except to a pre-approved issue. It makes the public forum meaningless. It ignores the obligations of a “Public Forum”. It is an assault on free speech. It defies reason.

If I am allowed to speak, I will reason that they can not dodge accountability by suppressing free speech; and yet they will anyway. Because, “power shites on the back of reason.”

And nobody will know what they have done, except the people in the room.


Update: I was not allowed to speak at either meeting. I was not allowed to speak despite the board policy requirement to follow Robert's Rules of Order. I was in fact escorted out of both meetings by uniformed members of APS' Praetorian Guard. It was not reported by the media who witnessed the dispute.