Open letter to the editors and news directors,

the people whose fist pounds the table last when decisions are made about investigating and reporting upon the APS.

A complaint has been filed in United States District Court against the school board collectively, individual members specifically, and three individual administrators.  Depending upon when the process service reaches them, they may be unaware they are being sued.

My complaint is; they have denied my right to speak freely and petition my government, and they have denied me due process in reversing their denial.

The government has the power and the authority to limit speech, i.e. yelling fire in a theater.

The government's authority to limit free speech is narrowly defined.  They cannot, for example, limit my speech by exercising prior restraint; they can't keep me from speaking because of what they think I am going to say.

They cannot limit my free speech based because of its content.  They cannot limit my free speech because they don't like what I'm saying, or more importantly, the questions I am asking.

They cannot limit my speech in retaliation for what I have said or written before, both in board meetings and on my blog.

The process they use to limit my speech, is an unlawful restraining order enforced by an unaccredited and un-certified publicly funded private police force, in violation of my right to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment.

APS' defense is to build a case that I am not worthy to complain about their treatment of me.  That I have done, and continue to do, things that are so reprehensible, that I have forfeited my right to speak freely to them, and to petition them for redress of my several legitimate grievances.

Everything I have done, everything they accuse me of doing, has happened at meetings that APS was recording, or could have recorded if they had chosen to.  Their cameras are conveniently turned off when they would otherwise be recording evidence of public corruption and incompetence.  Before believing I did something wrong, ask for the record, ask why there is no record.

I was a teacher for 25 years.  For about eight of them, I was a trainer of trainers, for APS' Character Counts! program.  I took role modeling seriously.  I still do.

There is nothing I have done, nothing they allege was so unacceptable, that I would not do again and in front of those students.   I am not ashamed of my record in front of the board and senior administration; I am proud of it.  I would wear the elephant mask again, I would hold up the posters again,  I would subject myself to more than a dozen arrests again, without a moment's hesitation.

Before printing or broadcasting any of their allegations or slander, ask to see the tape, ask to hear the audio that was recorded.  I didn't disrupt their meetings, they did.

They will try to make this about the messenger, and not about the ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS;

• the cover up of felony criminal misconduct by senior APS administrators
• the denial of due process to whistleblower complaints filed against administrators and board members
• the refusal to surrender a candid, forthright and honest accounting of spending at 6400 Uptown Blvd
• their ongoing refusal to publish audit findings on their website,
• their abdication from the obligations of the senior-most role models of the student standards of conduct

They are using an armed private police force to stifle; lawful, Constitutionally protected dissent.

The leadership of the APS will drag a red herring across the trail; me, my credibility, my character, my reputation.

Mahatma Gandhi wrote;

First they ignore you,
then they ridicule you,
then they fight you,
then you win.

They will try to destroy the messenger; ridicule me to the point where I will give up rather than suffer more of their slander. They will try to chill whistle blowing in general, as potential whistle blowers see what happens to people to expose corruption and incompetence.

To the extent you repeat their slander, in especially if you do not look at, listen to, and link to, the public record of the incident, you aid and abet them.

This is about the message, it not about the messenger.

The case, filed in the United States District Court for the District of New Mexico is numbered, 1:12-cv-01137

You can read it here, link.