Readin’, Writin’, Rantin’

The Rant says: The Revolution will be spelled correctly, because here in Oklahoma, the teachers have walked. Fed up with ten years of the systematic gutting of public education by the state legislature, they finally said enough. How bad is it? People are moving to Arkansas for better schools. Arkansas.

Can we please stop spinning the wholesale destruction of access to a better life by denying that making the rich even richer benefits anyone but the rich? Not about smaller government; not about fiscal responsibility; not about self-achievement. All about denying education to maintain a cheap, uninformed pool of labor for business; all about no individual and family safety nets to fund ever-expanding corporate welfare; all about demonizing, then incarcerating, anyone that doesn’t say thank-you for the beat-down.

The Rant works with many teacher and education organizations, and the dawning realization by many of them this year that children and the poor have value has been nothing but empty rhetoric by politicians and lobbyists bent on structuring a society that ensures their ever-lasting power and sway has been a wonder to behold.

If money is free speech, then our bodies and minds and skills are too, because that constitutes our capital. And we can express that speech by withholding all of them until all sides agree to an equitable arrangement that does not require our exploitation and humiliation just to survive.

Since so many of our legislators are fond of quoting the Bible from the floor, we’ll give you a verse to ponder: “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.”