Brainerd High principal offers wake-up call to Tea Party

[d_r]

Source: Chattanooga Times Free Press

Brainerd High Principal Charles Joynes offered a stern wake-up call to a group of self-described "white guys" Thursday night when he spoke to the Chattanooga Tea Party.

"What if you had been born to a single mother in the Harriet Tubman projects?" he asked. "If it were not for the grace of God, that could be you."

After his speech in the Century Club Banquet Hall on Harrison Pike, the whole room gave the inner-city principal a standing ovation, and some men put wads of cash in Joynes' hands afterward. They told him to use it for the students at Brainerd, for the ones who didn't have a cap and gown to graduate, for the ones who can't afford the field trips or the sports equipment.

"I'm just a white guy," said Tony Rubik, a Bakewell resident. "I don't know a lot about the black community. But I'm going to find out now what I can do."

Read more: http://timesfreepress.com/news/2012/apr/20/principal-offers-wake-up-call-to-tea-party/

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[annabanana]

1. This guy sounds like one hell of a motivational speaker! . . .n/t

[liberalmike27]

4. Interesting

Trying to activate the empathy and imagination, two things that seem to be obliterated by racism, and general anger.

[freshwest]

10. +1,000

[marshall gaines]

2. wads of cash?????

please.

[Ruby the Liberal]

23. I don't get this post.

So they gave the man cash for caps/gowns and sporting equipment for the kids who can't afford it.

Why is that a problem?

[marshall gaines]

27. I hate the teabaggers

Wouldn't take a dime from the racist snakes! that's the problem.

[Ruby the Liberal]

28. So if a bunch of good old boys were motivated

to give hard earned cash to an inner city school so that they could have the "luxuries" of a suburban school, you would shit on them as soon as look at them?

[marshall gaines]

32. yep

I'd find another way to get the money for the kids . Never take money from a known evil, no matter what the motivation. I stand by that.

[calimary]

29. I hate them, too, but hey - anything that extracts money from them means

they have less to give to kkkarl rove's group or mitt the dog abuser or one of their fellow teabaggers running for local office.

[drm604]

3. Interesting.

I don't know anything about the Chattanooga Tea Party but if this article is accurate, they seem to be open to learning. Are they atypical?

[DCKit]

5. I think someone on OUR team made the Kool-Aide that night. nt

[SunSeeker]

6. Charles Joynes should be our Secretary of Education.

The bureaucrat we have now inspires no one. It's all about winning hearts and minds, people.

[Alcibiades]

8. +1

It's like making the football coach the principal. It may be popular, but a winning record on the field doesn't mean you know how to run a school.

[qb]

7. First Duluth... now Brainerd? Northern Minnesota is really showing us how to handle race relations!

K&R
Duluth: http://unfaircampaign.org

[RZM]

11. This happened in Tennessee

Something tells me Brainerd, Minn. does not have a 'Harriet Tubman Projects.'

[NickB79]

16. Just hang a left at the 40 ft tall statue of Paul Bunyan

If you pass the 10-ton blue ox, you've gone too far.

[qb]

33. Aww. At least there's still Duluth.

[CottonBear]

22. Brainerd is part of the Greater Chattanooga, TN metro area. n/t

[freshwest]

35. I've only gone through Chattanooga on my way to D.C. IDK what significance his location has.

Is it a GOP area, is that what you're saying?

And the time I went through there it was much different, no doubt. It was 1972.

[freshwest]

9. 'But for the grace of God' has always been my view. Even when people want to heap on someone else

And I catch hell from them for not going along with the mob of holier-than-thou's. This man made an excellent point that should be used to bring people together. Great thread, thanks for this one.

[tk2kewl]

12. Yes. It was certainly taught to me by my parents and church as a kid.

[freshwest]

13. It's a reminder we are all born equal, eligible to be hurt, needing help, no matter who we are.

[tk2kewl]

17. I sometimes wonder if that is part of why pugs want to make conception the beginning

Last edited Fri Apr 20, 2012, 03:10 PM - Edit history (1)

of life rather than birth...

sure you are all "created" equal, but after birth, meh

[freshwest]

19. It's their clumsy interpretation. Admittedly, human life does begin at conception.

Even though the zygote turns into that embryo we've all seen the stages of it going through, which look like an amphibian, we know what the end result could be.

Their insistence on this plays into that logic, acting as if they are saving human life, but they even qualify the value of that life prior to conception. They certainly don't care about the babies of blacks or browns, not even the Chinese when they had the one-child rule, which they went so far as to force abortions of the last month to keep population down.

While the GOP was mewling on about partial-birth abortions in the Congress, grossing everyone out, they had nothing to say about the GOP's BFFs in China. When it was brought up that their principles were unequally applied, they refused to discuss it. One of their mouthpieces, Pat Robertson, said that abortion in China was different somehow.

So much for principles and the science of conception.

Buchanan argued that abortion was a plot (by Jews, probably, don't really want to delve into the cesspool to get the quote) to reduce a white majority and right wing evangelicals echoed that. Even Farrakhan made mention of the fact that white racism was based on the discoveries of Europeans traveling the world in their ships and finding that white people were in truth, a minority. So they had to find a way to keep their position above the other races or be helpless. But we can skip those guys.

Their deeds speak louder than their words. They don't believe in paying for those babies or their parents to be healthy, nor what happens after birth. They appear to be going the Dominionist line, about keeping the wombs under control, not for protecting life, but for making future populations for future wars.

[Dogtown]

34. "Admittedly, human life does begin at conception."

With that "admission" you lose all credibility.

[Skittles]

18. I detest that quote

implies god simply fucked over the less fortunate

[tk2kewl]

20. i find it to be saying "life is a crap shoot" or "you play the hand you're delt"

but i hear you

[freshwest]

21. Call it luck then. For those who are religious, it brings humility. They are often the most judging.

It forces them to emphathize, and that was why he used it in his example, as it is very effective. You can say luck of the draw or chance of fate to remove the reference.

Because one born in one place or of one color is not superior to another. One is not more special for being born in America or being born in Africa. The color of one's skin does not determine one's behavior.

This is the trap of labeling and an old way of dividing human beings. Flags, uniforms, skin color, the piece of dirt on this globe which was only separated by oceans and mountains and rivers, they are human ideas. No animal rejects its offspring based on these false notions.

We should not either. Whether the concept of a god is offensive to someone, is not the issue I'm going for and I don't think the OP is, either. My interpretation of that phrase is what I think most believers don't actually think of, but perhaps they do.

We leave things beyond our comprehension and power to control to something else, call it god or time or chance or fate. In other words, not under our control, thus not our choice, not our fault.

The man in the OP was bringing to those teabaggers the idea that they 'were eligible' to be in a socially stigmatized position, in a bad place, by accident, fate, god, what have you. That's all I'm saying.

During the Carter Administration, rules and regulation and laws were passed prohibiting discrimination based on place of origin, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and the like. That was part of a general drive for treating all people and living beings with equal respect, with conscious empathy and the basis of the EEOC, NLRB, OSHA, EPA, and ESA, etc.

Since Reagan, the push has been to divide and eliminate that feeling of conscience toward other people and life in general. Although I have some qualms about cheering a man who went to speak to the Tea Party, I remember the words of Lincoln:

“I destroy my enemy when I make him my friend."

Half the hell Obama gets, is for doing just that.

Are we cool, Skittles, or are you going to take me to woodshed?

[Zookeeper]

30. I always phrase it as "An accident of birth."

As in, no one gets to choose the circumstances of her/his birth: family, race, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic group, neighborhood or country. The wing-nuts *hate* having that pointed out, in my experience, when it suggests that the Rich are seldom successful solely because of innate talent, intelligence, skill or motivation. And the disadvantaged are seldom poor for a lack of those traits. (One RWer actually said that expression made him feel like hurting "someone.&quot

As in, Dubya and Mittens: A couple of guys that might have managed a car wash or burgerdoodle, if not for an accident of birth. (No offense to managers of either type of business.)

[DisgustipatedinCA]

14. Can't we just...take care of the Tea Party...in Brainerd? (Buscemi, Fargo) n/t

.

[BeGoodDoGood]

15. I grew up in Chattanooga

Brainerd is not "inner city". It's well away from the city center. It used to be the Brainerd Rebels. I remember when they had a drill team that used confederate flags. That was in the late '60's.

Walt

[d_r]

25. There are outskirt houses still in Brainerd

Last edited Fri Apr 20, 2012, 09:02 PM - Edit history (1)

but Brainerd high is a predominantly poor black school. Well away from the "city center" now is Ooletewah. Things move since the 60s. In the "City center" townhouses and condos costs millions of dollars now.

http://edu.reportcard.state.tn.us/pls/apex/f?p=200:1:2733493022125439::NO:::

Brainerd High:
96.3% African-American, > 95% economically disadvantaged


Also, this is Brainerd, not East Brainerd - so right outside the missionary ridge tunnel

[Ruby the Liberal]

24. This thread is awesome.

Thanks for finding this. k&r

[d_r]

26. I think there are a lot of good people in the world

it is good when people can communicate and learn about each other and get beyond their stereotypes. That statements goes in all directions.

[goclark]

31. Fantastic!