“Too bad, Judy that they are so well meaning and exploited.” – Email dated April 28, from Tucson Unified School District Superintendent Pedicone in response to email from TUSD Board member Judy Burns in which she describes the student takeover as “pretty impressive.”
The “American Autumn,” which organizers hope will mirror the Arab Spring and the “Midwest awakening,” is scheduled to begin in Washington D.C. on October 6. The October2011.org organization “seeks to Stop the Machine and Create a New World,” and these “social justice” advocates are not above exploiting kids.
According to the October2011.org website, the following sentence describes its genesis. “Inspired by the courageous, nonviolent uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Greece, Spain, and elsewhere, people in the United States have come together to form the October2011 Movement.” Not above exploiting kids, the organizers use footage of students during the mob takeover of the TUSD School Board meeting on April 26, 2011.
Dubbed over the video of these students, the narrator says, “The tipping point is now; in fact Americans are already fighting back.” As images of the district security guards’ attempts to prevent the students from taking the dais pass by, the narrator’s voice becomes more strident saying “just and sustainable solutions are available and known, what stands in the ways of all of these solutions is concentrated corporate power. Standing against is a legion of nonviolent creative resistors demanding that money be taken away from the corporate machine and reinvested in environmental protection, human needs and a government for and by the people.”
The majority of the “students” we see who were passed off by organizers and the media as TUSD students fighting for their “precious” classes were not, in fact, TUSD students at all. Of those who were actual high school students, one did not attend TUSD schools and few would have understood that they were not rioting for money to be taken away from “the corporate machine and reinvested in environmental protection, human needs and a government for and by the people.” They were actually rioting to prevent a democratic vote by an elected school board. Why should they let inconvenient facts stand in the way of compelling propaganda?
In the hearings on the appeal by TUSD of the finding by Arizona Superintendent Huppenthal that the district’s Mexican American/Raza Studies classes violate Arizona law, top administrator John Pedicone stated that “community and national activists” exploited district students. Pedicone was questioned by the state’s attorney about who he believed were exploiting the students, he replied it was Ward Churchill and “some people at the University of Arizona.”
The truth be told, most of the activists in the takeover were associated with the University of Arizona lead by professors from the University of Arizona and “no more borders” activist Isabel Garcia of Derechos Humanos. While Ward Churchill was seen at the meeting, there is no evidence that he was actually involved in this orchestrated mob action. What Superintendent Pedicone failed to mention was that, unlike with Mr. Churchill, there is evidence that the Mexican American/Raza Studies teachers were instrumental in creating this anti-democratic action.
Observers wonder out loud who is behind this new organization. Who is paying for the slick propaganda? Since the reported agenda is so patently false, what is the real agenda of this group? How many children and other innocents will they exploit? Let’s remember that most calls to “Create a New World” have resulted in destruction and tyranny. After all, to create a new world involves the destruction of the present one. Both Hitler and Stalin used that phrase freely to describe their actions. So did the Khmer Rouge and the Sandanistas. None of them got past the destruction to create anything worthy of our admiration.