Marshall High School Now Welcomes Political Displays

I was sent the following post from Marshall Michigan’s Marshall Public School Board of Education’s Facebook page:

"On behalf of the MPS Board of Education:

We are aware that a partially completed sign with the phrase Black Lives Matter was put on a window in the Marshall High School Cafeteria last week as part of a student project. The project has now been completed as part of a larger message designed by the students and which includes inspirational quotes along with information and statistics about the disproportionate impact of police actions on members of the Black community.

The sign borrows a phrase that has become common across the country and does not necessarily represent a particular organization. The intent of the student project was to start a dialogue and encourage students to think critically by illustrating the reality out of which the statement was created through reporting of objective facts and data.

The slogan Black Lives Matter is a means of calling attention to the facts and data that unequivocally illustrate the disproportionate impact of police violence on Black citizens. The slogan does not diminish the value of other lives but rather calls for Black lives to matter as much as those other lives do. The specific purpose of the statement here is to draw attention to those facts.

The statement will make some feel uncomfortable. For others, it reflects the reality that doing or saying the wrong thing at the wrong time can cost them their lives. The student creators are hoping the dialogue will encourage a discussion about what we can collectively do to bend the arc toward empathy, understanding, and compassion.

Some community members have asserted that different political perspectives have been discouraged in the past. We are examining our policies on those issues and those claims carefully. We encourage our students, faculty and staff to continue to engage in civic debate on the issues they feel passionate about. Going forward, efforts to engage in civil discourse by all sides will be encouraged and dialogue about these issues will be embraced.

The MPS Board of Education is meeting on Monday February 22, 2021, at 7:00 p.m. On behalf of the Board of Education, I encourage anyone who is willing to speak and to listen about these issues to participate in public comment. As a board we look forward to the dialogue.

Respectfully,   

Richard Lindsey, President, MPS Board of Education"

I am all for open dialogue on any topic that advances people’s thoughts and is appropriate for the age group to which the message is being targeted to.

My concern is it appears the school and the school board do not appear to understand that the Black Lives Matter (BLM) group they support is a very politically charged group, or perhaps they do.  A political group founded by Patrisse Cullors who has described herself and fellow co-founder, Alicia Garza, as “trained Marxists”.  These trained Marxists spoke on their website disparaging the “Western-prescribed nuclear family structure until the end of September last year as reported by the New York Post. Has anyone ever asked why they stripped that from their website?  Have they disavowed that goal or given up on it?

Specifically, the BLM site used to state:

“We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable”

I believe it is a fair question to ask if this is what the Marshall Public Schools and their Board agree with or believe in.  Being educators they should know that a central tenet of Marxism is the dismantling of the “nuclear family structure.”

Have they seen the “peaceful” protest that have been staged by Black Lives Matter groups such as the one in Washington D.C. where they surrounded diners on the street and yelled in their face and intimated a woman?  Or when a BLM mob in Portland Oregon beat a white man unconscious?

Have the teachers and school board members looked at the real statistics of police shooting unarmed black people or the number of encounters police have with people of color commensurate to the crime rates?

If all of the points I made and proved above will be part of their discussion then go for it.  As long as everyone is able to speak within any discussion within a classroom and teachers or discussion groups speak to all sides of the issue then that is fair game.

The true test to determine how fair the school and school board are comes when they allow all political and religious groups to paint their murals to be placed on the windows of the cafeteria.

Will the school and school board allow the following slogans:

• Blue Lives Matter
• All Lives Matter
• Babies In The Womb Matter
• Jesus’s Life Mattered
• Gun Rights Matter
• Freedom Of Speech Matter
• Republican/Conservatives Lives Matter
• And the big one: Trump’s Life Matters

When a school accepts public tax dollars it must allow all speech to be spoken and painted wherever you put the ones they favor.

I am 100% in favor of free speech so let the painting stay and start painting all the other issues that the students want to discuss.

Sounds fair to me, how about you?

If you would like to be heard in the public comment portion of tonight's (Feb 22nd) Marshall School Board meeting, you have to fill out a Public Comment Request Form and can do so by clicking here.  Once you fill it out, login information for access to the Zoom meeting will be sent to you.   After the comment portion is concluded, citizens need to view the rest of the meeting on YouTube by clicking on this link.