In San Francisco, Virus is Contained but Schools Are Still Closed

[RJNorton]

(03-19-2021 03:45 PM)RobertLC Wrote:  It seems to me that the problem arises when activism fuses with facts. How do we know what are the real facts and what is someone’s opinion?

Bob, your words reminded me of something my European history professor said in front of the class way back in 1964. He said, "In the course of history, truth is simply what the majority of people believe." Those words have stuck with me all these years as it was a different definition of the word truth than what I had ever heard or imagined. His definition seems inadequate to me, but maybe there's some "truth" in it? I do not know how the professor's definition matches up with the dictionary definition of truth.

[Rob Wick]

Roger, Bob, and Gene,

We all are, of course, familiar with Napoleon's trope that "History is a set of lies that people have agreed upon," While I'm not that cynical (at least I hope not) there can be little doubt that activism has been a trenchant factor in the study of American history, whether it's Parson Weems to the nationalistic school of history in the early 1900s in an attempt to inculcate patriotism in the thousands of immigrants to the study of history during the Cold War era (Communism, bad; Capitalism, good). We tend to look at the history we were taught in the schools as "the straight story" and anything that comes after that, and threatens that narrative, as revolutionary or not really history, but activism.

If one attempts to promote the 1619 Project as the final word in the study of race and slavery in America, then obviously that deserves repudiation. Yet I don't see it that way. It's an attempt to start and to steer the discussion in a new direction, and one that is more inclusive toward people who have been forgotten when it comes to our history. Think about it. How many African-Americans did you learn about in school? George Washington Carver? Maybe. Booker T. Washington? Probably. Who were the white heroes you learned about? The list is endless. And forget knowing anything about Native Americans or other minority groups.

The fact is that before American history can be considered "colorblind" it will have to go through a period of readjustment and revision. In some instances there will be overreaction and some people will use it in our never-ending culture wars that are really at the root of most of our issues. Who would have even heard of the 1619 Project if Trump hadn't brought it up and Fox hadn't promoted it as yet another example of "liberalism?"

Gene, in your world this program is a threat to the values you hold dear. I can understand that, even if I disagree with you. The genius of America is that all voices are eventually heard. Some just have to scream louder, because their voices have been silenced by a system stacked against them. The 1619 Project is not the endgame for the discussion, but rather the catalyst.

Best
Rob

[David Lockmiller]

In San Francisco, the “beachhead” battle to defend the character and reputation of President Abraham Lincoln has now been joined by Laurence H. Tribe, Esq. (Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus Harvard Law School.) On March 18, 2021, two attorneys, Paul Scott and Laurence Tribe, filed a Verified Petition for Writ of Mandate in San Francisco Superior Court on the basis of violations of the Ralph M. Brown Act, the U. S. Constitution (First and Fourteenth Amendments) and California Constitution (Article I).

Some numbered paragraphs of the twenty page filing:

1. On January 26, 2021, the San Francisco Board of Education (hereinafter “the Board”) passed Resolution 211-12A1 (“the Renaming Resolution”), declaring that 44 public schools in San Francisco would be renamed, based on allegations of racism, sexism or other forms of oppression by the historical figures after whom the schools had been named.

2. As has now been publicly acknowledged, however, the process followed by the Board in arriving at this resolution was badly flawed. Just a few of the numerous procedural and substantive errors include the following.

3. The Board adopted a resolution authorizing an advisory committee dubbed “The School Names Committee” (hereinafter “the Committee” or “the advisory committee”) to investigate the possibility of renaming San Francisco public schools. The resolution represented that this “blue ribbon” panel would be independent, have expertise suitable to the task and would not act without authority. Id. In reality, the Committee was headed by Jeremiah Jeffries, who served as Board Commissioner Mark Sanchez’s campaign manager, and who also enlisted Board President Lopez to run for her position. The Committee did not include any individuals, like historians, with the necessary expertise and it acted beyond its authority by directing schools to start looking at new names before any decision had been made by the Board to rename them.

8. On January 26, 2021, the Board passed the Renaming Resolution that is the subject of this petition. The notice provided by the Board for its January 26, 2021 vote, however, was inadequate and misleading. The agenda item associated with the renaming issue gave no indication that the Board was going to make a final decision to rename 44 San Francisco public schools in a single vote at the meeting. Indeed, the draft resolution attached to the agenda item spoke only of sanctioning a list for “potential renaming.” It was only toward the end of the meeting, and in a press release following the meeting, that the public was informed that the true import of the resolution was to make a final determination that 44 schools would be renamed with only alternative new names to be considered later.

9. The unsurprising results of this process were numerous substantive errors, public outcry, and notice by counsel for Petitioners that the Board had violated the Ralph M. Brown Act, Gov’t Code §§ 54950, et seq. (hereinafter “the Brown Act”), and Due Process.

12. In a February 25, 2021 letter, counsel for Petitioners explained these facts to the Board, explained the statutory time constraints on Petitioners to file suit for violations of the Brown Act, and exhorted the Board to comply with the law and simply repeal its unlawful Renaming Resolution, so as to avoid the time and expense of litigation for all concerned. But the Board declined to respond.

The San Francisco Court judge signed the Order on March 18 “to either vacate the Board’s Resolution 211-12A1 (“the Renaming Resolution”) adopted on January 26, 2021 and dissolve the School Renaming Committee, immediately after receipt of alternative writ of mandate or, in the alternative, to show cause before this court on May 6, 2021 why it has not done so.”

P.S. I just learned from a comment made to a story published Friday in the San Francisco Chronicle on this subject that "Professor Tribe graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School at the age of 16 in 1958."

A strange meeting of history, is it not? If he gone to a different high school in San Francisco in 1958, Professor Tribe might not have taken any interest in the case.

[Rob Wick]

I'm obviously not an attorney, but for the life of me I can't see how anyone was harmed in the renaming of any school. I predict that while circuit judges might go along with the suit, it will eventually be rejected on appeal.

Best
Rob

[Gene C]

Lets come up with some real solutions.
I suggest we change the name of schools for different kinds of trees.
Trees don't discriminate.
Trees are gender neutral.
Trees don't make mistakes.
Trees treat everyone the same.
Trees are excellent role models, something all children can look up to, especially the redwoods.
This should satisfy all the nuts and squirrels.

[Gene C]

Speaking of trees, who said this?

"Lincoln is a mighty tree. The shade he cast will endure as long as there is an American History."

[RJNorton]

(03-21-2021 03:11 PM)Gene C Wrote:  Speaking of trees, who said this?

"Lincoln is a mighty tree. The shade he cast will endure as long as there is an American History."

Gene, I will guess Reverend Dr. James Armstrong Reed in the eulogy he gave at Mary Lincoln's funeral. I know he referenced a tree (or trees), but I am blank right now on the exact wording.

[Gene C]

Sorry, that may be a correct answer, but since that's not the answer I'm looking for we can't consider it as correct.

(I learned that from the House and Senate Investigative Committee Policy and Procedures Manual)

[David Lockmiller]

(03-20-2021 06:38 PM)Rob Wick Wrote:  I'm obviously not an attorney, but for the life of me I can't see how anyone was harmed in the renaming of any school. I predict that while circuit judges might go along with the suit, it will eventually be rejected on appeal.

Best
Rob

A Poisoned Process - Constitutional Scholar Says School Renaming Effort Lost Credibility

Courthouse News Service by MARIA DINZEO March 19, 2021

The San Francisco school board is on the ropes after a judge ordered it to vacate a resolution scrubbing 44 public schools of their historical namesakes, or explain why it should not be compelled to do so.

It’s uncommon for a judge to rule so quickly, as public school alumni groups and the San Francisco Taxpayers Association just filed their petition seeking the decision’s repeal on the grounds that it was done without due process.

In an interview Friday, attorney and constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe said the order from Judge Ethan Schulman bolstered his conviction that the petitioners he represents have a strong case that the school board’s renaming process was unlawful.

“It vindicated my sense that this is an extremely strong and unambiguously correct case,” he said. “That’s why I wanted to become involved, because I thought the issues were so important.”

The board’s 6-1 vote raised an outcry from parents and alumni who said the process was conducted by fiat through a committee that excluded dissenting voices and did not allow for a properly-noticed public hearing on the individual schools. The petitioners believe this to be a violation of the Brown Act, California’s open meetings law.

“The whole process was poisoned from the beginning,” Tribe said.

A Harvard Law School professor emeritus who has argued innumerable cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, Tribe said this case piqued his interest for several reasons.
“One of them is I’m very interested in the issue of how to achieve racial justice in a world where all sorts of things have been named after racists and Confederate soldiers, and much of that renaming happened not at the time of the Civil War, but as part of the opposition to racial progress in the 1960s,” he said. “So I’m not one of those people who say you should never take down a Robert E. Lee statue.”

The issue is also personal for Tribe, a San Francisco native who graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School.

“As a member of the Lincoln High School alumni association, I naturally heard about how it was going to lose its name— and not through some well-reasoned, legally structured process, but through an impulsive, irrational, arbitrary decision that Lincoln doesn’t deserve to be seen as a Great Emancipator but some kind of racist,” he said. “I took it personally. I thought a lot of other people, graduates of a lot of other schools would take personally the idea of being told the name of the school they identified themselves with was being labeled racist, or exploitative of workers. Names carry a lot of weight.”

Tribe added that he also follows local government closely because “with national government being so dysfunctional, state and local government is where all the important action needs to happen in the next quarter century.”

“When the reputation of the Great Emancipator is under attack without due process of law, who better to lend a hand in his defense than the foremost constitutional scholar of our day?” said Paul Scott, a local attorney who is also representing the petitioners.

The lawsuit has raised the question of whether petitioners have standing to challenge the board’s decision on constitutional grounds. Tribe said the petitioners do have standing to bring the case.

“One of the fields I’m most expert in is standing and there’s no question that under California law, anybody who has a beneficial interest, who isn’t a mere stranger to the action but is affected in some particular way, through personal identification or otherwise, can seek an alternative writ of mandate to require a government agency to perform its ministerial duty,” Tribe said. “I’ve no question whatsoever that the petitioners have standing, and anyone who thinks otherwise is ignorant of California law.”

The burden is now on the school board and the San Francisco Unified School District to either comply with Schulman’s order, or present a case for why it hasn’t done so at a hearing set for May 6.

Tribe said the country’s racial reckoning is too important to address in a slipshod manner, and believes the sloppy handling of the renaming issue cost the school board and district dearly. While there are certainly schools that should be renamed, he said, the loss of credibility will make effort even harder.

“If the rule of law is something we can toss aside, people will not have confidence in the fairness of the process,” Tribe said. “Now the attempt to rename particular schools is going to be way uphill because the process has been poisoned.”

Tribe said Schulman’s ruling doesn’t mean the case is over, “but the judge indicated that he understands and is persuaded by the points we made. I’d treat that as handwriting on the wall if I were the respondents.”

[Rob Wick]

David,

I don't know how to break it to you, but lawyers always say that about their cases. What matters is what a judge or jury says. I wouldn't bet the family beer supply on what an advocate for one side tells the press.

Best
Rob

[RJNorton]

(03-21-2021 05:22 PM)Gene C Wrote:  Sorry, that may be a correct answer, but since that's not the answer I'm looking for we can't consider it as correct.

(I learned that from the House and Senate Investigative Committee Policy and Procedures Manual)

Gene, I shall now guess William Herndon.

I found what I was thinking of in Reverend Reed's eulogy:

"When among the Allegheny mountains last summer, I saw two tall and stately pines standing on a rocky ledge, where they, had grown so closely together as to be virtually united at the base, their interlocking roots entering the same rock cavities, and penetrating the same soil. There they had stood for years with intertwining branches and interlocking roots, braving in noble fellowship the mountain storms. But the taller of the two had, years before, been struck by a flash of lightning, that had gone to its very roots, shattering it from top to bottom, and leaving it scarred and dead.

The other, apparently uninjured, had survived for some years, but it was evident from the appearance of its leaves that it, too, was now quite dead. It had lingered in fellowship with its dead companion, but the shock was too much for it. In their sympathetic fellowship and union, both trees had suffered from the same calamity. They had virtually both been killed at the same time. With the one that lingered, it was only slow death from the same cause. So it seems to me today, that we are only at death placing his seal upon the lingering victim of a past calamity."

[Gene C]

Roger,

According the Bypass Policy and Skip the Procedures Partisan Subcommittee, after a behind closed doors emergency meeting, special counsel has advised that your answer can be accepted.

Besides, we liked your quote better. My quote was from the introduction of "Lincoln Talks" by Emanuel Hertz

[RJNorton]

The Bypass Policy and Skip the Procedures Partisan Subcommittee rules!!

[David Lockmiller]

(03-21-2021 10:59 PM)Rob Wick Wrote:  David,

I don't know how to break it to you, but lawyers always say that about their cases. What matters is what a judge or jury says. I wouldn't bet the family beer supply on what an advocate for one side tells the press.

Best
Rob

Did you and I read the same article?

"It’s uncommon for a judge to rule so quickly, as public school alumni groups and the San Francisco Taxpayers Association just filed their petition seeking the decision’s repeal on the grounds that it was done without due process."

In other words, the judge who would be hearing the case did not wait too long before issuing the proposed order directed to the San Francisco Board of Education.

I know that your opinion is that "it [the case] will eventually be rejected on appeal."

But, according to the article, the opinion of Professor Laurence H. Tribe, Esq. (Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus Harvard Law School.) is that "the judge indicated that he understands and is persuaded by the points we made. I’d treat that as handwriting on the wall if I were the respondents.”

You admit that you are not a lawyer.

Paul Scott, a local attorney who is also representing the petitioners, said “When the reputation of the Great Emancipator is under attack without due process of law, who better to lend a hand in his defense than the foremost constitutional scholar of our day?”

In the end, I would be willing to bet that the character and reputation of President Abraham Lincoln will win this contest . . . and I would be willing to give odds.

---

(03-22-2021 07:13 AM)Gene C Wrote:  Roger,

According the Bypass Policy and Skip the Procedures Partisan Subcommittee, after a behind closed doors emergency meeting, special counsel has advised that your answer can be accepted.

Besides, we liked your quote better. My quote was from the introduction of "Lincoln Talks" by Emanuel Hertz

Quoting from "Lincoln Talks" by Emanuel Hertz, without verification, is against the rules.

Don't you remember that time:

03-08-2019, 05:35 PMPost: #3303
David Lockmiller Online
Legendary Member

RE: Extra Credit Questions

I regret to inform the readers of the recent portion of this thread on Tad Lincoln and his father’s parental lessons that two of the stories that I have posted and attributed to Thomas Pendel in his book Thirty-Six Years in the White House are not true and not valid. Gene sent me a private message and informed me that Lincoln, Stanton, and Tad water hose incident was not in this work. He checked Internet Archives. I regret the mistakes and I apologize.

The two stories that I typed out from Emanuel Hertz’s book Lincoln Talks and attributed to Thomas Pendel are not valid. Pendel writes in his Preface to the book: “I have endeavored in my Recollections to relate only such events as appear to be worthy of preservation.” Since the two Pendel stories that I have posted on the “Stanton” and the “secret knocking code” incidents are not actually in this book, it is highly unlikely that either story is true.

However, I still believe in President Lincoln’s parenting philosophy as stated in the book Giant in the Shadows: The Life of Robert T. Lincoln by Jason Emerson at page 9: “It is my pleasure that my children are free, happy and unrestrained by parental tyranny. Love is the chain whereby to lock [or bind] a child to his parents.”

[Rob Wick]

David,

Unlike you I am not awed by credentials. There is no question that Laurence Tribe is well-known and very qualified, but that doesn't mean anything to a judge or jury. I have covered dozens of trials during my newspaper career, and I saw some very smart lawyers lose cases they swore would be a cakewalk. Your constant use of the "protect and defend the reputation of Lincoln" is silly and not a legal question. It's a matter of opinion, which is not actionable.

Best
Rob