Yesterday the Arkansas State Board of Education voted to return control of the Little Rock School District to the people of Little Rock. This followed massive demonstrations and demands by the citizenry. At the same meeting, the board voted unanimously to deny recognition to the Little Rock Educators Association, which represents 60% of the teachers in the district.

Rev/Dr. Anika Whitfield, an activist in Grassroots Arkansas, was outraged by the latter decision. She is a podiatrist and an ordained minister. For her volunteer fight for public schools and democracy, she is one of the heroes in my new book SLAYING GOLIATH.

She wrote the following response to the board’s stripping of the teachers’ right to join as a union.

October 10, 2019 will be a day marked in Arkansas history as the enslavement of LRSD teachers and educators, a day when democracy and liberation was denied to them.
 
The Auditorium in the Arkansas Department of Education was overflowing with concerned community members from the LRSD.  People who took leave from work to lend their voices for a people’s democracy to a nine member board appointed by a republic/empire run by billionaires and millionaires who maintain their wealth primarily from the economy of persons who earn the lowest compensation.  With the help of Gov. Asa Hutchinson, the Walton Family Foundation, Stephen’s, Inc. and Walter Hussman have been siphoning money from the people in our state who are the most vulnerable, our children.  And, to add insult to injury, they are targeting our children who primarily come from homes were their families are the lowest income earners in our state. The wealthy are maintaining their riches by stealing from the poor.  This a model of capitalism that traces back to the origins of this nation that we call the United States of America. 
 
Yesterday, we witnessed the nine appointed members of the state board of education unanimously remove the collective bargaining power of teachers and educators.  Their coup of sorts was made deliverable through a myriad of chaotic twists and turns of the worst type of confusion and violations of Robert’s Rules of Order.  And, after reflecting on the manner in which the state board of education directors conducted themselves on yesterday, it has become more evident that their goal was to be deceitful and underhanded, to ward off any opportunities for the public to call their hand and stop their votes. 
 
Dr. Sarah Moore, one of the nine appointed directors of the Arkansas State Board of Education, who worked as a Doctoral Academy Fellow at the Office of Education Policy (funded by the Walton Family Foundation) at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, made the initial motion to no longer recognize the Little Rock Educators Association (LREA) at the end of their call meeting on September 27, 2019. Yesterday, Atty Chad Pekron, who was appointed by Gov. Asa Hutchinson to the state board of education in July 2019, made and rescinded two or three motions to overturn, table, and then to vote on Dr. Moore’s tabled motion from the September 27th meeting.
 
After all of the smoke was clear, and the confusion was never resolved, the public realized that the state board of education voted to unanimously deny the Little Rock school teachers and educators the recognition of their union.  What a sad day in Little Rock and in Arkansas history. Justice, Liberation, Equity and Democracy continue to be lawfully denied by the Empire of the Republic of wealth, greed, and fear that is being unjustifiably marketed as a great America.