There is an emerging theme among Little Rock public school advocates that all that shouting last week was in fact positive, an indication of unity and a sign of hope, indeed a vital component of a solution.
Both local state senators, Joyce Elliott and Will Bond, counseled me not to be so despairing in my tone in telephone calls to them last week.
What might have looked like chaos and dysfunction, they advised, was instead vital community expression of the burning desire and need for the city's schools to be returned by the state to local control.
Ali Noland, a dedicated and insightful young mother and lawyer, wrote a guest online piece for the Arkansas Times saying the press had missed the story, mistaking hostile expression for a lack of vital unity.
Indeed, what we in the business call spot-news coverage of single events often will miss by definition the broader context. Ideally, you'd have columnists and editorialists and special takeouts for that.
A spot-news report will necessarily give prominent mention to an African American judge, Wendell Griffen, publicly labeling public school practices in the community "white supremacy," and getting mildly challenged on that point for a lack of helpfulness by a liberal senator, the aforementioned Bond, and then telling the mildly challenging liberal senator, respectfully, that he, being white, didn't have the experience and ensuing perspective needed to pass that judgment.
There was a treasure trove of context wrapped up in that exchange. You had the noted sitting African American judge (and preacher) who remains bound and determined to behave as an activist at the same time, though it galls much of the legal and judicial community. You had a liberal senator not running again who was taking a chance to challenge the bellicose judge, not on his point, but its helpfulness. You had the growing divide that exists in Little Rock between black activism and white liberal activism.
A fuller perspective on all that must entail the view of the other liberal local state senator, Joyce Elliott, who is African American. She has said that honest dialogue is essential, and that well-meaning white people must get over their hurt feelings or defensiveness when black people express the simple truth that neglectful policies are in part to blame for the inordinate pain from poorly performing schools felt in black neighborhoods.
Despite that disconnection between black activists and white progressives, Noland wrote in her guest article that at least 90 percent of the anger expressed in public meetings last week represented unified local expression of frustration with--I'd say disdain for--the state government.
The raucousness was, she argued--correctly, I think--barely if at all a matter of local people fighting among each other in a way that would reflect an inability to run the local schools competently and by reasonable consensus if given the chance.
The raging frustration is that state government has taken over the local schools and done no better by them. The state indeed has complicated the challenge with right-wing theories that may not even believe in the underlying concept of regular public schools.
Noland had risen at the Saint Mark Baptist Church meeting Tuesday evening to suggest that perhaps further meetings could be professionally moderated in a way that would permit everyone to be heard and better understood.
She told me a couple of days later: "Honestly, I kind of think we need both shouting activists and the people working politely within the system to try to craft real solutions."
That's how it must work. Change almost always comes from movements stirred by the people.
Politicians, being relatively weak by general assessment, react to the people. The best and most competent politicians and public servants then design and implement the public policy driven by the people.
That's why I've suggested that, after the shouting, or even during its continuation, former superintendent Baker Kurrus and current superintendent Michael Poore work with Elliott and Bond and former state Education Board member Jay Barth--and others reflecting more diversity whom I stand guilty of not thinking of--to work on the nuts and bolts of a responsible and workable plan that Little Rock intends to implement if the state will extend the community the decency of getting its schools back.
For essential accountability and transparency, the group would, of course, present its plan publicly to groups that might have raucous elements. Absent public backing, a brilliant blueprint by the finest experts would mean nothing.
Such a working group would have no legal standing, just as a governor's task force on this or that has no real legal standing.
And it would have no authority--except, that is, for the expertise, quality and command of its work, and, as I'm given to understand, the unified shouting of the people who perhaps would, mostly, embrace it.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 09/03/2019