We had our LDV meeting tonight as per usual. – Thursday nights – 6:30. Time and location mentioned at the LDV website. We had one of our better attendances and many folks had interesting things to bring to the discussion.
We had another good report on fundraising. It took the person who collected the mail today half an hour just to open all the letters. Maybe a new lawsuit is in order.
The most interesting thing I learned was that two plainclothes policemen were dispatched to the School Board meeting. As I reported I’ve experienced much hotter meetings than this. Unless the Superintendent’s I served with hid this news from Board members we never had any police protection. I mentioned this to my wife and her reaction was that this was reasonable. Whenever her company has a large public gathering they hire police just in case trouble erupts. Certainly, in this day and age of isolated mayhem from angry, alienated people this may not have been all that unreasonable.
On the other hand, the paranoid side of me can’t help but wonder if this will become part of the District’s appeal to the Sixth District Court. I can just imagine thier attorneys claiming that their clients, the School Board, live in terror because of the hatred our voting rights campaign has whipped up. (That’s a remarkable achievment for such a small vocal minority as Let Duluth Vote. We are, after all. a lot like those survivalists)
Certainly a lot of folks seemed primed to beat Let Duluth Vote folks up for being rude at the Board meeting on the Trib’s forum. Those attacks seemed like a calculated effort to gin up sympathy for the beleaguered Board. Maybe it will work. However, since I’m inclined to believe that intimidation was used on me very early in the game, possibly at the instigation of Dr. Dixon, I’m not inclined to be all that sympathetic. Politics ain’t beanbag.
The meeting left us with a couple interesting anecdotes. It seems that the union guy who went to the microphone to explain how the unions supported the Red Plan had earlier been surrounded by a dozen antis. Before his testimonial at the mike he had told the people next to him how terrible the Red Plan was.
A businessman in attendance told us that he called the Chamber the next day to cancel his membership after David Ross spoke. Ross did exit immediately after extolling the virtues of the Red Plan. Our guest speculated that another dozen businesses might have followed his example. Apparently Carinda Horton who has been on fire denouncing the Red Plan on her KDAL radio program for the past week told her audience to grill any business with a chamber decal about whether they supported the Red plan. She didn’t tell her audience what to do but said she planned to boycott any business that agreed with Ross.
One of our new attendees tonight was a former JCI employee. He told us that over a decade ago JCI hired a couple dozen employees to monitor millions of dollars worth of equipment they had just sold to the City and School District. After the installation they were almost all laid off. That meant that whenever there was an equipment failure the City and District were reduced to calling a 1-800 number for service. He’d had a District custodian tell him how awful the service was. Next day service to start a furnace isn’t very useful when its 20 degrees below zero.
As I said in an earlier post it was standing room only at the Board meeting. One of our folks asked the Superintendent’s PR person if the District had any more chairs that could be set out for the frail, elderly people who came late. “No we don’t,” was the clipped response. Perhaps this is not surprising since the District has taken such pains to make sure no one attends their Red Plan meetings.
