The maudlin, guilt-tripping of Kennedy-Covington lawyer David Jones in his role as an Uptown paper of record community columnist is mercifully at an end. But not before one more sanctimonious blast from Jones, wailing over the “walls” in Charlotte:
Charlotte is a city that seems to revel in its walls. We shun those who make less money than we do. We isolate ourselves in little communes of like-earning families. We fight over resources for our school, our park, our street and say to hell with other people’s schools and parks and streets.
It wasn’t always like that.
In the early and mid 1970s, faced with a court order to desegregate the public schools, the doctors and lawyers and bankers who populated the power structure understood that a desegregated, fairly funded school system that invested money in everyone’s children was the right thing for Charlotte. Not all of them, mind you, but enough of them. They had a vision that encompassed all of Charlotte, not just the street where they lived. They had a vision that wasn’t blocked by the wall around their neighborhood. There was no wall.
We have moved a long way from those days. We have built a lot of walls.
Bullcrap. On about 15 different levels. But most of all the toxic, and false, insinuation that long ago Charlotte’s public schools were fairly funded but now no longer are.
Jones, like all the would-be Uptown puppet-masters, just cannot accept the fact that Charlotte can no longer be easily manipulated a handful of amateur social engineers. Especially with regard to schools, where tens of thousands of parents have both the information and desire to cut the strings and do what is best for their children.
Even Harvey Gantt’s CMS Task Force, born, bred, and fed with Uptown money but with input from education experts across the country, concluded that Charlotte had to have neighborhood schools; that to do otherwise would guarantee that the system would crash and burn. Accordingly, the Uptown power structure has a waged a war on the Task Force report for the past year to the point where it is no longer a blueprint for reform of CMS.
Now Jones will pass the torch to some other apologist for Uptown power and control. Such is life in 2006 in Charlotte, the most fascist city in America.
