This sober and unforgettable heinous event should serve as a strong and present warning: There is a limit to what our society can allow when it comes to direct action and the purposeful stoking up of anger and resentment against taxes and public institutions.
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| Bath School Disaster Makes National Headlines (Baltimore News May 19, 1927) |
Yes, Bath Consolidated School was a 'government school.' Bath School was a public school; operated and run by the local governing school board and supported by the means of democratic voting-majority rule. Bath Consolidated 1927 was a proud community school.
One man, having been elected to the Bath school board, designed to work against it; plotted and executed a diabolical, murderous plan to punish his own community for offending his personal ideology and hatred of taxes levied for progressive educational reform-consolidation of the area's rural one room schools into a new and modern building.
Across the Country People Sense the Ongoing Warning Revealed in the Bath School Disaster
"I realized that today (May 18, 2011) is the anniversary of a terrorist act in Michigan 84 years ago. Ironic and fitting that it happened in Michigan, the home state of Betsy DeVos (sister of Erik Prince and wife of Amway heir Dick DeVos), the rabid crusader for dismantling public education."This was the troubling revelation and remonstration of U.S. Rep. Emma Berry, from Texas, on this date a year ago.
Today, 85 years after this horrific event, the single greatest domestic terror attack on innocent children in the history of America, we are rightfully reminded that there are radical forces still seeking to destroy, bring down our proud historic institution, the public school.
It may not be one stupendous blast of dynamite under the school house, it is a sustained and sinister series of local and state battles across the country pitched and fought by people with rage and anger at the public school and the teachers who mentor our children.
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The rise of the national TeaPartiasns (Republican Tea Party members) across America has given "legs" to the multi-millions of the Walton Family and the Amway Clan which have lit the fuse of mistrust and angst in the minds of the malleable public. Hating taxes, resenting the conditions of urban schools (abandoned by whites and cut off by business and corporations) as well as religious bias against the curriculum that includes a wide spectrum of free expression and critical thinking (dubbed by Fundamentalists and Christian Dominionists as a new religion: 'Secular Humanism') these mega-wealthy radicals (who have done so much to destroy the heart and soul of American communities with their plunder of dreams and usurpation of local merchants places on Main Street), now dane to take away that which is left, the neighborhood school.
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The vouchers and the charter school movements were born out of rabid reaction to the Civil Rights Movements of the 1960's and the forced federal integration of public schools. The segregation academy was the response to these revolutionary attacks on the "separate and equal" racial doctrines and the charade of Jim Crow Laws devised to enforce racial injustices, a quasi-pogrom that had ruled in America for far too long. In Michigan during the early 1920's there was a rapid rise in the activity and membership of the KKK. Churches and ministers, leading business men and citizens joined up as was discovered in Newaygo's cache of KKK member records and hidden memorabilia. This movement included religious individuals, mainly Protestant Fundamentalists, who like their counter parts in the Southern Baptist Convention, were rank racial and religious bigots with hatred for the "others" they despised in their society.
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The 1920's may have been "roaring" for bankers, speculators, and others on Wall Street and in large urban areas, but life on the farms and in the countryside at large was steadily declining, revealing the tell-tale signs of a economic and social rift. The gap between the wealth and income of the ordinary folk, many of them still on small family farms, was corrosively and aggressively taking hold and would result in, what we know now to be a widespread, deep national depression which lingered into the Second World War.
There are chilling parallels with the 1920's and today. The KKK is passé and in its place is the conspiracy of corporate backroom operators, the Koch Bros. et al, and The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), whose collaboration with FOX Cable News has ginned up a pseudo indigenous/astroturf amalgamation of hate and angst known loosely as the Tea Party movement. Their mantra: No new taxes, no collaboration, no helpful compromise, no bi-partisanship, no hand of fellowship: It's the enforcement wing of the Party of 'NO'.
This rise of a multiplicity of groups-skillfully manipulated and utilized to terrorize the Republican office holders of the nation-via the Karl Rovian tactic of TeaPartisan 'Primarying' of Moderates and Independents in the GOP-has given rise to a 'mob' of malcontents and anti-tax activists who feed on fear, anger, and personal greed. Their targets, much like that of the KKK, are immigrants, minorities, and other elements they envision as gnawing away at their own wealth, assets, and future security.
The Kehoe Malignancy
Andrew P. Kehoe, who was the mad bomber of Bath School May 18, 1927, would fit right in (during the lead up to his murderous act) with the TeaPartisan sentiment and share their anger and desire to radically alter the course of public education. He crossed the indelible line. Kehoe went far to the darkside. There is no way to excuse or diminish his aberrant act of blind rage and unhinged revenge against his own community-its children and teachers, none. There is here on this sad anniversary, however, sufficient and strong warning that the desire to perseverate and concentrate angst on government coercion and police powers to tax its citizens still inflames minds-some of which are unreasonable and unstable.
Squaring Off Against Political Vengeance & Reprisal That Goes Too Far
The current frame of mind in the Republican dominated Michigan Legislature includes a bull-headed determination to take down public schools and replace them with a zoological jungle of loosely-run charter schools, vouchers for religious/sectarian operations, on-line teaching schemes (virtual schools) and full-frontal attacks on the mentors who teach our children in the neighborhood school owned by everyone.
A miasma of delusion and reprisal is currently sweeping the Nation, and Michigan, replete with program cutting and give-aways, for-profit enterprises designed to undercut and replace the public schools. This is coup can only be classed as an updated campaign by some to resurrect the destruction and divisiveness of the KKK, benefit from the power of reprisal and greed, and offer private operators entree into billions of taxpayer dollars specifically set aside for publicly operated education and community acculturation.
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| Bath School Memorial Plaque Listing Victims (Bath, MI) |
Never Again
It was out of such motives that anger and ideology drove Andrew P. Kehoe May 18, 1927 into an act arising out of public school hating, tax-resenting, a single man's act which is unparalleled for its murderous zeal to kill children. Kehoe is a tragic and powerful reminder of unilateral direct action and a ghastly and deviant design laid to takedown a community-centered on obliterating its children.
Communities are rapidly losing their control and oversight of their neighborhood schools. Just as WalMart, with its cheap Chinese goods and poverty wages, has brought down town after town, now the Waltons, Michelle Rhee, Jeb Bush, and others led by Amway and Betsy Prince DeVos (American Federation for Children or AFC) are determined to rifle the assets and plunder the funding sources of your public school for personal profit and their extreme ideological purposes.
If these Anti-Public School forces succeed, we will not have learned the harsh lesson of the Bath School Disaster: The public school will always remain the enduring heart and soul of any community. Public schooling is essential to sustaining American democracy.
A Powerful Afterthought:
Pres. Bill Clinton's Remonstration and Plea Against Domestic Terror, Dark Forces That Give Rise to Evil
"To all my fellow Americans beyond this hall, I say, one thing we owe those who have sacrificed is the duty to purge ourselves of the dark forces which gave rise to this evil. They are forces that threaten our common peace, our freedom, our way of life.Source: Speech Transcript of President Clinton in Oklahoma City, OK on April 23, 1995.
Let us teach our children that the God of comfort is also the God of righteousness. Those who trouble their own house will inherit the wind. Justice will prevail.
Let us let our own children know that we will stand against the forces of fear. When there is talk of hatred, let us stand up and talk against it. When there is talk of violence, let us stand up and talk against it.
In the face of death, let us honor life. As St. Paul admonished us, 'Let us not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.'"
On the Reader:
Documentary "Bath School Disaster" by Lansing Community College (March 2012).
Contemporary, firsthand account and history of the Bath School District events by local resident M. J. Ellsworth (1927 5th Edition 1991), description of events on Wiki and a Rootsweb extensive list of historical sources and articles.
More recent coverage in "Survivors Recall 1927 Michigan School Massacre" a NPR story on April 17, 2009 and "Local residents recently discuss the future of the Bath School Memorial Park" and historical site - Story and video (May 14, 2012)
Related Slates:
More on Public Education and Michigan Public Schools on the Gazette.
Original.
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