Once Again the Rich in Massachusetts Are Using Their ILLEGITIMATE Power in Our FAKE Democracy that Is STILL Fake Even with Referenda
The rich aim to keep abusing our children with their high-stakes standardized testing
Here is one more example of why we need genuine democracy—SOVEREIGN local assemblies of EGALITARIANS, and not our current fake democracy. And yes, having referenda today is part of the fake democracy, as I discuss below.
The MCAS is the Massachusetts high-stakes standardized test that, like similar tests that the ruling class imposed in virtually all U.S. states, students must pass to graduate from high school.
As I write about in my earlier post, “Here's Why the Billionaire-Owned Oh-So-Liberal Boston Globe Is Trying to Prevent the State's Teacher Union from Abolishing the Abusive Standardized 'High Stakes' School Test”:
Starting in the 1970s the ruling class decided that in order to deal with the explosive radical 60s that challenged its authority everywhere, it was necessary to dramatically lower the expectations of the working class and make the have-nots feels very psychologically and economically insecure. I discuss this in some detail here.
One of the ways the ruling class made working class people feel more psychologically and economically insecure was by telling our children in public schools that unless they score high on some absurd "high stakes" standardized test (that is designed so that children from poorer families get lower scores; read “Standardized Test Scores and Family Income” and “Money, Race and Success: How Your School District Compares”) they don't deserve to have a decent-paying job or perhaps any job at all.1
Even with referenda, it’s STILL a FAKE democracy
Referenda do not a genuine democracy make. This is because as long as the billionaire class has its billions of dollars of wealth in a society like ours in which money is power, then the billionaire class will always have FAR more money to spend on deceitful advertising to make the public fear horrible results if it votes contrary to how the billionaire class wants them to vote. As the Boston Globe reports:2
Brian Wynne, a strategist for the group opposing the MCAS question, said his group is prepared to raise and spend millions in its campaign against the Massachusetts Teachers Association-backed initiative. …
The pair of digital ads from “Protect Our Kids’ Future: Vote No on 2″ doesn’t actually mention the MCAS exams at all. Instead, in one ad, James Conway, a Revere High School history teacher, warns of “an effort to undermine our education standards,” saying it will “create an unlevel playing field.”
In another spot, Jill Norton, a Concord mother of a student with dyslexia and ADHD, says that “reducing the expectations” for her child would be harmful.
“It’s not fair to our kids, and it jeopardizes their futures,” she says. A voice-over then urges viewers to vote no on Question 2.
The ads are expected to run on digital and social media platforms for roughly three weeks, and are only the first the group intends to release, Wynne said.
Here is how it OUGHT to be: Genuine democracy:
In a genuine democracy of, by and for the have-nots, people who want class inequality with some rich and some poor—in other words members of the billionaire class and people who are beholden to that class or eager to join it, whom I will call “the rich”—would not be allowed to have any say whatsoever in what the government does. The rich would be excluded from participating in the governmental body that is the sovereign law-making governmental body. (Just as, by the way, pro-slavery people were rightfully—yes, rightfully!—excluded from voting in the State of Missouri by its new 1865 Constitution.)
The genuine democracy law-making governmental body, which I call the Local Assembly of Egalitarians, is NOT composed of elected representatives. Rather, all the adults in the local community (more or less the size of a U.S. zip code area) who support the egalitarian values of no-rich-and-no-poor equality and mutual aid and fairness and truth, whom I call egalitarians whether they have ever heard the word “egalitarian” or not, and ONLY they, have the right to participate as equals in the Local Assembly of Egalitarians and democratically make the ONLY laws that everybody in the local community must obey.
Whether the MCAS high stakes exam would be used in a local community would be decided by the egalitarians who attend their Local Assembly of Egalitarians, and ONLY by them. They would make this decision by hearing each other discuss the question. They would tell anybody who showed up at the Assembly who was obviously beholden to the rich to LEAVE. And they would make their decision by whatever procedure they had agreed upon such as majority vote or consensus or some hybrid form of consensus. (I personally advocate majority vote.) In such a local3 assembly meeting, by the way, it would always be possible to determine for sure and indisputably which position on a question had the most support, even if it required an actual head count to determine. This is in stark contrast to the national elections in a fake democracy.
In such a genuine democracy the have-nots would deprive the rich of their freedom to be rich at the expense of have-nots and deprive them of the freedom to use the government to oppress the have-nots, just as in 1865 the good people of Missouri deprived (former) slave owners of their freedom to be slave owners and of their freedom to try to use the government to re-establish slavery.
The rich tell us, “Oh no! You must let EEEEEEVERYBODY have a vote or it isn’t really democracy.”
The rich can take their pro-oppression ideology and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.
If you don’t agree then you’ve been hoodwinked by a lifetime of hearing pro-oppression propaganda, as I discussed in my earlier post here.
Read here how YOU can help build the egalitarian revolutionary movement to remove the rich from power.
Read here about one big reason poor children get lower scores; it's because correct answers to test questions are marked wrong if they do not use virtually the same wording in the textbook that is linked to the test, and the poorest schools don't provide many (or sometimes any) of their students with these textbooks! These tests are a form of child abuse. Working class children in public elementary and high schools are required to take these tests, which are called "high stakes" tests because the child typically cannot be promoted or graduate from high school without passing the test. State governments tell parents that the tests are like the written test to get a driver's license in that if everybody has learned the material satisfactorily then everybody will pass. But in truth the authorities can and often do keep making the tests harder to pass in order to ensure that a large number of poor children will get a "fail" score no matter how well they have learned the material. Thus in Florida the Orlando Sentinel, in an article headlined, "Lawmakers push tougher scoring for high-stakes tests," reports:
"Florida’s key standardized tests, which already trip up more than 40 percent of those who take them, should be even tougher for students to pass in coming years, some House lawmakers say. Reviving a debate from last year, they want to require students to show 'proficiency' in order to pass Florida’s language arts and math exams, a move that could have far-reaching implications. The percentage of 10th graders who, on their first try, would pass the test needed to earn a diploma, for example, could fall from 51 percent to 36 percent, state data shows."
The rich sometimes just lie about the horrible consequences if people vote the wrong way, but sometimes they make very credible threats.
Or like this:
One can envision a "local community" to be perhaps the size of a United States postal zip code, of which there are about 34 inside the city of Boston, Massachusetts; this would equate to approximately a community with a total population of around 40,000 people. This size would be arrived at by trial and error; it is not written in stone. A "local community" should be large enough to make sense but small enough so that all the egalitarians in the local community who wish to participate in a Local Assembly meeting can fit in a large room, as people do at large conventions. While the Local Assembly is the sovereign power (no higher authority has law-making power) in its local community, people would likely have all sorts of smaller meetings of egalitarians who work together or who live in the same neighborhood or who share some common interest of whatever kind, for three purposes: 1) to decide how to do routine things, or decide to do new things that do not require additional support from the larger community nor conflict with laws and policies determined by its Local Assembly; 2) to develop proposals to submit to the Local Assembly; 3) to participate in voluntary federation with people both within the local community and outside of it to achieve cooperation with them for some goal or purpose on a larger scale (as mentioned above) with the only condition that they must abide by the laws and policies determined by their Local Assembly. Additionally, the Local Assembly may if it wishes, and for as long a time period as it wishes, delegate certain limited (geographically or otherwise) policy-making powers to some of these smaller meetings/organizations/committees.
Here's an interesting historical fact that may be somewhat relevant. The open area where the democratic governance of Ancient Greece took place was called the Pnyx. “Meetings at the Pnyx could involve anywhere between 6,000 and 12,000 people, groups comprising free adult males drawn from perhaps 20 per cent of the city’s total population.”— The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber
Note that the Local Assemblies are NOT composed of representatives; every person in attending the assembly represents only him or her self. Here is what the famous 18th century philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau said about representatives in his The Social Contract:
“Sovereignty, for the same reason as makes it inalienable, cannot be represented; it lies essentially in the general will, and will does not admit of representation: it is either the same, or other; there is no intermediate possibility. The deputies of the people, therefore, are not and cannot be its representatives: they are merely its stewards, and can carry through no definitive acts. Every law the people has not ratified in person is null and void—is, in fact, not a law. The people of England regards itself as free; but it is grossly mistaken; it is free only during the election of members of parliament. As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing. The use it makes of the short moments of liberty it enjoys shows indeed that it deserves to lose them. The idea of representation is modern; it comes to us from feudal government, from that iniquitous and absurd system which degrades humanity and dishonours the name of man.”
— Delphi Collected Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Illustrated) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rousseau also, wisely in my opinion, says that the law-making assemblies should have a regular periodical time at which they meet without any need for anyone to call the meeting. This ensures that if any standing governmental body tries to usurp law-making power by refusing to call any meetings of the assembly, it will not be able to do so or will stand as obviously in violation of the law if it tries. Rousseau also, wisely in my view, says that the assembly may declare when additional meetings of itself shall take place, but that no other ad hoc meeting of egalitarians should be considered a meeting of the assembly with authority to enact laws.