Voters in the progressive vanguard city of San Francisco are voting today to oust three of the seven board members of the city’s Unified School District. All seven are far-left liberal Democrats, but only three are currently eligible for recall. The others haven’t served long enough to qualify for recall.
Otherwise, it’s likely that all seven would be replaced in the recall election taking place today in “The City by the Bay.” Those removed today will be replaced by other Democrats named by Democrat Mayor London Breed.
It’s not about ideology. Most of the 80,000 citizens who signed the petition putting Gabriella Lopez, Alison Collins, and Faauuga Moliga on the recall ballot are political liberals, proud that their city is in the vanguard of liberal, progressive policies being pushed by the far left. It’s that the board has just gone too far, even for San Francisco.
The rumblings of discontent began more than a year ago, following a nine-hour board meeting during which the board members all but ignored the issue of closed schools negatively affecting the learning and education of students. Instead, the meeting focused on the renaming of 44 schools in order to fit the agenda of the day: Any historical figure that ever once evinced any sort of “white supremacy,” “racism,” or “discrimination” was to be banished. Anyone whose name adorned a school that, in retrospect, “inhibited societal progress” was to be dropped down the memory hole.
They would include Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and even Senator Dianne Feinstein!
Defenders of that insanity claimed that Washington owned slaves, that Lincoln facilitated the slaughter of Native Americans, and that Feinstein once replaced a Confederate flag that had been vandalized back in 1984.
Even far-left Matt Gonzalez, chief attorney for the city’s Public Defender’s Office, had enough of this foolishness. He expressed his support for the removal of the three members in The Epoch Times by explaining that their zeal to be politically correct had exceeded their understanding of history, including the case of Abraham Lincoln:
Abraham Lincoln’s name was deemed worthy of removal because his administration continued to implement discriminatory 19th-century policies against Native Americans.
He is also implicated in failing to intervene in the death sentences imposed by the U.S. Army against many Native Americans for hostilities against white settlers during the Dakota War in Minnesota in 1862.
Lincoln did assert his power to commute the sentences of 264 individuals, and one of the condemned captives was granted a full reprieve. However, 38 captured Native warriors were executed after Lincoln chose not to intervene.
While the criticism against Lincoln is grounded in fact, we should hesitate to require purity among anyone [who] might be honored with public recognition, otherwise we might be left without anyone who would qualify. In Lincoln’s case his Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves and his role in preserving the Union is what we honor when we name a school after him.
I question whether this school board can fairly consider historical facts when making such decisions.
That’s a fair question. In the board’s desire to rewrite history by removing the names of many of its most famous and influential figures from schools, it has gone beyond what even liberal San Franciscans can stand.
The board excoriated the highly-regarded Lowell High School, one of the highest-performing schools in the district, over its admission standards. Those policies have resulted in nearly half the student population being of Asian descent. This is anathema to the liberals running the show as this is disproportionate to the district’s overall student population.
Naturally, the recall efforts are being funded by conservative “billionaires,” “right wingers,” “Big Tech,” and “Trump supporters,” claimed Frank Lara, vice president of the United Educators of San Francisco, which has opposed the recall efforts.
But even that is a lie. Supporters needed 51,325 signatures per board member in order to set up the recall election. Each received more than 80,000. As Gonzalez noted, “It is not reasonable to dismiss these San Franciscans as all Republicans or conservatives — or to use the spectre of the GOP to detract from the issue here.” It’s much more reasonable, he wrote, that the pending ouster stems from “the dissatisfaction of residents … with the performance and decision-making of these officials.”
The vote taking place today in San Francisco isn’t over ideology, per se. It’s over ideology run amok. As Jeremy White wrote in liberal Politico, today’s recall election is “a stark warning that public officials can veer too far left even for proudly progressive voters to tolerate.”
The results of today’s recall election are expected to be announced by the end of the week.
