Speak out and ye will be tainted!
A liberal acquaintance of ours (we have a few) sent us a sensible piece he had written calling for a return to discipline in Madison’s public schools.
“Classroom discipline – the foundation for learning – has deteriorated to an extent that has made students feel unsafe in school, and has significantly accelerated black as well as white flight from the school district,” he wrote.
The Werkes posted an abbreviated version of his piece, we thought, with permission. Turns out we were mistaken and, some of you may have noticed, it has been taken down in the author’s hopes that the Wisconsin State Journal or some other credible outlet — unlike this roadside stand — will publish.
“I’m looking to change the landscape in which currently everyone in the liberal world (90% of Madtown) is either frightened of being called racist, racked with guilt or glass-eyed in awe of the Woke ethos,” the author tells us. “Help me here, Dave, don’t make it harder.”
The author’s liberal credentials are impeccable and we understand his concerns. He fears the taint of Blaska will pollute his message, even though our messages overlap in a single, coterminous Venn diagram. Which is why Blaska so appreciates former mayor Dave Cieslewicz’s uncommon courage in endorsing Blaska’s write-in campaign! Mayor Dave’s reward is to be pilloried in the stocks by Madison social justice warriors like Nada Elmikashfi, who ran unsuccessfully for state senate with the endorsement of U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar.
Nada Elmikashfi: “We must start by acknowledging that our police and criminal justice system are directly tied to the legacy of slavery and slave patrols in our country. It was state-sanctioned violence against black people then, and it is certainly state-sanctioned violence against black people now.”
“Defund the Police!
“No Cops in Schools!
“Let imprisoned felons vote!”
Thunder and lightning, very very frightening
Now chief of staff to State Rep. Francesca Hong, D-Madison, Elmikashfi takes both Daves to task in “The frightful implications of a failed write-in campaign for Madison’s school board.”
If you are for some reason unaware of who this Blaska is, congratulations. I want your life. If you aren’t so fortunate, then you know very well of the “alt-right lite” shenanigans he gets up to. His latest project, running as a write-in candidate against current school board president Muldrow, centered around his unhelpful obsession with what he frames as school safety. He claimed that Madison schools have “waged a war on discipline” as a result of a “woke experimentation with identity politics.”
Can’t argue nor, from the text, does Ms. Elmikashfi. She continues:
The pro-[school resource police officer] crowd has capitalized on a recent spate of fights and other disciplinary problems to renew calls for restoring SROs, though their presence would do almost nothing to fix the deep-seated problems behind the fights.
Police may very well do nothing to fix deep-seated problems; but might they prevent their autistic victim from getting beaten to a pulp? Ms. E. continues:
It also was literally the argument former Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz made in a mealy-mouthed, performatively reluctant endorsement of Blaska. From Blaska’s … harping on every black elected official he can think of … to Cieslewicz’s obsessive disdain for identity politics, you can easily see that they both have a major problem with how our communities are evolving to better interact with multiculturalism and racism.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: If Nada Elmikashfi has evidence of how Madison is “better interacting with multi-culturism and racism,” she is not sharing. After eight years of the school district’s Behavior Education Plan, school test scores are down, in-school violence has worsened, and kids as young as 12 are stealing and wrecking cars throughout the city.
24 responses to “Blaska is a stranger in a strange land”
David Blaska Alt Right – Lite, I cracked up when I read that. I love reading your blog, and posting infrequent snark but you are as far from Alt Right – Lite as it gets.
Anything to the right (the middle) of the extreme left gets labeled alt right. They have totally lost perspective, that’s all. But you know that!!
I’m stuck today on a damn zoom panel on zero waste, and can’t talk till later.
Looks like you and Nada won’t be rendezvousing under the moonlight any time soon.
I know you think I’m nuts for this, but in February when she used her Isthmus column to bemoan white flight (ignoring the parallel black flight), used the readers comments in an honest attempt to engage in conversation:
Black as well as white flight from city’s schools
You have put your finger on a vital concern to whether disadvantaged kids in Madison can continue to have a pathway out of poverty through a good education when middle class families with children flee the District.
If we think the District’s physical plant isn’t attractive now in comparison to Middleton’s, then we have to be extremely worried about what will happen to funding when less than 1 in 10 households have a child in the city’s schools, and very few from the professional classes that politics caters to.
My three children went to Madison schools, as are my three grandchildren now, because we’re deeply committed to public schools and a diverse education.
But, it would not be realistic to expect that from everyone. Most parents, black as well as white, put their kids’ education above everything else, and they have concerns that go far beyond the science labs, even though no one wants to talk about it out loud. When they see a collapse in discipline, and the serious deterioration in learning that follows, it is unrealistic to expect them to keep their kids in the District, since they only need to move three or four miles to escape that turmoil.
I want you to know that there are those who fight every day for racial justice, but have become very concerned that the direction the Board has been taking since 2014 is becoming terribly counterproductive to the justice goals you and I share. It is the unintended secondary impacts from those racial justice policies, not fancy buildings, that largely explains the flight from the District that concerns both of us.
As just one example of what I mean, the Behavior Education Plan had a great idea to designate a Positive Behavior Coach in each school charged with learning about the troubled kids’ problems. They were to be focused, whenever possible, on diffusing outbursts that fester in poverty to keep those innocent children as far away as possible from the criminal justice system.
The problem, however, is what to do when the constructive intervention doesn’t work, as will often be the case in the real world, because the underlying problems are too severe, the coach is not perfect, or the timing just doesn’t work out.
As things have stood for the past eight years, in order to avoid disproportionate outcomes, the disruption continues, and conditions spiral downward. Teens can be wonderful as they begin to spread their wings, but they are also devilishly clever at figuring out and exploiting grown up’s weaknesses. As a result, the message gets almost instantly picked up and passed along the grapevine that there are no consequences, after which all hell breaks loose.
That is to say, there are real-world limits to what we can do for kids, who for no fault of their own, were born into horribly impoverished lives. I volunteer at One City Schools and could cry at the struggles against adversity these wonderful kids go through every day, yet they continue, somehow, to persevere.
If we refuse to face that immutable fact, the scene that is unfurling in front of our eyes shows that we will actually only make it worse for them.
For after eight years of these well-intentioned policies that, to avoid disproportionate outcomes, end in no consequences, by 8th grade, about 95% – 95%! – of black students in Madison’s schools continue, as before the intervention, to be unable to read at grade level. Not able to keep up with the class work, what else can we expect otherwise healthy teens to do as they seek to retain their self-esteem but act up. And, when they leave school with no skills to succeed in the new information economy, to yield to the siren song of the drug culture.
Could I be blunt? The reason why racial justice advocates have found themselves pushing hard against an open door in dominating the School Board is because the elites they thought they were fighting have found it simpler to pick up and take their kids out of the District’s schools.
The tragic price of that complex dynamic, as your essay makes clear you understand, is a future in which the District will find it increasingly difficult to raise funds, and, with the flight of black as well as white families focused on education, a failed school system in which the disadvantaged we both are determined to help are trapped.
I would urge you to consider, together, commencing a community dialog by young racial justice advocates like yourself with others who share the same goal before things reach a death spiral in our schools and it is too late.
I got no reply.
Don’t tell me you told me so.
Right powerful stuff there that needed saying, Mr. Peterson, and thanks!
The Gotch humbly observed a while back: Other than the MMSD reimagining the definition of DIVERSITY, the other BIG story from last Tuesday’s (04/02/2019) Spring Elections?
Twelve (12) school districts in South Central Wisconsin asked voters to approve new school/addition construction referenda; the total they were asked to approve was ~ $486 million.
$486 million? Mercy me; that’s nearly half a Billion…WITH A “B”!
Funniest thing; not one thin dime of that was earmarked for The 77 Square Miles Surrounded By A Sea Of Reality.
The talented Ms. Toriana Pettaway, fresh off an admirable ~.03 approval rating/ laughably miniscule % of the mayoral vote, might opine that’s some sort of White Supremacy B.S., same as the explanation for her inestimable…um…popularity amongst Madison voters.
Anywho, while well short of Ichabod Evers $2 Billion Structural Deficit Territory, that’s still some pretty serious coin, am I right?
Those Fat $chool referenda for districts all within driving distance of Madison all passed.
Probably nothing to it…right?
The Gotch
Peter, you understand the issues, especially working over at One City. The problem is actual liberals still think true discussion is possible. The woke (school board, union, many staff members, administration, many community members) believe they have all the answers and any discussion that isn’t in the woke playbook will not be entertained. It’s like trying to talk a Jihadist out of their religious beliefs. They cannot budge. It’s some kind of cognitive problem where they cannot see multiple perspectives. Religious zeal, it appears.
I groc
On Wed, Apr 13, 2022 at 12:20 PM Blaska Policy Werkes wrote:
> David Blaska posted: “Speak out and ye will be tainted! A liberal > acquaintance of ours (we have a few) sent us a sensible piece he had > written calling for a return to discipline in Madison’s public schools. > “Classroom discipline – the foundation for learning – has deteriorate” >
You should be deeply honored by being referred to as “this Blaska,” as though you were an unexplained phenomenon or a force of nature. Which, of course, to them you are. Since they’re utterly incapable of self-examination (or self-awareness), their only response to criticism, no matter how reasonable and well-deserved, is to lash out like 13-year-olds who’ve just had their favorite pop star dissed on social media. Maybe you’d have gotten more votes if you’d worn a hajib during the campaign.
“both have a major problem with how our communities are evolving to better interact with multiculturalism and racism.”
I believe what she means by “our communities” are her friends, her political favorites and supportive institutions such as the media or certain UW and school administrators. Not the people of the city and their kids. What she means by “interact with multiculturalism and racism” is that they all read the same small group of hacks like Kendi and Nikole Hannah-Jones, and they manage to hijack more tax dollars to pay ever more obscene fees for the DEI frauds they bring to town. Test scores may be going down, but those dollars spent are going up and up. That’s the “better interaction” they care about most.
Black men who already are struggling with mental issues are being pushed over the edge by the inflammatory, irresponsible rhetoric of demagogues like Omar, Hong, and Elmikashi.
They are pushing flat-out lies about American history and the history of policing, and LYING through their teeth when they say police are gunning for Blacks. In fact MORE white suspects are killed by police despite Blacks having the highest rate of police contacts of any racial or ethnic group, by far, due to their behaviors.
Blacks are murdetred mostly by other Blacks in urban areas and this has gone on continuously for decades, week in and week out, year after year.
Now unstable Black men fight the police responding to calls for help from domestic violence victims. Whipped up by ferociously inflammatory and hateful rhetoric from privileged officeholders making big bucks and collecting perks, a few unbalanced Black men are acting out randomly in public with attacks on Jews, Asians and others, even committing terrorist attacks like the NY subway attack yesterday and the Waukesha Christmas parade massacre.
Media try to downplay or even hide either the race of these suspects or fail to even report the countless attacks they commit against Jews and Asians in places like NY and SF.
WHERE DOES THIS END????
Follow the money. Racialist “non profits” pay extremely well in Madison. BLM won’t be happy until every Marxist in the BLM hierarchy has a mansion. $90,000,000 was given to BLM for trashing our cities. Dane county gushes money to create illiterates and miserable teachers in the MMSD. Can anyone point to a success that can be credited to the MMSD?
Anyone?
What you subsidize you get more of.
Our students in MMSD deserve real programs with real benefits like individualized reading and math for all grades as needed and vocational ed in high school. These will cost money. Woke talk is cheap and ineffective and not the truth. We can’t afford to get this wrong. These kids are our future.
Dave- you are on the right path! Both Madison Daves are voices of reason!!
Patty Hay-Chapman
30+ years MMSD teacher, retired
Longtime Madison lefty liberal
Not woke
pattyhay1 wrote, “Woke talk is cheap and ineffective and not the truth. We can’t afford to get this wrong. These kids are our future.”
Well said!
The problem is that the social justice warriors keep doing the same irrational things expecting different results regardless of the fact that things are not changing in a positive way. They’re acting like they’re insane. I get the feeling that the only outcome these woke social justice warriors are looking to change are the numbers of students that they can identify as being properly indoctrinated into their irrational hive minded wokeness.
It makes them FEEL GOOD and that’s about it. Superiority feelings are addictive, a burst of dopamine. It’s actually a bad religion. I think it’s like a jihadist religion, very vindictive, irrational, unforgiving. Superstitious as hell. It is still surprising to me. I’ve seen the absolute worst behavior from them. Embarrassing and the union and administration are all in. Sickening, really. I may just be an old hippie, “all you need is love” and the belief that we are all one race, the human race.
“Superiority feelings are addictive, a burst of dopamine.”
Don’t discount that much splendored Endorphin Rush, which bypasses cognition (such as it is) and convinces hive-minded Lefties to go Full Id.
The Gotch
What happened to the three R’s or now R,W and M(reading, writing, math). If today’s students can’t read, write or do math what is their future? Drug dealing, drive by shootings, prison, death? The woke will tell us it’s racism and white people’s fault.
Reading, righting and rithmetic were the original 3 R’s (r sound.)
Just think how much better they would be at drug dealing, fentanyl is counted in Micrograms. If corn pop cuts and sells 100 grams of fentanyl to 500,000 people at a minimum 2 doses a day for 5 years for 10 dollars a dose. How much money will he/she/they/it make tax free?
So happy voting machine worked, nov. 2020 April 2021 they did not. My writein got recorded. Be happy.
Nada Elmikashfi wrote on her Facebook page, “What really gets the blood boiling is the fact that Dave Blaska and his endorsers pitched his candidacy as a way to make the school board more diverse,” writes @nadaelmikashfi of a local right-winger’s latest failed bid for a Madison school board seat.”
She also shared a link to her Tone Madison article and one of the statement in the article was, “Blaska’s obnoxious but predictable desire to run our schools like prisons”.
Here is my replies to her post and that statement in the article.
https://stevewitherspoonhome.files.wordpress.com/2022/04/nada-vs-reality.jpg
Nada K… (Zip, Nuthin’, Zero, ZUD and more), has left me cold and angry many times after her subjective limited experience missives to all of us she perceives as ne’er-do-wells. So I never turned down a challenge in the past -and responded to ALL her silliness, and ALL the time. Noticed a few other Blaska-ites commenting in the same manner there, too.
That is until Judy D. started stackin’ the deck by discreetly hiding responses that were logical yet dis-agreed. So now Isthmus gets even LESS scrutiny, even less meaningful attention and appears to be the “Go-To” chump-change publication in the county. Gotta/MUST laugh, we surely cannot take Isthmus seriously any longer.
The Isthmus? The Gotch penned an LTE to Madison Newspapers just when the PanDEMic was kicking in on 03/20/2020 and as the weekly was preparing to shut down; to no none’s surprise, it never saw print:
*****************************************************************************************************
While rarely agreeing with The Isthmus politically, I always respected their voice in the city I call home. Two copies (for us and my folks) were secured weekly, and I look forward to their return.
That said, leave it to them to keep things in perspective.
Tens of trillions in net worth have evaporated, small businesses and workers suffer mightily and may never recover, critical supply chains have been hopelessly disrupted, health care has been stretched to its very limits and beyond.
With the zeitgeist and collective sanity of Mother Gaia herself lying precariously in the balance, what appears to be a compelling Isthmus concern?
That the Brie, Chablis, & Wheat Grass Tea crowd’s raison d’être has been derailed.
CANCELLED! Coronavirus Precautions Take Their Toll On The Arts
The Gotch
The only “diversity”they are taught that counts is skin color or ethnic group membership. So sad.
I really think the woke are a bad religious cult and religious cults should not be running our public schools according to the first amendment. Maybe Freedom From Religion Foundation would want to take a stab at that?
How can Nada be Chief of Staff to an office of one? Or have things changed since I worked in the statehouse when the minority party–with little to do–had one staffer in an office? The fact Nada has more of a voice and makes herself more strident than the actual state representative is interesting to watch. So is the way some aides first work in the statehouse and then run for office, Nada decided to lose first and then be an aide. As one who strongly championed support for Darfur and urged U.S. action for years with posts on my blog etc, I suspect Nada would be an excellent person to talk with over coffee about her land and the people. But when it comes to policy and shaping working solutions for Dane County I am far less impressed.