80th Legislature: Vouchers Are Not “Civil Rights”

I almost fainted dead away when I saw this:

Framing the issue as the latest front in the civil rights movement, thousands of parents, educators, and students descended on the state Capitol on Wednesday to support school vouchers.

Oh, Hell no. See? It got me so mad I used profanity.

While it might be amusing to see what James Leininger would do if the Austin fire Department turned one of its hoses on him, trying to frame the debate over government subsidized private and religious school education as a “civil rights” issue is so far out of line I don’t know where to begin.

“Civil rights” is defined as follows:

n. those rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution, including the right to due process, equal treatment under the law of all people regarding enjoyment of life, liberty, property, and protection. Positive civil rights include the right to vote, the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of a democratic society, such as equal access to public schools, recreation, transportation, public facilities, and housing, and equal and fair treatment by law enforcement and the courts.

Nowhere in that definition do I see anything about school vouchers. And, to intimate that it is “discrimination” because the state won’t take over Leininger’s inner-city San Antonio voucher program that is about to expire is perhaps the most inflamatory thing I’ve ever seen concerning vouchers.

I double dog dare Leininger to approach some African Americans or Latinos who lived through the Civil Rights Movement in Texas and tell them how vouchers are a civil right. If he comes out alive, I’d love to hear what he has to say.

Putting the right to vote on par with school vouchers? That’s like saying a puppy is the same thing as a bowl of grapefruit.

Vouchers are, plain and simple, welfare for the wealthy or hyperreligious for whom public schools simply aren’t “socially acceptable.” There, I said it.

Sure, they talk a good game about poor inner city children and children with disabilities and damned near make you weep when you think about all those poor children, but those poor and disabled children are merely the pawns of the Religious Right who want to get enough of a foot in the door so that vouchers become sweeping public policy.

Of course, the 5,000 people who marched on the capitol today are trained not to tell that story. They tell their sob stories of allegedly shitty inner-city schools and how they can’t afford private school tuition.

And, I’m playing the world’s smallest violin for them all. Is that crass? No, because instead of being part of the solution and working to fix their neighborhood public schools, they’ve abandoned ship. Most of those who have abandoned ship have done so to religious schools, which government should never subsidize.

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