It's Not Easy Being Green

Bongo has some advice for Board President Shawn Green: “Try using your internal monologue next time!”

Wow. Bongo did a double-take when he saw the Daily Herald headline “Dist. 158 President Calls Global Warming, Diversity Propaganda” in Friday’s Daily Herald.

Saturday’s Northwest Herald article was a bit milder, but it still made Bongo wonder why Green would intentionally throw District 158 back into the news with controversial headlines right when things were going so well.

Yes, President Green is entitled to his opinion. Yes, President Green’s experience as a police officer gives him a unique perspective on behaviors that are deemed “acceptable” in different cultures (spousal abuse is acceptable in some cultures).

But Bongo isn’t with Green on this one… especially on the recycling issue. These are kids, and we should be teaching tolerance of cultural differences and recycling. Note that tolerance is different then acceptance or support.

Bongo received an e-mail which included Green’s word-for-word statements at the board meeting. In fairness to Green, it appears that his comments were sensationalized a bit in the Daily Herald, but Bongo believes that considering all the fodder Green provided, Jameel did a pretty fair job reporting the issue. It could have been a lot worse.

Here are Green’s statements:

American Diversity Club:

• The more we force “tolerance” and acceptance of certain behaviors and beliefs that go against traditional values, the more the values this country was founded on become eroded.
• This is why I’m so adamantly opposed hiring non-English speaking contract workers to do work at the school district.
• Imposing “tolerance” had served as a way to indoctrinate students into feeling guilty about finding certain behaviors and beliefs objectionable.
• In my years of experience as a police officer, I’ve seen first hand on several occasions instances of spousal abuse- spousal abuse that is considered acceptable by the abuser because it is acceptable in his native culture.
• My belief is that we should embrace the American culture, and not insist our students must be tolerant of all others. Should we be tolerant of these cultures that support spousal abuse, and worse, and try to “understand their point of view”? This is an extreme example, but it's the slippery slope this kind of thing can lead to.
• The bottom line is we have anti-discrimination built in to our everyday curriculum, and that should suffice. I don’t approve of spending district money on this program.

Recycling Coordinators:

• As with the diversity club, I believe social indoctrination is at the root of this.
• I am all for being good stewards of the environment, recycling, looking for new energy alternatives, etc., but there’s no question in my mind that this program is all about the more extreme environmentalist “green movement”. It even says so right in the synopsis of the program.
• I personally believe the idea of man-made global warming, or “climate change” as it’s now being called since the environmentalists can’t make up their minds about what effect our SUV’s and incandescent light bulbs are supposedly having, is one of the biggest propaganda campaigns in American history.
• I think anyone who looks at the description of the recycling coordinator, and doesn’t realize it is part of the environmental activist movement, is not seeing the big picture.

Green ended by saying, “I believe these are both examples of “wolves in sheep’s clothing”. While this may not be the intent of those involved at D158, the ultimate purpose of these types of programs is to push forward a liberal agenda that does not reflect the values of this community.”

Bongo believes Green’s inexperience is showing with these comments. Board discussion at board meetings is supposed to be used as a platform for trying to persuade others to accept a certain point of view. Since Green probably knew ahead of time that he didn’t have to votes he needed to change the ultimate board vote, he could have just said “I am opposed to these two positions” and left it at that. Instead, Green used his position as board president to make a very explosive political statement that threw D 158 back onto the first page of the newspaper with more nasty headlines.