WKNO TRANSCRIPT
CHRISTOPHER BLANK (Host): Shelby County school districts faced a wave of threats on social media this week as officials scrambled to maintain safety, alert parents and look out for copycat threats. With us again to talk about that and other issues is political analyst Otis Sanford. Welcome back.
OTIS SANFORD: Thank you, Chris. Good to be with you.
BLANK: Otis, because we are living in a gun-loving society and school shootings are now routinely part of life, taking every threat seriously posted to social media seems like a very easy way for anyone to create chaos. And lately, especially, there have been more threats to schools nationwide. What do you think is contributing to the rise?
BLANK: Well, a lot of it is something you just mentioned in the intro, which was copycats. But a lot of it is also based on our discourse in society right now. And I'm talking about political discourse. And, you know, I'm not ascribing this to any one person but, let's be honest, when you have a major candidate for president who constantly talks about people are enemies and talking about retribution and demonizing people like the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, you will naturally have a society that takes that cue and then tries to create chaos this way.
BLANK: thinking about the folks in Springfield, Ohio: you know, they are a marginalized group, the Haitian Community there, and it seems like extremists tend to focus on marginalized groups. Memphis is a city full of marginalized groups. Are you worried about that happening more often here?
SANFORD: Everybody should be concerned about it. We live in a society now, Chris, that because of the Internet, because of social media, because of this perceived hatred of other people who are not like you, these things are happening more and more. And, yeah, a city like Memphis, especially with all of the vitriol that you've seen between, say, Memphis and the State of Tennessee's legislature -- all of these things play into a dangerous time in our society. Even if the threats are hoaxes, they are designed to disrupt and cause chaos.
BLANK: We know that Republicans in the General Assembly don't see the number or availability of guns as a problem in our city. They have suggested that schools just need more security. More resource officers, more trauma counselors, more school nurses. Why hasn't this happened already?
SANFORD: Well, because they do more talk than they act on things. So it was easy to talk about this, especially when they were in session, but they had no real plan to initiate what they were talking about in terms of more resources, because all of that costs money and nobody planned for that.
BLANK: Well, given that Shelby County has the largest number of schools in the state -- more than 200 -- we would also be the most expensive county to equip for battle. Our Republican government does not like to spend money here, we know that as well. Moving ahead, do you see Republicans allotting the resources we might need for security, or was that all taken care of with the law that allows teachers to bring guns to school to provide security for themselves?
SANFORD: Well, the answer is no, and no. Let's talk about the second part of that. There is no evidence that teachers are taking advantage of the ability now to go armed in schools. Chalkbeat did a pretty good story on this just last month and there's no indication that this is going on. And again, I see no evidence that this legislature is willing to put the kind of money and resources into Memphis-Shelby County Schools because it is the largest school system and it would require millions of dollars to get that done.
BLANK: Otis, while we're talking about educational priorities in the upcoming session. I want to point out that the most amount of lobbying money going into Republican coffers right now is from proponents of school vouchers. And on top of that, the head of our state's public education system, raised some ethics questions lately by taking free trips to Pro-voucher conferences. It seems like the deck is stacking against the more than 50 Tennessee school districts who see vouchers as a way to defund Public Schools, while giving $300 million a year in taxpayer money to private schools. Governor Lee has called school vouchers the Civil Rights issue of our time. Isn't the right to be safe in schools and also to get a quality education also a civil right, and why aren't more fiscally conservative lawmakers talking more about that?
SANFORD: Well, of course it's a civil right and why aren't more conservative lawmakers
talking about it? There's a lot of money going into campaigns of state legislators from pro-voucher groups. Bill Lee, the governor, has made vouchers another signature effort in the next legislative session. He realized he only has two full years left in his term. He has to get this done in the next year, which is not an election year, so that people who don't like it will forget it the following year. But to say that this is the Civil Rights issue of our time is a slap in the face to the real civil rights issues of our times, and vouchers are not it.
