EdAction
Maple River Education Coalition PAC
105 Peavey Rd, St 116 
Chaska, MN  55318 
952-361-4931
http://www.EdAction.org
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April 29, 2001

Protest Rally Speech

Speech given at the Protest Rally
On the steps of the St. Paul Capitol
By Renee Doyle
President of Maple River Education Coalition

You know what is different about us? We are not here asking for money for education. We think it is time to talk about what is being taught. We know that all the surplus in this state won’t fix the failure in our schools. We think it is time to get back to the root of the problem: too much spending on something that doesn’t work.!

Our forefathers deemed no right more sacred than the right of speech. They called the right to free speech "the great moral renovator." Today, friends, we are here to exercise our right to free speech and to urge a moral renovation of education!

Tyrants dread men and women who can and will speak freely. Our Governor and the legislators who support this takeover of education and the workforce dread your faces and your voice. They know a citizen movement of this size is powerful! Principalities and powers such as those that have been set up against us here in St. Paul and in Washington tremble when men and women of reason and good judgment come into their presence. You see, we are being enslaved by this system of minimal education and forced job placement. But, slavery cannot tolerate free speech!

Friends, if we begin, today, to exercise our right of free speech in a new and bold manner as our founding fathers did, the weak scaffolding of public deception that supports this system will come tumbling down.

(Pause)

Our elected Governor and representatives are, under a democratic republic, the voice of the people and the protectors of our God-given Constitutional rights. When they cease to fulfill these duties, they must be removed. And when the atmosphere of a place where laws are made, does not even allow the citizens to express their honest sentiments, or where Constitutional law is ignored, then representative government has failed. Ladies and Gentlemen, representative government failed in the Minnesota Senate this year. Senators Moe, Pappas and others have done everything possible to undermine these principles.

There is a right to speak and a right to hear. Our Senators had a right to hear what we had to say, but were, for the most part denied that right in early committee hearings. Until the right to speak is afforded to the humblest parent in the same way it is to the power-seeking education cartel, freedom is mocked.

Our representative and Constitutional government has failed at the executive level. Our Governor has ignored our thousands of phone calls reminding him that our U. S. Constitution reserves the authority for education to the states and not the federal government. He has never allowed any one of us to even speak with him. He has told the legislators that the Profile of Learning is hands off and he is holding all their other legislation hostage if they try to repeal or change it.

Fredrick Douglas said, "It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of him of his money." Under the Governor’s newly proposed education tax plan, he intends to do both. By absorbing the local education levies on our property taxes at the state level, all control of education operating costs will be centralized at the Governor’s doorstep. Then a new sale's or service tax or the elimination of an income tax reduction will be instituted to pay for it. We get to pay to have no voice!

(Pause)

Our lawmakers in Washington are only days away from reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The language of the act mandates that each state must have a single set of content and achievement standards aligned to one single statewide test for grades 3-8. This is the education law of the land from the federal level and totally unconstitutional. This IS the Profile of Learning/School-to-Work System for the entire country! Ladies and gentlemen, once this law is passed, Minnesota will loose millions of federal education dollars if it does not fully comply.

Does this pending federal law make what we are doing here today even more important? Yes it does! We need to call Washington tomorrow, and if they are watching right now, we have a message for them: We are going to fight to get rid of the Profile of Learning/School-to-Work System in Minnesota this legislative session. If the bureaucrats in Washington tell us to do it or else, we will take "or else." They can keep our money and we will keep our local control!

I am a mom. I am not a professional speaker. I am not trained in education or politics. But that does not make me afraid to lift my voice against the educrats, politicians and social planners that want to train my children to be compliant, worker bees for their political and economic interests. And I know that you are not afraid to lift your voice either!

Let me tell you about one, very brave woman from Forest Lake, Linda Flatten. When this mother found out that her school was surveying students, she researched to find out what it was and where it came from. She and another mother took the shockingly intrusive survey to the school board meeting. The school board knew nothing of the survey and had never authorized its use. Because of her efforts the board rejected the survey. That survey from our own MN Department of Children, Families and Learning has been revealed throughout the state, in large part, because of the work of this one woman.

This is what you need to do. Take your personal experiences of how this education and workforce nightmare has affected your children, your family or your business, write these stories down and give them to legislators and the Governor. Handwritten letters are very powerful. Then visit them. Go in pairs, be respectful but be firm. Send us a copy of your stories. We want a record of what is happening to the children and families in this state.

This is a very important day. We must remember to tell our children and their children that we were here today. We will tell them that we boldly brought a request and we brought a warning: Put an end to the Profile of Learning/School-to-Work System or we will remove our children from it! And if our lawmakers do not listen to us and act upon our request, then we will remind them for generations that it was they who ignored our wisdom, and secured the fate of Minnesota’s public schools.

I would like to read from the forward of a 1898 public school civics’ textbook:

"To equip a lad with a knowledge of the working of governments and the rights of citizens, without equipping him with a conscience that will constrain him to practice the virtues of citizenship, may be to prepare him for a more successful career as a public rogue."

Do you know that there is no mention of American History, citizenship or self-government in the Profile of Learning until grade 9 or 10? The question is still applicable today, are our public schools teaching about our foundational principles of self-government and ethical citizenship with a conscience or for a successful career as a dependent of the State? Is the future liberty of our nation secure in the minds and hearts of our children?

Today, you have publicly demonstrated that, not only are you a citizen in a literal way, but you are citizens with a conscience and the will to make things better by being involved. You desire the best that a proven, academic education will bring to the future citizens of our state. And you won’t give up until it happens.

It is up to us to take this protest rally to the streets and back to our communities and refuse to accept anything less than a full repeal of the Profile of Learning/School-to-Work System. The rally in Minnesota and the nation has only just begun!

As President of the Maple River Education Coalition PAC and on behalf of all the education grassroots groups and others that sponsored this protest rally, I thank you for being here today and in the days to come.

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