President Trump Would be Pleased to Know Jesus is Back at Emery!
Colin Kaepernick: If You Ever Find Yourself in Emeryville, Keep Traveling
Yes, THAT Jesus. After a four month hiatus, the Pledge of Allegiance is back at Emery Unified School District, in all its God fearing automaton-like saccharine inducing patriotic glory. It would appear the Tattler's story back last August on the demise of the loyalty oath known as the Pledge of Allegiance at Emery Unified School District was premature. Or maybe the School Board voted to reinstate the Oath (3-2; Inch & Langner dissenting) taken at the start of every meeting BECAUSE of the Tattler. Either way, under God, the Board can read the tea leaves and they think this kind of symbolic patriotism is de regueur in this age of Donald Trump.
So it's hats off, hands on hearts and to hell with critical thinking at Emery Unified. Children must learn to support the government, right or wrong, no matter what. Next comes ROTC, morning flag drills and bonnets for the girls at our patriotic little school district.
Praise be to God, Jesus, President Trump and Board member Cruz Vargas, the true blue American, for bringing this back to Emery.
10/25/17 Video Communist Alert: Listen closely and you'll hear Board President Donn Merriam (center) forsake God during the Pledge. Board member Barbara Inch (right...should be left) doesn't even partake at all, a tell-tale sign of a godless communist.
Number 7 is not welcome at Emery Unified School District.
Loyalty Oath Coercion Deemed Inappropriate at School District
Follow Up Friday: we look back on previous stories; what's happened after our spotlight shined on it? If there was a problem identified, has it been solved? Has there been no change and the amount of elapsed time made the issue newsworthy again by virtue of that fact? Look to Follow Up Friday to wrap it all up or to highlight for us all how lame our city can be. First it was the Emeryville City Council meetings, and now it's the Emery School Board meetings: it seems a wave of godless communism has washed over our city. Or non-divisive rational politics.
A spokesperson from the Emery Unified School District who wishes anonymity reports that Superintendent John Rubio and Board President Donn Merriam have decided the loyalty oath known as the Pledge of Allegiance has no place at School Board meetings and it's been quietly dropped.
Long Time Coming
After decades of dutifully administering the Pledge before meetings, suddenly the Board announced they would consider eliminating the controversial religious and robotic loyalty oath in 2011 after parents complained. At the time, then Board President Josh Simon told the Tattler he expected they would eventually remove the Pledge agenda item from meetings but cautioned it would take "more than a month or two" of deliberations.
The Tattler long made hay of the mindless recital of the Pledge, noting it had the effect of cancelling out a self stated School District goal that students learn critical thinking skills. It was an argument that parents took up, several making their views known to the Board. In the end, the Board deliberations, if they even occurred, stretched on for six more years before they dropped the god and country 'right or wrong' trope and succumbed to rationality based non-divisive meetings earlier this month.
The City Council voted to remove the loyalty oath from public meetings in January after years of cajoling from the Tattler. It's noteworthy and likely telling the Council finally took action on this fake patriotism right before President Trump took office, avoiding the unseemly spectacle of Emeryville City Council members effectively pledging their loyalty to Donald Trump.
Watching their lips closely over the last few years, it became more and more obvious that neither the City Council members nor the Board members themselves were actually verbalizing the Pledge after they had been asking the public to "stand and join" them each time.
After voting at their last meeting to dispense with the public administering of the loyalty oath known as the Pledge of Allegiance before each City Council meeting, tonight the Council led the first halting if out of key rendition of the populist collectivist Woody Guthrie song from the Depression era, 'This Land Is Your Land'. It's out with God and country and in with godless communism in Emeryville. The minute right wing Council matriarch Nora Davis is out the door, her (formerly) beloved Emeryville City Council goes all flakey. What's next? Providing accountability at City Hall?
No Allegiance to the Pledge of Allegiance in Emeryville
In yet another sure sign Emeryville has turned away from its conservative former self, last night the loyalty oath to God and country aka the Pledge of Allegiance was booted out of Emeryville and replaced with the lilting lyrics of a soft spoken Great Depression era populist from Oklahoma whose collectivist vision of America is sure to rile the feathers of more than a few conservatives. The City Council voted to dispense with the standard recital of the Pledge of Allegiance before every meeting to now raising voices in a chorus of This Land is Your Land by Woody Guthrie at the start of each Council meeting from now on.
A lack of allegiance to the new President probably had something to do with the City Council's decision to jettison the Pledge of Allegiance.
Mayor Scott Donahue led the drive to quit with the traditional recital of the Pledge at Emeryville City Council meetings but he acknowledged its positive community unifying effects and he suggested the community instead sing a verse or two of the popular 40's era song about how we're all in this boat together. The Mayor's Council colleagues were quick to agree the Pledge has no place at Council meetings, especially with its god references but they only reluctantly signed onto the idea of singing and the vote to change the rules and procedures for the City to include This Land is Your Land won in a 3-2 split decision. Council members Ally Medina and Christian Patz, self deprecating of their singing skills, outright said they would not be singing.
The Council also directed the City Clerk to prepare verses of a pledge to the California Constitution and the US Constitution for the Council members to make before they join the community in the singing in the People's Hall.
The Tattler has long advocated for dispensing with the McCarthyist loyalty oath that is the Pledge of Allegiance, it being quintessentially un-American with its calls for unswerving obedience and relinquishing of agency. It would appear the Council agreed last night but singing the Woody Guthrie song before every meeting was the Mayor's idea.
The era of the Pledge of Allegiance in Emeryville, decades ensconced at City Hall, is now over; the new procedures are to be installed for the start of the first meeting in February at City Hall.
Emeryville Patriotism in the Age of Trump Publicly Administered Loyalty Oath At City Hall Should Exit With Trump's Entrance
Opinion "I pledge allegiance to the United States...". "Without benefit of critical thinking, I swear my loyalty"- how's that sound, especially now that Donald Trump will wield near supreme power? How about, "No matter what Donald Trump has planned for us, I pledge my allegiance to him". How's that sound? Those stand-in pledges can now be construed to be at the black heart of the Pledge of Allegiance, an un-American loyalty oath wherein the speaker unthinkingly gives up his or her own agency to do the bidding of the federal government (and by extension, its executive). Starting on January 20th the beneficiary of that bidding has a new neo-fascist face most Emeryville residents will be uncomfortable with.
The American loyalty oath, before bootcamp-like in its coercive adherence, now suddenly seems positively Pyongyang-like.
The eagle wants us to make a pledge of allegiance: to ban pesticides and end habitat destruction.
That is unless the Emeryville City Council does its patriotic duty and dispels with the public administering of the Pledge of Allegiance before every Council meeting; something they have pledged, so to speak, to consider at the Council meeting on January 17th.
A change in how our local government sanctifies its democratic legitimacy is shaping up. Mayor Scott Donahue is directing the Council to consider all manner of loyalty oath Pledge replacement possibilities to satisfy the function of bringing the community together at public City Council meetings including the singing of the Woody Guthrie classic 'This Land is Your Land' and/or the public recital of Walt Whitman poetry. It represents an important shift away from the banal provincialism of Emeryville reliant on kitsch sophistry as it is to a more aspirational civic engagement as it could be.
Many towns in the Bay Area don't do the loyalty pledge before their public meetings. Indeed, there's no law saying the oath must be administered, so why do we do it? We can see plenty that's put at risk by administering the oath but nothing that can be gained that couldn't be gained by a less authoritarian and demanding avowal such as the populist unifying hosannas from Mr Guthrie or Mr Whitman.
“May we think of freedom,
not as the right to do as we please,
but as the opportunity to do what is right.”
- Walt Whitman
Besides the oath being un-American, we've noticed the City Council, while asking us to join them in reciting the oath, don't like to say it themselves. Even former Councilwoman Nora Davis (how we love to say that), the premier conservative on the Council, stood silently as do her colleagues whenever the oath is being administered. It is the crowd in the Council chambers, cowed as they are, that freely give away their agency hands on hearts and sign on to relinquishing their critical thinking rights so wantonly as they speak the words. The hypocrisy of this Council on this score has been blinding; if you're going to ask us to say the pledge, don't you think at least you yourself should say it, City Council?
Under God Kicked to the curb: Jesus wants us to continue praising him at City Hall.
Nonetheless, now it would seem, those days are behind us. We like the Mayor's idea especially of having the community unite in song with the palliative effects brought on from This Land is Your Land with its Trump-canceling collectivist vision of our community and country. This will likely get the right wing all agog and agitated, a nice side benefit.
The Council will also consider various non-theocratic pledges, for instance from a contest held by TheHumanist however inspiring as some may be, those represent just more of the same; a pledge. The government should not ask our community to pledge it anything. Loyalty is to be earned, not coerced. We urge the Council to reject the Pledge of Allegiance being replaced with another pledge, even one that kicks Jesus to the curb.
We hope this City Council rejection of the American loyalty oath will spill over to the School District where it's needed at least as much as at City Hall. We have long been agitating against the Council led administrating of the McCarthyist loyalty oath especially at the School Board meetings. How blinkered is it we have to ask, that the School District spends so much time teaching the value of critical thinking skills to the students only to subvert that message every School Board meeting when everyone enters collective amnesia and again nearly on automatic, goes through the anti-critical saccharine display of phony rectitude and piety. Back in the dark days of 2011, the School Board was on the verge of dispensing with the loyalty oath but reactionary forces rose up to make sure the District stayed on the straight and narrow with God and country.
It shouldn't take the terrifying idea of President Trump to spur the City Council into action on this and we're not sure if that's indeed what was instrumental in their turn around; really it doesn't matter. We just welcome rationality in association with public policy at City Hall and we applaud the Council for this symbolic but still important rejection of heretofore unneeded and unhelpful nonsense.
We're a community here that has allegiances we'd like to proclaim, yes, but we're a community that has allegiance to redwood forests, gulf stream waters and the collectivist idea that the land was made for you and me.
School Board Considers Removing Loyalty Oath, God Praising At Schools
The Emery Unified School District school board announced at their regularly scheduled March 28th meeting, they will debate the prudence of continuation of the daily recital of the Pledge of Allegiance for Emeryville's school children. The board committed to engaging in a public debate on the merits of the pledge, essentially a loyalty oath, at a future to be announced meeting and possibly changing school district policy as a result.
The monotheistic god Zeus.
The State of California requires each school district have a daily policy of "patriotic" instruction and most districts statewide interpret this as a reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance. The State makes no such claim however, opening up the possibility for other forms of patriotic instruction. The official policy right now is that the Emery United School District allows each teacher discretion over the daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.
Some pro-pledge parents invoke the State mandated "opt out" privileges that allow parents to have their children to sit quietly while the oath is administered but this has been shown to be a false choice, owing to the coercive nature of classroom interpersonal dynamics and child psychology.
School Board member Cheryl Webb questioned the need for the oath at the March 28th meeting and she indicated since the State of California doesn't require the district to administer the pledge with it's monotheistic god reference, perhaps Emeryville itself should opt out. Ms Webb said it might be a "good idea" to stop the children's mindless recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance and instead have the children learn the Articles of the US Constitution as a more educational implementation to satisfy Sacramento's patriotic instruction requirement.
Ms Webb noted she thinks Emeryville school children should be aware of the Pledge of Allegiance and even to know the words, just not the daily recitation of it, "It is a part of our culture" she intoned.
Zeus, doing the god thing.
Secular humanist parents have long called the Pledge of Allegiance a god indoctrination that has no place in public schools. Secular and atheist parents have called the praising of god contained within the pledge a subversion of parental rights and an unnecessary and heavy handed government intrusion into inalienable parental rights to teach their children as they see fit about god. The actual pledge itself, being a loyalty oath, is demonstrably counter to the district's goal of teaching children critical thinking skills.
Is this really what patriotism looks like?
While the School Board has promised to take up this issue, atheist and secular parents may have to wait some time for justice. Board member Josh Simon acknowledged the importance of the issue but he noted the two most pressing agenda items before the board; the budget crisis and the selection of a new school superintendent, "Don't expect this to be resolved in the next month or two" he warned. The Tattler will report any developments in this issue.
Yes, THAT Jesus. After a four month hiatus, the Pledge of Allegiance is back at Emery Unified School District, in all its God fearing automaton-like saccharine inducing patriotic glory. It would appear the Tattler's story back last August on the demise of the loyalty oath known as the Pledge of Allegiance at Emery Unified School District was premature. Or maybe the School Board voted to reinstate the Oath (3-2; Inch & Langner dissenting) taken at the start of every meeting BECAUSE of the Tattler. Either way, under God, the Board can read the tea leaves and they think this kind of symbolic patriotism is de regueur in this age of Donald Trump.
