Note: As a courtesy, I revised the December 10, 2011 editorial for N&O editors. The editorial is revised to reflect news that the Democrats on the Wake County school board agree with Republicans that protesters should answer for their alleged criminal behavior at trial, not remediation.
Give Timothy Tyson, the outspoken historian who was a thorn in the backside of the former majority on the Wake County school board, credit for embracing the principle of civil disobedience. Once you test the limits of the law or even break it to make a point, as Tyson and fellow protesters did by disrupting the board’s meetings, you have to be ready to accept the consequences.
So Tyson, when asked, declined to make a big deal about the board’s insistence that people arrested for trespassing at the meetings should be put on trial. That reflects well on him – just as the decision by lame-duck chairman Ron Margiotta school board chair Kevin Hill and colleagues reflects a petty vindictiveness.
Wake District Attorney Colon Willoughby made it clear he preferred to see the charges settled through mediation, so as to avoid tying up court dockets. Fortunately, the D.A. has the final call.
The protesters – also including the Rev. William Barber, head of the state chapter of the NAACP – used tactics that should not be winked away. But being arrested and briefly jailed, as some were, is no picnic. A mediated outcome could perhaps include some obligation to make amends via apology and community service while not putting charges on people’s records.
Margiotta said a hard line was called for as a stand against “anarchy.” Hill refused to discuss the reason behind the board’s decision. What must have chafed him was that the protesters had focused on decisions about diversity in the schools that ended up figuring in his near loss in the October elections.
With that defeat Much to our relief, control of the board switched over to members more sympathetic to the aims of Barber, Tyson and their allies, if not to their disruptive methods. Hence the impulse to get even. But if anarchy is a problem, Despite this change, Willoughby is better positioned to address it, and we hope he listens to us, not vindictive Republican and Democrat school board members.
