For Better Durham Schools and Politics, We Need More Righteous Anger
' ... let’s review the record of recent elections. Over the past four election cycles that included the Durham County Board of Education going back to 2014, no candidate has won without the endorsement of the People’s Alliance. Not one.
Those elected officials have won their offices with an average of over 75 percent of the vote. To be sure, the number of people in Durham who participate in local elections is embarrassingly small and often these candidates ran unopposed, but election results like these show a surprising level of “unity” among the voting public.
For my part, I do not want unity. I want good schools for my children. We will get to good schools via disagreement, discussion, compromise, accountability—these are the hallmarks of a functioning local polity. This is what community solutions to community problems look like. But in Durham, we rarely seem to get any of these things—or at least not around election time, when they matter most."