On April 20, Tanya McDowell, a Black woman who is homeless from
Bridgeport, Conn., was charged with first-degree larceny and
conspiracy to commit first-degree larceny. If found guilty, she could
be fined $15,686 and would face a possible 20 years in prison for
sending her child to a predominately white public school in Norwalk,
Conn.
Ana Rebecca Marques, the babysitter for McDowell’s son, was
evicted from her public housing apartment for letting McDowell use
her address. McDowell sent her son to the Norwalk kindergarten
because she knew it was better than the schools in nearby Bridgeport.
“If you could see … where he is now compared to Brookside,
you’d see why I chose Norwalk,” McDowell said of her son’s new
school, Thomas Hooker Elementary School in Bridgeport. (Yahoo
News,Associated Press, April 25)
Parents are rarely criminally punished for using false
addresses. However, Kelly Williams-Bolar of Ohio was convicted in a similar case after she enrolled her son in school using her
father’s address. Williams-Bolar’s case received national attention.
Why is McDowell threatened with such a severe punishment ? The
biased and discriminatory charges are clearly racist.
“I wanted to send my child to a great school. What kind of
crime are you committing by doing that?” said McDowell. “All I
wanted was the best for him.”
The response of the school district reveals its exclusionary
attitude: “There has to be a penalty for stealing our services,”
said school board president Jack Chiaramonte.
The real crime is the clear funding
inequalities between white suburban schools and inner-city schools,
which serve mainly children of color. Bridgeport is a predominantly
Black city that has suffered from de-industrialization in recent
decades and had a 2010 unemployment rate of 12.1 percent. Norwalk
spends nearly $1,700 more per student than Bridgeport.
In the United States, public education is supposedly available to
all, but due to racism, massive budget cuts and anti-worker policies,
the system as a whole has failed to assist millions of families in
providing a quality education. The real criminal is the capitalist
system of oppression that convicts people of color who demand free
and quality education.
The people are fighting back: A rally took place on April 27 at
the courthouse to protest the racist and discriminatory acts of the
city of Norwalk. Kelly Williams-Bolars was a featured speaker in
support of McDowell. The rally demanded that the charges
against McDowell be dropped.
