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info@SalemDSA.org
Salem Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) protests in the strongest possible terms the efforts by Salem-Keizer School Board Chair Satya Chandragiri and other Board members to deny recognition to a student journalist and to associate this denial with DSA and our support for her recent work. This student journalist was due to be recognized as the 2021 Oregon High School Journalist of the Year, but Chandragiri and his clique pulled this recognition and claimed to be doing so in part because DSA posted an article by her about the Board on our Facebook page.
Salem DSA believes that Salem-Keizer School Board Chair Satya Chandragiri and other Board members are engaging in an attempt to intimidate a journalist and punish free speech because this student journalist exposed unethical funding mechanisms that have been used to elect a right-wing majority to the School Board. Similar means of funding far-right candidates have emerged in the current race for four Board seats that will be decided on May 18, 2021. Dirty money in politics locks out the voices of people of color, students, the poor, and the working-class. This and dysfunctionality at the Board level, disrespect for people of color and workers, premature school reopenings, and the Chair and the Board majority stifling discussion are the real issues before us. Chandragiri and his allies are engaging in subterfuge.
Salem DSA notes that Chandragiri and others are engaging in red-baiting to make their case and are using DSA as their target. The intimidation of journalists, punishing free speech, and red-baiting have a long history in the United States and are used by the most totalitarian forces when they feel threatened. Senator Joe McCarthy did just this between 1950 and 1954. Salem DSA also notes that another elected official who apparently supports Chandragiri and his clique is using Chandragiri’s stand to shamelessly promote four conservative candidates for Board seats by attempting to gin up the public’s emotions and causing DSA to be attacked.
DSA has no connection to the journalist beyond supporting some of her work and appreciating her efforts to shed light on the hidden funding of right-wing School Board candidates. DSA members are active in the Salem-Keizer community by supporting veterans’ housing, serving in our unions, helping the houseless, teaching, volunteering for community projects, and advocating publicly for social, gender, racial, worker, immigrant, and environmental justice. We are parents, educational workers, service providers, lodge members, community gardeners, students, youth who are trying to find a human future. We are care providers and we are differently-abled. We are environmentalists. We are blue-collar, poor, middle-class. We are people of color and we are white. We are multi-generational. We are LGBTQIA+ and we are straight. We come from many faith traditions or we are humanists. We are your family, neighbors, and co-workers. We are transparent in our program, in our goals, and in our organizing.
We do not insist that anyone agree with us. We do insist that the rights to free association and free speech must be respected, and we believe that Chandragiri and certain of his allies are attempting to suppress these rights. We call upon the community to reject red-baiting, division, suppression, and backroom politics.
Salem DSA believes that our most reliable allies are the working-class and oppressed peoples. We call upon our allies to stand together for civil liberties and rights, to vote for positive change on May 18, to support the PRO Act and Labor’s political program in Oregon, to help win healthcare for all, to proclaim that Black Lives Matter, to work for a Green New Deal, and to protest attempts to stifle quality journalism.
info@SalemDSA.org
Salem Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) protests in the strongest possible terms the efforts by Salem-Keizer School Board Chair Satya Chandragiri and other Board members to deny recognition to a student journalist and to associate this denial with DSA and our support for her recent work. This student journalist was due to be recognized as the 2021 Oregon High School Journalist of the Year, but Chandragiri and his clique pulled this recognition and claimed to be doing so in part because DSA posted an article by her about the Board on our Facebook page.
Salem DSA believes that Salem-Keizer School Board Chair Satya Chandragiri and other Board members are engaging in an attempt to intimidate a journalist and punish free speech because this student journalist exposed unethical funding mechanisms that have been used to elect a right-wing majority to the School Board. Similar means of funding far-right candidates have emerged in the current race for four Board seats that will be decided on May 18, 2021. Dirty money in politics locks out the voices of people of color, students, the poor, and the working-class. This and dysfunctionality at the Board level, disrespect for people of color and workers, premature school reopenings, and the Chair and the Board majority stifling discussion are the real issues before us. Chandragiri and his allies are engaging in subterfuge.
Salem DSA notes that Chandragiri and others are engaging in red-baiting to make their case and are using DSA as their target. The intimidation of journalists, punishing free speech, and red-baiting have a long history in the United States and are used by the most totalitarian forces when they feel threatened. Senator Joe McCarthy did just this between 1950 and 1954. Salem DSA also notes that another elected official who apparently supports Chandragiri and his clique is using Chandragiri’s stand to shamelessly promote four conservative candidates for Board seats by attempting to gin up the public’s emotions and causing DSA to be attacked.
DSA has no connection to the journalist beyond supporting some of her work and appreciating her efforts to shed light on the hidden funding of right-wing School Board candidates. DSA members are active in the Salem-Keizer community by supporting veterans’ housing, serving in our unions, helping the houseless, teaching, volunteering for community projects, and advocating publicly for social, gender, racial, worker, immigrant, and environmental justice. We are parents, educational workers, service providers, lodge members, community gardeners, students, youth who are trying to find a human future. We are care providers and we are differently-abled. We are environmentalists. We are blue-collar, poor, middle-class. We are people of color and we are white. We are multi-generational. We are LGBTQIA+ and we are straight. We come from many faith traditions or we are humanists. We are your family, neighbors, and co-workers. We are transparent in our program, in our goals, and in our organizing.
We do not insist that anyone agree with us. We do insist that the rights to free association and free speech must be respected, and we believe that Chandragiri and certain of his allies are attempting to suppress these rights. We call upon the community to reject red-baiting, division, suppression, and backroom politics.
Salem DSA believes that our most reliable allies are the working-class and oppressed peoples. We call upon our allies to stand together for civil liberties and rights, to vote for positive change on May 18, to support the PRO Act and Labor’s political program in Oregon, to help win healthcare for all, to proclaim that Black Lives Matter, to work for a Green New Deal, and to protest attempts to stifle quality journalism.
And Salem DSA has also issued the following:
We absolutely support the reporting by Salem-Keizer student Eddy Binford-Ross about the many problems with our current School Board, just as we continue our full support for the years-long campaign led by Salem-Keizer students in Latinos Unidos Siempre (LUS) to end the school-to-prison pipeline. Building knowledge and building unity is what changes the balance of power, and the work of these students is a model for all students in the District.
Chair Chandragiri is not fooling anyone: he’s choosing to deny recognition to one of Salem-Keizer’s most accomplished students because she criticized his politics. This is not new for the Chair, who has a history of silencing all voices who disagree with him or his far-right financial backers, although he has gone to new depths of pettiness by singling out one student in this case.
In December 2020 he shamefully equated public accountability of elected officials to domestic violence, hoping he could ignore LUS’s calls to end the SRO contract (a fight he eventually lost). His new strawman argument is textbook red-baiting. Fred Hampton said, “socialism is the people. If you're afraid of socialism, you're afraid of yourself.” So far Chair Chandragiri has made it clear that he’s afraid of socialism and that he’s afraid of the people—at least the ones who don’t agree with him.
Eddy Binford-Ross has nothing but support and solidarity from Salem DSA. If simply sharing her reporting on Facebook is enough to make Chair Chandragiri and his rich donors nervous, we will feel even better about continuing to do so. We are confident that she will continue to uphold her journalistic integrity in the face of the Chair’s petty rudeness, which is nothing compared to the police violence she faced while reporting in Portland through clouds of teargas last summer.
We urge the Salem-Keizer community to read the March 21 article “Scandals, Special Interests And Dysfunction Plague School Board” and to join with us in winning the School Board back for students, school workers, and the community by voting for all four progressive candidates by May 18th: Osvaldo Avila, Ashley Carson Cottingham, María Cecilia Hinojos Pressey, and Karina Guzmán Ortiz. Contact us at info@SalemDSA.org for ways to get involved.
In solidarity,
Salem DSA Steering Committee
April 11, 2021
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