Democracy In Albany

Gerald Reynolds was only recently appointed by George W. Bush to be a Republican member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, but the article failed to mention that his day job is as corporate lawyer for Kansas City Power & Light Co., and Mr. Reynolds has never litigated a single civil rights case.  Mr. Reynolds has never held any academic appointment in law, public policy or education. Mr. Reynolds possesses no record of scholarship on matters of education or social policy.  Mr. Reynolds has no substantial professional work experience in public education or in helping high-poverty communities.   In other words Mr. Reynolds is a hack lawyer, ala Michael Brown (formerly of FEMA) who has little professional qualification for his government position.    What Mr. Reynolds does have is a long history of calling civil rights leaders names while attacking our civil rights laws.

In 1997 Mr. Reynolds called affirmative action "a big lie," a "corrupt system of preferences...that discriminate in favor of certain groups at the expense of others."  Mr. Reynolds has derided organizations like the NAACP which brought us BROWN v. BOARD OF EDUCATION and the Voting Rights Act as a "civil rights industry."   Mr. Reynolds has suggested that the Americans with Disabilities Act could stymie economic development in poor communities.

In 2002 Mr. Reynolds was given a recess political appointment by George W. Bush to a civil rights position in the U.S. Education Department.  The reason for the recess appointment (ala John Bolton) was to avoid the potential of an embarrassing Senate defeat due to Mr. Reynolds' vocal opposition to our country's long-established civil rights laws.   By his own admission Reynolds has no previous connection to the civil rights movement.  "I am not a civil rights activist," he told National Public Radio in a news report aired in December 2004. "Never have been a civil rights activist."  Mr. Reynolds is an empty suit.  Considering his lack of professional standing, why should Albanians listen to his out-of-the-mainstream views about urban education?

Before his Education Department appointment, Reynolds was president of a Washington think tank known as the "Center for New Black Leadership."   Despite the name, the "Center" doesn't train any new black leaders. It advocates abolishing affirmative action and establishing "free market" solutions in education.   Reynolds' most recent political appointment didn't require any Senate confirmation. The commission has no real enforcement power and little influence (they have published only two reports in the last year). But Mr. Reynolds' appointment vests him with a vague authority to speak on behalf of a historied government agency and twist its founding purpose. When a right-wing ideologue gets to set the terms of public discourse on civil rights you know you're in big trouble.

The Times Union reporter calling Gerald Reynolds "the nation's top civil rights official" is akin to calling Gerald Jennings chairman of the local temperance commission.

Your readers may recall that Albany residents voted on charter schools in May when they were asked if they support paying for charter schools out of the public school budget. By a vote of 4519 to 996, Albany voters said NO to the charter school tax grab.  Too bad it was a non-binding vote.  One of the charter school blowhards was quoted at the time as saying the vote was a propaganda gimmick.  A public vote is not a gimmick, its called democracy.  Perhaps the charter school propagandists would be more comfortable working their tax grab schemes in the former Soviet Union.   The charter school types may have forgotten that people from these parts once fought a revolution to get out from under the taxes of King George.    In my opinion it is the charter school hacks and their tax grab that need to be "thrown over the side."