The Sinister Six Feel Entitled To Their Racism

Six Authoritarian Waterloo School Board Trustees Go Full Woke!

Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash

Six highly authoritarian trustees, the Sinister Six – chairman Scott Piatkowski, Karen Meissner, Jayne Herring, Kathleen Woodcock,  Carol Millar and Joanne Weston, all of them white, New Democratic Party members, and all annoyingly, insufferably woke - have voted to remove the only black member of the Waterloo Region District School Board (WRDSB), Mike Ramsey, an elected trustee, who is not woke, and who formerly served in the military and was a police officer. Sigh.

This is exactly why many critics of postmodern identity politics (wokesim) often refer to these types of scenarios as “clown world.” They defy logic, ethics, and basic moral decency. The woke do this all the time. They entrench and capture institutions. This activity results in what amounts to undemocratic and illiberal take-overs of things like school boards. This is exactly what has happened here, and the parents and citizens of Waterloo should be furious at this subversion of democratic process, and the grotesque treatment of Mike Ramsey.

The woke make it exceedingly difficult for someone like Mike Ramsey to live his values and reflect them in his work. While being intensely concerned with cultural sensitivity and attending to the needs of certain groups lived experiences, this only ever extends to those who first pledge allegiance to the new woke morality plowing through democratic norms with reckless abandon, while virtue signaling idealogue’s assure us the “greater good” justifies the mutinous dismantling of Canadian public institutions. Along with the collateral damage and casualties (like Mike Ramsey) Canadians are supposed to go along with this cruel progressive agenda (wokesim) and its plans and actions to re-engineer society. This needs to stop.

Apparently, trustee Laurie Tremble filed a complaint against Mike Ramsey (that no one, including Mike, was allowed to know anything about until after the “cancellation” was practically a done deal). But what catalyzed the campaign against Mike Ramsey? - the sinister six (or is it seven?) were obviously gunning for him long before any complaint was filed and unmentionable things hit fans.

From Sue-Ann Levy’s reporting for True North:

To date, the board has refused to release the report of a pricey outside law firm or the board’s integrity commissioner who investigated Tremble’s complaints. 

And also:

But the board chairman subsequently permitted Herring, a fellow NDPer and the board’s former director of corporate services to spell out how Ramsay apparently breached the Code of Conduct.

Herring claimed Ramsay did not respect the integrity and dignity of the office, refused to uphold the decisions of the board (suggesting he disagreed with them), that he accused fellow trustees of unlawful conduct and refused to be civil.

In a statement from Ramsay released prior to the board meeting he reiterated that everything has remained a secret: The identity of the trustee who complained, the complaint itself, the integrity commissioner’s report and even the rationale for the board’s secrecy.

Ramsay described the process as a “weaponization of the complaint process” to muzzle a trustee who doesn’t march to their woke drumbeat.

“The complaint is motivated by disagreement with my positions at board meetings and statements made to constituents,” he said in his statement.

The irony of all of this is that the same NDP cabal who voted to cancel Ramsay shamelessly and repeatedly stress the need for anti-racism education.

Read Sue-Ann Levy’s full piece here. 

And on the same topics Sue-Ann’s - The deranged left has taken over Waterloo’s school board - in this piece Sue-Ann aptly describes the debacle,

It was all just hyperbole and rhetoric from activists and educators who use shame and guilt to try to extinguish dissenting voices.

The deranged left has taken over the WRDSB but fortunately, people are slowly but surely awakening to these destructive woke tactics.

What this case illustrates clearly, is that diversity and inclusion do not extend to viewpoints. While Mike Ramsay’s physical characteristics make him a perfect candidate to represent the ambitions of the woke - which would win him much praise and career advancement - his values preclude him from doing so. I would argue that people with the courage to stand behind their convictions are the types we want as trustees on school boards.

Every morning, I tweet a Thomas Sowell quote as a way to get the day started. Sometimes Mike Ramsey likes those tweets! I always take special notice when he does. I admire Mike and I support his effort to bring much needed viewpoint diversity to the WRDSB. The trustees from Waterloo could really use a little Thomas Sowell, and a lot less Ibram Kendi. Mike could have brought some of that to the table, if they were open to it. Sadly, for now at least, they are not.

More Background On The Woke WRDSB

On May 30th, WRDSB trustee Cindy Watson, with the support of Mike Ramsey, put forward a motion to discuss Critical Race Theory & White Privilege. This culminated in a delegation by professor David Haskell at the most recent WRDSB meeting (June 27). But before we discuss that delegation, it’s worth mentioning another woke scandal emanating from the WRDSB.

Scott Piatkowski, the ring-leader of the Sinister Six, and the WRDSB board, is being sued by a former teacher who worked for the WRDSB for 20 years, Carolyn Burjoski. In a board meeting on January 17th, Carolyn was cut-off during her presentation in which she was bringing to the attention of the board, the same books containing age inappropriate sexualized content found in schools libraries, that Pierre Barns raises alarms about. Piatkowski continually referred to Carolyn’s cut-short presentation as transphobic and hateful on social media and in a series of media interviews following the Jan. 17 board meeting.

This prompted Carolyn to file a 1.7 million dollar defamation suit against Scott Piatowski and the WRDSB. And in June she launched a second lawsuit against the WRDSB, this time to have reversed the board's Jan. 17 decision to silence her presentation.

Sun-Ann Levy and True North also cover this story:

Carolyn Burjoski has asked the Superior Court to undertake a judicial review of the WRDSB’s decision to end her presentation prematurely and expel her from a January 17, 2022 board meeting amid allegations that what she said was contrary to the Ontario Human Rights Code.

Get the full story here - LEVY: Cancelled teacher launches second lawsuit against Waterloo school board | True North (tnc.news)

 The school board in Waterloo has some serious issues. Not only is the abhorrent and anti-social treatment of Mike Ramsey and Carolyn Burjoski enough to make most Canadians cringe in disgust, there is a long list of woke shenanigans coming from what appears to be a district matched in wokeness only by the PDSB & TDSB. The sinister alliance of democracy-subverting trustees in Waterloo has been at their game for quite some time. 

Below is a quick list of other WRDSB stories that caught the attention of Canadians:

• LEVY: Waterloo school officials host video for “menstruating people” | True North (tnc.news)

• Waterloo schools to permit exposed cleavage and underwear in new dress code | True North (tnc.news)

• LEVY: Waterloo school board offering woke workshop for teachers | True North (tnc.news)

• Waterloo school board equity officer says “history is paved with white-led violence”  | True North (tnc.news)

• Waterloo school board wants to rename three schools due to “systemic racism” | True North (tnc.news)

Wow, that is a lot of wokeness coming from one school board. Credit goes to True North and Sue-Ann Levy for being on the case.

But other journalists and commentators have also taken notice of the dysfunction at the WRDSB. Educator and author of the books Sage On The Stage: Common Sense Reflections On Teaching And Learning and What’s Wrong with Our Schools and How We Can Fix Them, Michael Zwaagstra wrote an op-ed in the Epoch Times School Trustees Should Focus on Education, Not Politics (theepochtimes.com) regarding all the nonsense at the WRDSB.

Michael makes an interesting point that trustee roles at Canadian school boards are far too often being occupied by people using them as stepping stones towards greater political ambitions. This is not good for education. We don’t need people passionate about politics in trustee roles, we need people passionate about education.

“…two WRDSB trustees ran unsuccessfully for the NDP in the recent provincial election. Meanwhile, the board chair is a past president of Waterloo’s NDP constituency association, who twice ran unsuccessfully for that party in previous federal elections.

When school trustees use their positions as a stepping stone to higher political office (or as a consolation prize when they cannot win anywhere else), we should not be surprised that they make poor decisions about education. That’s what we can expect from people who never really wanted the job in the first place.

While WRDSB is a particularly egregious example of poor governance, there are plenty of other Canadian school boards that are similarly dysfunctional. Considering how important education is to a healthy society, we have every right to insist that school boards work effectively to achieve that objective.” - Michael Zwaagstra

And, as mentioned previously, at the board meeting on June 27th, professor David Haskell gave a compellingly argued delegation to the WRDSB. In the video, at the 1 hour 13 min mark, is his excellent research-based summary regarding CRT and white privilege.

Also notable, at the 33:20 min mark of that same video, a parents view regarding WRDSB’s use of CRT. Alida Wilms gives an impassioned talk in defense of enlightenment rationality, and states - “I and many others in the community have questions about critical race theory and anti-racist teachings…” Wilms also asked the board what it meant when two teachers from Hamilton were quoted in a Hamilton Spectator piece saying “critical race theory has been embedded in much of Ontario’s school curricula for almost 20 years.” Her question - “What does that mean? We would like to know.”

Another important question that Alida Wilm’s asked - “How much information are parents currently receiving around anti-racist lesson plans?” So far, it appears the WRDSB is sticking to the deliberately misleading story that CRT is not taught in schools. This is a blatant obfuscation. While correct in the sense that CRT classes are not taught, the ideology is “embedded” throughout the curriculum (most visibly in anti-racism initiatives or anything related to diversity, equity and inclusion).

That it was voted down, what Cindy Watson, Mike Ramsay, Alida Wilm, and David Haskell respectfully requested, and decided discussion regarding teaching practices related to CRT and white privilege should not be permitted to occur, even for the sake of parents seeking transparency, puts the illiberal attitude of the Sinister Six on full display.

That’s it for today. If you found this commentary interesting, then you might be interested in that time I attended a Parents Of Black Children Meeting (If you haven’t read my account of this yet, and maybe still aren’t sure what all this CRT, Antiracism, and Equity talk is all about, this piece may shed some light).

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