what goes on in private

for the love of money (part 1, probably)

Anti-Reader, i had so many Forest Epiphanies that i was prepared to share with you yesterday, but then i opened my email to a newsletter by the clever and funny journalist Lyz, author of Men Yell at Me, discussing, as the title aptly states, When Public Money Becomes Private. Lyz begins,

The fight isn’t a new one. But this year, in states like New Jersey, Oregon, New Hampshire, Iowa, Missouri, Utah, and Texas, the move to push voucher programs has gained new momentum. Last year, the Supreme Court issued a ruling allowing public money to be spent on private school tuition. This, combined with backlash over pandemic school shutdowns and mask mandates, has energized the far right to shift money from public to private schools.

the newsletter is well-written and you can read that here because i, dearest anti-reader, graduated from journalism school jaded with a (useless?) degree and never looked back, not even to attend the graduation ceremony. my prerequisite to university was 15 years of private christian schooling in the bible belt so, this, i am qualified to speak on but before we get into that- i’m not finished griping about university and the city of Atlanta and how boring i found all of the ‘public relations’ impersonating as journalism.

not to discredit all Atlanta journalists (or discredit them! idc! i’m not concerned for them) but the lack of coverage on Cop City and the police murdering protester, Tortuguita, in a public park is showing me that not much has changed around here. i always believed journalism was meant to wake people up to the reality of a situation even if it’s hard to hear, in the name of the public interest, but when the CEOs of your city’s major newspapers have investments in these for-profit projects you can forget about getting anything resembling honest coverage. even in the early 2010s as a naive, fresh outta private school young adult i could see how so much of the journalism being taught at my university (in Atlanta) was actually marketing and public relations and it enraged me. it was the exact opposite of what i believed journalism to be. i only spoke in my classes when addressed, unless it was to sometimes respond “that’s PR” whenever a fellow journalism student took it upon themselves to describe their strategies to the class. as far as i can remember no one ever argued with me.

news coverage from out of state sources and even abroad will share reports of the situation for what it is like, ‘assassinated in cold blood’, but the only news coverage coming out of Atlanta is about “violent riots and arrests of non residents.” surprise, surprise. our current mayor, Andre Dickens, is no different from the rest completely disregarding the loss of life. It isn’t surprising, though disheartening, because 1) that’s what the State does and 2) this specific life was one that happened to also be hindering the development of a horrific infrastructure that Mr. Mayor, then-city councilman, voted in favor of. The Atlanta Police Department knows who they need on their side and have the power, the infrastructure, and the resources to get them. The Bitter Southerner is the only source i’ve seen that has given any insight into what is happening on the grounds of the park thanks to Decatur based journalist David Peisner who spent 6 months with protesters at the camp.

we are very much in the throes of a privatization epidemic, especially here in Atlanta. it’s dystopian and horrifying so i thought that i would share some of my own personal experiences from America’s Private Institutions because life is art, right?

as i was reading Lyz’s newsletter i was getting all fired up, literally, my armpits started sweating which is how i know i’m on the brink of something and need to write. many of my memories from private school are visceral, yet dreamlike, as i suppose memories are. being a child or an adolescent is a trip because there can be so many absurd things happening around you—chaos, ludicrousness, even horror— and you definitely sense the absurdity but perhaps you figured you were simply confused, or missing something, because this is what has been happening since you arrived and no one else really complains about it so it must just be A Thing People (like christians) Do?

if you’re new here the run down is this: i attended private christian schools from grades K-12, the longest and most notable being a southern baptist private school about 35 mins south of Atlanta that i attended from age 9-18. i begged, for years, to go to public school but my dad wouldn’t have it.

i almost got out once but the principle, who would go on later that year to tell me i was “a smart girl who asks stupid questions” in bible class, somehow talked my dad into keeping me enrolled at the school, and thus kept his money rolling in for the next 4 years.

i was a competitive soccer player growing up and my school didn’t even have a soccer program. it wasn’t an option for a competitive player to sit dormant for a season - so we started one! and we were good, too! more money for them!! those preachers sure are convincing. have y’all watched The Eyes of Tammy Faye? it’s a thing.

my family wasn’t religious, besides my grandmother who is catholic, and after performing some Catholic rituals, like baptism and communion, for my Mexican family as a young child i didn’t attend any church outside of my schools’ mandatory weekly chapel service and daily bible class. unless, of course, it was something fun i could do with my friends like the ‘alternative Wednesday night youth group’ my friends’ mother led in a warehouse church where even the “troubled kids” were welcomed.

i’m not sure why i was made to stay at this school despite my pleas. perhaps some parents think it looks better to have your kid in a private school but let me tell ya- looks can be deceiving because mine was not known for their rigorous education. we weren’t even offered a single AP class until we were juniors (3rd year of high school for Americans).

our “college prep” consisted of receiving disclaimers in biology class when being taught evolution because, obviously, god created everything and we only learn this stuff to survive the secular college world, not eternity, and we took a SAT practice exam a total of… once. it cost approximately $10,000 a year to attend this school. this school still exists.

hopefully they at least have more AP classes now. i could go on, and perhaps i will one day, but today is not that day. this is not an exposé, per se, it’s just my experience and what else do we really know but that? i want to share this with you, Anti-Reader, because it’s the type of stuff that can go on at private schools and i’ve found that the people i’ve shared this with- outside of those who have actually experienced private schooling- are utterly shocked.

one of the most anticipated days of the year was a planned and organized event that involved the entire school, which included elementary, middle, and high. first thing in the morning they ushered the whole school into the church auditorium for this exciting day. they called it the Senior Auction.

The Senior Auction was a day most people looked forward to. it was fun, exciting, and a change of pace from the typical soft rock christian band, subsequent preacher giving us a list of our assignments to gain god’s conditioned love, and making sure no teachers notice that you forgot to bring your bible. the seniors would oblige [the auction], albeit begrudgingly, knowing what the day entailed. plus, it’s almost graduation and not everyone can afford an unexcused absence for missing this most important day. hell, some of them even seemed to like it but it’s all in the name of fun, right?

Narrator: it wasn’t. it was actually in the name of Money and that’s not the only thing that made it weird.

you see the Senior Auction was a day where each senior was called up on stage, individually, by our disciplinarian or some other older white male figure of authority, to be auctioned off and sold to the highest bidder. many of the men that worked at my school went by “Coach” Something or Another and i never really knew what their roles were at any given time. one of the coaches, who taught math class my senior year, had us go around the room and share where/what we were going to study in university. i said journalism and my Math “Coach” asked if i was going to be a “weather girl.” an omen, in hindsight, but at the time my classmates and i were momentarily dumbstruck, looked around at each other, snickered, and moved on. a process we’d learned to do quite well after years at this bizarre school. anyway, my concern on the day of the Senior Auction was now the fact that this other “Coach” was also the keeper and deliverer of my fate— my auctioneer.

i’ll never forget my Senior Auction Day. they shuffled all the seniors in and sat us in the first few rows on the right side of the stage. we waited for this performance that we’ve sat through year after year, but there was always something a little unplanned with our class. administration thought we were rebellious but really we were just weird. the things my school shoved down our throats (sports, church, showing face) didn’t interest as many of the kids in my grade as it did the others, therefore we were heathens. stricter rules were placed on my class simply because they anticipated we would do something sneaky. it’s funny how you can be minding your own business and people will call you shady, but it seems those are usually the people who are doing shady things themselves. what’s that saying? everyone’s a liar to a liar.

so “Coach” finished his intro and into the microphone goes, “now whoOo am i going to pick first??” and pauses while scanning the rows of “rebellious” seniors with a mischievous grin hoping to catch us off guard.

yeah, you know where it’s going…

“Lexiiii Toribioooo”

it took them years to pronounce my last name correctly but boy, they got it now!

somehow sensing my fate i was already looking at my friends and they started to chuckle. so began my ascent to the stage donning my little uniform plaid skirt and knee highs. this is the same plaid skirt that would repeatedly get me called into some small room where i was told to get on my knees so that someone can take a ruler to my leg and measure the inches of skin between my knee and the fabric of my skirt; nothing over 2 inches! my skirt was always the appropriate length but they never failed to express their confusion because “it looks so short in the back….”

now this skirt was surely going to aid in the purchase of… me, oh yes, for sex sells and mommy and daddy are buyin’ and i don’t even get a single word in the microphone concerning this entire transaction.

i stood there on stage in my christian school uniform under the harsh spotlights as an old white man called “Coach” Something marketed me to the entire school while students bid actually money to purchase me inside of a church auditorium.

it all felt very biblical.

i was purchased by a small group of 12 year old boys who put the money that their parents gave them together to buy me. i’m sure by now you’re wondering what these kids are bidding for, Anti-Reader, and i’ll tell you how the duty was described. You were meant to be “their slave for the day” and it’s pretty much full stop there. they used to let the seniors leave school to go buy their “owners” lunch off campus but they stopped doing that before i was sold. luckily, though, i got to relive some trauma from when i was 12. sitting in the same classroom with the same creepy math teacher who was now the bible teacher asking me to share memories from my time in 6th grade. when i shared a story of him kind of ruining my life at the time, he asked if i had any happy memories. i said no.

i mostly remember all of the things i kept having to refuse my tiny 6th grade “owners”. no, i will not put that lip gloss on. i’m not dancing on the tables at lunch. you cannot piggy back ride me on the way to class! you get it. there are so many other things i could say about the auction- the disparity in who is sold and for how much and why and how that is affecting their psyche, THE SHEER FACT THAT KIDS (MANY OF WHOM DIDN’T ATTEND THE CHURCH) ARE BEING SOLD TO MAKE MONEY FOR SAID MEGA CHURCH. it was a majority white school at the time but there weren’t only white kids there. they really put Black and brown kids up on stage and auctioned them off to hungry white kids eager to assert some kind of power over them. they sold us under the premise that it was to raise money for the senior trip but in order to go on the senior trip you were required to pay something like $3,000 per person and maybe 15 kids in the class even went. i don’t find it necessary to list out all of the disturbing aspects of our annual Senior Auction; i trust they are pretty clear.

my tax-exempt, tuition collecting mega-church of a baptist school was selling it’s students to other students as “slaves for the day” in order to make additional annual profit for the church.

ahh, a tale as old as time.

maybe this goes without saying but i graduated from that school and never looked back. i hear the school is no longer majority white so i hope they aren’t still selling students as “slaves”, but i’m not that old and this ‘once upon a time’ wasn’t so long ago.

it took me a while to grasp the microcosm of America that i was living in during that time. the dark secrets hidden behind white light and false narratives, the rewriting of history, the coercion, guilt, and shame, the favoritism, nepotism, the PATRIARCHY dear god the patriarchy, elections not really being elections, divisiveness, prejudice, injustice, lack of protection, outright harm. so many of the failings of that school are mirrored in the failings of our larger systems. privatization allows these failings to continue, to grow worse, or morph into something that is the same but different. private entities are unregulated and are not required to meet any standard of quality nor equality. my school had the right to refuse, or suddenly retract, service to anyone they wished and they absolutely asserted their right as a business, i mean school, but worse than that they’ve gotten away with behavior that as an adult now having taught children in schools, appalls me to think about.

and i’d be infuriated if my taxpayer money was used to help to fund the trauma

~

or build a mock city to train cops on how to suppress us nationwide amidst a homelessness and climate crisis

it isn’t just irresponsible but a big fuck you to all citizens, whether you like cops or not. it is a reminder that “our” politicians and “our” law enforcement and “our” injustice systems don’t have to (and won’t) take us into consideration so why do we keep voting them in? so that they can approve more private projects that they get a cut of at our expense? come on y’all, this is such a theme in Atlanta. this is the history of our city but, also historically, people here get tired of playing by rules, especially when those who write them get to break them. people keep talking about the major increase in violence here in Atlanta as if it has nothing to do with how violent our police infrastructure is. you can’t solve violence with more violence and they know that. APD is not trying to serve or protect anything other than their assumed right to maintain the status quo of doing and killing whomever they wish without accountability. citizens, even those that aren’t as overtly harmed, are painstakingly aware of the insidiousness of the system and how all the seemingly separate parts are actually working together. we must do the same, for we are many, and we have power though it looks different and must be wielded differently. it’s the cops who will be banking on violence, prepared for violence, and the politicians will have their backs so what are We the People going to do now? they’re killing protesters in a self-proclaimed free country. are we going to live inside of Octavia Butler’s parables or are we going to get on same page and figure it out (not to be dramatic) before it’s too late??? this is an inquiry.

we struggle so much at functioning as a cohesive society here in the US and is it any wonder? we have NO connection to our ancestral roots or to the land. we have no respect for children or elders because they aren’t “profitable” under capitalism. how can we be shocked at the violence when that’s what we were founded on? this is the ugly product of settler colonialism. the choices we make ripple through generations.

history repeats itself

reality is a loop

feel like you’ve been here before?

wanna get off the ride?

how will we move forward in resisting this dystopian hell?

how will we mend the relationships?

because the show is going on

and we’ve all got a finger on the controller.