[PEN-L:36243] Come on, now

[Dan Scanlan <dscanlan@xxxxxxx>]

> Catholic Teacher Quits Rather Than Remove Anti-War Button --A
> teacher at a Catholic high school has quit rather than remove an
> anti-war button the principal said violated the dress code.
> [Principal Dr. Joseph S. Fusco's email address,
> jfusco@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, of Bergen Catholic High School in
> Oradell, New Jersey.]


Dear Dr. Fusco,

In 1966 I was teaching English and journalism in an all-girls
parochial high school run by Dominican nuns. We were in an area of
Los Angeles bordering Watts that was rapidly becoming darker, thanks,
in part, to the local Realtors and their "blockbusting" schemes,
i.e., selling to a black family in order to get the frightened white
neighbors to sell their homes cheaply. In faculty meetings when we
talked about how to address the rampant racism surrounding our
school, I introduced Pope John XXIII's encyclical on racism. That was
my first sin.

My second sin was speaking out against the war in Vietnam. The local
John Birch Society, which was led by the local head of the Board of
Realtors, flooded the school one day with phone calls about my stance
on racism and the war.

I was called in by the principal who told me, verbatim, "You may be
ahead of your time, but we can't allow you to teach here now." I was
fired. My cousin who was a senior at the school at the time told me a
few months later that all of the teachers were speaking out against
the war, that I wasn't ten years ahead of my time, only months.

You seem to be years behind, Doctor. Shame on you.

Dan Scanlan
Grass Valley CA 95945