People Speak

By Duke Gomez-Schempp
Lead Organizer, The People’ Press Project

The People’s Press Project has been filming Fargo Board of Education meetings for a year and making the meetings available to the public through the web and on Fargo Access TV-12.  During the past year of filming, we have noticed that it is infrequent that community members attend the meeting to address their concerns with the school board. There are several possible reasons for this lack of community input. The meetings are not public forum friendly, they tend to run long and are run as business meetings. Another barrier is the way the school board interacts with the public. Although they do have an agenda item called “Recognition of the Audience”  the agenda instructs persons they are in a public meeting, not a public forum and are given a variety of restrictions on their speech, which discourages input from the public. When the President calls on people who penned their name on a sign-up sheet there are further restrictions on how they can address the board. They are told that they cannot criticize or complain about any employee of the school district nor mention anyone by name. There is also a five minutes time limit enforced by the President. With the renewed discussion regarding racism and discrimination in Fargo, parents, children and past and present victims may wish to come forward to speak at School Board meetings, but may run into problems expressing their concerns to the Fargo Board of Education.

The PPP fears, as history has shown so far, that few people will actually have the opportunity to have their complaints heard and addressed publicly – especially in the cases where: parents and children feel they would suffer retaliation, need anonymity, have been disillusioned with past inaction or injustice by school authorities in Fargo, etc. That’s why the PPP is beginning the People Speak Project Hotline: Justice Means Being Heard to address these barriers to democracy.

In an effort to cast the widest net, anyone who has a concern about racism and discrimination, past or present, can speak. The calls will be aired on that they want to voice can call this number and have their concerns made public and aired on PPP’s website at ThePeoplesPressproject.org.and listeners can leave comments and join the discussion. Unfortunately, our recording software only allows 3.5 minutes of recording time per person, but persons can also chose to write their stories for others to read on our website. PPP will update you on the progression of discussion and help elevate the voices of everyone who needs to be heard.

We encourage the public to call 701-205-4513 and speak freely about experiences of racism in the Fargo and metro school systems.  By leaving a message on this hotline there is an agreement that PPP will make it public. If the caller fears that there would be retaliation, we encourage them to be anonymous. We also ask that the callers stay on topic and do not use the hotline to illegally harass or threaten anyone. The voicemail system we are using limits messages to three minutes, so we ask that the caller be concise in their message.

Now is time to speak.  Call People Speak at 701-205-4513 and visit http://thepeoplespressproject.org/people-speak to hear what the community has to say.

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