SF School Board Proposes Renaming Washington and Lincoln Schools With Jerry Garcia
How about Janis Joplin Elementary School?
By Katy Grimes, January 30, 2021 10:10 am
We learned this week that the San Francisco School Board voted 6-1 to rename 44 schools around the city over “racist” namesakes, of historical figures in U.S. history from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln to Paul Revere to U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein. The school board claimed the change was needed due to calls from a small minority of people in the city who believed the namesakes were “slave owners, had a part in slavery and genocide, were part of human rights violations, or were known racists or white supremacists.”
This unleashed a storm of controversy.
The Globe reported within days the outrage over the Board’s strange decision to rename the schools ballooned. To no one’s surprise, a petition was launched shortly after the decision on Tuesday and has since exploded in popularity. As of Thursday, the petition had 10,000 signatures, with hundreds still signing by the hour. Similar petitions asking for recalls of school board members are planned to start up this weekend by activists opposed to the school boards plan.
As if San Francisco could not beclown itself more, the Grateful Dead’s frontman and lead guitarist Jerry Garcia is one of several names being considered for a school renaming, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The legendary San Francisco Bay Area band rose to fame as a part of the counterculture in the 1960s, embodying the drug culture, experimentation, Bohemian lifestyle, the rise of the hippie movement and other “alternative” lifestyles. In fact, Garcia died while in drug rehab. Garcia had long struggled with heroin and opiate drug addictions, weight problems, diabetes, and heavy smoking.
Are they really considering “Jerry Garcia High?”
Why stop with one San Francisco musician on school renaming rights?
How about Janis Joplin Elementary School?
Sly Stone High School?
The Dead Kennedys’ Jello Biafra would make a nice middle school name.
Grace Slick Continuation School has a ring to it.
Carlos Santana Senior High School.
Jazz great Vincent Guaraldi Early Education School… Guaraldi wrote the arrangement for “Linus and Lucy.”
“Hip to be Square” Huey Lewis and the News Middle School.
All kidding aside, the time and taxpayer money spent by the San Francisco School Board on such a ridiculous vanity virtue signaling project should trigger an automatic recall election. The schools in the San Francisco School District were named for people with historical significance. This school board has devolved to a long standing joke, if this is on their agenda.
And, with public schools still closed throughout the state, who needs a school board? This exercise is a petty distraction from the business of school boards, filled with largely worthless members.
The movement to rename the schools began last year, led by first grade teacher Jeremiah Jeffries, who came up with 44 schools that he claimed were named after people who were slave owners, had a part in slavery and genocide, were part of human rights violations, or were known racists or white supremacists.
You really can’t make this up. Truth is stranger than fiction in California.
- ‘Fix Prop. 47’ Ballot Initiative is a Game Changer on Day 1 - April 19, 2024
- California Lawmaker Making the State More Hostile to Business - April 18, 2024
- California Democrats’ Backdoor Reparations Scheme - April 17, 2024
Let’s not forget Cheech & Chong. Maybe for a math and science high school.
The suggestion to name an educational institution after Jerry Garcia suggests contempt for the very idea of education. Of course, so does keeping schools closed month after month. Clearly these people have no interest in education, in children, or for that matter in a workable democratic society. When the air-traffic controllers tried to pull a stunt like this, Reagan fired them all.
Gee, maybe these insane school board members should just go for it, as they say, and re-name the schools after some of California’s most notorious criminals:
Juan Corona Pre-K
Charlie Manson Middle School
Richard Ramirez Elementary
Menendez Brothers Magnet
Lawrence Bittaker High
Ha, yes we are living in La La Land, so why not? Just go all out! Let’s add some notorious pedophiles while were at it! I mean some of these sick minds would argue they are experienced sex educators! Great contributors to our society.
This is all so very disturbing.
Gary Glitter Elementary School. Jerry Sandusky Middle School. Roman Polanski High School. Kevin Spacey High School. Jeffrey Epstein High School. Mao Zedong High School (the latter would actually not surprise me at all – pedophilia, genocide, and communism all combined into one)
Don’t forget Golden State Killer kindergarten.
No kidding.
Thank you Katy Grimes for your good writing and article, been missing you. Nothing like renaming a school after Jerry Garcia, who I loved his music, but to honor a drug addict and name a school after him? How is that a better role model than our first president who happened to live at a time when slavery was acceptable, it was a different time in the world back then. Why crucify Washington and Lincoln who also did many good things. At that time it was considered the normal, doesn’t make it right in todays world but it is HISTORY, right? Why can’t people be happy with the progress society has made with racism, slavery etc.? It is part of American history, which I assume is no longer taught in California? So let me ask, does our new generation not care about history and its progress, aren’t they proud to be part of a new world and its changes from such things? Or we just pretend, if we tear down sculptures, erase names, that it makes it all go away? Isn’t history called history for a reason? I don’t get the cancel culture generation at all. But they also think money grows on trees, and don’t believe in hard work, they want everything given to them equally where hard work and education and a desire to better yourself is not needed, they are all equals. Relying on us older folks who worked hard for what we have and the money we have paid to the government won’t last their lazy generation very long. At some point the handouts for being a lazy cry baby will disappear! Go sit in a tree and eat plants and live off the government! Sorry, got a bad attitude today. Why isn’t Robin Williams on the list to name a school after? Is it because suicide isn’t talked about? Again sorry for the bad attitude. Katy your articles always spark a great discussion, thank you.
At least Jerry Garcia had talent. Ditto most of the others you name.
(I’ve always considered Janice Joplin overrated, although the Big Brother and the Holding Company album with Robert Crumb’s always brilliant artwork was certainly excellent.
(Now there’s a thought: Why not at least name something, an art school probably, after Robert Crumb?* )
Consider that they could have instead proposed naming it after some unattractive and obese lesbian ‘of color’. You know, an otherwise essentially obscure nobody, complete with a kinte-cloth mu-mu. with an unpronounceable faux-African Ebonics first name followed by a pretentiously hyphenated last name, name hyphenation being pretentious unless you really are English.
(Guess we lucked out there, but this isn’t over yet, so who knows.)
All that said, naming schools clearly has become a PC nightmare where in trying to satisfy everybody, you satisfy nobody, inasmuch as there’s always some media-ready and narcissistic malcontent ready to bitch and moan on cue about whatever aggrievement that dominates their tortured psyche: “This defames One-Legged Albanian midgets! I demand justice for One-Legged Albanian Midgets!!!”
Roll cameras.
Let’s look to the past as a way to avoid the whole mess. Why not instead just assign the school a number? Or name it after the street it’s on? You know, like they used to do. Something might be called P.S. #3,” or “Forth Street Jr. High.”
See, plain vanilla as can be. Problem solved.
(Maybe: “This offensive name discriminates against Innumerates! Justice for Innumerates now!!)
Just a thought. (As I duck and run from crazed Albanians.)
VicB3
*If you know breadth of his artwork, you know that Robert Crumb would immediately skewer these school board members et al for the lunatics they really are (if he already hasn’t). He really is our era’s William Hogarth.
Jerry would say, “Are you f…kin’ kidding me? That’s a dumb ass idea! Hell, no!”
Thank you John! I laughed tonight!
If the school board doesn’t know who Abraham Lincoln was, what are the kids learning?
Demand SCHOOL CHOICE.
https://recallgavin2020.com/
It’s really important to understand that Jerry Garcia and the whole counterculture were assets of the National Security state. The whole creation of the Hippie movement and the Summer of Love was a Psyop created by the 103 Psychological Warfare Operations Batallion at the SF Presidio. The idea was to control and divert organized opposition to the Vietnam War and prevent it from joining with veterans or creating any sort of an effective front. Suddenly the White Panthers turned into hippies, and it was very frustrating to the legitimate peace movement of the early 60’s such as that at Berkeley which interrupted the UnAmerican Activities Committee (see the book “Subversives”). In other words, Jerry Garcia was part of Cointelpro-NewLeft, so the idea that he was somehow radical or even progressive is simply a sham. The best book on the counterculture is “Weird Scenes in the Canyon” by David McGowan.