On May 30th, Rochester joined the rest of the world in protesting racist police terror and murder imposed on Black People across the United States.  In response to the protest, Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren decried the events stating that 'outsiders' had been responsible for the 'violence' that followed the 'peaceful' BLM event. Warren noted, "Outsiders – and I do mean outsiders – not from our city, not from our community, decided to set police cars on fire". She later clarified that "Outsiders. Outsiders of the Black Lives Matter movement. People that came to agitate and irritate were the ones that started the destruction, that set the police car on fire, and defaced our police station." Rochester's Democrat and Chronicle noted, "Warren personalized her remarks by talking about the destruction of the "Family Dollar that my cousin works at," and that her cousin no longer knows whether she will still have a job there."

Both the 'outsiders' who 'agitate,' and the Family Dollar remarks are problematic. The former is doublespeak, or an attempt to shuffle the meaning of words to shift the systemic failures of the state onto the community. By spouting the lie of blaming 'outsiders' for the violence, Mayor Warren attempts to invalidate the uprising by claiming that the riot was somehow an outside plot, rather than the oppressed demanding that their voices be heard against the racist and violent police. The latter reeks of ignorance of Family Dollar's role in the destruction of urban communities, given the daily hoarding and looting that Dollar Tree Stores Incorporated exhibits in its business endeavors throughout communities across the nation.

The notion of 'outsiders' who 'agitate' are and always have been dubious claims. The claims date as early as the antebellum era of the south and are thrown around by those in power after mass uprisings. The allegations have been used by a range of power brokers, from businessmen such as the Rockefellers and Andrew Carnegie to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. University of Texas at Austin Professor Peniel Joseph has defined the claims as, "…whatever conflict, political rebellion or demonstration is happening, it's not organically home grown, it's not authentic. That none of these troubles would happen if not for outside agitators", while Howard University law professor Justin Hansford has defined the claims as "a racial term… that protests are somehow less legitimate and really run by people who are, not black, usually white people, who are not local — people who are from different parts of the country or different parts of the world." Basically, the claims are that individuals, not from the local community, are either organizing the demonstrations or are the cause of what the government sees as the questionable actions of the protests.

Outside of being a false statement, which I will comment on later, Mayor Warren's claims undermine the event in several ways. For one, the allegations provide cover to Warren and the police for any wrongdoings that are cause for the uprising. The Mayor doesn't have to face questions about the 14 suspicious deaths since 1975 at the hands of RPD, as well as the countless number of cases in which RPD has used excessive force if the current disdain in Rochester is orchestrated by 'outsiders' of the community. The Mayor can handwave calls for action if she can claim the calls are from 'outsiders.' In turn, by providing cover for its role in instigating the uprisings, Mayor Warren further obfuscates the government's oppression of the Black community through the justification of violent action against demonstrators. Tear gas and pepper bullets are more palatable to the public when they are characterized as being shot at 'outsiders' who have 'agitated' the government, as opposed to the government shooting our neighbors and community members. As former undercover FBI agent, Michael German explained, "It hard for police to violently respond to protests by the community they're sworn to protect.  So, saying its outside agitators, helps them justify more violence,"

Additionally, the Mayor's claims undermine the uprising as they whitewash demonstrations and organizers. If the Mayor can claim specific actions are not by community members, then the implicit suggestion is that the activities must be carried out by white people. Rochester is a majority non-white city, while every other population outside of the Rochester community (County, surrounding Counties, Region, State, Nation) is overwhelmingly white. Unsurprisingly, the Mayor explicitly suggested this whitewashing when she rebuked City Councilmember Mary Lupien's 'no' vote of the city budget.

The white Councilmember was the only dissenting vote to the city's budget after accurately stating the city spends more on RPD's budget than on schools, libraries, and youth services combined when factoring in pension costs. The Mayor characterized the factoring in of pension costs when discussing the budget as "absolutely absurd." She did not explain why it was absurd, nor did she explain why one would not factor in the cost given that the city contributes to the fund. Instead, the Mayor went on to claim the Councilmember's statements were meant to incite and that "people who promote themselves, and the existing broken system, rather than empowering black and brown people to truly change the system. ...  Black and brown people don't need a savior."

Organizers of the May 30th event clapped back at the response, as all forms of Black people have organized the events in Rochester. It has been Black people who have planned rallies and lead the movement, and any suggestion otherwise is a lie. Sadly, the Mayor's comments attempt to strip agency from the organizers and paint Lupien and other white resistors as a type of adventurists. The comments further deny any oppression RPD and the government may impose against Black people.

Even without any of the above contexts, the claims of 'outsiders' who 'agitate' are quite simply a bold face lie. The comments are a lie simply because every report has indicated that those arrested have been from the community. Based on public reporting, only one person has been arrested from outside of the county, while an overwhelming majority of arrests have been from individuals who live in city limits. This should come as no surprise, as this was the case in Ferguson back in 2014, as well as the case currently in Minnesota, Miami, and neighboring Buffalo.

What is more disturbing than the lies is the fact that local reporters seemingly knew the claims were lies, yet the claims were printed anyways and have yet to be redacted or followed up. Reporter Justin Murphy noted, "The Democrat and Chronicle has no independent confirmation of the identities of anyone who may have instigated the unrest, and officials did not provide any proof," Yet the newspaper ran the Mayor's comments without publishing any direct questioning of the Mayor's remarks. The press has yet to publicly follow up on the claims through either an investigative report or op-ed, even though there is no indication the allegations are true. Contrast this with Minnesota, where actual investigative reporting takes place. Reporters combed through arrest records, and in turn, forced the Mayor of St. Paul to walk back statements on 'outside agitators,' as records showed residences made up an overwhelming majority of arrests.

Though the use of 'outsiders' who 'agitate' can be dismissed as a trope, to do so undermines the sinister nature of its usage. When Mayor Warren and similar government leaders uniformly make these claims, they do so not as a literary device for theatrics. The words are doublespeak and are a form of government propaganda. Author Edward S. Herman has described doublespeak as the implicit redefinition of terms, the manipulation of verbatim, and, "the ability to lie, whether knowingly or unconsciously, and to get away with it; and the ability to use lies and choose and shape facts selectively, blocking out those that don't fit an agenda or program."

Included in Herman's doublespeak dictionary is the word 'agitator.' Herman  describes the concept as "The source of disaffection and riots among otherwise contented people." Ironically, Herman uses FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as an example of the 'agitator' doublespeak term.

Hoover stated that 'outside agitators' had played a role in the 1967 negro riots, commonly known as the 'long, hot summer of 1967'. By shifting the blame onto 'agitators' as being the cause of the riots, Hoover was able to both push the false notion of contentment among Blacks, while also justifying a hardline approach by the government against protestors. In turn, the government killed over 80 people during the summer of 1967 and injured over 2,000 citizens. It should come as no surprise that the context of the 1967 riots was used as a justification of the phrase 'when the looting starts, the shooting starts' by Miami police chief Walter Headley. While the vile distortion of ‘agitators’ justifies state violence, the Mayor's second comment may be much worse, given the continued exploitation and looting exhibited by Family Dollar Inc.

Journalist Alec McGillis recently wrote a harrowing article on what he describes as, "one of the most dangerous low-wage jobs in America, even before it became a form of essential worker during Covid-19: dollar-store clerk.” McGillis details the plight of dollar-store clerks, specifically the violence and exploitation concocted by Dollar Tree Stores, Inc. The organization operates low-staffed and physically jumbled stores that, in turn, place workers in dangerous positions that have become feeding grounds for violence. McGillis writes, “Because dollar stores are heavily concentrated in poor towns and neighborhoods, many middle- and upper-middle-class consumers are unaware of their ubiquity — or of the frequency of armed robberies and shootings.” The frequency of violence led McGillis to interview dozens of clerks, some of who have died on the job. Others have been fired for attempting to defend themselves while working as clerks.

McGillis writes that dollar stores are purposely unequipped to protect clerks as their business practices undercut traditional grocery and ‘small-business’ stores. Undercuttings include less staff on hand than conventional stores, a lack of security guards in many stores, as well as inadequate cameras that limit record-keeping for when robberies take place. These conditions create opportunities for robberies and violence. McGillis writes that “Robberies and killings that have taken place at dollar store chains would not have necessarily happened elsewhere…Making it harder to commit a crime doesn’t just push crime elsewhere; it reduces it.”

Additionally, McGillis writes that this low-cost method of operation has historically been the business strategy of Family Dollar and its parent company, Dollar Tree Stores, Inc. Dollar Tree owner Hurley Turner’s business strategy was to seek out cheap real estate for storefronts, while also paying poorly; “Wages were to be kept at a maximum of 5% of a store’s gross sales, which, Cal Jr. [son of owner Hurley Turner] acknowledged, “placed us at the bottom of a low-paying industry.” This method of operating stores maximized revenue provided by the low-priced goods found at the stores. Presently, the company has lamented the rise of hourly wage across the nation, while noting in financial statements that it hopes not to have to increase security at stores. Financial statements from 2019 emphasized the increase in security could “adversely affect” economic conditions. Company execs expressed, “Our ability to pass along labor costs to our customers is constrained by our everyday low-price model …and we may not be able to offset such increased costs elsewhere in our business.”

Although dollar stores are cited as filling a need for low-income populations, further evidence shows that the stores’ business practices further exacerbate inequalities. A report from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance illustrates how dollar stores worsen income, health, and access inequalities.  By competing with grocery stores, dollar stores reduce communities’ access to fresh foods. In contrast, the strategy of saturating neighborhoods with multiple stores makes it difficult for new grocers and other businesses to grow. Additionally, while the stores market their pricing as lower than groceries, the single-serving packaging of many of their products means their goods are often higher per-unit price than competitors. The higher per-unit rate means that in the long-term, individuals who shop at dollar stores are almost always paying more for their goods than individuals who are privileged to shop at traditional grocery stores.

The exacerbation also means that any profits that potentially cycle into local communities and the local economy through community-owned ventures are instead diverted to Dollar Tree Stores, Inc. McGillis mentions that Dollar General has seen its share price triple over the past five years, with its CEO taking in $10 million in total compensation, or about 800 times the median pay of workers at the company. Dollar Tree’s CEO was paid about the same. This is all while the stores face class-action lawsuits for violating labor laws, as well as a potential lawsuit organized by victims of violence at dollar generals. A quick internet search of their suits revealed Dollar Tree Stores, Inc. had paid $129 million in penalties since 2000.

Not only do c-suite execs acknowledge this looting of communities, execs see this looting as literally the driver of their core customer. The parasitic brand thrives off the most impoverished communities while paying the lowest wages possible, all the while hoarding profits that could potentially be reinvested into communities should other businesses take their place. And yet this is the company the Mayor decides to acknowledge a day after the uprisings. All while the nation faces a once in a generation pandemic and the unemployment of tens of millions of Americans.

This mentioning of family relations is a common trope by Mayor Warren, as it paints an empathic picture of her being ‘one of the people.’ By connecting with the common Rochesterian, Mayor Warren attempts to show herself as the same with Rochester’s working-class. The problem with the statement, along with several other past comments, are that they display Mayor Warren’s inability to recognize her placement among the bourgeoisie, while the remarks protect the actual looters within our community.

Mayor Warren cites a better future for ‘our children’ as justification for radical change to the local Rochester City School District, yet her daughter attends a private school outside of city limits. Mayor Warren has said it would be unconscionable for a healthcare provider to administer an STD vaccine to her daughter without her consent and has used this ‘contrary to fact’ fallacy as an excuse to lobby against three state sex health bills. And yet Warren’s position as Mayor privileges her access to premier healthcare, which in turn allows Warren to choose her daughter’s provider at will and as she pleases. The Mayor uses her cousin’s employer as an example of the consequences of rioting and looting. And yet the Mayor’s cousin’s employer is one of the largest looters of the working class, and the employer perpetually places Warren’s cousin at risk. To quote Mayor Warren, Dollar Tree, Inc. are the “Outsiders – and I do mean outsiders – not from our city, not from our community…that agitate and irritate,” our community.

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On November 17, 2017, Keyoni Adams was arrested during a domestic dispute. This is her story detailing her experience of being abused and beaten by members of the Rochester Police Department and deputies in the Monroe County Jail. Please be advised that her story is graphic and disturbing.

She was released on November 20, 2017. Ms. Adams pleaded to a conditional discharge. Since then, she has been harassed by the Rochester Police Department.

This interview was conducted on March 28, 2018.

Enough is enough!

Related: It’s not over for Benny Warr | City Council Candidate Forum on Police Accountability from 2017 | David Vann v. the system

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Keyoni Adams
 

The current budget crisis in the Rochester City School District (RCSD) is somewhat a mystery. We often hear that the school district overspent its budget by tens of millions of dollars, but rarely hear how this happened. Just how does the school district go from having a budget that was balanced on paper at the end of the 2018-2019 school year to being $30 million short at the start of of the next? One answer is the completely absurd process used to balance last year's 2018-2019 budget.

A good starting point is the Oct. 8 report from Superintendent Terry Dade where he states that the 2018-2019 budget was $22.4 million dollars underbudget when compared to actual expenditures. He highlighted 6 items in particular:

• BOCES Special Education Services
• Charter School Tuition
• Self-funded Health Insurance
• Substitute Teachers
• Retirement Benefits
• Transportation

The confusing part of this list is that each item represents a predictable expense. For example, health insurance costs vary from year to year, but the change can be estimated based on the number of new hires and predicted rise of health care costs. This won't result in 100% accuracy, but it should be fairly close.

How did the school district underbudget by so much, in so many areas that should have been predictable? Well, in order to balance the 2018-2019 budget, they simply reduced the budgets for these items without any plan to actually reduce spending.

A "balanced budget"

In March 2018 Superintendent Barbara Deane-Williams and CFO Everton Sewell were tasked with closing a $52.1 million deficit from the initial budget estimates. They outlined their plan in the budget overview presented on March 27 (see page 28). The majority of the gap was closed with 2 changes:

• Appropriating an extra $10 million dollars from the general fund, for a total of $20 million (AKA dipping into the district's "savings account").
• Reducing various budget items for a total of $32.2 million dollars, including 5 out of the 6 items that would later appear in Dade's report as underbudgeted: BOCES, Health Insurance, Substitute Teachers, Retirement Benefits, and Transportation.

I'll emphasize again: all of the items listed are more-or-less predictable. Any reductions should be accompanied with a reason that we would expect decreased spending or a plan to cause that to happen However, the district never presented anything approaching an explanation, including when board members questioned these reductions. Here are some excerpts from the RSCD Administration's answers to the School Board's questions.

Question: In light of the additional teachers and other staff (total of 186FTE) to be hired in the next year, how is the District planning to attain a $2.6M reduction in employee benefits?

Answer, prepared by Everton Sewell: This reduction is not a year over year reduction, but rather a change in the projected amount that was originally projected for 2018-19. The overall employee benefit is still increasing to accommodate for the change in FTEs (Full-time Employees)

There are many drivers contributing to our employee benefits including NYS retirement system, Social Security, COBRA Claims, medical and dental costs, unemployment insurance and workers compensation, just to name a few. The initial increase costs of employee benefits were projected to be $13.2M. Detail analysis of each item indicated a potential reduction is sustainable.

The first paragraph seems to either miss the point entirely or is intentional misdirection. The district was proposing to add 186 full-time positions and administration itself predicted a 4% rise in health care costs, a 10%-15% increase in retirement benefits costs, as well as a 4% increase for other benefits (RCSD 2018-2019 Budget section 3, page 26). Because of this, it's clear that simply comparing the year over year budget numbers is pointless. A better comparison is against the initial projected amount, which factored in employee growth and increased costs per-employee. When compared to that number, the employee benefits budget was most certainly reduced.

The second paragraph is long on words, but short on explanation. In essence the administration is asking us to accept the reductions based on on their claim that "detail analysis of each item indicated a potential reduction".

The D&C actually has some good reporting on the health insurance reductions. It's unfortunately behind a paywall, but here are some key takeaways:

• The district reduced health insurance budget per-employee in the 2017-2018 budget, which resulted in underbudgeting when compared to actual costs.
• In 2018-2019 the district further reduced the budget per-employee, below the already underbudgeted number while actual costs continued to rise.
• The self-insurance fund balance was positive $11.8 million in June 2017. Money from this fund was moved to the general fund to cover expenses. According to Dan DiClemente, present of the BENTE union, this was done without union official's knowledge.

Charter school tuition was similarly underbudgeted and this happened from the start, before the March 2018 changes. The budget line increased from the 2017-2018 to 2018-2019, however that increase was not nearly enough to cover the predicted increase in both charter school enrollment numbers and per-student tuition cost. Superintendent Dade's report listed charter school tuition as $6 million underbudget.

Other questions received similarly unhelpful answers.

Question: What "transportation efficiencies" are currently being considered by the District?

Answer, prepared by Mike Schmidt: The transportation department is utilizing the feedback from the Board of Education to guide our process of securing efficiency and improved service. We will not be transporting the sixth grade students at Young Men's Leadership on RTS service. We are looking very closely at our service for high school students in alternative programs to provide them more flexibility.

If you can find any explanation of why they expected significant savings, please send me an email (ben at rocus.org). I'm struggling to find any substance in this answer at all. According to Superintendent Dade's report, contract transportation was underbudgeted by $3.3 million in 2018-2019.

Maintenance of Effort

The contract transportation budget was lowered as part of "Department Maintenance of Effort reductions" that totaled $15 million dollars. These reductions seem entirely arbitrary.

Question: The 2018-19 RCSD Budget Overview presentation referred to $15M in projected cost savings from "Department Maintenance of Effort Reductions". Please explain the major source(s) of these reductions, and how the estimates were derived.

Answer, Prepared by Everton Sewell: The major sources of the $15M are listed below.

• Specialized Services $2,701,705
• Student Support Services $885,164
• Alternative Program $1,574,623
• Transportation $1,272,404
• Safety and Security $306,278
• Facilities $2,986,753
• Info Mgmt. & Technology $1,337,530
• Deputy Supt of Admin $213,159
• Teaching and Learning $2,192,780

The estimates were derived based on the remaining budget gap at the time and taking that as a percent of the total operating budget for all the nonschool departments. The amount came to be about 12%.

I find this answer completely amazing. How did the administration determine how much each department could be cut? They simply took the amount the needed to balance the budget and split it up proportionally between all the departments. There was no investigation into how these departments spent their money. The administration simply assumed they could be cut by whatever was needed to close the budget gap.

It's unclear what happened with the budgets for the departments other than transporation. Were they able to reduce spending by 12%? Were they underbudget but not listed on Dade's report? Were the budgets restored, and if so where did the funding come from? Hopefully the upcoming results of the state audit or the comprehensive annual financial report will explain more.

One effect of this budget process is that it severly limits any public participation. When the administration fails to provide clear explanations of what's changing and why, then it becomes very hard for anyone to understand the budget and virtually impossible to give meaningful input.

One consistent cry from the community from the start of the budget crisis is that there is room in the RCSD budget to make cuts without cutting teachers and staff. Many have volunteered to work with the board to identify these areas. Could the community help to find areas of overspending to help balance the RCSD's budget? It seems reasonable considering that the top-down approach, largely driven by the superintendent and CFO, has driven the district into our current financial crisis. It's also one of the few alternatives to suggestions of state control for the RCSD.

Stepping Back

This article focused on tracing the current budget crisis back to the absurd and dysfunctional process used by the RCSD administration and board to balance the 2018-2019 budget. However, it's important we we also look at the larger picture to avoid missing the forest for the trees. The larger picture is that we have a school system that's underfunded at all levels of government, city to federal. We have a system of highly segregated schools, 65 years after Brown vs Board of Education. Finally, we have numerous charter schools working to attract students away from public schools, taking large portions of RCSD funding in the process.

It doesn't seem fair to simply say the board or the administration didn't know how to balance a budget. If they had adequate funding from the start, like most/all of the suburbs, then there would have be no need for this absurdity in the first place.

So let's be fair: The RCSD has been been tasked for years now to balance an underfunded budget at the same time as it needed to improve the quality of education for our children. Maybe it could have been done with the right expertise, more community involvement, or an exceptional leader, but the administration and board we had were not up to the task. They tried to balance the budget using absurd measures that could have been predicted to fail from the start.

Upcoming Events

If you're interested in fighting for change in the Rochester City School District, please consider one of these actions:

• Fund our Schools Lobby Day. Citizen Action and Alliance for Quality Education are taking a bus to Albany to lobby to "demand that Andrew Cuomo fulfill his obligation and pay the Rochester City School District the $86 million its owed in Foundation Aid."
• Protest at Govener Cuomo's State of the State address. A group of Rochesterians is organizing to protest the lack of state funding at the address. There's a lottery to get tickets inside, but if folks don't get tickets they are planning to make some noise outside instead. If you're interested, please send me an email (ben at rocus.org) and I can get you in touch with the group.