Deposed Anaheim Union High School District Trustee Harald Martin must have felt a disturbance in the force today.
Gustavo Arellano, over at the OC Weekly’s Navelgazing Blog, wrote a post entitled “Gordo and Harald Sitting in a Tree…” wherein he took O.C. Register columnist Gordon Dillow to the woodshed for some major nalgadas.
Dillow must have taken some stupid pills when he wrote his column, in today’s O.C. Register, entitled “Lightning strikes immigration foe.”
He drew Arellano’s ire by writing “Former Anaheim school board member Harald Martin puts it this way: “I’ve been out there pushing for a long time. When you do that, eventually they’re going to get you. And I got got.”
Barf! But it got worse.
Martin was first elected to the Anaheim school board in 1994, while he was still a police officer. He ran for the office, he says, because making arrests wasn’t enough.
“Just making arrest after arrest after arrest is a failed police strategy,” he says. “And how many of the people I arrested were ‘A’ students? The answer is none. The ones I was arresting were the ‘F’ students. I wanted to work through the school system to make a change.”
And the change was…to try to deport all Mexican students! But Dillow did not mention that.
Let’s see how Arellano skewered Dillon (whom he refers to as Gordo) and Martin:
No, Gordo: folks hate Martin because the guy is a grandstanding, arrogant bigot with illusions of grandeur and a bad goatee. Folks hate the cronyism that allowed Martin to sneak back onto the board, his campaign against the students that he’s suppose to care for, the hatred of diversity, the comparison of illegal immigrants to Osama bin Laden.
And then Arellano goes on to really smack these two around:
Then Dillow commits his greatest sin: he allows Martin to finally apologize for telling a reporter in 1999 that a 13-year-old AUHSD student was culpable for her molestation at the hands of a teacher. “[Martin] now calls that comment ‘dumb’ and ‘stupid’ and ‘my greatest error,” Gordo solemnly reports.
Funny, Martin’s apology. He never did during his years on the board, according to former AUHSD trustee (and current County Board of Education trustee) Alexandria Coronado. Indeed, when community members asked Martin in 1999 to apologize during a school board meeting, Martin refused and even tried to justify his blame game. “I stand by my words, and no amount of your unsubstantiated vitriolic rhetoric will change it,” he told a community activist. “Your actions are nothing less than those of a politically correct terrorist with a mailing list.” Dillow makes no mention of this, of course.
Be sure to read Arellano’s post in order to find out why Martin is finally apologizing for his horrible comments about the little girl who was molested.
When Harald Martin runs for office again. Most voters will not remember this recall effort.
Just his name. He could be the top voter getter because of all the name calling.
I am of Hispanic descent and believe it or not I agree with Mr. Martin’s ideas. He is not racist, he is being real. Yes, the truth hurts. He knows more than the average citizen about the streets, gangs and the ghetto. This in turn, made him a great candidate for this school board for approximately 8 years! And regarding, the comments he made about the 13yr old victim, he on the radio said she came out after 4 yrs with her case, and makes it kinda questionable, but the point is he did say he made a stupid mistake saying some harsh comments. If you look at the OC Register article concerning this, there are a lot of Martin supporters, why because I too had a child in the SAUSD and went to school board meetings and I was just fed up with that school district which I can imagine it must be very similar to AUSD. I noticed when I went to my child’s school, PTO meetings, and board meetings, the majority of the Hispanic illegal or not, parents don’t care about the child’s education. They have a cocky attitude about education and could care less about the meaning of education. Everything starts at home and that is why these school systems are failing because these parents give their children this same cocky attituce. I in turn, wanted a solution to this problem and became proactive but the SAUSD adminstrators just basically laught at your face. I got fed up and simply moved to a better city and school district where I did not have to deal with the city of Santa Ana nor its school district! Amen.