As a pilot I am not going to second guess the tragedy in New York. But of all government agencies the NTSB is one of the very few in which I have any confidence. I wish I could say the same of politicians and our schools.

Who of any sensibility is going to credit those like Kennedy, the Clintons, or those who support creatures like Foley having anything substantive to say on the basis of real morality? It is all the same with those crediting Cardinal Mahoney having anything sincere to say about morality and “concern” for children. All self-professed “liberals” like Ted Kennedy and those of his ilk should serve as teachers in Watts to validate their boasts about “caring.”

Most people were aware of the Watts riot of 1965 at a safe distance through TV and other media. But it was up close and personal for me when I became a tenured teacher at David Starr Jordan High School on the corner of 103^rd and Alameda there at “ground zero.” What those at the time living in comfortable and safe neighborhoods throughout America could not possibly understand was the utter hopelessness of those living in Watts that their condition would ever change for the better, and what the extremes of poverty, crime and violence over literally decades can do to any people.

But conditions were dangerous enough in Watts to get the attention of the FBI, a couple of agents coming to the school attempting to get my cooperation should I hear anything that might be of interest to the agency. It was really ludicrous, the agents, both Caucasians dressed in such a manner complete with hats and three-piece suits they might have been wearing FBI stenciled on their backs, coming to have a “private” conversation with a Caucasian teacher in an all Negro school in an all Negro community. Fortunately for me my reputation with the kids and the community was such we all got a laugh about it rather than me becoming a resulting fatality of FBI stupidity.

However, in retrospect most of us felt much safer in an America where TV was continuing to portray an age of innocent opulence, an America that had not yet suffered the wholesale betrayal of our nation by politicians dedicated to slave labor from Mexico and selling out America to the highest bidder. In that America Watts was an aberration, not the norm.

While the problem of violence in the schools across America is getting some much needed attention I was writing about this in the late 60s warning the violence in Watts would not always be contained to the ghettos and barrios, but like drugs would be exported to “lily-white” suburban areas because the issues were not first addressed in places like Watts. When the Mafioso in The Godfather pronounced dealing in drugs was inevitable but should be confined to Negro communities because “they’re just a bunch of animals anyway” he was only giving voice to the attitude of many politicians, the only difference being that politicians think of the “animals” in terms of votes rather than drugs.

When one of my pupils tried to leave his gun at the front office so he could pick it up after school he could not understand why he was refused this accommodation. He needed the gun to safely come to school and safely get back to his house after school. Wasn’t it enough he was even willing to attend school under the circumstances? Try to explain this young fellow’s thinking to those that have never lived in such an environment; try to explain to those never living in areas like Watts where such a request becomes “reasonable” on the part of a child. As with many of the things I write about from experience I don’t even attempt to do so knowing how futile such efforts are.

But the people in Watts were ignored by politicians. It was sufficient the welfare checks kept going out to “keep those people in their place” while the politicians lived their cushy insulated lives of privilege at taxpayer expense. How often I would wish the politicians would come to Watts and see for themselves the abject hopelessness of the children attending Jordan, of conditions in the homes I would visit where there were no books only the daily fight for a grim existence with no hope a future promising anything any better.

However, the very system of the L. A. City Schools at the time was no better since it was a political system designed like government to ignore the problems while throwing money at them. And now that the whole of Los Angeles is reduced to that of a third world nation it would be vain to hope anything will get any better for the schools and the children suffering the indifference of politicians including those in charge of the schools that see elected office only as a license to steal.

When I was first hired at Jordan I was told to ignore drugs on campus because they were not a problem; rape, murder, and other forms of violence were the problem. And sure enough, my very first week on the job a girl stabbed another from one of my classes to death over a boy. But rape and murder in Watts did not merit notice by the L. A. Times and my job as a teacher was to simply keep the kids “polishing belt buckles” and pad the attendance role to keep the ADA money coming in.

I have had many years of experience being forced by the circumstances of earning a living and supporting a family to accommodate the lesser of evils because politicians have only offered greater evils as a choice. And now because of the all too typical greed and avarice of politicians and their corporate bosses Mexico is invading America and colonizing making conditions in schools across America even more hostile to American children. I experienced this as well while teaching in East San Jose where because of the predominantly Mexican population of largely illegal aliens the police were called to the campus 90 times the first ten weeks of school. But the Mexican principal of the school told the media Yerba Buena High School “Did not have a problem” and the San Jose Mercury News didn’t see any problems either.

Over the years things have only worsened in the schools across America, only worsened for families and children trying to hold on to any semblance of education. I used to tell parents back in the 60s “Things are not as bad as you think; they are far worse!” I used to point out concerning education a system for failure could not have been better designed had it been done purposely.”

Now, as I look back over the years I spent working with children in the worst circumstances imaginable I fervently wish I could hold on to hope of some things changing for the better in our schools. But it seems this will remain a wish, and one continually thwarted by politicians living in their insulated worlds of privilege far apart from conditions in Watts and East San Jose. And, from the conditions elsewhere in the world that now threaten the very survival of America as a nation.