1,000 signatures reached
To: Principal David Hay, Principal of Brookside Elementary School, Senator Bob Duff, Senator of Conneticut, and Governor Ned Lamont
Pardon for Tanya McDowell single mother prosecuted for claiming a free education for her legal, h...
Dear Moveon members,
Tanya McDowell is a single African American mother in Conneticut. She has just been used as an example to show parents what happens when they fraudulently fill out public school enrollment forms. In order to make the charges stick and to reduce public support for her, they also picked her up selling drugs and offered her a plea deal of 12 years in prison. While she clearly has made her share of mistakes, our response as a society should be to surround this woman and her child. Give them the services they need, help her keep her child in school, help her find employment. Instead we imprison her and thrust her son into a life of struggling with no parent to advocate and protect him. We turn a blind eye to the heinous criminal and immoral acts of bankers and corporations who ruin our economy, steal from our national resources without paying their fair share in taxes, and and destroy our environment. The leaders of those companies sleep in lavish homes, their children warm, fed, educated. No prosecution and prison time for them. Yet, this single mother trying to gain a free education in which her child is entitled is imprisoned and her and her sons lives destroyed. Shame on our united states, shame on Conneticut who you would think would have learned something about giving support to their community members...
Tanya McDowell is a single African American mother in Conneticut. She has just been used as an example to show parents what happens when they fraudulently fill out public school enrollment forms. In order to make the charges stick and to reduce public support for her, they also picked her up selling drugs and offered her a plea deal of 12 years in prison. While she clearly has made her share of mistakes, our response as a society should be to surround this woman and her child. Give them the services they need, help her keep her child in school, help her find employment. Instead we imprison her and thrust her son into a life of struggling with no parent to advocate and protect him. We turn a blind eye to the heinous criminal and immoral acts of bankers and corporations who ruin our economy, steal from our national resources without paying their fair share in taxes, and and destroy our environment. The leaders of those companies sleep in lavish homes, their children warm, fed, educated. No prosecution and prison time for them. Yet, this single mother trying to gain a free education in which her child is entitled is imprisoned and her and her sons lives destroyed. Shame on our united states, shame on Conneticut who you would think would have learned something about giving support to their community members...
Why is this important?
Tanya McDowell was convicted of fraud and felony for enrolling her homeless child in a Norwalk school. Brookside Elementary. She used her babysitters address because she had no address and was trying to continue his education. Instead of giving her the assistance she needed they imprisoned her, took away her babysitters low income housing, and thrust her child into the child welfare system to fend for himself,