The privatization of America, part 1

This is part of a 2-part series about the Allowed Cloud of privatization - which the Peace Bike and I got a firsthand glimpse of on Wednesday.

One of the most enduring doctrines of civilization is that at least some land must be public to serve the people. It must be publicly owned and publicly accessible. Hand in hand with this concept is that services may be publicly controlled.

America has private and public schools, but one of the purposes of the latter is to guarantee a right to an education. The nation's young have long had a right to an education that is free and publicly supported.

In Hartford, Connecticut, this right was dashed in the mid-'90s when the city's school system was farmed out to a private, for-profit company - thus denying Hartford's youth access to public schools. However, this experiment ended when the company mismanaged the schools' finances.

But no matter! Today, America's schools are in effect public in name only. They get taxpayer funds, but they keep students out for "crimes" like disagreeing with uniforms.

Because schools have become effectively private, they fit into the protocol of the privatization of America. Which brings me to what I did Wednesday.

If a public road becomes part of a campus of a so-called public high school, is the road still public? In this case, the road clearly still exists, and it connects public roads. So how can it not be open to the public?

I speak of the part of 7th Street that seems to run through the property of Newport High School in Newport, Kentucky. A sign clearly says DO NOT ENTER. But I biked it, for I feel as if it is public, for it meets the characteristics described above:



I'm not too pleased at the Newport school system, because of its recent bullying scandal and several instances of the school system advancing right-wing causes or candidates. But the reason I used that street is because I considered it public and because it was an efficient path to the next road.

There's a big difference between some harmless guy like me biking on a street (that was once open to the public) to get from one place to another, and some weirdo going into the school and bothering kids. I believe I was right; the school would surely believe I was wrong. It would take an army of lawyers to figure out for certain.

To me, the campus was an obstruction of a road that was physically travelable. It was necessary for me to challenge the school's authority over the street, because if I don't, when will the trend of losing public land stop?