More Karens needed

Have you met “Karen”? She is an uppity, self-righteous, empowered mom who has “had it up to here” and would now like to see the manager. She’s bulldoggish because she knows, deep in her fed-up (possibly over-privileged) bones, that this is wrong and she is not having it anymore. A true Karen is just done with ineptitude, her irritation sated only by manager’s correction.

In the case of the state takeover of the Little Rock School District, we need more Karens: people who see that the state Board of Education has harmed the district—multiplied 22 failing schools out of six, closed schools, opened competing charters, communicated poorly, and held children to standards that the state does not teach.

Karen recognizes that something is off; pick one: (1) taxation without representation, (2) failure to improve schools where, even if her baby doesn’t attend, “they” deserve a decent education, (3) the unfairness of unreasonable standards for her teacher friends, (4) that cloying sense of a racialized situation she can’t put her finger on, (5) if the state can do this to Little Rock, imagine when it’ll find cause to take over others.

Karen values fairness, equality, and moral high ground. Karen wants to speak to corporate, beyond middle management/appointed board Johnny Key hiding in the back office, to boss Gov. Asa Hutchinson. Karen wanted to attend the last community meeting on Sept. 3, but she got tickets to Ruth Bader Ginsburg—so to soothe her guilt, Karen needs to call manager Hutchinson and give him a piece of her mind; insist on returning control to a locally elected board representative of the children. Because Karen, if she has any real purpose in life, it’s to use her powers for good. Call Hutchinson now. It is literally the least she can do.

MARIE MAINARD-O’CONNELL

Little Rock