The school board in Watertown (pop. 22,926) has made national headlines for its extraordinary move to vote to ban a high school band from performing a specific piece in its recital.
The Watertown Unified School District School Board voted 7-1 on May 12 to pre-empt the Watertown Wind Symphony from performing “A Mother of A Revolution,” a fully instrumental orchestral piece that honors the late Marsha P. Johnson, the famed activist known for throwing the first stone at the 1969 Stonewall Uprising. Without Johnson, the U.S. gay rights movement would have needed a different spark.
The majority school board members have avoided the media storm since – including coverage from the likes of CNN, Forbes and many others – but previously attested that allowing the performance would have been tantamount to “indoctrination” and that “A Mother of A Revolution” went against the district’s “controversial issues policy.” The band’s director, Reid LaDew, sought to adhere up to that policy, having sent a note to parents more than six months ago regarding “A Mother of A Revolution.” LaDew wrote in the letter: “The purpose behind studying ‘(A) Mother of A Revolution’ is not to provoke controversy, but to deepen students’ understanding of how music reflects the diverse experiences of humanity.” The letter included an option for parents to opt their students out. The school board didn’t do anything at the time, but still moved – for reasons unexplained at this point – to act in the past two weeks. The band performed Monday night with a substitute song, Robert Jager’s “Esprit de Corps.”
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
Other Students Taking Up Cause
This whole affair isn’t contained to the band or even walls of one school now. Students at the high school walked out of class last Wednesday. And on Friday, teens and tweens from Watertown’s Riverside Middle School were so committed to their walkout protest that they pushed through a “wall of teachers,” one student told TMJ4 – the Milwaukee outlet carrying out the most robust coverage on the saga thus far.
Reaching the Streets Marsha Walked
A 2012 graduate of Watertown High School, Jacob Voigt, lives in New York City now. He walked to the Stonewall Inn – still operating as a gay bar today in Greenwich Village – to record a hopeful message for the students who sit in the same desks he left behind 14 years ago. In reaction to the “indoctrination” allegations, Voigt told TMJ4, “Learning that something exists is not the same thing as being forced to agree with it.”
Tonight, Tonight, Tonight
Tonight — at 7 p.m. Wednesday, May 20 — the composer of “A Mother of a Revolution,” Omar Thomas, is scheduled to be in Watertown. A New Yorker who is now a resident of Paris, Thomas is flying back to the U.S. and is scheduled to conduct a performance that will include “A Mother of a Revolution.” The special performance is to be hosted at a local church, Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran. “Who I am, and the life I enjoy is 100% a product of public school music education,” Thomas told TMJ4 last week. “This is what art has always done, and so I’m proud of these students for handling themselves as beautifully as they have.”
Saturday
When news broke of Watertown School Board’s vote, Minocqua Brewing Company and its political lightning rod owner Kirk Bangstad invited the Watertown High School Band to perform at his Madison taproom at 5 p.m. on Saturday, May 23.
The whole band isn’t going to be able to make it, but more than 20 are reportedly scheduled to go… and perform the whole, uncensored setlist. According to Bangstad, more than $60,000 in donations have been collected in support of the band program as a result.
