Response To "SD 227 board candidate collected $340K from District" by Mr. Komaa Mnyofu
This letter is in response to the Sunday March 31, 2013 article by Casey Toner entitled "SD 227 BD CANDIDATE COLLECTED $340K FROM DISTRICT."
First, much of what Mr. Toner has written is a rehash of his 2008 article when he interviewed me in the office of businessman and Olympia Fields resident, Mr. Fred Veazy. At that time Mr. Toner requested to know the terms of the settlement reached in 2008 with the school board. As he indicated in the article correctly and I as stated then, due to the confidentiality agreement between the parties, I was unable to disclose the settlement amount.
In 2008, the district determined that, based upon allegations regarding the conduct of the Betty Owens school board in violating my civil rights, they offered to settle the lawsuit rather than face a trial by jury and expose the district to further risk.
However, true to form, in the district's unethical conduct and campaign to attack and destroy my creditability they joined forces with an adjoining school district and violated the very confidentiality agreement which they signed their names to, in which the board promised to keep the terms of the settlement "confidential" by giving this information to the adjoining district's attorney.
The audio recording of the closed session meeting of the school board played during superintendent Donna Leak's deposition, revealed that the board knew they were violating the confidentiality agreement but did it anyway and knew they would have to pay the $15,000.00 in damages for doing so.
It is peculiar that Mr. Toner appears to suggest that only the press has the right to free speech and the right to pursue redress of denial of free speech rights through the courts. This peculiarity is evidenced by his convenient failure to mention the basis of the two lawsuits against district 227. And what was the basis? The denial of parents, citizens, sitting school board members, and individuals such as myself constitutional rights to freedom of thought, speech, expression, assembly, association, etc. The same rights that he as a journalist, and his employer, the Southtown, practice and pursue daily.
For the last 12 years, the current school board regime has practiced repression, suppression, bullying, police intimidation, and outright denial of community participation and free speech which has caused our school district to fail. He failed to even mention that these violations of our community's rights were the only basis of my lawsuits.
Further, Mr. Toner moves from District 227 lawsuits to mentioning that I am also "suing Matteson Elementary School District 162 and the Matteson Police Dept., " suggesting that this article is an all encompassing attempt to further imply that the allegation of violation of Constitutional rights by these governmental units, have no place for citizens to redress these grievances through the courts. Is he suggesting that citizens resort to the "old west" way of settling grievances? I hope not.
He then moves into my personal life involving judges who believe that they are immune from being held accountable for violating people's rights. Finally, he mentions "sixteen lawsuits," which I quoted in my deposition the district attorney's allegations of "sixteen lawsuits."
Mr. Toner's article reflects many of the same types of criticism that were hurled against the Brown vs. Board of Education litigants who challenged race based discrimination in public education---through the courts. After Thurgood Marshall filed this initial landmark case before the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the bigotry, the insidious racism, and discrimination in education against Blacks, hundreds of more lawsuits were filed challenging the same bigotry, discrimination in housing, hiring, voting, educational opportunity, including against Toner's industry, the press, throughout American society.
The pursuit of and exercise of constitutional rights for Blacks and other minorities through the courts has been a time honored approach of the civil rights movement as opposed to the use of violence.
The fact that the discrimination was being conducted by whites during this era, in no way makes it more palatable today simply because it is being done by blacks against their own community. For Toner to suggest that I should not pursue, through the courts, redress of my grievances for denial of these same rights simply because it is being done by blacks is an insult to every citizen in Rich Township High School District 227, no matter their race.
Since Mr. Toner doesn't have one day of training or education as a paralegal or lawyer, I can excuse his ignorance and misunderstanding of the legal terms contained in both my lawsuits. However, I need to make clear his misrepresentation that the district "refused to release information on the first lawsuit it settled with Mnyofu in 2008," due to a confidentiality agreement.
If, as Mr. Toner implies, he had correctly read my recent settled lawsuit, he would have understood that the district, contrary to what he wrote here, in fact had violated the confidentiality agreement from the 2008 settlement agreement. Thus, count three of the lawsuit was headed "BREACH OF CONTRACT." On that count the judge ruled that the district was in fact guilty and ordered them to pay $15,000 dollars in damages. Apparently, this was an oversight in his research.
Finally, the balance of the article is a hodge-podge of journalistic popcorn and obviously not nonpartisan. When he interviewed me over two months ago for this article, Toner stated that some on the current board were concerned with the cost of legal fees to the district in defending my two lawsuits. Although I pointed out to him with specificity the $873,000 paid to the Scariano law firm in the 2010-2011 school years , the hundreds of thousands of dollars misspent in defending themselves in the Fred Jacobeit litigation settlement, hundreds of thousands spent in a failed attempt to close the charter school, and the millions of dollars misspent by this board over the past twelve years, that it is "laughable" that this board now laments to the press their "concern" for the use of tax payer dollars to pay legal fees.
Apparently, this was also another oversight by Mr. Toner, leading the readers to believe that the millions the board has misspent in defending lawsuits, other than mine, is smaller and of no consequence. Any intelligent and thinking reader can do the math.
The South Town should look internally at its own faces which report on our communities in District 227 and ask themselves do their reporters and staff reflect the communities in our district?
I have been the most vetted and reported on candidate by Mr. Toner in the history of our District. In an effort to settle an ongoing personal grievance he has against me, this article appears right before our communities April 9, 2013 election to replace the current dysfunctional school board on which he has made his career rise writing about.
After April 9, 2013, we will see if Mr. Toner will have anything positive to say about the turn-around and positive changes the new board will make----the change they can depend on.
Komaa Mnyofu, mnyofuk@yahoo.com, comments welcome
This guy has no business running for the school board
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