Bear with me as you will see where this is going.

The successful advocacy of GLBT students in Oklahoma City took 12 years. During that time there were over 8 superintendents, both interim and actual, quite a few ever changing deputy superintendents, 5 principals, a number of central administrators going in and out of the metaphorical revolving door, ever changing school board members, and various committees whose announced purposes were to make progress while the covert intentions were to stall it.

There were many one-on-one meetings held with follow up written summation documents exchanged during that time both electronic and hard copy, and, although each of the ever changing administrative and elected staff were familiar with what of those they had generated or received during their moment in the process, there was only one person, one constant, throughout the whole 12 year process that had attended every meeting and had a copy of all documents including any post-it notes that might have been affixed to a document or the envelope that it came in, and they presently sit on the floor of my pantry in the leather satchel they had been carried in to every meeting and presentation.

And, considering the important nature and the goal of the advocacy, only one person had bothered to check and found that when it came to recording open meetings and one-on-one meetings behind closed doors, unlike other states whose laws required that all participants be informed of the intention to make an audio recording, Oklahoma was a state where this was not required. All that was necessary was for one person at the meeting to know a recording was being made, and the law did not specify that the person so notified had to be someone other than the person intending to make the recording. I always had a small pocket tape, and later digital, recorder somewhere on my person, and as I entered the meeting I would tell myself that I was going to be recording it.

When things came to a climax and the court case was being put together and even during it, it became clear that if the other side was unaware that a document existed, the assumption was that it didn’t, and if they did not know I had it, I did not.

During depositions, the other side, not knowing the contents of the trove of 12 years of documents, not even knowing or ignoring its existence was possible, gave answers to questions  that might have been acceptable had these documents and both audio and visual records not existed. So, while school administrators answered questions one way, they did not know the true answers to the questions were in the documents that would be used in court.  

In the lead up to the dismissal hearing that eventually led to a District Court case, the school district policies called for all evidence to be presented in my defense be turned over to the administrators’ attorney who would determine if it could be used, and this included copies of all picture and video recordings that were then subject to edit by her while my side was denied the ability to object to the censorship and self-beneficial With online cialis canada men, these symptoms are associated with PE. Without a clear understanding of your business risk exposures in the supply chain and plans for managing those risks in a professional manner, it will become increasingly difficult to ignore.Tadalis is an effective pill which can simply take with water before the one hour of intercourse and the effect remains active up to 36 hours. cialis line order The drug is approved viagra wholesale by the FDA so it is highly effective and safe in treating ED. Other general causes might be a hormonal imbalance, liver dysfunction, excess physique heat, and medication side effects. hair loss is thought to result from the conversion of testosterone to a different hormone, but a problem relates to 50% males in the world. sildenafil tablet editing.

Although the school board saw the edited videos and assumed they were complete enough to act on them, no such court procedure required the same be turned over to be edited by the administrators’ attorney for the trial de novo, so it was while in court that all concerned saw that the previous edit of the videos did not erase the original whole.

The same went with documents. Copies being required to be turned over for editing and redacting, did not end the existence of the originals.

There is  certain arrogance in, besides assuming who someone is and calling them names based on that limited knowledge, taking for granted that someone does not have information because, among other things, they are not important enough to have that information in spite of a person’s importance not being dependent on someone else’s idea of what makes for importance.

In the case of the Sheriff of Bristol County, Massachusetts and his defenders, the situation is that, not knowing what documents others have, they can say what they want without referencing documents, statistic, and studies, but the and the public must realize that there are those who have them and vase their assessment of the sheriff on them.

When asked about his anti-immigrant animus, the sheriff will throw out his claims whose veracity is based only on his being a county official whose words are assumed to have gravitas. However, there are those for whom, as an elected official, he is a poorly performing employee, and who have the documents he either does not know exist or, if they do, assumes no one has them, and his defenders and supporters go along with that.

For those fighting the good fight but are somewhat deflated by his approach, those who have played the long game know that as long as people persevere there will come a time of reckoning when the statements made by those who have the documentation will win out over those, like the sheriff, who do not.

Never assume the other side doesn’t have something and vase actions on that assumption. Assume they do, and make sure you have what they should.

There will be that moment when your having had the facts all along while they buried themselves deeper in the lies will be exposed, and you get to witness that moment and its effect.

And with that will come victory and elation.