Caffeinated Politics

The news from Watertown is truly disheartening.

Watertown High School’s wind symphony will not be allowed to play a musical piece with ties to LGBTQ history at an upcoming spring concert.

The decision didn’t come without fiery opposition from most in attendance at a School Board meeting Tuesday.

Board members voted 7-1 to prohibit the wind symphony from playing “A Mother of a Revolution” by Omar Thomas, an instrumental piece inspired by Marsha Johnson, a trans woman credited with being an instigator of the 1969 Stonewall uprising, which was a pivotal event in the LGBTQ liberation movement, according to Thomas’ website.

Who knew until recently that the newest threat to public education was a piece of music? Not a scandal of some sort, or a severe budget shortfall, but a musical selection written by a composer to remind listeners about the famed Stonewall uprising and the gay‑rights movement. And in a moment of over-the-top, breathtaking overreaction, the board decided the high school band could not perform it at their spring concert. Because apparently the wind section is now a political weapon.

Let’s be clear: the piece wasn’t a manifesto. There are no lyrics. It wasn’t to be accompanied by rainbow‑themed pyrotechnics. It was music. Notes on a page, performed by teenagers who have spent months practicing so their parents can sit in a folding chair and beam with pride. The only “controversy” here is the one the board manufactured out of thin air based on some flim-flam from an outraged parent with a partisan pot to stir. She even admitted to not listening to the musical piece.

Consider the outrageous nature of what is happening. When a school board starts policing the biography of every artist whose work students might encounter, we’re not ‘protecting kids’ but rather severely shrinking their world. We’re telling them that history must be sanitized, that art must be stripped of context, and that anything connected to LGBTQ+ people is somehow radioactive. That’s not education. That’s cowardice dressed up as moral guardianship.

What the Watertown School Board achieved was making sure that LGBT+ students understand that they are “lesser than” for being gay or bi, or trans. This decision was not a mere ‘dog whistle’ approach to this issue but a blast from the ‘foghorn’ of bigotry. Not one, I guarantee, of the LGBT+ students in the “unified district” of Watertown feels safe right now—in a country where, from the White House to the local School Board, they are being openly reviled. And isn’t that sad, especially coming from those expressing their desire to “protect the children”?

The irony is almost too rich, as the Stonewall movement was about resisting the policing of identity and expression. Now, this school board is still trying to police identity and expression. This time, by banning a piece of music written about someone who stood on the right side of history.

This action was an insult to the students who, for many months, have worked on this difficult piece of music. These musicians are not fragile. They can handle the idea that a composer wrote a piece about a person who took a stand. One aspect of art, after all, is to make us feel something, even if that created sensation makes us uncomfortable.

At the board meeting, someone mentioned that an argument for removing the piece is the importance of “keeping politics out of schools.” The only political act here was the board’s decision to erase a piece of music because of who the composer was honoring. That’s not neutrality. That’s a message of bigotry.

What we have this morning are many angry parents and students. And they should be. The Watertown School Board had a chance to show trust in its students, respect for its educators, and basic cultural literacy. Instead, it chose fear. And fear, as history keeps reminding us, never ages well.