By Steve Gunn
EAGnews.org

NEW YORK – Before demanding the termination of a public employee, one might expect people of good character to get their facts straight.

But the folks who operate iacenter.org, a website affiliated with the Ramsey Clark International Action Center, don’t seem to care if accusations against a school principal from Queens are true or not.

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They condemn the principal based on one person’s claims, and assume the accusations are true.

The website begins by demanding “an immediate, rapid and unbiased investigation” of Minerva Zanca, principal of Pan American International High School, for allegedly making racist comments to her assistant principal about two black teachers she recently fired.

Fair enough.

But the website also calls for a rally today outside city Department of Education offices.

Why?

“Pan American International High School will be without any African-American teachers next year, because two teachers have been fired after a Queens Principal, Minerva Zanca, made racist comments about them in closed door meetings with her assistant principal,” the website states.

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What a minute. Suddenly the website is convicting Zanca, stating that she definitely made the racist comments to her assistant principal. How do the editors know this? Did the assistant principal record the comments? If so, why is that fact not mentioned on the website?

First the website calls for a fair investigation, then it categorically states the accusations against Zanca are true.

The website goes on to say that “the third African-American teacher is leaving the school because of severe budget cuts to her hugely successful theater program that were racially motivated.”

Huh? Do the editors have proof that the theater program experienced budget cuts because the teacher is black? If so, they don’t mention it. They just want us to believe the cuts were racially motivated because they say so.

Finally, the website calls for “the discontinuances of the personnel involved (teachers John Flanagan, Heather Hightower and Assistant Principal Anthony Riccardo) be reversed.” In other words, they are demanding the reinstatement of fired personnel before determining  whether they were fired for good reason.

A list of groups endorsing today’s protest included the United Federation of Teachers, the city’s teachers union.

How ironic that the union, which is getting a lot of publicity for insisting that all teachers accused of sexual misconduct with students be given due process, is willing to convict a principal and demand her head before there’s even an investigation.

If the allegations against Zanca are true, she should be fired. But she deserves her day in court, just like any American who is accused of any type of wrongdoing.

If fairness and justice are the true goals in this situation, everyone (particularly the editors of iacenter.org) needs to calm down and allow the investigation to proceed, instead of acting like a bunch of backwoods vigilantes who are determined to convict and hang the defendant based on nothing but the unsubstantiated word of one witness.