Arlene Ackerman’s Million Dollar Lynching

by Christopher Paslay

Activist Novella Williams complains Arlene Ackerman was ‘lynched’ by Mayor Nutter and other local leaders.   

At yesterday’s School Reform Commission meeting, activist Novella Williams complained that former Philadelphia school’s chief Arlene Ackerman was lynched by the SRC and local African American politicians, including SRC Chairman Robert Archie, Mayor Nutter, state Rep. Dwight Evans, and Acting Superintendent Leroy Nunery.

“She deserved not to be lynched by three of four black men,” Williams said.  “I didn’t think my men was going to destroy her.”

William’s comments were similar to those Jesse Jackson made about Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert in June of 2010, when Gilbert personally attacked LeBron James and said that he “cowardly betrayed” the city of Cleveland by taking $120 million to play in Miami. 

“[Gilbert] speaks as an owner of LeBron and not the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers,” Jackson said in a public statement.  “His feelings of betrayal personify a slave master mentality. He sees LeBron as a runaway slave.” 

A runaway slave that makes $120 million, that is. 

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan also used the slavery analogy, calling the NBA a “big plantation” on which LeBron James was a “sharecropper.”       

Though Ackerman is no NBA superstar, her base salary of nearly $350,000 for the past three years was close to the NBA league minimum for a rookie, which in 2010-11 was $490,180; Ackerman was also given a car, two chauffeurs salaried at $44,000 each, a BlackBerry, a cellphone and usage, a laptop, and a printer. 

And now Ackerman is being paid, all told, over a million dollars to walk away. 

As one person wrote on Philly.com’s comment board, “If getting a million dollars for not working is considered a lynching, sign me up. That’s like hitting the lottery.”