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My name is Jean Swantko Wiseman
and I met the Twelve Tribes 18 years ago when the Communities
were accused of child abuse and truancy. I want to tell
you today that in 1979 the children of the Twelve Tribes
were not truant, and in 1984, despite a massive and
illegal round-up of the children in Island Pond, they
were not abused. Today the charge is child labor. Our
children are not oppressed by child labor.
In 1990 the Vermont Commissioner
of Education came to Island Pond and visited our classrooms.
He left with the comment, “We in public education
could learn a lot from you people.” That man was
Richard Mills. Today he sits in Albany as the New York
Commissioner of Education. He saw how our children were
being raised and he marveled.
I wonder what he thinks of
the proposal of a New York City mayoral candidate to
devote $100 million dollars to use city schools for
after-hours activities for 200,000 students between
the hours of 3 pm and 6 pm. The purpose of the plan
is to keep kids safe and working parents secure during
those three critical hours. An anti-crime coalition
of law enforcement officers, crime victims, and youth
experts found the after-school hours of 3 to 6 pm to
be peak hours for teen crime, teen sex, teen car crashes,
teen victimization, and the teen use of smokes, alcohol
and drugs.
An article announcing the
need for this program ran side-by-side with Monday’s
New York Post article taking credit for the fact that
the New York Department of Labor was “launching
an investigation into the Twelve Tribes” for child
labor violations. The Post even boasted such action
“was on the heels of a Post report.” The irony
is that the Post’s scandal was not based on any
finding of violation or any factual complaint against
us, but there is no denying the problem of idle teens
without purpose or parenting in society at large.
Our life in the Twelve Tribes
has purpose and parenting and we pay attention to our
children. One of the leading causes of school violence
in the United States is neglected children — children
who do not get enough attention paid to them. It is
a national epidemic. The life we live in the Twelve
Tribes Communities is one remedy to that problem, which
not many have real solutions for. Students with ADD
(Attention Deficit Disorder) probably can’t pay
attention because they don’t get any. The magnitude
of the amount of Ritalin forced on school children in
this country is astronomical. It is a much bigger problem
than oppressive child labor.
Giving attention to children
is the remedy to today’s social ills, not the source
of them. That is what we do. We pay attention to our
children and give them purpose. We train them in the
way that they should go so that when they are old they
will not depart from it. We teach them diligence and
to work hard. They prosper under the watchful eye of
good authority.
The life we share in the
Twelve Tribes Communities is the beginning of a new
social order, a new way of living that demonstrates
the restoration between men and women, parents and children,
and between races where the barriers that divide the
human race are broken down. It is normal for parents
and children to work together. There is no law against
parents and children loving one another. There is no
law against parents caring for their children and having
them right by their side. This is just common sense.
Good government officials understand the spirit of the
law that agrees with common sense. I could name you
a list of public servants who look admirably upon us.
We believe that true servants in government can recognize
the difference between people doing good and people
doing evil. We have always been able to find a place
within the law to live in peace. In our dialogue with
New York State Labor Department officials over the past
few days, we found them to be no exception. They were
in no way alarmed by what they saw at our facilities.
We shared some information and were glad to meet each
other and look forward to working together.
We welcome you to get to
know the truth about us, so you can put away the lies.
I offer to each of you a “Somethin’s Happenin’
Here” paper written a year ago for the 30th
year Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young reunion tour.
I recommend to you in particular a couple of articles
in it that will let you know who we are and where we
are going as a people. One is Our House and the other
is called The Movement. You will soon learn that we
are neither isolationist nor racist, or maybe you already
know. We do insulate ourselves from the popular culture
because there is not much about it that we admire, but
our purpose is the restoration of all things, relationships
between humanity and God, between men and women, between
parents and children, and between one race and another.
The hope of our life is to produce a real and lasting
unity, a life of love that brings light to the darkness
that surrounds us.
I hope you will begin by taking the time to find out
who we really are and not settle for anything less.
By the way, we live on Main Street surrounded by neighbors,
not in compounds. Anyone is free to leave and everyone
is welcome to visit.
More about the education of our children:
We train our children in our own homes. We have developed
our own curriculum, designed to meet our children's
needs. We report our children's educational progress
to the state regularly in recognition of their right
to know that our children are being educated.
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