The Earthquake in Syria and Turkey has now led to at least 20K dead. I am not sure what to say but with Syria perpetually in a Civil War and the sanctions that have been a part of the US relations for decades for their support in Terrorism will mean that they will have to be temporarily removed and in turn coordination or efforts to assist a challenge. Turkey, a country we have had a very challenged relationship and largely strategic in nature has been tested with the war in the Ukraine and the NATO sanctions placed upon Russia, which Turkey has largely ignored and in turn Russia despite it all has managed to circumvent them to maintain their economy and war effort. All of this is part of our International news coverage which as I suspect few follow or actually read about. Putting Sunflowers on clothes or flying flags in windows is great and all but what actually do you know about the boots on the ground, the Americans and Europeans who have gone there to help, and in turn what is happening with regards to Russian misinformation, European reliance on them for power and in turn the overall costs that again are not new. We have had a myriad of problems with Russia for decades, Putin has fucked over five Presidents in our country, he has interfered in US elections through the use of bots to flood social media and in turn stir racial unrest. All of this AGAIN is well presented in varying media outlets but AGAIN most people simply refuse or at least even commit to reading, listening to or watching news for even 30 minutes. There are the 24/7 MSNBC, CNN and Fox watchers perpetuating the horseshoe effect that has individuals on either end of the spectrum spout the talking points sure they are getting truths and facts. And with that I move on.
I read three papers and currently flip through the Daily Memphian to read about Memphis and the reports on the Police Violence situation as the investigation is still ongoing. Since his funeral one other Police officer has been fired and the story that circulated aka “rumor” that Tyre was seeing one of the Officer’s ex’s of course has been dismissed but there was a Woman one of the Officers was pursuing or was acquainted with whom he sent the photos he took at the crime scene as Tyre lay dying. The New York Times wrote an extensive update on what transpired that night and the suppression evidence and lying that continued to cover up what really happened. Again, who will know the truth or will it ever get its day in court? Let’s hope.
This now brings me to the role of AI and how it too can be used to create a false narrative and it appear real. The story from the New York Times confirms how convincing it can be to create a newscast using bots aka DEEPFAKE and create a script, now thanks to CHAT AI to make it appear genuine. I will spend some time in another post discussing what I believe will end many writers careers and freelancing efforts with the creation of CHAT AI. The cuts across the white collar industries will only contribute to that with copy writers, content creators and the like being dismissed. There may be only one or two left on a team to do clean up and editing but I suspect more will follow across the board when it comes to this and the role of AI in production.
And with that I did have a “conversation” with a White Man in Manhattan who commented about me reading the NY Times in hand and I responded that I still subscribe to the print edition I like the feel of paper, the ability to spread it out and read story in succession as reading on the phone for me is challenging. He was reading his NYT on his phone and immediately informed me that Turkey/Syria was now at 20K. I knew immediately recognized that as a passive aggressive way of informing me that reading online was superior as it is in real time. I said I had heard on the radio coming over to the city that the death toll had risen and that this tragedy was again a sign of politics and war and the inability of country’s to maintain their labor and work force to promote stability to enact growth and change. It parallels our own country’s brain drains in red vs blue states and in turn also in the Latin countries. When people leave there is no imperative to grow but to maintain power and all at a sacrifice to a country’s own growth. He immediately did what I call the standard white person response – NO YOU ARE WRONG. I put that to the equivalent to the invite, “Hey let’s meet for coffee” and the response is, “I don’t drink coffee.” When you begin a dialogue in the negative you end something before it begins. So in this case I simply tried to explain what I have seen in Nashville and the South with people who want to stay but they eventually cannot as jobs and opportunities dry up, even basic services like grocery stores are lacking, so they leave and these great towns are dying. And then he launched into his story about Religion, working in upstate Pennsylvania and a watch maker he hired, to hiring workers to do things for him and telling me one negative story after another about all the people he knew including former College classmates he encountered at his reunion with their reliance upon religion. I wonder if it was less about them and more about him and he being an utter asshole. After about 5 minutes of this lecture (as that it was it was not a conversation) he jumped up and said, “Enjoy your roll and have a good day.” I looked at my plate which was down to scraps, as I had just sat there shoving it into my mouth to avoid speaking, ignoring my newspaper which is why I stopped in the first place. And I go, “I will and you too.” All I could think was how was this man whom I thought Gay, and usually they are not quite that angry or rude, confirms why I have to stop these random encounters, they are not productive, they are not healthy for me. This was just very New Yorker typical (they are either amazing or utter shit, no grey there) yet although during his rant I gathered he was from Maryland; with that I am not sure if he lives here but he had a white shi zu who seems to be his only friend (he was clutching that do like a child does a stuffed animal) so he had to actually live here or why the dog? And frankly why he felt the need to talk to me another. Don’t initiate a conversation when you have no intent of having one. I was relieved to see them both take a leave and while I too left shortly thereafter my morning not ruined but certainly not one I wished to extend. A bad taste remained, from neither the coffee nor the pain a raisin but from his vitriol.
I truly exhaust myself trying to be “nice” and with that I want to move onto the subject about the shooting in Virginia with the six year old. After spending a day in an Autism classroom with four amazing young men on varying degrees on the spectrum I was looking forward to a couple of days of just being alone and keeping busy with things that matter. People not so much. As the Teacher of that room contracted Covid, meaning all them including the IA was exposed, I did not want to push my luck and I will test on Saturday to see how I am passing the 72 hour mark from exposure to contraction. So these next two days are not only necessary they put me less at risk. I think the IA was shocked that I was not planning to alter my schedule to be there Thursday and Friday as I told her that I already had obligations, she seemed to think that they were flexible and I would of course step in. Again, I have no obligation, no responsibility and am a GIG WORKER who works on my schedule not yours. But later during the day the VP was there for the afternoon and in an exchange with her the IA informed her that with all the Teachers out sick, on leave or for emergency reasons she was being placed in a place that led her to do more work that she was not paid for. I laughed to myself as I feel the same way. You want me to work, pay me, enable me with access to computers, a password, a locker to store my stuff and of course sick leave, health care and the rest. That.Will.Not.Happen. I cobbled together lessons for the boys, they really need constant reiteration and consistency, none that I have actually witnessed in my time in those rooms. So again lack of leadership and direction is evident. And my past exchanges on this subject I am more than aware of how incalcitrant Teachers are to change. This goes with my last post regarding the Doctor who admitted that many of the problems Doctor’s face are due to the lobbying by the AMA to keep the status quo. And it is always about money. Even the comment by the Doctor who said there is an ER that is no safe and that they will travel rather than go there. What does that say about those who don’t have said option?
And this goes not only with regards to medical care but to education and to the judicial system. Those safety nets that are designed to provide equity to those in need or demand are not treated equally. Access and availability are not parsed out fairly but in fact that is what is defined as systemic racism, they are designed to treat the poor, the less well off financially and in turn less educated in how the system works to be treated disparagingly, as if it was a type of intrinsic failure that led them there. And since most of those are faces of color the reality is that yes it is a form of Racism. I was a white woman when I was abused and mistreated by the hospital I was brought to be cared for. It is a public hospital in charge of treating the poor and has a history of issues and problems and it was only sheer fucking luck I survived. They threw me in the street sick and deranged and I sued them on my own. Why? Why not. The Police and the EMT who rescued me, did not help me but in fact went out of their ways to ensure I was further punished as if being in coma and not knowing or caring if I was to come out of it, decided to make sure if I did I would be punished. And I was. The numerous Judges, the Attorneys I hired and fired and the City Attorneys went out of their way to do little to nothing despite my pleas and the checks that cleared. NOT ONE. I was on my own so anyone who thinks I will ever lend a hand anymore is mistaken. I have nothing more to say on this subject but I will say that anyone who thinks that Politicians will change these broken systems are mistaken. Unless people band together to become a Citizen Lobbyist and take charge of their workplace, their community and organize to bring money, yes money, to the varying assholes who run for office and in turn demand and pay for their candidacy, then drive to get them elected and more George Santos’ will take office without shame or guilt.
And with that we should be able to have our children go to local schools, to not have to commute in which to find a basic education. I get that special programs may have to be divided up for financial reasons, that said a child needs to be in the community he/she lives in which to make friends, to build a history and establish roots. And what it says that when you don’t have an opportunity for education and in turn can drop out of school and be left alone to scrub together an existence allows one to remain ignorant. Lessons learned less about fact and more on lies, misinformation, and it opens the door to January 6th. Another Insurrectionist who was sentenced this week seemed to believe his ignorance was an excuse. Funny how hid did not understand anything about history and Democracy yet seemed to think that this was okay. He is married with a family, has a job and he seemed to know enough to get there and carry a Confederate Flag into the Capitol. To quote his Attorney: “He was taught that the flag was a symbol of an idealized view of southern life and southern heritage,” “Lacking an education beyond the ninth grade and lacking even average intellectual capacity, Mr. Seefried did not appreciate the complex and, for many, painful, history behind the Confederate battle flag.”” Really he didn’t know this as he never heard it ever? None of his family had? Yeah it is what I call “willful ignorance.”
And that same type of ignorance is what happened in Virginia at Richneck Elementary School on the day a six year old shot his Teacher. None of it makes sense and yet all of seems to be one of willful intent. He planned it, he discussed it, he demonstrated prior acts of violence and with that he waited until a moment arrived to KILL HER. Did I mention he was Six? When he was Five he strangled a Teacher. Again this is all odd as if he was trained to do this. As few six year olds I have met have that amazing skill set to find guns, unlock them, carry them and in turn use them. To strangle someone with that much force to render a Teacher near unconsciousness. He told classmates and with that his need for attention led him to share it with other Students, threaten them and in turn be dismissed without recourse. And his Parents brought him to school and after a brief period felt it was not necessary to accompany him any further. Really? There is so much missing from this story but what isn’t is that take a look at the School, the lack of training, the lack of doors, the entire inability to respond to a crisis. The Principal not in the loop and the VP running the show. I have seen this many many times. A young Teacher with no support system in which to help her and a class of 24 or more which is WAY TOO BIG for children that age and no IA’s to assist. This district sucks but hey the Governor has made sure no CRT is being taught! And all following a pandemic when this Boy was 4 he had no oversight nor care to diagnose what is happening and enters Kindergarten already in a state and progressed what appears to be a new school for First grade. Where were his history or file? This is not exclusive to this school, this is EVERYWHERE. And what is the solution? Vouchers for Private Schools or more Charters. Yeah that is the solution or in other words kick the can down the road. This is a child not a can of pop. And the affect of this on all the other children will only exacerbate what I have come to believe a loss of a generation interrupted due to the pandemic. Ages 2-20 will fucked up for years to come. And it is why I will not spend more than three days in a school as the adage goes: Company like fish stink after three days. And why I quit doing both Elementary and Middle school as they are not easy in the best of times and these are not the best of times.
How Richneck Elementary failed to stop a 6-year-old from shooting his teacher
By Hannah Natanson and Justin Jouvenal February 10, 2023 The Washington Post
Abigail Zwerner was frustrated.
It was Jan. 4. A 6-year-old in her first-grade class at Richneck Elementary School had stolen her phone and slammed it to the floor, apparently upset over a schedule change, according to text messages Zwerner sent to a friend.
Administrators, she wrote, were faulting her for the situation.
The 6-year-old “took my phone and smashed it on the ground,” Zwerner wrote in a text message obtained by The Washington Post, “and admin is blaming me.”
Two days later, the 6-year-old told classmates at recess he was going to shoot Zwerner, showed them a gun and its clip tucked into his jacket pocket, and threatened to kill them if they told anyone, according to an attorney for the family of a student who witnessed the threat, offering the first account of events leading to the shooting from someone in Zwerner’s class.
That afternoon, the 6-year-old did as he promised, authorities said — firing a bullet through Zwerner’s upraised hand and into her chest as she was midway through teaching a lesson.
Zwerner’s lawyer and other educators at the Newport News, Va., school have alleged the shooting came after school administrators downplayed repeated warnings from Zwerner and other teachers about the boy. The incident sparked a staffing shake-up at Richneck and the ouster of Superintendent George Parker III.
The Washington Post interviewed 34 people — including teachers, parents and children at Richneck — and obtained dozens of text messages, school emails and documents to reconstruct what happened inside Richneck that day and in the days and weeks before the shooting, revealing new details about the administration’s failure to manage the 6-year-old’s disciplinary issues and to respond to other reports of troubling student behavior.
The Post learned that the 6-year-old was moved to a half-day schedule due to poor conduct in early September,and was suspended for a day after slamming Zwerner’s phone. But educators had long been vexed by the student, who previously attempted to strangle his kindergarten teacher, according to two school employees and records obtained by The Post.
Diane Toscano, Zwerner’s lawyer, has said teachers relayed several warnings to administrators on the morning of the shooting, including at least three reports that the boy had a gun. The Post interviewed a kindergartner who said the boy threatened to punch her at lunch that day and that she informed a staffer — but that the staffer did little more than give the boy a verbal warning.
In the direct aftermath of the shooting, two second-grade classes were left briefly wandering the hallways in search of a safe place to hide because their classroom was not equipped with doors and they had not rehearsed safety drills, according to one second-grade teacher, one fifth-grade teacher and a parent of a second-grade student, as well as text messages obtained by The Post. A second-grade teacher told The Post she had asked to have doors installed but administrators refused, saying the doors would be too expensive.
Many people interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity because the district has asked teachers not to talk with reporters or because they wanted to protect their families’ privacy.
James Ellenson, an attorney for the family of the 6-year-old boy, declined to comment directly on the new reporting but said in a statement that Newport News schools “had a duty to protect all the parties involved, especially the child who needed to be protected from himself.”
Newport News school district spokeswoman Michelle Price declined to comment for this story, as did Parker, the former superintendent, and Toscano, Zwerner’s attorney.
‘We were scared’
Teachers’ fears about the 6-year-old date backto his kindergarten year, when he tried to strangle his teacher, according to a letter Zwerner’s attorney sent to the school system Jan. 24 announcing her intent to sue. The letter was first reported by the Daily Press.
“The shooter had been removed from the school a year prior after he chokedhis teacher until she couldn’t breathe,” says the letter, obtained by The Post through a public records request. It was not immediately clear how a boy so young could have choked an adult. The Post was not able to learn other details of the incident and authorities have not released information about the boy.
Early this fall, as Richneck teachers sought to settle their new crop of students inside the low-slung red-brick building nestled amid trees, news of the 6-year-old’s troubled history circulated swiftly among the staff, according to text messages between teachers.
Less than a week into September, officials switched the 6-year-old to a half-day schedule due to misbehavior — but administrators were already lagging in efforts to accommodate the student, according to Toscano’s letter and to text messages sent between Zwerner and a friend of hers who teaches at the school.
It was not clear what specific incident triggered the schedule change.Toscano wrote in her letter that the 6-year-old “constantly cursed at the staff and teachers and then one day took off his belt on the playground and chased kids trying to whip them.”
On Sept. 5, Zwerner wrote in a text message to her friend that officials were being slow to offer updates on how to handle the child.
“I still haven’t gotten any info about [the student’s] half day schedule,” Zwerner wrote.
The friend wrote back that the 6-year-old “needs to be half days … They better stick to that for your sake.” The friend added that administrators’ “communication and accountability aren’t good again this year.”
As the year progressed, concerns did, too.
Though the 6-year-old was a particular challenge, teachers alleged that administrators’ response to discipline issues was generally lackluster, both for Zwerner’s class of roughly two dozen students and elsewhere in the building.
Harold Belkowitz, an attorney for Richneck parents with a child in Zwerner’s class, said his clients’ child was physically and verbally bullied by classmates during the current school year.He said his clients raised concerns with Richneck and Newport News school officials “numerous times” but that administrators took no action to stop the behavior.
Text messages and a photo shared between teachers show that a student in Zwerner’s class reportedly hit a teacher so hard with a chair that her legs became dotted with green and purple bruises — and that, at another point, a kindergartner was accused of pushing a pregnant teacher to the ground and kicking her in the stomach so hard that she feared for her unborn child, two weeks shy of giving birth. It was not immediately clear how administrators responded to those episodes, although one educator wrote in a text this fall that the bruised teacher had “heard nothing from admin.”
On Nov. 9, the second-grade teacher wrote in a text message to a colleague that she was applying to work in another district because of “how bad the first graders are right now put together with the fact we don’t have doors.”
The second-grade teacher added, referencing administrative failures, “It’s only gonna get worse.”
‘Again nothing was done’
About two months later, on the morning of Jan. 6, the 6-year-old slipped his mother’s gun into his backpack before heading to school, Newport News police have said. Ellenson, the lawyer for the boy’s family, has said the weapon was kept in the mother’s closet under a gun lock. It remains unclear how the boy was able to obtain the weapon.
The boy arrived on campus around 11 a.m., passing a school sign that still wished students “Happy New Year” in capital letters. He was accompanied by his mother, according to a second-grade teacher who said she spoke with the mother in the hallway.
Before that day, due to an unspecified disability, the boy followed a special schedule in which his parents shadowed him to and during class, the family said in a statement last month. On Jan. 6, for unknown reasons, the parents discontinued that plan: “The week of the shooting was the first week when we were not in class with him,” the statement said.
Around 11:05 a.m., the boy was slated to leave Zwerner’s classroom and head along the gray-tiled hallway to lunch, which is held jointly for kindergartners and first-graders, according to a copy of a Richneck schedule obtained by The Post.
Inside the lunchroom, which a Richneck teacher said has white walls lined with posters advising students how to behave respectfully, a kindergarten student was sitting at her lunch table when she spotted the boy, she said in a video call with The Post this month. The girl was interviewed beside her mother; both spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their privacy.
The kindergarten student said she had long wanted to become friends with the 6-year-old. When she saw him that day, she said, she looked steadily in his direction to attract his attention.
Noticing her gaze, she said, the boy walked close to her table and asked, “What are you looking at, little girl?” before jumping forward and shoving himself close to her. He raised his fist to eye level and said, “I’m going to punch you in the face,” she recalled. Scared and sad, the girl raced from her table to grab the nearest school staffer, she said.
The school staffer warned the 6-year-old that punching another student could force a visit to the principal’s office, according to the kindergartner and her mother. The girl’s mother said the staffer spoke on the phone with her about a week after the shooting to try to explain the decision-making process in that moment — and to confess that the boy with the raised fist was the same one who, hours later, shot his teacher.
“They felt that they did the best they could by addressing it to the child,” the kindergartner’s mother said, declining to identify the staffer. “But I disagree.”
By 11:30 a.m., reports that the boy had threatened another child reached Zwerner, according to Toscano, Zwerner’s attorney. Toscano wrote in her letter to the school district that Zwerner took theinformation directly to Assistant Principal EbonyParker,who is not related to the former superintendent with the same last name.
Zwerner visited the assistant principal’s office and told her about the threat, reporting “that the shooter was in a violent mood,” Toscano wrote. “Yet … absolutely nothing is done.”
At 12:20 p.m., after the first-graders finished lunch and sat through a brief “Reading” period, they were supposed to head outside for recess, according to the Richneck daily schedule.
By this point, rumorswere spreading that the boy had brought a weapon to school, according to Toscano. One teacher searched the 6-year-old’s backpack at around 12:30 p.m., Toscano wrote, but found nothing.
Zwerner told a colleague she had glimpsed “the shooter take something out of his backpack and put it in his pocket” and feared it might be a gun, spurring that colleague to bring concerns to Assistant Principal Parker, Toscano wrote in her letter. But Parker ignored the teacher, Toscano wrote, suggesting the boy’s pockets were too small to contain a gun: “Assistant Principal Parker was made aware at the beginning of recess that Ms. Zwerner was afraid the shooter had a gun in his pocket. And again nothing was done.”
Meanwhile, outside at recess, the 6-year-old approached three other students and told them he intended to shoot Zwerner, according to Emily Mapp Brannon, an attorney who is representing the parents of four Richneck families. Brannon provided a statement that details an account of that day given by a boy enrolled in Zwerner’s class.
The 6-year-old showed his fellow students the gun, which he had concealed in the pocket of his jacket, revealing the clip, according to the statement.
“The shooter also threatened the other classmates that if they told on him, he would shoot them,” the statement says.
Two students immediately ran away terrified, according to the statement.
The statement said the boy told the shooter that he wanted to go play in another area of the playground and left for the monkey bars. Not long after, the boy told a teacher about the gun, Brannon said.
Toscano described a similar incident in her letter to the district, writing that a teacher alerted to the recess gun threat by a student told another teacher, who told Assistant Principal Parker. But Parker “responded that she was aware of the threat and the shooter’s backpack had already been searched,” according to Toscano’s letter.
Around the same time, a school guidance counselor also approached the assistant principal to warn her the student might have a gun — marking at least the third warning about a gun Parker received that day.
The guidance counselor “asked Assistant Principal Parker if he could search the shooter’s person for the weapon,” Toscano wrote. “Assistant Principal Parker’s response was no, because the shooter’s mother would be arriving soon to pick up the shooter.”
Parker did not respond to requests for comment for this story. An attorney for Briana Foster Newton, who was Richneck principal at the time, said in a statement that “it would be imprudent to comment on discussions that Mrs. Newton was not a part of.” She has said Newton, who has since been reassigned, was not told the boy might have had a gun that day.
At 12:50 p.m., first-grade recess wrapped up, per the school schedule. The first-graders filed back into Zwerner’s classroom for what was listed on the schedule as math class.
Shortly before 2 p.m., Toscano wrote in her letter, Zwerner “was sitting at her reading table when the shooter, who was sitting at his desk, pulled the gun out of his pocket.” He squeezed the trigger.
‘We all went under the teacher’s table’
Several things happened almost at once after the shot was fired, according to Newport News police. Surveillance video shows between 16 and 20 students fleeing the classroom to seek shelter across the hall. Another school employee ran into Zwerner’s room to restrain the student and continued holding him until police officers arrived on campus. The 6-year-old was ultimately taken to a hospital for a mental health evaluation.
Zwerner was the last to leave her classroom, police have said. She made a right turn and traveled down the hallway before looking back “to make sure every one of those students was safe,” Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew has said.
The rest of the school was plunged into confusion and terror. Alyssa Dooley, who is 8 and in third grade, said a lockdown was announced over her classroom’s loudspeaker shortly after the shot was fired.
“We all went under the teacher’s table,” Alyssa said. “There was crying, and we were scared.”
Down the hall from Zwerner’s classroom, two classes of second-graders had no idea where to go, according to one of the second-grade teachers. Not only did their shared classroom lack doors, but the school had failed to hold a lockdown drill that school year, two Richneck teachers said, leaving the second-grade teachers without a plan.
The second-grade teachers began trying classroom doors until they found the computer lab unlocked, one said. They hustled students inside and sought to keep them calm for about an hour, according to the teacher and a parent of a second-grader, before the principal and police began circulating the building unlocking classroom doors. The adults led the children to the gym to await reunion with their parents.
At the same time, parents began learning of the shooting from news reports — frustrating some, who said they wanted to hear directly from the school.
Mark Anthony Garcia, a parent of a second-grade boy, said he learned of the shooting when his wife called him, herself having gleaned the news from local station WAVY-TV.
“My wife told me to get to the school because there was a shooter at Richneck Elementary,” Garcia said.
Garcia said he jumped in his car and sped to Richneck. He got about a mile and a half away before hitting a police roadblock. A woman said he could park his car in her driveway. He left the vehicle and hurried to the school, where hundreds of parents stood waiting in an area cordoned off by yellow police tape.
As the minutes ticked on, parents paced nervously. Others cried. Some were irate. By 2:45 p.m., Garcia said, police began reuniting anxious mothers and fathers with their children.
Garcia captured the moment on video.
“Everybody have their ID in their hand,” an officer shouted through a megaphone. She told the crowd to form a single line.
Parents burst through the yellow tape toward the school. One woman shouted, “Go! Go!”
Garcia said he met his son in the gym. He gave the boy a big hug and told him he was a hero.
Garcia and his son then drove to a gas station, where they met up with Garcia’s wife, who had been stranded on a different side of the school. The family spilled out of their cars and gathered in a group hug.
Then, together, the boy and his parents said a prayer.
Off the Rack Publishing 