Willful Ignorance

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.

Horses and Apples

One bad apple doesn’t spoil the bunch. This is an idiom. In that a bad apple as “someone who creates problems or causes trouble for others; specifically, a member of a group whose behavior negatively affects the remainder of the group.” And it comes from the proverb that actually states, “one bad apple spoils the whole barrel.” And that misuse has been applied repeatedly when in cones to Police. So now we have cleared that up, it shows that in fact that the acts of one affect many. Cannot say that one enough as we have repeatedly again seen Police Officers kill and abuse those in custody and those not yet placed in as such. The SCORPION unit that was comprised of many Police Officers in Memphis and were not just the 5 who killed him nor the one who stopped him and has since been fired, it was an entire unit, a Goon Squad. The unit was devised to be a largely traffic force that looked for minor violations including seat belts, running lights, speeding and the like as a deterrent. In other words, “stop and frisk” and the concept of broken windows. And we know already that most of these arbitrary stops enable Police to search the vehicle, seize the vehicle and in turn fine the Driver excessive fees as well as Jail them. Sandra Bland was an example of such. and with that we also know they are highly fraught exchanges. I keep thinking of the band Big Bad Voodoo Daddy when it comes to these squads. The band great, the thugs of Officers not so great. This is from the NY Times today on said SCORPION unit which has now been disbanded. Don’t worry it will be back with no less a dickwad acronym that is all about the men who use tasers and guns as extensions of their manhood.

The idea that there are good Cops is in fact the EXCEPTION not the rule. Sorry, not sorry. But there is something that needs to be understood that in the case of Memphis that despite the fact that the Police and the Victim were/are Black it is less about the color of skin and more the color of the uniform. The Military has similar dogmas and the reality is that many who try to join exclusive units in their respective branch have found themselves abused and often end up dead or seriously disabled in some type of hazing process that has gone on for decades. If they complain or are not able to complete the course, they are assigned dead end jobs. The sexual abuse includes not just Women of the Military but Men. And even the ROTC units in the public schools have come under fire as they too are using their authority and inference of power to assault and victimize many potential recruits. The reality is that we have a Badge obsession like we do a gun one and they have both. And the badge of honor is to keep one’s mouth shut.

When you think of these organizations of defense you think very much a tribal mentality that permeates the core and you become like them rather that try to go against them. Those that have have faced serious repercussions and their careers have been ended as a result. And we all are members of one tribe or another. We use that membership to declare moral superiority, intellect, a coolness or whatever other adjective or moniker you wish in order to add to your identity. The hyphenate world in which we live places us in the need for more apparently. He/She/Her/Him/Mx/Ms and so forth. Fuck it I don’t care anymore frankly as it just again lends to the divisions and more ire than it is worth. And with that I found this editorial today and I share it to see why I am a loner. I cannot handle the endless need to validate or prove worth. I find each conversation fraught with challenges that are exhausting and I spend my days already exhausted from sitting and doing nothing and watching children do nothing. It is not how I saw my life pan out in the least. And again it is why I write, words that no one reads or maybe they do but they don’t care as they are seize on one word, one thought, remove it from context and decide if the rest is worth reading or not. It is all judgement and assessment and none of it productive or good for anyone.

The most salient point the Author makes is the endless cycle of Good vs Bad and the tales of who has it better/worse and does largely the same to defend and support their beliefs. It is called the Horseshoe Effect. Just that theory alone sets off alarm bells. And if this does not resonate with anyone, think book banning. The right are running amok with books about Slavery, Sexuality and other issues of culture. The Left too is doing the same, removing books like To Kill and Mockingbird for Atticus as a White Savior or Huckleberry Finn and other books like Mice and Men that were written in the 1920s and used the word “Nigger” in the text. Even me writing the word is highly fraught as it should not be spoken or written. I am to use the phrase the “N word” Really? I am not using to level a name or affix a negative abusive moniker and am discussing the word in a literary critical context. Nope can’t do that. Then please only Women can use the word, “Bitch.” Gays I am talking to you here!

But here is the NAACP position and they feel that it should NEVER be used ever, under any circumstance. And once again I refer to John McWhorter and his thoughts on the issue. And he concludes with this:

The N-word euphemism was an organic outcome, as was an increasing consensus that “nigger” itself is forbidden not only in use as a slur but even when referred to. Our spontaneous sense is that profanity consists of the classic four-letter words, while slurs are something separate. However, anthropological reality is that today, slurs have become our profanity: repellent to our senses, rendering even words that sound like them suspicious and eliciting not only censure but also punishment.

For a person who uses the word Fuck all the time I have had my moments where I was scolded and reprimanded usually by white men who are obviously deeply offended by my lack of lady like speech. To that I say, “Fuck yeah Asshole.” I don’t care anymore but in context of a discussion we should be able to use words, even those most repellent to bring about discussion. It is critical in all kinds of theory, race included. We must use words powerfully and we do so in ways to do harm and do well. Again the use of “Bro” or “Boy” or even “Man” taken out of context and broken apart to see evil where there is none is again a part of the process of moral superiority. I was talking about “lunch ladies” regarding School Cafeteria workers which is an old nickname, harmless and I was informed that there are Men now in the kitchens. Really there are? When were you last in a public school lunchroom? There are none and of course the good Liberal scold continued as they cannot be wrong; “Thanks for the reminder that gender enforcement and stereotyping are critical functions of education.” And my response: “Hey it is what I live for.” We are talking about Lunchroom workers and that the term is not pejorative in the least but this is where we are nitpicking, bullying and fighting over words and terms. It will not get better. Why? Its all we have. We have no interests, no hobbies, no work that is meaningful. So we misdirect and channel our anger and frustrations to those on the interwebs. Social media is anything but social nor is it media.

‘Bad Apples’ or Systemic Issues?

By David French Opinion Columnist The New York Times Feb 5, 2023

On Wednesday, the city of Memphis remembered the life of Tyre Nichols, a young man who was beaten by at least five Memphis police officers and died three days later. Stories like this are terrible, they’re relentless, and they renew one of the most contentious debates in the nation: Are there deep and systemic problems with the American police?

How we answer that question isn’t based solely on personal experience or even available data. It often reflects a massive partisan divide, one that reveals how we understand our relationships with the institutions we prize the most — and the least.

Every year Gallup releases a survey that measures public confidence in a variety of American institutions, including the police. In 2022, no institution (aside from the presidency) reflected a greater partisan trust gap than the police. A full 67 percent of Republicans expressed confidence in the police, versus only 28 percent of Democrats.

Why is that gap so large? While I try to avoid simple explanations for complex social phenomena, there is one part of the answer that I believe receives insufficient attention: Our partisanship tends to affect our reasoning, influencing our assessments of institutions regardless of the specifics of any particular case.

Here’s what I mean. The instant that a person or an institution becomes closely identified with one political “tribe,” members of that tribe become reflexively protective and are inclined to write off scandals as “isolated” or the work of “a few bad apples.”

Conversely, the instant an institution is perceived as part of an opposing political tribe, the opposite instinct kicks in: We’re far more likely to see each individual scandal as evidence of systemic malice or corruption, further proof that the other side is just as bad as we already believed.

Before I go further, let me put my own partisan cards on the table. I’m a conservative independent. I left the Republican Party in 2016, not because I abandoned my conservatism but rather because I applied it. A party helmed by Donald Trump no longer reflected either the character or the ideology of the conservatism I believed in, and when push came to shove, I was more conservative than I was Republican.

But my declaration of independence wasn’t just about Trump. In 2007 I deployed, relatively late in life, to Iraq as a U.S. Army judge advocate general, or JAG. Ever since I returned from my deployment, I’ve been gradually shedding my partisanship.

The savagery of the sectarian infighting I saw in Iraq shocked me. I witnessed where mutual hatred leads, and when I came home I saw that the seeds of political violence were being planted here at home — seeds that started to sprout in the riots of summer 2020 and in the Trump insurrection of 2021.

As American polarization deepens, I’ve noticed unmistakable ways in which committed partisans mirror one another, especially at the far edges. There’s even a term for the phenomenon: horseshoe theory, the idea that as left and right grow more extreme they grow more alike. When it comes to the partisan reflex — the defense of “my people” and “my institutions” — extreme partisans behave very much like their polar opposites.

And make no mistake, respect for police officers has long been vital to the very identity of conservative Americans. Men and women in uniform are ours. They’re part of our community, and — as the Blue Lives Matter flags in my suburban Nashville neighborhood demonstrate — we’ve got their backs. (Mostly, anyway. Lately, the Capitol Police and the F.B.I. do not feel that same support.)

There are good reasons for respecting and admiring police officers. A functioning police force is an indispensable element of civil society. Crime can deprive citizens of property, hope and even life. It is necessary to protect people from predation, and a lack of policing creates its own forms of injustice.

But our admiration has darker elements. It causes too many of us — again, particularly in my tribe — to reflexively question, for example, the testimony of our Black friends and neighbors who can tell very different stories about their encounters with police officers. Sometimes citizens don’t really care if other communities routinely experience no-knock raids and other manifestations of aggression as long as they consider their own communities to be safe.

At this point you might be asking: When is the left reflexively defensive? What institutions does it guard as jealously as conservatives guard the police?

Consider academia. Just as there is a massive partisan gap in views of the police, there is a similar gap in views of higher education. According to a 2022 New America Survey, 73 percent of Democrats believe universities have a “positive effect” on the country, while only 37 percent of Republicans have the same view.

Yes, this is in part a consequence of anti-intellectual strains on the right and among right-wing media. And this conservative mistrust of higher education (and secondary education) is causing it to turn its back on free speech and instead resort to punitive legislation, such as Florida’s recently passed “Stop Woke Act,” which a federal court called “positively dystopian” and unconstitutionally “bans professors from expressing disfavored viewpoints in university classrooms while permitting unfettered expression of the opposite viewpoints.”

But that’s not the whole story. The nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression — of which, full disclosure, I was once president — has tracked over 900 incidents since 2001 where scholars were targeted for termination or other penalties for speech that was protected by the First Amendment or by conventional principles of academic freedom. In 2021 alone there were 111 attempts to penalize professors for their speech, and almost 70 percent of those attacks came from the left.

I spent years litigating campus free speech in court. It was frustrating to file successful case after successful case — often challenging policies that existed in campuses across the country — only to be told time and again that there was no systemic problem with free expression on campus, that these were merely isolated incidents or a product of youthful overenthusiasm, of kids being kids.

No one should pretend for a moment that there is any kind of moral equivalence between university censorship and fatal police violence. The stakes on the streets are infinitely higher than the stakes in the classroom. But there is still a common problem: Our repeated assumptions that those on our team might make mistakes or overstep, but those on the other team are deliberately malevolent.

I should know. I used to fit that partisan mold. As a conservative, I could clearly see the problems in American universities. After all, it was my tribe that disproportionately faced penalties and discipline. When it came to the police, however, I was skeptical. I knew there were some bad apples. But was there a systemic problem? I was doubtful.

I have since changed my mind, but it took shedding my partisanship and applying my principles to allow me to see more clearly. Fundamental to my worldview is the belief that human beings possess incalculable worth, but that we are also deeply flawed. No person or institution can be completely trusted.

Thus powerful people and powerful institutions must be held accountable. If you combine authority with impunity, then corruption and injustice will be the inevitable result. If I could see this reality clearly in institutions on the left, why couldn’t I see it on the right?

The police, after all, possess immense power in American streets, often wielded at the point of a gun. Yet the law systematically shields them from accountability. Collective bargaining agreements and state statutes provide police officers with greater protections from discipline than almost any other class of civil servant — despite the fact that the consequences of misconduct can be unimaginably worse. A judge-made doctrine called qualified immunity provides powerful protections against liability, even when officers violate citizens’ civil rights. Systemic police corruption and systemic abuse should not have been a surprise.

How do we fight past our partisanship to become truly curious about the truth? For me, the answer started with the first principle of my conservatism: Human beings possess incalculable worth. If that is true, and my neighbors and fellow citizens are crying out about injustice, I should hear their voices and carefully consider their claims.

My initial inability to see the truth is related to the second principle, that human beings are deeply flawed. I had no trouble applying that principle to my opponents. But it also applies to those I generally admire. It applies to police officers. It applies to me.

The lesson I’ve taken has been clear: Any time my tribe or my allies are under fire, before I yield to the temptation of a reflexive defense, I should apply my principles and carefully consider the most uncomfortable of thoughts: My opponents might be right, my allies might be wrong and justice may require that I change my mind. And it may, in all likelihood, require that I do this again and again.

Nashville, you suck

I spent the last three years trying to recover from living in Nashville, where I spent three years there trying to recover from Seattle. An odd pattern of escaping a liberal city for an extreme right wing one but that it called finding balance. Being a Libra I seek balance and with that I am also a strong avoider of conflict and with that my own personal baggage aside, I have always been a bit of a nomad as a result. I quit jobs, friends, places I went, things I do in which to avoid that feeling of anxiety that wells up every time you walk into an office, a place of business or be in someone’s company. It took 63 years and a pandemic where I finally understand less is more, I share less, listen more and with that I can extricate myself out of a situation with much more ease and less drama.

I spent my last three months, the number three is a rather big number for me with regards to both numerology and in science. I do think that it takes about that amount of times to understand a situation in ways that seems balanced. Think of it, two out of three, power of three, a triangle in geometry is the most stable shape. In the military you “triangulate” your position. And now three years in here in Jersey City I like it, it his highly overrated but considering that only a few years ago this city was a raging ghetto it is now just pushed south and with that little has changed regarding crime but a bunch of expensive apartment towers with expensive bars/restaurants/coffee shops and of course day care below makes it seem on the surface it is a thriving city. I just hate where I live. I loathe apartments and the whole front desk bullshit with the endless observations and the fucking tipping which is coming up this next month which if this was a normal functional place we would simply give what we can to the Management and like the Captain on Below Deck distribute it equally to all the players in the house. For the record we are asked to tip not only the Concierge Desk, we have Porters, Building Superintendent and other Managers, including leasing Agents which we are to “tip.” If you did it fairly and appropriately it would add up to the same amount I pay annually as Amenity Fee. That is the fees to use the Gym, the Lounge, the Pool and if you have dogs and kids, the dog park and play area. It is an utter rip off at just under 500 dollars a year. A gym monthly membership costs less. So once again the envelopes are offered and I used to cook a huge lunch and offer it with a potluck grab bag where there were envelopes of cash of 5.00 or gift cards of the same. The cost, just under 300 bucks. Not. doing.that.ever.again. This year I have budgeted 50 bucks and divide it among the front desk, the rest no. They are not paid enough and I am not supplementing those who remain in jobs that do so but as I have to encounter and rely on the front desk for packages/deliveries they will get the split.

I love the area and frankly still would love to live in Manhattan but that too upon each visit becomes a navigational hurdle as to where and would it work for me. There is a much more challenging aspect in finding the “right place” and the right “location” so for now I simply look to where the PATH and Ferry are closest and easy to get to at night without issue. So again for now this is where I live where I live in abject rage with regards to the crazies below me. No amount of banishment or hot foot spells can be made to rid myself of them, so once again it falls to me and in 16 months my lease is up and with that rents may be lower and options greater as the economy seems to be tanking in ways that largely affects the working white collar class via the layoffs in the tech sector and banking and of course the working poor via rising costs. Us in the middle are just lying in wait.

I am never wrong, well I was once and it was because I ignored my inner voice to get the fuck out and leave as it wasn’t worth waiting but then I thought hey what does it matter, it is just a drink. Well I was wrong and that is why I now go out of my way to remind myself that never go against those inner instincts. I knew about three months in living in Nashville that it was a hell pit of religious hypocrisy and with that the obsession over money was the only reason the citizens and politicians overlooked the newcomers, the tourists and the overall change to the once dumpy but a historically based city founded in music. Money is the only tangible asset that matters to anyone who crosses the threshold of the Churches and Bars that align the same blocks all along Nashville.

I know the truth of a city via its schools. I know instantly once I walk in and see the state of them, the kids and their racial/ethnic composition, the way Teachers and Staff look and behave as often they are the holders of the mirror and in turn model the ways the Students behave. Or in fact are also a reflection of them as it shows that now we have turned the concept of respect and education into the hands of Students and they have the power. It explains the rising tide of violence, the lowering of academic standards and test scores. It explains why suddenly books are being banned and curriculum dumped as the fear of Students and their well being intellectually or emotionally matter more than the work involved to vet and instruct materials in ways that enable Children to learn about others and the ways things were and how that can affect the present in both perception and reality.

And to once again maintain my stance on my belief about how broken our institutions are. I continually find examples, stories and other information to validate it and add it to my “Hoover file.” It is named after the former FBI director who had a stranglehold on the position given his ability to have access to massive information on the powerful in which to use against or with them to maintain his own status. A current book on the man discusses his career and the ways he used his position to accumulate said power. Irony that like Robert Moses the urban planner in NY who was the subject of both a book and play, was again a White Male who was never elected, never accountable to the voting public and maintained their job running a type of fiefdom for over 40 years until they either died, as did Hoover, or finally a wealthier whiter man, Rockefeller, got rid of them. There is your White Privilege, I can find no woman with equal or even remotely close in power and/or influence.

Racism is an example and with that John McWhorter wrote an excellent essay on the subject and how it is used and defined. Institutions are they Racist? Or those who work within them? Trigger Warning

The problem with ‘systemic,’ ‘structural’ and ‘institutional’ racism

By John McWhorter

“Systemic bigotry.”

“Institutional prejudice.”

Notice how those terms don’t really work? They challenge our mental processing, in part because systems can’t be bigots and institutions can’t be prejudiced.

And so I offer a modest proposal, but an earnest one. How about revising our terms for “systemic racism,” “structural racism” and “institutional racism”?

The problem with these phrases is that systems, structures and institutions cannot be racist any more than they can be happy or sad. They can be made up of individuals who share these traits, or even have procedures that may engender them. But systems, structures and institutions do not themselves have feelings or prejudices.

Yes, of course, we use these terms in a more abstract way: The idea is that the inequities between races that systems can harbor are themselves racist. They are a different form of racism than personal bias.

But we must learn this usage of racism in the same way that we learn we aren’t supposed to say “Tom and me talked” as opposed to “Tom and I talked.” It is a hallmark of the modern enlightened American to understand that systems can “be racist.” But deep down I suspect many cannot help but ask, if only in flashlight-under-the-pillow style: Isn’t bias different from inequality, and why are we using one word to refer to both?

Calling for people to stop saying this or that almost never has any real effect, and overall, linguists like me delight in the changes we hear around us. Plus, things people decry as confusing in language usually are not. Context is key: You probably have no problem with the fact that a rabbit can run “fast,” but that in the idiom “stuck fast” the word suddenly means the opposite.

But the terms “systemic racism,” “structural racism” and “institutional racism” can be seen as different in that they sow a kind of confusion — just as “sanction” meaning both to approve and to penalize does, especially among lawyers, from what I am told. We are to understand a pathway running through, first, racism as bias, then bias causing inequalities and thus leaving in its wake a different rendition of “racism.” But in actuality, using this word enables an attitude that can be less than constructive.

I once had a conversation with a Black woman who lived near a school in a mostly Black, low-income neighborhood whose students were almost all kids of other races from other neighborhoods. The school required a certain test score for admission. The woman referred to the school as “straight-up racist” in that almost no kids from the neighborhood attended it.

But this is a highly stretched usage of the word. The low number of Black kids in that school is something we need to fix. But it is probably safe to say that no one in the school would disagree — the reason for the low numbers is not anyone’s bigotry. Now, the reason is indeed legacies of what bigotry created in the past: poverty and its effects, parents who work too hard to have as much time to help their kids with schoolwork as others do, lack of inherited wealth to allay that problem, and so on.

And here’s the thing. One might formally understand that, but the set-jawed anger many, such as this woman, have about “systemic racism” is not anger at 1960. It is, even if tacitly, based on a sense that this systemic racism is a present-tense phenomenon — i.e., that what we must battle is something going by the name of “racism” that exists in the here and now and both enrages and disgusts us.

And in its true sense, it should. But what will get more Black kids into schools like the one this person was referring to here and now, in the present, are things like getting the word out about test preparation, changing the way poor kids are taught how to read and making good charter schools available to as many underprivileged kids as possible. These things have little to do with going out and battling the evil face of racist bias.

Similarly, it helps little to call a test on which racial groups differ in their performance a “racist” test. It is unlikely that anyone connected to the test is committed to keeping Black people from passing it, even if the reasons for the differential in pass rates are rooted in the effects of past racism. Labeling Black English speakers as linguistically deficient is something we call “systemic racism” — with even me bowing to the convention not long ago when I wrote about it — despite the fact that there is no reason to think that anyone designing or administering the tests is racist; they often even suppose they are helping rather than hurting Black kids.

What we call environmental racism also profoundly affects poor whites as well, and it can also be viewed as a class phenomenon based on a disregard for people without power, whatever color they are. The disparity in criminal sentencing for possession of powder versus crack cocaine certainly affected Black people disproportionately. However, calling this systemic racism cannot help but call to mind bigoted officials punishing Black people out of racist contempt when, in reality, many leaders in the Black community ardently supported these laws.

Terms like “systemic racism” are not utterly without use. For one, of course there are actual racists embedded in some segments of American society, not to mention less overt, yet intolerable, racism of subtler kinds. For example, the idea among medical practitioners that Black people are more tolerant of pain than others is a kind of racist bias whose effects spread throughout the medical system. The fact that cops are more likely to rough up Black people cannot be treated as anything other than a “systemic” manifestation of underlying dehumanization.

But such cases are exceptions. Most disparities between Black and white people, though they exist and are not something Black people deserve any kind of blame for, are not due in 2022 to “racism” in any sense compatible with clear and honest language.

To insist on using the term this way so challenges basic understanding that it can only encourage less discriminating observers to see it as “playing the race card,” confused by the idea that the racism of the past leaves behind a system that continues to exert that trait as if it were sentient. Calling systems, structures and institutions “racist” encourages a kind of anthropomorphization of abstract matters, which is a simplistic and even unscientific mode kind of thought.

However, I am arguing not from any authority one might associate with my being a linguist. I am pretty sure quite a few linguists will disagree with me on this. I am simply seeking a clearer and less unnecessarily loaded way of talking about racism and how we actually help people in a society riddled with inequality. Calling inequities between races “systemic racism” and the like gets in the way of that.

I think of a hypothetical people founding a town long ago, among whom acrophobia — i.e., fear of heights — was unusually common. They restricted buildings to being two stories high at most. In subsequent generations, as the population grew both locally and from immigration, acrophobia largely faded away. However, this had always been a town with limited funds, and the two-story limit has led to significant overcrowding. Imagine the town leaders making sonorous speeches referring to overcrowding and its attendant ills — below-average schools, crime, pollution — as “acrophobia” because that’s what they were traceable to in the past. You could wrap your head around using the term that way if necessary. But that would also interfere with clear and constructive discussion about what to do about the problems.

From now on, I, for one, will be referring to most of the things we are now taught to call systemic racism as being “inequities between races.” In my ideal universe, the term would quickly and inevitably be shortened to just “inequities,” with a tacit reference to Black and Latino people, just as “minority” now has the same implication. We would battle these inequities, but without the lexical mission creep which has led to how confusingly we use the word “racism” now. Less distracted by the fantasy that these inequities are embodiments of an undying bigotry in “institutional” form, we could focus more attention on genuine solutions to what is holding back real people in today’s America.

Tennessee is a State run by a minority, not of race but of numbers. They have long passed laws to oppress voting, the ID requirement, limited time to vote and of course the gerrymandering that finally took place this year to carve up Nashville ensures that the voters who register and do vote count very little. But Tennessee overall has often ranked in the bottom when it comes to both. That defines the resignation and what I call co-dependency of those in obligation to the rich when it comes to what little they have in their possession and that is very little. Much of the industry is controlled by a few families, the few publicly held companies that employ the population have never tried to surpress Labor Organizing but they have done equally little to remove the statute Right to Work that does its part to almost make such organizing impossible. That is Tennessee to a T. It will be interesting to see what comes from the spate of businesses that were relocating or opening secondary headquarters and offices, Amazon and Oracle are just two examples, will be doing as we move away from office work and corporate offices. All are in the middle of layoffs and reconsidering expansion as are many others in the same industries, Alliance Bernstein a white collar firm that relocated is now selling off part of its business in totality over the next five years so with that jobs and other needs such as office space will go with them – to London. I am sure they love a city that makes its largest portion of money from tourists aka Bridezillas who drunkenly peddle boat their way down the sole street that defines the core. YEE HAW.

With that I read two articles about the Legislature and their pursuit of the agenda that does more than voter surpress, it is one that will remove civil liberties from the LGBQT community, reproductive rights and of course deny funding to public education and information. YEE HAW. The article below from the local Nashville Scene, which is stepping up to be more of an alternative press and actually covering more local news versus Entertainment, it shows the need for more local press. The Scene now covers all the MNPS school board meetings and is there that I found out about the Teacher terminated from the Johnson Alternative Learning Center. I wrote about my familiarity with him in the last blog post and nothing surprises me with the documented tales of his abuse as that school former Admin was the wife of another Administrator, who despite all the Doctorates attained at religious Colleges attempted to sexually harass employees at the school he worked at. My favorite his recruiting of a man from an Adult Book Store. Even this man was horrified when he arrived into the office of the Admin to find him pant-less and asking him if he “would like a taste of this” while pointing to his dick. But he was not alone, not in the least. And there were many in my time there and since. Yes the Superintendent at that time was busy promoting others who let Teachers relocate after assaulting Students and other Teachers despite the numerous and well documented complaints and lawsuits. But guns not a problem right?

I have tried to understand the predisposition or reasoning behind adults who are drawn to careers in the Military or Education or Municipal work which includes Police and the like, which are often lowly paid but also poorly supervised and yet despite thriving and functioning they seem to regress and become predators who take advantage of their position and exploit and do harm to others. I have read extensive stories about the ROTC and their harm they do when placed in public schools; or the numerous stories about Prison Guards and the harm they do to both Adults and Children under their watch; From Teachers and Others in Public Education and lastly Police who seem to endlessly have a compulsion if not need to do harm. I worked in Education on and off for 30 years and with that either turned a blind eye or simply did not care enough to well, care enough, to find better employment to seek a profession better suited. As a Woman like many in my position be they a Minority or simply drawn to that due to family connections or history these are fields that will pretty much hire you with a simple background check. The licensing and credentials are on your dime and since you pay for it you find yourself in a job that once the cost and benefit outlay has been determined you attempt to make it work. It is why so few are entering the profession and those who do say have extensive loans or have set up their own fiefdom or are awaiting the time to take a pension and leave as these are still the only jobs with that time of security. The private sector with the better pay also is less likely to tolerate some of the behaviors and in turn dump money into the bullshit 401Ks versus having retirement security that the public sector offers. I am not sure why it explains the abuse and overwhelming exploitation by people, often the same color and ethnicity of those they harm, but there is a massive problem when it comes to understanding the reasoning behind it. This is the pandering and patronizing of what I have found repeatedly in Education and with that a tacit or implicit threat of being accused a Racist if you do ask questions or complain. So you turn the blind eye.

It explains why I used to look for exit doors on my way into every school, they are living dumpsters. And this is why I decided to turn my book about this into fiction as you cannot make this shit up and yet who would believe it, despite the numerous articles and stories about it. Sorry this is not worth fact checking and I can throw in the others I have accumulated over the years from the other districts in which I have worked. Again finally doing the inventory of that made me realize how much I hate Teaching. Well not the actual Teaching but the public schools in which I did said “teaching.”

When ProPublica covers one of the many many sagas and stories about the city of Nashville and the State of Tennessee there is a problem. So you can read below the Scene’s article and with that the link to ProPublica’s investigation. We live in a bubble of our own making. I do not live in Tennessee but that said I do keep informed as where they go there will be followers, this is after all the buckle of the belt and that Bible runs core hard and deep. If Bredesen the once acclaimed Mayor of Nashville and Governor wonders why he never was elected into a National office that is because he is not “from” there. He was emphasis on was “respected” as oversaw tremendous growth, the businesses that came came because he was atypical for the area and with that all outsiders are fine if they bring cash and leave quickly. But now the State can do without an outsider as they learned the skill set, to make money you offer money. You know like paying for your job as I did. Money is the color of the blood that runs in their waters and veins, Jesus may be the name they use most often but it is a cover for their hypocrisy. The Senators and current Governor are much more of their own kind and that is because Tennessee of late has been the shiny key and with that too many outsiders stay and we can’t have them or their ideas coming here, their money can.

Not a day goes by where I don’t remind myself why I am never wrong. I listen, I learn and I remember. It is like Jersey City and why I think this city is actually poorly run and administered. 30 years their schools under State Control only now getting that back, but with that the State pulling funding. The state of the schools are horrid and the children within them equally so. But keep those expensive towers being built as they offer more rental units to flood the market and with that the rents will eventually go down and more come up on offer. Supply and Demand another way to measure an economy. I learned that in school.

Tennessee Republicans Discover Their Colleagues Are Who They Say They Are

State Rep. Eddie Mannis and state Sen. Richard Briggs found out that, yes, the Tennessee GOP really is anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion

• Betsy Phillips
• Nashville Scene
• Nov 21, 2022

Last week was apparently “Some Tennessee Republicans Discover Tennessee Republicans Suck” week, which I was unaware was a statewide commemoration. But I honor the moral journeys of those faceless members of the “Leopards eat your face” party who have just now discovered that their party is exactly what it claims to be.

First up we have Eddie Mannis over in Knoxville lamenting to Betty Bean that his time as Tennessee’s first openly gay Republican legislator was very difficult because — pause here to prepare yourself for a revelation that will shock absolutely no one — Tennessee Republicans are incredibly hostile to gay people.

Bean writes:

This past February after an anti-LGBTQ vote, Mannis decided to try to reason with some of his colleagues. He went to some of their offices and sent emails to others.

“I asked them to think about what they were doing to LGBTQ students … just wanted to express from personal experience the impact this can have on children. Do you think I am gay because I had gay influences? Have you ever sat down and talked with a gay person?”

His efforts were not well-received. One colleague came to his office seething with anger. Then he was summoned to House Speaker Cameron Sexton’s office where the entire leadership team was waiting to rake him over the coals for “insulting” his colleagues.

But what did he expect? It’s not like the Tennessee GOP is claiming to be open and affirming of gay people. And then, bam, he gets to Nashville and it’s all bigotry. They are who they say they are. The baffling and upsetting part is why Mannis thought he would be the exception.

Mannis complains that some of the hostility even came from people who had encouraged him to run in the first place. I guess he thought he would get to be the exception because he has the right friends or something?

The other example comes from this barn-burner of an article at Pro Publica by Kavitha Surana, who repeatedly got state Sen. (and doctor) Richard Briggs to admit to such absolute stupidities about the Tennessee Republican position on and conduct around abortion that I am stunned he hasn’t changed his name and grown a goatee so that he can plausibly deny that he is himself.

Every bit of Surana’s piece is so good and so important. Just read the whole thing and imagine me shouting after every sentence. Republicans are flat-out coming for birth control and in vitro fertilization next. They want the ability to mine your medical records. They don’t want exceptions for abortion, at all. And they’re saying so out loud. Read it and absorb it.

But back to Briggs. “When Tennessee Right to Life, the state’s main anti-abortion lobbying group, proposed the trigger ban in 2019, Briggs admits he barely read the two-page bill forwarded to his office,” writes Surana. “He followed the lead of his colleagues, who assured state lawmakers that the bill included medical exceptions. He even added his name as a co-sponsor. ‘I’m not trying to defend myself,’ he says now.”

He co-sponsored a bill he hadn’t even read. He couldn’t even be bothered to read a two-page bill. When I told you all last week that there are only two types of bills filed by our state legislature, I’m sure many of you thought I was just joking or being hyperbolic. Briggs is literally describing how “I’m going to say I wrote this bill, but actually some special interest group or lobbyists or a think tank wrote it and I’m not that clear on what’s in it” bills happen.

And what has Briggs found now that he’s pulled his head out of the sand and applied his expertise as a doctor to the Republicans’ stand on abortion? He has found that it’s horrific, that it calls for endangering pregnant people, and that it doesn’t line up with science.

The School Bell

If anyone truly believes that school will be starting next month or in September I think they need to take a remedial reading class.

Covid is here until a vaccine is created and even then it will only affect those who follow the protocol and are continually self checking and regulating to ensure that it is affective and proactive in reducing the spread.  There will be many who won’t. See the mask resisters to give you an idea about how they will refuse to vaccinate and in turn get sick, spread Covid and in turn lead to further lockdowns or some type of restrictive behavior.

The reality is that we have no clue if Children simply are carriers of the virus and asymptomatic and in turn have varying other ailments that mask Covid and are not tested. But yyes, children do have Covid.  We just have not moved to that scale and as I walked by two playfields yesterday I saw unmasked Coaches and Minders with equally unmasked children playing soccer, games, etc.  Good luck with that.

To open the schools it will be a massive reinvention of how we teach and administer schools. The first is screen guards. We use them in testing situations only in this case they will need to be transparent and affixed to the desk to literally shield children in an additional way that masks and personal hygiene do not.  Then the rooms will have to be ventilated, well.  Windows open, doors open and no hall passes, no class exchanges at same times, but in a staggered schedule and arrival, lunch and departures the same.   I would not want kids eating in a classroom as the cleaning and problems with that alone in the best of times is horrific and add this means nightmare.  The need to go to the bathroom with escorts to monitor numbers and of course hand washing would be necessary.   ALL students, their respective families/guardians, and staff must be tested every two weeks, the minute a positive is affirmed, the entire class shut down, quarantined and the family members and others must also be quarantined and tested.

Screening, such as temps on a daily basis is fine; however again the disease as a dormant period where you are asymptomatic and therefore not exhibiting the disease but you are still contagious.  So all of this is a simple measure but again there is going to have to be a very stringent policy and procedure in place to ensure health and safety of all.  NOT.GOING.TO.HAPPEN.

Why? Have you been in a public school? They are underfunded, under staffed, lack clean facilities and updated buildings that would help in eliminating a spread of a virus that comes from contact.  Look to the varying Measles and Whooping Cough epidemics of the last decade thanks to the crazy anti-vaxxers who have allowed sick children to come to school and wreak havoc in ways that any asshole kid could never compare.  Then we can talk about nutrition both in school and at home as many public school children are underfed and no more now that prior to the pandemonium.  Kids come to school underfed, under rested, under cared for with basic medical needs from vision to dental  and the most unpleasant of facts – poor hygiene.  Many families do not have access to washing machines and bathing facilities to allow for frequent showers or baths.  Folks this is America, a third world nation.

Seattle is a very wealthy city, largely white and very liberal. Their public schools run the gamut from amazing facilities to utter shitholes.  The poverty level of the students across the board are well into 85% or more dependent upon the schools location. I can think of South Shore K-8 (dump); Rainier Beach HS (dump times 10), Aki Kurose MS (horror), Columbia City K-8 (a sloppy mess). There are elementary schools that align that same corridor and they are struggling other than a few. Again the ones with the local white residents and Asian students are more stable but as those who have a large American Samoan, Black and Brown faces you find the problems that are across the country when it comes to systemic racism.  Don’t tell this to any Seattle parent or teacher as they are sure that they are doing all the right, good and liberal things to make equity versus equality, as they do get the difference, they just don’t actually do either.  This was the city and district in the shadow of tech that admitted they had no ability to maintain distance learning let alone implement it.  WHOOPS!  I.Me.Mine is the mantra of America and Seattle is no exception.  This was the SPS press release during the pandemic. Priorities people:

Seattle School Board president Zachary DeWolf is mad at media for missing this story: He should be! But there’s a lot going on and we’re understaffed, Zachary! Invest in local journalism! Here’s what’s up, per DeWolf’s Facebook call-out:
✅ All school construction projects must include one multi-stall gender-neutral restroom
✅ An audit of our 104 schools to identify space available for gender-neutral restroom conversion
✅ All curriculum adoptions (history, English language arts, etc) must explicitly incorporate LGBTQIA+ history, contributions, significant events and figures
✅ One school will be identified to change their school name to that of an LGBTQI+ local or national hero
✅ Exploration and pilot of an LGBTQIA+ studies high school course
✊🏽🏳️‍🌈 Happy #Pride to all of our students, their families, our staff and educators, and community

No local media has covered this—even during #Pride month—but we passed my transformational and historic resolution “No. 2019/20-28 – Inclusion for Our LGBTQIA+ Students, Staff, and Community,” which commits the District to the following (policy changes in process):

We have believed that charter schools will somehow resolve that and no they don’t they actually contribute to making it worse and there are numerous bloggers that go into detail about that issue, so dig around, from Peter Greene to Dad Gone Wild in Nashville, they are there for the reading. Oh that reading again!

Here is the tentative idea behind opening schools in the Northwest, ground zero for Covid.  I suspect this will be the prototype for nation as well there is nothing else. Irony that we are told to open schools regardless of science.  Yes that makes sense given that science is a subject taught in school, its clear someone did not take those courses.

New report warns: School reopening could depend on behavior outside of classrooms

By Becca Savransky, SeattlePI, Wednesday, July 15, 2020

If schools open in the fall across King County without appropriate precautions in place, the region could see a drastic surge in the number of cases of the coronavirus, a new report found. (Photo by Arne Dedert/picture alliance via Getty Images)

If schools open in the fall across King County without appropriate precautions in place, the region could see a drastic surge in the number of cases of the coronavirus, a new report found.

But, according to the report, community activity outside of schools matters just as much when looking at whether school buildings can safely open their doors.

“Reopening schools cannot be considered in isolation – what happens outside of schools is as important as what happens inside of schools,” said Lacy Fehrenbach, DOH’s deputy secretary of health for the COVID-19 response. “The most important step we can take to reopen schools this fall is to come together to reduce spread of the virus in our communities and statewide.”

The report, from the Institute for Disease Modeling, used data from King County to model possible scenarios of how the opening of schools could impact the coronavirus pandemic. The analysis included data only through mid-June, meaning some of the recent growth in the number of coronavirus cases across the county was not reflected in the report.

The report found taking precautions in schools, such as having students and staff wear masks, socially distance and maintain good hygiene, in addition to screening and testing people, would help to reduce the spread of the virus — but it wouldn’t be enough.

Fehrenbach said during a press briefing Wednesday the state wants to reopen schools at some level in the fall, but is concerned about the rising number of coronavirus cases Washington has been seeing over the past several weeks.

“We’re particularly concerned right now about what we’re seeing in terms of gatherings. The more people and groups we mix with in our daily lives, the higher our risk is in spreading COVID-19,” she said. “In order for our kids to return to school as safely as possible, everyone in Washington needs to limit the number of people they’re gathering with.”

Jeff Duchin of Public Health – Seattle & King County called the report “sobering.”

“It is telling us that at this time, there is too much COVID-19 transmission in our community to support school reopening and I find that conclusion very problematic,” he said during the briefing. “It reflects the intense interdependence that we have on one another in this community in order to move forward safely in the era of COVID-19.”

According to the report, reopening schools without taking any countermeasures could result in a “doubling of the COVID attack rate” in the first three months of the academic year. The report modeled several different scenarios which determine how the virus might spread if schools reopen, taking into account the amount of activity outside of schools and the specific precautions in place inside school buildings, such as the amount of testing and contact tracing among students and teachers.

“These results suggest that reopening community, workplace and schools represents a symbiotic relationship, meaning that if community activity rises above a 70% mobility threshold from activity levels in mid-June, no amount of school intervention will prevent the epidemic from growing,” the report said.

“That said, the results also suggest that if community activity levels remain at or below 70% of pre-COVID baseline, there may be some room to reopen schools, if we implement mask usage, physical distancing and safe hygiene measures, classroom cohorting, screening and some follow-up diagnostic testing and contact tracing.”

However, the report also points to the most recent data not included in the analysis, which it says shows disease activity is “too high to support reopening at this time.”

“Thus community-wide mitigation efforts must improve significantly such that the effective reproductive number is below 1 at the end of August for schools to reopen in September without triggering exponential growth in COVID-19 burden,” the report said.

Officials across the country in recent months have been weighing how to safely restart school in the fall. Across Washington, schools have been closed since March.

Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal said last month school districts across Washington should prepare for students to come back to school for in-person learning in the fall. The state released guidelines for schools to reopen safely, including requiring students and staff to wear masks and keeping students six feet apart in the classroom.

But Reykdal later said it was “very unlikely” and “almost impossible” that every student across the state would be going back to in-person learning at the beginning of the next school year.

The Seattle Public Schools Board earlier this month looked at several possible scenarios for what it could look like when students return to school in the fall. Possible setups included staggered schedules, a combination of in-person and remote learning, health screenings, social distancing, mask wearing and enhanced cleaning protocols for all students in grades K-12. Schools could operate on an A/B schedule, with groups of students going in two days a week on alternating schedules.

Officials in Seattle had previously said the way SPS would reopen would depend on what phase King County was in. But since then, Gov. Jay Inslee has put into place a pause on counties moving forward beyond the current phase they are in. Inslee has also warned he could put more restrictions back into place if the virus continues to spread in the region.

“People should not be surprised if more gets rolled back depending on the course of this pandemic,” Inslee said during a news conference Tuesday. “And that’s going to be influenced by how many people wear masks and how many people decide to socially distance.”

Even if children do not show symptoms of the virus, they could be spreading it to others who are more vulnerable. Public health officials have been urging people in recent weeks to continue wearing masks, social distancing and avoiding large gatherings.

As of Wednesday, the Washington State Department of Health reported more than 42,000 confirmed cases of the virus across the state, including 1,404 deaths.

Trolls Under the Bridge

Social Media is awash with them, some very real some less so, but the reality is that from anonymity comes security in being free to be you and you alone.  It allows us to shout from the rooftops, to be finally heard and when you say all that is deep inside you feel free.  Do you?  See I actually have always said what I think in carefully well thought out language versus just blurting it out. I do think quickly as if anything I learned from that ability is to develop a razor sharp rhetoric to go with the thick skin that develops when you prize honesty and veracity with verbal acuity. As I often say, “Educated individuals be they liberal or conservative know better how to verbally attack someone and get to the bone better than anyone with a knife”  Learning how to find that “trigger” is more of a listening skill and one that must adapt to the audience.    Sarcasm is a dish best served with a well decanted wine versus a smirk.  One takes time to savor the other is obvious that it has turned and has not aged well.

I learned that craft early as a defensive measure and it failed me in Nashville, I had never met people more ill bred, nasty, angry and as rude as they.  Southerners are trash regardless of race or class, (and that is those who identify as SOUTHERN.  Nashville has a large Kurdish population and a growing Latino one and they have struggles in assimilating into the culture on several levels, but for those who are Southern in origin, they are tribal, they use religion as a weapon versus a tool and they hide behind absurd beliefs in culture and history as if they are rigid and unable to be changed or examined.  and those who are not become like the oppressor as that is a coping if not survivial strategy.  Southerners justify, they excuse and most importantly explain just how fucked up they are in one single encounter.  You need no others as they make their loathing for the outsider quite clear. And they are the same ones who live anywhere where God and Country are definitive explanations for how the earth was created to how a family dynamic is to perform. There are so many horrific Bible texts that are almost laughable if they were not in fact accepted as truth.  Here is where we do pray.  For what? Try critical thinking.  

The South continues its slide to idiocy as the Confederate Flag was flown at a NASCAR race in of course Tennessee and Georgia has outlawed any city or municipality for mandating masks to prevent the stop of Covid. And Jeff Sessions in some dimwitted need for relevance lost his chance to return to the Senate to a man named Tuberville. Right there Doug Jones is going to need all the money and help he can as this opponent was a football coach.  Next to God, Guns and Country, sports is the biggest other religion.

After leaving Nashville and moving to Jersey City I realized that racism is a cloak we wear when we pursue this idea of a coping or survival strategy.  We choose to not hear or see anyone who offends, who challenges, or who simply seems different than us and we then bring out our cloak of irresponsibility and promptly wear it. It shields us, protects us and keeps us safe. We do not call it racism we call it colorblindness. We don not think we hate those who do not share our color, our gender, our faith, our beliefs but when they upset or confuse us the cloak is a garment of comfort.    We can watch sports, listen to music, watch TV or movies and love the panoply of individuals who bring their craft to the buffet table of life and that should be proof enough that we are not.. fill in the blank “ist”.   We assume as we have no power nor actual influence over others in our lives or work but we are friendly, we accept those not like us on the surface, therefore, we cannot be racist.  Well, yes we all are. All of us and until you READ the book, How to be an Anti-Racist, as  it is difficult to realize how many of us have deep rooted prejudices and biases that affect our perceptions and in turn our beliefs.  I know when Isabel Wilkinson’s book on Caste comes out that I will pour over it as I have been quite sure that class and economics dictate much of the way we visualize America and our own absurd belief in the issue of meritocracy as some type of explanation why those of color consistently seem to stay at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.  Go South, go there, live there, and see how it is and then you will get woke.

I wrote about the Trump supporters who are now going Biden and one was a woman from Grand Rapid Michigan, who at age 53 did not know of this systemic racism and abuse of those faces of color by those in the Criminal Justice system until watching the death of George Floyd on her TV.  Dear God, I pray that this is not what it takes, live broadcasts of murders to get people to get up off their asses and do something.  But yep, public executions will be next I feel it.

I read this in the Washington Post and to say the comment section is awash with trolls is a non-starter. After they wreak their damage they go onto Facebook, Twitter, etc to again demean and degrade anyone with whom they don’t agree. They are anonymous, faceless and colorblind.  There you go, you can guess some as they do make it clear but you have no idea who they are, where they are and more importantly why they care.  They care as the same way Trump cares, chaos theory, makes people afraid and in turn compliant or at least unwilling to do anymore. Fear baby fear. Kick them when they are down, and kick them again to remind them how they got there.  I read the analogy that Trump demeans all of his people openly and brazenly and toys with them as a Cat with a nearly dead mouse to remind them who has the power to finally end the game. What a sick fuck.

Look at the way he derides others, absurd name calling appropriate for a fourth grade playground in a school in the 1950’s. I remember the days when the playground, the lunchroom were mines in which you had to navigate safely to survive the hazing, the bullying and the simple hierarchy of power and more importantly powerless.  In school it was looks, sports ability and family history that determined one’s fate, money and economics were somehow part of that factor but in the 60s and 70s that was less a factor as we were not as socially unequal as we are today.  Today that is the number one factor, then you hit the rest in opposite order, with race at the end of the tier.  Again kids are not usually openly racist, that comes with time and with further segregation and isolation due to access and availability of extracurricular activities.  Sports is the number one and its offshoot cheer leading.  Music is not as it is expensive and one must own instruments, afford lessons as well as have time to pursue it and practice.  So poor and faces of color are often shut out.  Drama however more open but that reeks of sexual identity and sorry folks but the Black community has to own that homophobia is a massive problem and again that is that Book of Myths that perpetuate that belief.  Ah it always comes back to that.

I urge you to read the story of the Oklahoma women below. It is no coincidence the reporter selected that state and of course the history and the present that collided with the idiot in chief having one of his facist rally’s during a pandemic there no less which enabled Journalists to remain in the community and embed with real people versus politicians.  Lets’ face the truth, that Political Journalism is its own kind of skill set and there are books about how seductive that gravy train is.  The Boys on the Bus is one most infamous about the subject.   Not much has changed in that dynamic since.  We really need a woman soon in the White House in any position other than First Lady.

These women are starting to at least try and that says something.  I have had enough and no longer want to be a part of it. From trying as a Teacher to as a Woman, I have had more slings and arrows than Cupid on Valentine’s Day.  I am exhausted. I write in anonymity for that reason, if you don’t like what I have to say, don’t read it. If you don’t agree that is all you need to say and cite your reasons, leave the abuse, the names and the sarcasm out of it. But you can’t. Why?  Because it requires critical thinking, intellect and more importantly time. Making time to do actually do something and give a damn, fuck that.

Stumbling toward wokeness
After George Floyd’s death, she wanted to be anti-racist. But what would that mean, exactly?

The Washingon Post
By Robert Samuels
July 15, 2020

TULSA — The text messages were flying in to Christine Tell’s cellphone. They were coming from a group of friends who taught with her at a preschool inside the Methodist chapel near the green fields of the University of Tulsa.

“A woman on our FB post is claiming we are a whites only school,” one wrote about the interaction on Facebook. “Someone tell me what I’m missing.”

When Tell looked at the post, she knew exactly what was missing: photos of black and brown students. All of the smiling children featured on the school’s post were white, which the teachers insisted was a coincidence.

“So far from the truth,” one responded, noting some of the children in the post were Hispanic.

“This pisses me off,” said another.

“Dumb,” said a third.

Tell tried to figure out the right way to contribute to the conversation. Ever since she watched a video of a police officer digging his knee into the neck of George Floyd, she had pledged to become a better white person.

Even though she lived hundreds of miles from the street corner in Minneapolis where police pinned Floyd to the ground, Tell felt complicit in his death. She had convicted herself — and white people just like her — of a lack of concern about racism in America, shaping a country in which black men could be killed in such a disturbing and public way.

“I always thought I was the type of person who would do the right thing, and this summer I realized it was not true,” Tell, a 36-year-old mother of two, said later in an interview. “I was walking around oblivious to the concerns of the black community.

“No, not oblivious. It was like I could see their problems, but I couldn’t see the problems.”

She wanted to be an anti-racist, although she was still trying to figure out what that meant. It was a messy process, stumbling toward wokeness, in which she would learn the limits and frustrations of trying to dismantle structural racism.

Tell was among the throngs of white people across the country reexamining their role in America’s racial dilemma. Books about anti-racism have been flying off the shelves and the Black Lives Matter protest movement had gained newfound support in all crevices and corners of the country. Social justice groups were seeing waves of new white supporters, who, while awash in feelings of anger, guilt and shame, were eager to find some semblance of activism and absolution.

“They all want to know what they should do,” said David Harland of Aware Tulsa. It is part of a rapidly expanding national network of organizations called Showing Up for Racial Justice, or SURJ, formed to help white people learn how to support the Black Lives Matter movement.

Harland gives this advice: Amplify the concerns of black voices, because this time is not about you. Educate yourself on the history of systemic racism. Most of all, have awkward, delicate conversations about race with friends and family.

“White anger is not the same thing as black anger,” Harland said. “It does not come from the same place. It resolves itself in a different way.”

In the text exchange, Karen Cody, the school’s executive director, at first, became defensive at the stranger’s accusation.

“This year we were very white heavy but I don’t control who enrolls,” Cody wrote to the group. “I don’t get my feelings hurt EVER. But this hurt my feelings.”

The angry texts continued. Tell tried to figure out how to shift the conversation from their feelings. This was an opportunity to have the awkward conversation about diversity. She didn’t want to ruin her chance.

Her friends called her Chrissy, but she was nervous about being a “Karen” — Internet-speak for a privileged, self-righteous white woman.

“Even though I thought racism was the dumbest thing ever, I keep thinking about how racism lived in me,” Tell said. “I don’t know how it became so ingrained.”

She had made racist jokes to her friends and mocked black women’s hairstyles. She remembered the times she locked her car doors when she saw a black person pass, and when she imagined her English professor, a black woman, as a criminal when she saw her put on a hoodie.

Tell remembered a time when she ignored the racist rant of an in-law who spat epithets while watching a basketball game. Instead of questioning his words, she was more concerned about who might hear him because the front door was open.

She joined a local political organization in 2017, in search of camaraderie with other Democrats in a state in which President Trump won 65 percent of the vote. She wanted to talk about the new president threatening women’s rights. Others kept talking about race.

Through the group, she learned about the Tulsa race massacre, which was not often discussed in the segregated part of the city where she lived. She became aware of the coded-language of using “North Tulsa” to mean the black neighborhoods. She learned about the highway system that segregated the two sides, the lack of grocery stores on the black side, and the 12-year difference in life expectancy between the communities.

Tell had seen those issues as someone else’s problem.

Floyd’s death snapped her out of it. She couldn’t get past his cries for his mother, the seeming nonchalance of the officer ignoring pleas for mercy.

She could no longer ignore the demands of black people taking to the streets again to assert their lives’ value and the seemingly glacial pace at which the killings of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor were being investigated. She took faith in the anti-racist evangelism she encountered in memes and videos streaming on social media during this time of pandemic-imposed isolation. “If you ever wondered what you’d do during slavery, the holocaust or the civil rights movement; YOU’RE DOING IT RIGHT NOW,” read one meme.

“I’d have been the Northern white woman that didn’t agree with Jim Crow but didn’t even try to do anything until I saw little girls getting blown up at a church or Emmett Till’s mother at his funeral,” Tell said. She considered it “a shocking and disappointing revelation about myself. It completely shifted my lens.”

Tell wanted to reach out to her black friends, but she realized she didn’t have any close ones. And recalling a tweet from writer Ijeoma Oluo about the emotional toll this moment can have on African Americans, she felt now wasn’t the time to make one. “Don’t make us swim through your tears while we fight,” the tweet said.

Tell was nervous about joining protesters on the street — she didn’t want to risk exposure to the coronavirus. But she watched Ava DuVernay’s film on mass incarceration, “13th,” and purchased the audiobook version of Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility.” She listened to podcasts and took in more memes.

On May 30, for the first time, she posted “Black Lives Matter” on her Facebook page. And then, for the first time, she argued with her cousin, Matt Willis, who figured Tell was falling for a liberal attempt to exploit racial tensions to unseat the president.

“So do white and brown lives,” Willis responded. “All lives matter.”

Facebook friends seized on the comment, leading to a heated back-and-forth about police brutality and defunding the police.

Eventually Willis deleted his comment and stopped following his cousin on Facebook.

“Somehow because I say all lives matter, they think I’m a racist,” Willis said in an interview. “It will take a lot to get people to see your point of view nowadays. Emotions are too hot right now.”

Still, Tell had hoped the conversation would resonate with him one day, even if it did not right now.

“Doing this is exhausting,” Tell said. “But that’s a stupid thing to think because black people have to deal with this everyday. That’s exhausting.”
“Even though I thought racism was the dumbest thing ever, I keep thinking about how racism lived in me,” Tell said. “I don’t know how it became so ingrained.” (Nick Oxford for The Washington Post)

A few days after she posted her Black Lives Matter message to her Facebook page, Tell saw a friend post a frightening statement on social media: “I am very scared!”

The friend was horrified to see a picture of her husband, a white police officer, listed in a Facebook group called Oklahoma Bad Cops.

A bad cop? Tell figured there must be a misunderstanding. She sifted though the comments and discovered the officer’s indiscretion: He had clicked the laughing emoji on an illustration of a car running over protesters.

“All Lives Splatter,” the image read.

Tell agreed the message was in poor taste. But was it worth his being publicly shamed? She wanted to try a new strategy of being the bridge between both sides.

“I know this man,” Tell commented on Oklahoma Bad Cops. “He’s a good man with a beautiful family you’ve frightened … If you’re just recklessly calling people bad cops, you are being dangerously irresponsible and bringing violence on people that don’t deserve it.”

“Respectability doesn’t deter racism,” one person responded.

Said another: “black people deal with the same fear and worry about police officers harming their family every day.”

“You are the epitome of the all lives matter movement,” wrote a third. “Quit arguing for racism.”

Now it was Tell who was offended. She didn’t want to be mistaken for a “Karen.” She tried to get them to understand her perspective, admitting that she had been preoccupied with jobs and raising children before the novel coronavirus, and was still “learning and gaining perspectives and changing.” She believed the officer, too, was “capable of self-reflection.”

A text message popped up on her phone. It was from the officer.

“Thank you for coming to my defense,” he wrote, but his words stung.

Tell didn’t want to be in a position where she was defending police officers mocking protesters. But she didn’t want to feel as though white people couldn’t get a second chance. She had tried to meet two sides in the middle, and ended up being compromised on both ends.

Finally, Tell concluded the people on the side who called her out were right. She had done what all the lessons had instructed her not to do — center the conversations around the feelings of white people.

“The threat to my friend’s family was perceived,” she said. “But as an officer, he was actually threatening them.”

Instead of trying to get the officer to join her on the journey, this time Tell decided it was better to just move on.

Her best chance to influence her white friends was at her preschool.

The woman whose comments started all their angst over the diversity of the school wasn’t affiliated with the school. Anahi Franco, an immigrant from Mexico and mother of a 3-year-old, stumbled on the photo while looking at different preschools in the area.

“When you see a school that looks like that, you can’t let it pass,” Franco, a 36-year-old Grand Canyon University psychology graduate student focusing on diversity issues, said in an interview. “You have to challenge it.”

In the text exchange, Tell tried to get her colleagues to understand Franco’s perspective. “I wonder if there are ways to make us more appealing to a diverse crowd,” Tell wrote.

“Chrissy, I’ve wondered as well,” Cody, the executive director, replied. “I truly have.”

Weeks later, Tell and Cody got together to discuss diversity. They were joined at their preschool by another good friend and teacher named Katie Colombin.

The three women felt the pictures didn’t actually show how diverse the school was — of the 45 students enrolled in the school this year, at least nine had one parent of color, according to their tally.

Cody had chosen the pictures because they were the children of parents who worked at the school. It was easier to get permission for them. She then posted new photos of children with darker skin, but she knew those changes were insufficient. Only three of the school’s students were African American.

“How many black baby dolls do we have?” she asked. “We need to get some black baby dolls.”

“Oh, I didn’t think about that,” said Colombin, the other teacher. “We have none. But that wasn’t intentional. Ninety-nine percent of those toys are donated.”

Tell suggested the fact that all the toys were the same race by happenstance was an idea worth thinking about.

“I think part of our responsibility as white people is to reflect back on our own experiences and what ways we have unconsciously chosen the white baby doll,” Tell said.

Cody told the other teachers that the Floyd video moved her to want to do her part to bring unity to this country. Cody said she had spent her adult life trying not to pay attention to skin color, because she didn’t want anyone to be judged by their race.

And now, she could not stop paying attention to a person’s skin color — and the injustice it might bring.

“When I’m driving down the street and there’s a black man walking down the street, bam, I look and go, ‘Oh, wow,’” Cody said. “I say, ‘Okay, he might be next.’”

So she wanted to do more than get more diverse baby dolls.

“I seriously thought about going to North Tulsa and knocking on doors and saying, ‘Hey, I would really love for your child to come to preschool here and we’ll give you a full scholarship for it,’” she said.

“But is that offensive?” asked Colombin, a 37-year-old mother of four. “Because you’re only reaching to the other side and the only reason you’re offering a scholarship is skin color. Is that offensive?”

“I don’t know,” Cody said.

“Now’s not the time,” Tell said.

Colombin, the other teacher, was nervous about coming up with ideas to help the black community that came from a group of white women who had few black friends in their lives and who didn’t actively think about race until this summer.

“You could lose your job,” Colombin said. “You don’t want to be viewed that way when you’re trying to help.”

Colombin agreed that she needed to teach her children to be kind and stand up when people seemed cruel to others — especially minorities.

But now, it seemed that friends like Tell were asking her to do uncomfortable things, things that might be taken the wrong way. They were using these terms that seemed to have just become popular: White privilege. Implicit bias. Structural racism.

“Growing up, racism was never explained to us that way,” Colombin said. “It was never this system. It was more of a prejudice.”

She paused.

“That probably also is why it’s hard, as a white person, to know how to help or speak up or be an advocate for the black community,” Colombin said.

“But it’s our job [to speak out],” Tell said. “It’s our job to hear what’s being said to us and take the time to read a book or watch a movie that’s recommended. And to try to put our experience aside and really try to understand.”

“I’ve done that,” Colombin said. “I watched ‘Just Mercy’ and the movie about Harriet Tubman. I watched it with my children. But how does that make life better for anyone in the black community? How does my not watching a movie keep them down?”

Tell had not fully worked out the answer to the question. She hoped conversations with white people would help change votes and change minds. But, sometimes she asked herself, how could she be sure?

She couldn’t be certain because she wasn’t certain of anything. In a month, she had realized pervasive racism in the school system and in the prison system, in her family and friends, in herself. The tectonics of what made it great to be an American seemed to be shifting, and she had no idea what it meant for the future.

A few days later, it was Independence Day. Tell told her two children that being an American was great because they lived in a place where citizens were allowed to speak out against injustice, a land that was still striving to be free. Patriotism was embedded in protest.

Her family walked to their driveway, and she handed sparklers to her kids. She struck up a Spotify playlist called “Patriotic Music,” and soon played the Aaron Lewis song “Country Boy.” At the end, the gritty groove faded into a spoken-word monologue set to the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

“I love my country, I love my guns, I love my family, I love the way it is now,” the final lyrics went. “And anybody that tries to change it has to come through me,” he said. “That should be all of our attitudes, ’cause this is America.”

Tell shook her head. This was not her America. She called out to her husband and yelled: “Turn it off.”

The River Runs Through It

And by it I mean bullshIT.  I have been back writing about Amazon simply because there is no better time in which to do so.   There are two companies that I find repugnant, Ikea and Amazon.  I can avoid Ikea and with Amazon I try as often as I can to work around them.  I have been experimenting with Walmart (although even they are deeply disturbing), Wayfair, Staples, Target, Macy’s and for books I go to Powells, Thrift and B&N.  And admittedly it is easier with Amazon as today I broke a canister and rather than go to Bed Bath & Beyond, I hit click.  I am right now trying hard to keep my distance as it was easier when there was less to choose from but fewer people out and with the resurgence of people there is no time like the present to actually quarantine.  That said the grocery stores are a dream they are not crowded and I go at any time which makes it less stressful.

But as in the case with Amazon and Nashville I demonstrated how they played the State and City for fools with wages that made no sense and on closer look they show how unrealistic it was to believe it but that is not what gets people elected, lies do.  Look no further than Trump for that one.  And in that example is another parallel of how that words and deeds are not the same.  I have for one laughed at the endless stream of emails and promises that have supplanted the concerned missives about Covid  with those about Black Lives and racial equality. Again put your MONEY where your mouth is.  Pay living wages, support universal health care and of course training, and long term investment counseling so people can plan for a rainy day, like the one that happened.  You want less Government? Well employ people with a decent wage, provide child care, education and advancement and of course investment counseling so people can learn how to save and invest wisely to be less reliant on stimulus, Social Security and other public safety nets that the Government provides.  Then you will get less Government. Of course that does not include supporting your Churches as they are with the CARES act, the varying laws under the guise of “religious freedom” than in turn suppress Gay rights and Women’s right to choose and manage their own bodies. Somehow Government gets a pass there. Why is that?  Racism and Sexism that is why.

And Amazon’s bullshit about facial recognition is a farce as they are not a big player in that game, yet.  But in the meantime the other companies that are being used by Police Agencies are loaded with problems and rigged to fail.  John Oliver has done a story on Clearview AI and they are the largest scammer in the industry as this profile in The New York Times discusses.  And yes folks do get arrested based on this new tech. Just ask this man in Detroit about that.   Add Shinola to your list of racist businesses to boycott. 

And no bigger river that runs to that ocean of racism and discrimination is Amazon.

Amazon Workers Urge Bezos to Match His Words on Race With Actions

From racist graffiti to missed promotions, employees say a “systemic pattern of racial bias” permeates the company.

By Karen Weise
The New York Times
June 24, 2020

SEATTLE — Last week, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, wrote a rare note to all of the company’s employees. His leadership team had been reflecting on the “systemic racism” facing black communities, he said, and he urged employees to take time to learn and reflect on Juneteenth, the holiday marking the end of slavery in the United States.

“I’m canceling all my meetings on Friday, and I encourage you to do the same if you can,” he said.

But some of Amazon’s employees said there was one big problem with his suggestion: For the vast majority of Amazon’s black workers, canceling a meeting is not an option. They work in Amazon’s fulfillment operations, packing, shipping and delivering products to millions of customers.

Several other retailers, like Target, J.C. Penney and Nike, made Juneteenth a paid holiday. At Amazon, many warehouses recognized the day by encouraging workers to dress in black.

“What does a black shirt do for anybody in terms of social justice?” said Adrienne Williams, a black contract driver for Amazon in the Bay Area, who organized a vigil for Juneteenth. Better pay, she said, would do far more. “That would cut down the pre-existing condition that is poverty,” she said.

Ms. Williams and more employees and contractors are arguing that Amazon, one of the nation’s largest employers, needs to do much more to address racial inequality within its own walls. The calls for change — including diversifying its top ranks and addressing racism in its warehouses — have generated an unusual degree of turmoil inside the tech giant.

Many other large businesses also face calls for change from within. But Amazon stands out because it has a large percentage of black employees — more than a quarter of its 500,000-person domestic work force, most of them in hourly jobs at its sprawling logistics operations, where they earn far less than their corporate counterparts. That percentage is slightly higher than among Walmart’s employees in the United States, and far higher than at other big tech companies. At Facebook, for example, less than 4 percent of its work force is black.

And few executives have been as blunt in their public support of the Black Lives Matter movement as Mr. Bezos, the world’s richest person. On Instagram, Mr. Bezos posted disturbing messages he had received in response to his support of racial equality, including an email from a person named Dave, who used racist slurs and said that he would no longer do business with Amazon.

“Dave,” Mr. Bezos wrote, “you’re the kind of customer I’m happy to lose.”

Johnnie Corina III, who last week filed a discrimination complaint accusing Amazon of fostering a hostile work environment for black warehouse employees, said it was hard to consider those statements as more than lip service

“The ‘in’ thing right now is Black Lives Matter and equal justice,” Mr. Corina said. “You can tell when something is genuine and something is not.”

An Amazon spokeswoman, Jaci Anderson, said that the company stood in solidarity with the black community, and that it was “committed to helping build a country and a world where everyone can live with dignity and free from fear.” She said employees had been free to take vacation or accrued unpaid time off to attend Juneteenth events. “We respect and encourage their choice to do so,” she said.

This month, the company said it would temporarily stop selling its facial recognition software, which researchers have found to misidentify people of color, to police departments. The one-year moratorium was striking because Amazon had long denied problems and resisted calls to slow its deployment.

But Amazon’s critics, including some employees, say even that was a half-step — pointing out that the company did not directly acknowledge concerns about the technology nor did it stop selling the tools to federal law enforcement offices.

The pause is a “great start,” one employee wrote on an internal website. But the goal, the person wrote, should be broader, to ensure the products Amazon builds “are not directly at odds with promoting inclusion and diversity and perpetuating biases and injustices to black and brown communities.”

Employees and some shareholders have long groused about the lack of diversity on Mr. Bezos’s senior leadership team, a group known as the “S-Team” that has 22 executives, none of whom are black.

At a town hall in 2017, after Michael Brown, Philando Castile and Sandra Bland had already become household names, an employee asked Mr. Bezos about the lack of diversity on his team. Mr. Bezos said his top deputies had been by his side for years, and he saw the low turnover as an asset. Any transition on the team, he said, would “happen very incrementally over a long period of time.”

In April, before George Floyd was killed in police custody in Minneapolis, a group of midlevel employees wrote to Mr. Bezos and his senior team, saying there was “a systemic pattern of racial bias that permeates Amazon,” according to emails viewed by The New York Times. They said they were prompted to write after a leak of meeting notes showed that David Zapolsky, Amazon’s general counsel, had called a black warehouse employee in Staten Island “not smart or articulate.”

In New York, the City Council passed a bill that for the first time will require the police to reveal information about their arsenal of surveillance tools, some of which may have been used in recent days at protests in New York. Mayor Bill de Blasio and police officials have previously opposed the bill, but changing course this week, the mayor said he was now inclined to sign it.
President Trump signed an executive to encourage changes in policing, including new restrictions on chokeholds. But the order will have little immediate impact, and does not address calls for broader action and a new focus on racism.
Aunt Jemima, the syrup and pancake mix brand, will change its name and image amid an ongoing backlash, with its parent company Quaker Oats acknowledging that the brand’s origins are “based on a racial stereotype.”
Jill Snyder, who has served as director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland for 23 years, resigned. Her departure comes nearly two weeks after Ms. Snyder publicly apologized to an artist for canceling his exhibition dealing with police killings of black and Latino boys and men.
A statue of Theodore Roosevelt will be removed from the front of the Museum of Natural History in New York. The equestrian memorial has long prompted objections as a symbol of colonialism and racism.

Mr. Zapolsky had said his comments were “personal and emotional” and that he did not know the employee was black. But in their email, the corporate employees said it “was not an isolated incident, but rather a symptom of a bigger problem.”

They said Amazon adopted the entrenched racism that plagued America, evidenced by the “homogeneity” of the its leadership compared with “the rich racial and ethic diversity amongst our hourly worker population.”

The group proposed almost a dozen specific changes, including conducting a third-party audit of bias, releasing detailed figures on race and promotions, establishing goals for representation in management and leadership roles, and having the head of diversity be a member of Mr. Bezos’s S-Team.

Amazon said that senior leaders offered resources to help the group develop their suggestions into a formal proposal.

On Tuesday, Microsoft, one of Amazon’s top competitors for tech talent, said it would spend $150 million on diversity efforts and planned to double the number of black managers and senior employees by 2025.

Mr. Bezos’ leadership team in recent weeks has been holding “listening circles” with black employees, and many Amazon executives have written personal emails to their departments. Some teams have moved away from biased technical terms, ditching phrases like “black lists” and “white lists” to connote network access, according to an email shared among some employees.

But many employees want more to be done. They have been collaborating on a document to propose that Amazon make diversity a new “leadership principle,” the guiding list of attributes Amazon uses to hire, review and promote workers.

In the document, dozens of employees anonymously cited experiences of discrimination in daily work interactions. When a black employee “said something honest, he was told, ‘You’re not earning trust,’” one wrote. “But when a White Stanford M.B.A. said the exact same thing, he got an accolade.” Others wrote about being passed over for promotions, or not being mentored.

The document was earlier reported by Business Insider.

Ms. Anderson said that the anecdotes “do not reflect our values.” The company does not tolerate workplace discrimination, she said, and it investigates all claims reported through official channels. She added that the current leadership principles encouraged diversity because they “remind team members to seek diverse perspectives, learn and be curious, and constantly earn others’ trust.”

In the warehouses where Ms. Williams and the bulk of Amazon’s black employees work, the concerns of some workers can be even more explicit. Mr. Corina, in his discrimination complaint filed in California, said Amazon repeatedly failed to adequately respond to racist graffiti in bathrooms of the warehouse where he works east of Los Angeles.

Mr. Corina, who is involved with the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said that since November he had repeatedly reported racist graffiti and that the language worsened after Mr. Floyd’s death. Some used racial epithets to express hatred toward black people and said that they should “go back to Africa.”

He said Amazon had not addressed the warehouses’ employees to say such behavior was unacceptable, nor had he seen any evidence that Amazon has investigated who wrote the racist graffiti, even though he had asked.

The result, he said, left him scared to go to work. “To not do any interventions is really not a safe environment for a black person,” he said.

In another complaint filed last week with California’s fair employment agency, a black janitorial contractor at the same warehouse said he was fired in early June because Amazon thought he had taken a photo of new racist graffiti that a colleague posted on Twitter.

The contractor, Donald Archie II, said that Amazon had not tried to uncover who wrote the racist words.

“They are firing a black guy because of their perception that he was responsible for calling out racism in their facility,” said Dennis Moss of Moss Bollinger, the lawyer representing Mr. Corina and Mr. Archie.

Amazon said it told warehouse employees about “unacceptable graffiti” in December, and then discussed it again in February. The company said it started to investigate the markings in June. Mr. Archie was removed from Amazon buildings for not escalating concerns about the graffiti and violating the company’s cellphone use policy, the company said.

On June 16, a colleague sent Mr. Archie a photo from the bathroom, with racist phrases once again scrawled on the wall. Below it was an internal newsletter that quoted Amazon’s public statement from May 31, reading, “The inequitable and brutal treatment of Black people in our country must stop.”

Rent a Cop

The move to take Police out of schools is well interesting that given the last two years of school shootings the move to have more armed staff inside was considered “essential” and today there is no mention of that as the push to push out SRO out is moving forward. This is the new Catch 22 as when a kid comes in guns a blazing the “We should not have put Cops out” will be the next battle cry.  It is up there with the idea of eliminating Police entirely which is frankly insane. Does no one have any idea of finding compromise and inquiring as to why policies are in place and looking at each to see how they can be eliminated or improved? No just fuck it burn it to the ground and clearly they are setting the Wendy’s on fire where the latest victim of Cop murder took place.  Hey I am no fan of Wendy’s but what did that bitch have to do with it?

When I lived and worked in Seattle Public Schools there were a few schools that I can recall ever seeing a Police presence and those were largely high schools in parts of the city that had extensive issues around violence and crime. I never encountered any that I can recall,  personally or professionally,  nor saw anything regarding them when discipline issues occurred. And being both a full time Teacher and Substitute I should have, but while I was aware of many situations that did occur I thankfully was not part of it.  I did know many of the Security staff as  schools had SPS Security Officers and they were there to handle those issues and  I just assumed that the Police were there for overall school security and nothing more if there were larger issues at play – again extrinsic ones. That changed when I lived in Nashville and their the Police were the Security and the sole force of enforcement.  I witnessed Police removing students from classes and being quite active in the school. They were a hard presence with a parking spot in the front of the buildings to again remind you of that and they were as you see on the street, armed, vested and ready to rumble.  It  was incredibly off putting as the schools were the size of mini malls with often 1000 plus more kids and frankly they did little to make me feel safe and given what I saw I was right about that.

First up the most challenging alternative schools in Nashville, Bass and Johnson, were staffed with at least two Officers each and they quit in the last year I was there 2019 as they felt unsafe and felt that they could not do their work effectively. What that was apparently was to diffuse situations and support Administration in managing children who were often violent, had a history of disruption and often criminal backgrounds that made discipline in the best of times challenging.  I worked very few times at Bass and managed to never see or experience anything that bothered me.  I knew how to get the fuck out of the building and the doors were not locked from the outside so leaving the room or securing the room was actually not an issue.  The doors were locked at Johnson from the outside and in turn when I left I had to either take everything with me or could not leave to even go to the bathroom without rigging the door. The bathrooms also locked and they were not at Bass so again of the two I preferred Bass.  Johnson however was across the street from where I lived so that was why I was there more often and then after a cell phone was stolen while I was in the room trying to manage the class (the old distract her and we will rob her is common) was enough and the Police were utterly disinterested in pursuing what was a common problem. Staffing turnaround, the Administration utterly disengaged and a component of racial problems also led to this school simply being a dumping ground in ways that transcended my belief that in some ways all were, other than a few; Those were the schools where kids had to test into, had to apply and in turn had better academic programs in which to educate the small white cohort who did not go to the hundreds of private largely non secular schools, as well as  faces of color kids who were better behaved and had better resources in which to meet state standards.  And  as low as they were it was not a high bar to cross but many kids were in fact smart but just normal ordinary kids, so at least they had that.

In those schools I saw Police once or twice and the predominately black one, MLK in North Nashville, Police were there at the front door and were very much a part of the landscape. The white school, Hume Fogg in downtown Nashville, had none that I ever saw despite being downtown in the center of the honky tonk paradise.  My experiences with the SEO’s were always fraught as I loathed them and not once but twice was questioned by them as I waited to go into the schools til the last possible minute they were sure I was some nefarious white woman up to something.  That something was never clearly explained as in many of the schools I could of used Cops and they were as invisible as Caspar the ghost and yet videos exits of them in many of same schools with kids in choke holds as they intervened in many assaults and other fights that took place on campus.  There were many many times students were found with guns, shootings that happened in front of schools and other acts of violence that included sexual assaults that hit the not the triple digits but the quads by the time I left. Nashville Public Schools were sewers where the shit flowed in and out. Sorry folks they were and until I read How to Be an Anti Racist in 2019 did I realize how these schools defined institutional systemic racism and in turn how Seattle carefully covered its tracks but was in fact no different.

There is some sense of shame there but I also knew this but again I took it personally as if I was somehow arrogant, demanding, a bitch or whatever other moniker you put on me to describe me as I often found myself at the end of rope arguing with or listening to the endless berating at the hands of Admistrator’s who wanted to school me on my attitude. Funny they like those in Nashville were all faces of color, all women in fact,  who had secured their jobs in public education and thanks to policies that enabled them equality and security, and they clearly drank that kool aid to believe that  if they had “worked hard” enough that they earned it.  The bullshit about meritocracy is just that,  and if it was not for many Governmental programs the little equality attained would not exist,  and we can thank the GOP for slowly eliminating those. But no one wants to believe that it was those laws and and policies that enabled them to succeed and denial is a nice glass of kool aid.  So these same women (and men )  did not see their role in contributing to what is in fact a system established to reduce success for people just like them. They were the outliers and the exceptions and they also believed that if that they could so could anyone.  So fucking wrong. In my years in education I have personally experienced few Principals to ever be accolated, most are in positions thanks to their own legacy history (yes they have that in public education) or some political connection, be respected for their jobs.  Few are and those that do are quickly promoted to the big school house and those that remain are either feared or often kicked out and around when a no vote of confidence is taken by staff.  I never worked for any Principal ever who wasn’t.  Every single one of them.  So while they got there they couldn’t stay there as they had no clue how to do their job and effectively manage a school, build coalitions and in turn relate to others that would enable to succeed.  The way to do that is to provide mentors and a support network they would. No just throw them into jobs that they were set up to fail and in turn it allows them to prove that to those who are racist/sexist and the rest of the “isms,  that validates their pre-conceptions, that women/black/brown/gay folks just aren’t good at it.    Saw it many times over and over again and still do.   So start there when you want to reform education as the fish stinks from the head.  And yes the Broad Principal academy is a farce of racism disguised as reform as they take largely Admins who are faces of color and indoctrinate them into their thinking which is of course racist and discriminatory and is a way of eliminating public education.  The Broad Academy is a white man’s racist academy in every sense of the word and just the key word “urban” in its mission statement is literally a “white” flag for anyone who wants to understand the train of thought there.   **This also applies to Teachers when they keep saying unions keep bad Teachers. Again where is the support network, the mentors, the leaders? Again they don’t exist.  There is your defunding the Police.

Removing Police is likely a good idea but it does mean restoring a school security presence and that can be off duty or even retired Police but they need to lose the warrior cop gear and mentality. They need training in de-escalation, classroom management and of course have some assistance from medical and mental health professionals.  Include Social Workers and others who have experience in taking case loads on that can properly assist the student and more importantly their family in getting them on track be it academically or socially to stop the outbursts and disruptions that make it challenging for Teachers and their fellow classmates to learn.  Ah fuck that it requires money and time, we don’t have that. Well if you “defund” the Police you would.

Fueled by protests, school districts across the country cut ties with police

By
Moriah Balingit,
Valerie Strauss and
Kim Bellware
The Washington Post
June 12, 2020

For years, civil rights activists have worked to remove police officers from the nation’s public schools, arguing that they pose a greater risk to students of color than the intruders they’re supposed to guard against. But in the wake of George Floyd’s death, a shift that seemed impossible only a few weeks ago is underway: Several major school systems have canceled their contracts with police, and others are under mounting pressure to do the same.

Within eight days of Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, as the city convulsed with massive demonstrations, school board members there voted unanimously to end the district’s contract with the city police department. The superintendent in Portland, Ore., followed suit two days later.

This week, more dominoes fell. The Denver School Board voted unanimously Thursday night to phase police out of its schools. On Wednesday in Seattle, the school board voted to suspend its contract with police for a year. And in Oakland this week, after police there used tear gas to disperse teens demonstrating for police-free schools, the school board passed the “George Floyd Resolution to Eliminate the Oakland Schools Police Department.” Nearby, the West Contra Costa Unified School District voted unanimously to end its contract with police.

Several other districts are considering similar moves, and others are under pressure to take action: Students in Phoenix have started a petition to remove police from campuses, and young people in New York and Chicago have taken to the streets to demand police-free schools. The Chicago Teachers Union backs their effort.

Derrianna Ford, a 16-year-old who attends Chicago’s Mather High School, is among the teens protesting to get police out of schools. She said that the three school resource officers at her school do not make her feel safer and that she believes the money could be better spent. The school has just one counselor and no full-time nurse, which means it’s a police officer who responds when a student gets hurt. The school system has a $33 million contract with police.

“Even if you hurt yourself, they’re calling the SRO,” Ford said. “The first thing you should call is a nurse — but our nurses are only here Tuesday. If you’re not hurt on Tuesday, it’s your loss.”

‘Defund the police’ gains traction as cities seek to respond to demands for a major law enforcement shift

The swift action signals a remarkable about-face for U.S. schools, which have spent much of the past two decades beefing up security in response to the scourge of school shootings. Civil rights activists have fought for years to get police out of schools but had seen little progress. The votes are yet another sign of the widespread impact of Floyd’s death and the resulting protests, which have pushed cities to overhaul police departments and inspired activists to topple monuments.

Nathaniel Genene is a rising high school senior and the student representative for the Minneapolis School Board. He said he watched, over and over, the video of Floyd’s arrest, which captures the 46-year-old black man yelling and gasping for air while an officer kneels on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes. The video kept him up at night. Later, he heard stories of his classmates getting tear-gassed and pepper-sprayed by police during protests.

“Would we invest in an institution that is currently being investigated … for human rights abuses when 60 percent of our students are students of color?” Genene said in an interview. “I could not imagine a positive school climate in any school with an MPD officer walking through the hall.”

Minneapolis Board of Education votes to kick police out of public schools over George Floyd’s death

Kimberly Ellison, chair of the Minneapolis school board, watched, too. “I thought of all my students, my children, my sons, the students we have in our schools,” Ellison said in the days after the board voted. “It could have been any one of them.”

Police were introduced in schools in the 1950s to combat crime on school grounds, but their numbers skyrocketed after the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado that left 15 dead — at the time the deadliest massacre on school grounds. The Justice Department poured millions into funding police officers on campus, to guard against outside threats and respond to growing fears about rising crime among youths.

The officers became a fixture in public schools, with many receiving training to become “student resource officers,” or SROs. Nearly 60 percent of schools and nearly 90 percent of high schools now have an officer at least part-time. Some states sought to increase their numbers again following the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., which left 17 people dead. Florida began requiring all schools to have a police officer or armed security guard. South Carolina invested millions into putting officers in schools, and Maryland, where an SRO helped stop a school shooter, invested millions into expanding them.

Proponents see police as essential in keeping students safe: responding in the event of a school shooting, ferreting out students who could turn violent, breaking up fights and swiftly addressing students caught with drugs or guns. In the 2017-2018 school year, schools reported more than 960,000 violent incidents on school grounds, according to data collected by the Education Department.

But civil rights groups say that officers pose a threat to many students, and especially students of color and students with disabilities. Black and Latino students are more likely to have police officers in their schools, increasing the likelihood of arrest, federal data shows. In the 2015-2016 school year, black students accounted for 15 percent of the school population nationally but accounted for 31 percent of arrests, according to federal data, despite studies showing that black students do not necessarily break the rules at greater rates than their white peers.

Racial disparities in school discipline are growing, federal data show

Those arrests can turn violent. And just as grainy cellphone video of police shootings and violent arrests has helped shed light on police brutality, images captured by students on school buses, in hallways and in classrooms have revealed what can go wrong when officers confront students. A 2015 cellphone video captured a white officer putting a black teenager in a chokehold, then tearing her from her desk and throwing her to the ground at a high school in Spring Valley, S.C. The deputy was called when the student would not put away her cellphone. Other videos have shown officers pepper-spraying middle-schoolers to break up a fight and tackling an 11-year-old girl to the ground.

Tay Anderson, a 21-year-old school board member in Denver, has become the de facto leader of the Black Lives Matter protests there. He worries about setting up children for failure by having police in schools. Anderson said police have issued 4,500 citations to students at Denver schools since 2014 — and that most have gone to black or Latino students.

“The reason why we want to move forward without Denver police is simple: We don’t want our schools to be ground zero for the school-to-prison pipeline,” Anderson said. The board voted unanimously Thursday night to phase out police in schools over the next 18 months.

Some school leaders say the right training and the right arrangement can mitigate many of the concerns civil rights activists have raised.

Paul Kelly, principal of Elk Grove High School in Illinois, said having an SRO on campus makes him feel more secure. But he acknowledges he has some assets that other schools might lack: a good working relationship with the local police department, the authority to take the lead on student disciplinary issues and adequate mental health resources. The primary role of the officer, he said, is to guard against outside threats.

“We don’t view our SRO as a disciplinarian or as someone who is primarily responsible for intervening with respect to student behaviors,” Kelly said.

Don Bridges has worked as a school resource officer in Baltimore County since 1997. He’s trained SROs all over the country, he said, including in Chicago and Ferguson, Mo., arriving there after an officer killed recent high school graduate Mike Brown.

Many of the problems people ascribe to school police can be resolved with better training, he said — teaching officers about adolescent brain development and about how to mentor students.

“When we look at programs that are having problems, what we see is that law enforcement is just putting officers in schools without guidance,” Bridges said. “You do not police a school in the same way you police the streets.”

Trained properly, Bridges said, school resource officers can help repair the bond between police and communities of color that might harbor mistrust of law enforcement.

But Anderson countered that police who patrol schools are not necessary for school safety. Denver Public Schools has a robust armed school security force, he said, which can swiftly respond to school shootings but cannot arrest students.

It is also not clear what difference officers make to school safety. Many students say they feel less safe, or even criminalized, with school police. And having a school police officer is no guarantee that a school shooting will be stopped. A 2018 Washington Post analysis found school police officers rarely made a difference in how school shootings unfolded. And students had mixed opinions about school resource officers.

Scarred by school shootings

School police have also proved costly for districts. Kentucky’s Jefferson County Public Schools, which encompasses Louisville, decided to scrap school police last year when faced with a $35 million budget deficit. At a time when the New York City schools are facing budget cuts of more than $800 million and a hiring freeze, Mayor Bill de Blasio has proposed adding about $20 million to next year’s budget for safety officers, bringing the total to $427 million. The proposal sparked protests.

Civil rights activists say the money could be better spent. The American Civil Liberties Union found that there were more than a million students in the United States who attended a school where there is a police officer but no counselor. And some 22 million students attend schools that have funding for police officers but not social workers, the group says. In the nation’s capital, a city council member said this week he would like to divert spending on police in schools to mental health professionals.

Caleb Reed, who also attends Mather High in Chicago, said the school resource officers often seem to make things worse. He said he was arrested two years ago when he walked away from an officer who asked for his student identification at a basketball game. He ended up spending six hours at a police station, he said.

“I felt angry. My emotions felt big,” Reed said. “But I tried to stay humble — because they expect that from every black person. They expect every black person to act out.”

“I think they see us as dangerous.”