Jesus Fucking Christ
I have many things I want to write about. I haven't talked about who I'm voting for DHB, or why Tasers are not the answer.* Plus I read Louise Nicholas's book last night - and I have a few things to say.
But since I also post on Alas an American blog, I had to take a moment to write about this:
School security guards in Palmdale, CA have been caught on camera assaulting a 16-year-old girl and breaking her arm after she spilled some cake during lunch and left some crumbs on the floor after cleaning it up.
The incident occurred last week at Knight High School in Palmdale and was caught on a cell phone camera by another pupil who was then also assaulted by the security guards.
The girl was black (in case anyone didn't know that already).
The students are organising (possibly have organised, I'm a little confused about dates and times) a walk-out. Check out Oh No a WoC PhD for more information about what you can do.
I think what's really important about this incident, is that while it is a horrific example it is also the inevitable result of a culture of security in schools . Yes be outraged that a girl's wrist was broken for not being able to clean up the cake she dropped, but it would have been just as outrageous if she'd responded to the request to clean up the cake by saying 'fuck you' and walking off and the same thing had happened. It's not enough just to object to the extremes of a system that attempts to controls students for every minute they're at school, we have to object to the whole system. As
Grace Lee Boggs argues that youths of color are “opting out” rather than “dropping out” of school–that is, rather than mindlessly dropping out of school to engage in a life of debauchery and sin–they are making a conscious choice to leave a violent and prison like atmosphere that labels them as “problems” from the moment they enter into the system.
Why would anybody want to go to school in a place like this? And who the hell are *we* to honestly believe that the “war” taking place in our schools today (schools are war zones, after all), is not a war between administration/security gaurds and the students?
I read about this at brownfemipower, feministing and Lenin's Tomb (and my reaction was very similar to Lenin's).
* Unless the question is "what do we not want the police to carry?"
I don't think the story is an accurate representation of what happened. I think I've worked out the sequence of events and it is pretty intuitive.
ReplyDeleteBreaking her wrist is obviously, not on - but I suspect this is also another example of how shallow our media is (and this is FOX! you don't get much more shallow than that)
Anon: I'm really pushed to think of _any_ sequence of events where a great big security guard gets to assault a teenage girl, brake her wrist, assault the boy who documented it, and it's okay.
ReplyDeleteDid she have a loaded gun? Machete? Nope. Was she throttling another student to death?
This is sick. Shallow media coverage or no.
Yes you are right he should not have done that obviously. I imagine he didn't intend to break her wrist but of course that just implies negligence.
ReplyDeleteBut it would be nice if the media tried to describe the actual situation as opposed to selling an article.
For one thing later articles report it as a food fight, and it is likely that the grabing of the arm was more to do with the charges that she faces in relation to the female security person.