School Girls, Teachers, Targeted in Middle East Violence

As pro-democracy uprisings continue throughout North Africa and the Middle East, students and teachers continue to be targeted in the violent crackdowns by local governments. Democracy Now reported today that school girls as young as 12 were abducted by Bahraini government forces and beaten severely and threatened with rape. A 16-year-old girl told Al Jazeera that she and three classmates were taken from school and savagely beaten with rubber hoses.

Sanaa, Yemen (Image by Saliam)

The Teacher Solidarity website reported that Yemeni police fired upon demonstrating teachers this week with live ammunition and tear gas. Three teachers have been killed in recent weeks. Thousands had been occupying the education ministry in Taez, Yemen’s second largest city, demanding a pay raise and the removal of President Saleh from office. Several students have also been killed. Overall, 150 people have been killed in the Yemeni protests.

Class War Escalates—Use Live Ammo On WI Protesters

Image by Chris Huggins (Toronto G20 Protest)

 On Saturday, a Mother Jones staffer tweeted that riot police might sweep workers out of the Wisconsin Capital building. In response, Jeff Cox, a deputy attorney general, for the state of Indiana tweeted, “Use live ammunition.” He also called the demonstrators “political enemies” (which they are, but what’s wrong with that?) and “thugs” (which he obviously is).

Image by underclassrising  (Greek Protester)

It should come as no surprise to anyone that such violent statements would be made publicly by a government official. We’ve been hearing them for years from some religious leaders, anti-immigrant activists and Tea Party activists. Sharon Angle, for example, suggested using “2nd amendment remedies” should Tea Party efforts fail in Congress, while Sarah Palin infamously called on her followers to “reload” rather than retreat. Many executives would not shed a tear if there were a few casualties on the labor side in the class war (it certainly doesn’t seem to matter to the bosses at Coke, in Columbia, or Chevron, in Nigeria) so why not here? After all, it’s a small price to pay to keep wages low and profits high.

Cox’s statements are only noteworthy in the context of Gov. Scott Walker’s explicit threat to use the National Guard on protesters AND his active preparation for such an assault (See “General Strike,” paragraph 3). In the interest of full disclosure, Cox is a loose cannon, known for making all sorts of ludicrous, vitriolic remarks. He once said that Planned Parenthood could help themselves if they performed retroactive abortions and he compared the SEIU to Hitler’s Sturmabteilung. Nevertheless, in this climate of fear and paranoia, it only takes one Jared Loughner to get inspired by such rhetoric and then go on a self-righteous rampage that, in the middle of a mass demonstration, could end up being far more deadly than the recent massacre in Tuscon. On the other hand, it only takes orders by one right wing governor for the National Guard to open fire on striking workers, as has happened so many times in U.S. history (for a partial list of examples, please see “The Violent Demise of Unions.”)

Schools Are Jails (Piss Buckets For Your Kids’ Safety)

School or Jail (image by lavocado)

In the wake of two recent school lockdowns, LAUSD is now requiring all LAUSD classrooms to have a “lockdown kit” that includes a 5-gallon bucket to be used as a toilet. Kits also include toilet paper and a portable toilet seat, as well as first aid equipment, duct tape, gloves and flashlights. The shit buckets were apparently used by some students last week, who were locked in their classrooms for hours while cops and school officials ran around like chickens without heads.

As appalling as it is to think that school districts now consider violent school rampages so routine that classrooms must be equipped with bucket johns, it is even worse when they start to treat any disturbance as cause for a full scale lockdown and use lockdown procedures as a form of social control.

In the case of the Gardena shooting last week, a student brought a gun to school. It accidentally discharged when he dropped his backpack and two students were seriously injured. While this was a terrible tragedy and there was certainly need for emergency procedures, there is no reason why the entire school needed to be locked down for hours. There were no hostages, intruders or armed suspect rampaging through the school. The incident was self-contained. The room in which it occurred should have been quickly secured so that emergency workers could attend to the injured students and police could question witnesses. Once this had been accomplished, the rest of the school should have been allowed to return to their routines, or dismissed.

In the Woodland Hills case, police were searching for an armed assailant who had shot and wounded a school cop, near El Camino Real High School. Students from nine different schools were locked down for up to five hours as officers searched for the suspect. While it may be justified in cases like this to keep classrooms locked down for student safety, LAUSD’s own police chief, Steve Zipperman, admitted that students were locked down longer than necessary. LAPD and LAUSD blamed each other for the miscommunication and lack of coherent plan.

In both cases, students’ hygiene, dignity and wellbeing were sacrificed by police and school officials, not to protect children, but to make the grownups’ jobs easier.

Violence Prevention Undermined in SFUSD

In 2009, the San Francisco Board of Education (BOE) eliminated violation prevention program funding and replaced it with a number of policy directives based on recommendations by the Coalition for Fair and Caring Schools (FairCare). The change was intended to promote alternative disciplinary processes, professional development, increased accountability, and a “culture shift” in how SFUSD addresses discipline, with the goal of reducing suspensions and expulsions, and the disproportionate number of black, Latino and Pacific Islander suspensions.

Implementation has been slow, due in part to the SFUSD corruption scandal, but also due to bureaucratic problems, like the Restorative Justice program not being phased in quickly enough (as of December, 2010, it was still in the planning stages). The program has only been implemented in four schools so far. In short, existing violence prevention programs were eliminated and replaced with a program that will not be fully implemented for years, creating a vacuum that may have devastating consequences for San Francisco youth.

Consider the data for last year:

• 3098 suspensions, 21 expulsions out of a student population of 60,000
• African-Americans, who comprise 10.8% of the student populations, made up 45% of the expulsion referrals and 62% of those actually expelled
• 12.6% of students cut class for safety concerns
• 9.5% carried a knife or club as a weapon on school property
• 34% reported being harassed because of their race or ethnicity
• 22% of middle school students seriously considered suicide
• 29.5% of LGBQ students seriously considered suicide