This came in an email from the Jersey Conservative
BLM leader defends violence in video distributed by NJ schools
By Rubashov
Should school districts be teaching a message of violence to young children?
And if they do, wouldn’t it be better to do so balanced by a message of non-violence, so that young minds could be challenged by alternatives?
We’re looking today at a “summer reading list” distributed by the Martin J. Ryerson Middle School in Ringwood, New Jersey. It is a formatted program distributed across the state and around the country. An accompanying letter from the “Middle School Language Arts Team” carries the names “Eric Erler, Principal” and “Carrie Leonard, Dean of Students”. The letter reads:
Students are urged to read one book every 1-2 weeks, or more over the summer, maintaining the same momentum as in the classroom. We highly recommend students working in partnerships or small book clubs to add to the enjoyment of reading.
Students are expected to arrive on the first day of school ready to discuss their books. This book talk should include evidence of reading in the form of journal entries to reflect important thinking. For each journal entry created (1 book read), points will be earned to increase the first marking period grade.
…Here are a list of websites to find great books:
Great Suggestions For Books About Racism and Justice
RingwoodLibrary.org
Goodreads.com Middle School Tag
OpenLibrary.org
Amazon.com Books
PalsPlus
HooplaDigital.com
Clearly then, this is a required activity on which students academic performance will be graded. This is a taxpayer-supported education program run by a unit of government that imposes property taxes and penalties for failure to pay, up to and including foreclosure and homelessness. Such power cries out for scrutiny.
Great Suggestions For Books About Racism and Justice, is the first link on the suggested reading list. It takes you to the webpage of the Oakland Public Library, in California. This page is titled, “Listen, Learn, Participate: a #BlackLivesMatter Resources Series”.
Featured prominently in the Series is a video by #BlackLivesMatter founder Alicia Garza. The video was produced in 2014 by Al Jazeera. It is recommended for Grades 7 and up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5WeJaNtMQs
At the 3:05 mark the Al Jazeera interviewer asks:
“…there’s also been some incidents of vandalism and things getting a little more violent. What tactics do you advocate and where do you draw the line?”
Alicia Garza replies:
“We advocate those types of tactics that really, um, shake up the comfort level.”
The Al Jazeera interviewer interjects:
“What do you say to people who, critics, what do you say to critics who say, you know, smashing property windows and store fronts and some looting is actually counterproductive to the movement?”
Alicia Garza replies:
“My response to that would be, do we have the same level of outrage when a window gets broken as we do when a young black person is killed in our communities, and if we don’t there’s a real disparity there and we need to figure out what that is.”
No commentary is necessary. Garza’s intent is quite clear. So when a BLM protest turns violent, please recall that these words were spoken in 2014.
Who is Alicia Garza?
Wikipedia reports: “Garza was born in Oakland, California, on January 4, 1981. She grew up as Alicia Schwartz in Marin County in a mixed-raced and mixed-religion household, with a Jewish stepfather and an African American mother.[1] Garza identifies as Jewish.[2] The family ran an antiques business, assisted later by her younger brother, Joey.[1] In her teens, Alicia engaged in activism, promoting school sex education about birth control.[3] Enrolling in the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), she continued her activism by joining the student association and calling for higher pay for the university’s janitors. In her final year at college, she helped organize the first Women of Color Conference, a university-wide convocation held at UCSD in 2002.[4] She graduated in 2002 with a degree in anthropology and sociology.[5] In 2003 she met Malachi Garza, 24, a transgender man and a community activist. In 2004, Alicia came out as queer to her family. In 2008, she married Malachi and took the name Garza, settling in Oakland.[1][3]” Note the connection to Oakland.
Who is Al Jazeera?
From Wikipedia: “Al Jazeera (Arabic: الجزيرة, romanized: al-jazīrah, IPA: [æl (d)ʒæˈziːrɐ], literally “The Island”, though referring to the Arabian Peninsula in context[3]) is a Qatari state-owned[4] broadcaster in Doha, Qatar, owned by the Al Jazeera Media Network.”
The choice of a state-owned platform controlled by the nation of Qatar is a curious one for someone who claims to hold the views that Alicia Garza does. According to Human Rights Watch…
“Qatari laws continue to discriminate against migrants, women, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals. Throughout 2018, the diplomatic crisis persisted between Qatar on one side and Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on the other, over Qatar’s alleged support of terrorism and ties with Iran, impacting the rights of Qataris.”
Further, migrant workers in Qatar exist under a form of modern day slavery, according to Human Rights Watch. From the group’s website…
“Qatar has a migrant labor force of over 2 million people, who comprise approximately 95 percent of its total labor force. Approximately 800,000 workers are employed in construction while another 100,000 are domestic workers. Qatar’s kafala (sponsorship) system governing the employment of migrant workers gives employers excessive control over them, including the power to deny them the right to leave the country or change jobs.”
In 2017, a leading British newspaper, The Independent, ran this headline: “World Cup 2022: Qatar’s workers are not workers, they are slaves, and they are building mausoleums, not stadiums”. You should read the entire article:
At a recent meeting of the Ringwood School District, officials defended the “Listen, Learn, Participate: a #BlackLivesMatter Resources Series” as helping to train Ringwood’s children to be “global citizens”. Leaving aside the fact that the parents of Ringwood’s children pay taxes to the school district, the town, the county, the state, the government of the United States of America – but not as of yet to some global entity that they are supposedly “citizens” of – might we suggest that a truly “global” outlook would include a discussion about such topics as modern slavery in countries like Qatar?
Yes, modern slavery in the country that owns the medium that sponsored that Alicia Garza video that Ryerson Middle School hyped to its students.
Of course, there’s far more to the “Listen, Learn, Participate: a #BlackLivesMatter Resources Series” being promoted in Ringwood. The Al Jazeera video is only a part of it. There will be more on this subject tomorrow…
“Government ought to be all outside and no inside. . . . Everybody knows that corruption thrives in secret places, and avoids public places, and we believe it a fair presumption that secrecy means impropriety.”
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