Tag Archives: social justice

Juvenile Injustice In Our Schools

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Many students and parents are rightly upset that school principals, administrators and counselors conspire and combine with police assigned to the schools (called “resource officers”) to make schools more like prisons.

Police are assigned to almost every school with one principal function being to criminalize what used to be student discipline, to stigmatize young students, to compromise their futures – what schools they may attend and what jobs they may aspire to have.

Nor is this some informal arrangement between the school and the police.  It’s the law.  Virginia Code Annotated Section 22.1-279.3:1 spells out how student discipline at the school transmogrifies into a crime.

This offensive pincer movement, by which the state combines a school disciplinary action with a criminal prosecution has prompted righteous fury among students and parents for the students have been denied the basic protections any adult would enjoy in his defense. Continue reading →

There shall be no neutrals

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The ongoing PBS series The American Experience has been praised as “the finest documentary series on television,” and The Abolitionists, broadcast last night, is possibly the finest episode I have ever seen. Behold William Lloyd Garrison, American hero. At the time that he wrote these words in 1831, introducing the first issue of The Liberator, he was virtually alone as a white ally:

There shall be no neutrals. Men shall either like, or dislike me. Let Southern oppressors tremble. Let their Northern apologists tremble. Let all the enemies of the persecuted blacks tremble. On the subject of slavery, I do not wish to write with moderation. I am in earnest. I will not equivocate. I will not excuse. I will not retreat a single inch, and I WILL BE HEARD.

Continue reading →

Can the press be this bad?

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The Richmond Times Dispatch wrote a gushing opinion piece on Wolf’s book, Prisoner of conscience.  The piece contained this quote:

American policy can make a difference…Economic pressure helps as well. The suspension of Most Favored Nation trade status for Romania, for instance, hastened tyranny’s fall. We also would emphasize that sanctions against South Africa, enacted over Ronald Reagan’s repulsive veto, sealed apartheid’s fate. Disinvestment helped.

Regarding “Reagan’s repulsive veto”, Congressman Wolf is referring to the 1986 vote on H.R.4868, the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986.  The Thomas knowledge base only publishes roll call votes back to 1989.  The 1986 vote predates, but it does publish an alphabetical list of  bill co-sponsors.  The  relevant ‘W’s”  are pasted below.

Rep Wirth, Timothy [CO-2] – 6/5/1986
Rep Wolpe, Howard E. [MI-3] – 5/21/1986

Where’s Frank Wolf?  It’s worth a question, isn’t it?