Nothing excites pundits and tough on crime commentators quite like young brown offenders ram raiding and skipping school.
There is a new cry in the air for harsher sentences, relaxing Police chase policy and punishing parents for the crimes of their children.
I appreciate the fear of crime and how unsettling such lawlessness can be, but we are adults in this country, and as such, it is our obligation and responsibility as adults to drive debate that isn’t reactionary and is focused more on de-escalation.
Especially now.
We have all collectively gone through a universal unique experience with this Covid pandemic, it has thrown our certainty and agency out the window while creating intense economic pressure and psychological stress.
This pressure and stress are impacting all of us in different ways and that certainly goes for our most vulnerable kids.
We need compassion, not anger.
Many of these kids are already known to social services, there isn’t a need to escalate Police chase policy when you know who you are looking for.
Truancy can be countered by providing free lunches and breakfasts at school and using our schools as true access points to wider social services. Make it illegal for businesses to employ school-age children during school hours so that they can’t feed on exploitable labour.
Design shop fronts with more concrete bollards.
Do everything and anything to show these kids some support and empathy with clear funding to prevent lives lost to crime and anger.
This is when we need to step up as a community to provide a counterweight to the cry from the angry mob, especially when that angry mob has a long history of lashing out at young brown offenders more harshly.
Our most vulnerable kids need our help, not our denouncement.
First published on Waatea News.
Like workers the kids are voting with their feet against Woke Wellington and destroying an education system ‘in their name’.
Elizabeth Rata: The Decolonisation of Education in New Zealand
https://democracyproject.nz/2022/04/22/elizabeth-rata-the-decolonisation-of-education-in-new-zealand/
Maori need to urgently speak out against woke thinking being used in their name.
The treaty supports one person one vote, equal representation – not the woke versions.
Te Tiriti and democracy: The principle of equal representation
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/ideasroom/te-tiriti-and-democracy-part-5
“If this argument is well founded, the equal value of individual citizens is upheld by Te Tiriti o Waitangi as well as the Bill of Rights.
“No New Zealander should be asked to accept that, by virtue of their birth, they are less worthy than any other. And the chances that if they are asked, they will agree, are vanishingly small, because to do so is to surrender their dignity as a person.
As it states in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ‘Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.’
No ifs, no buts, no exceptions.”
Worldwide anti democracy
Journalism is now dominated by highly educated elites who crusade about racial matters in order to generate outrage while protecting their own economic interests, says a US writer.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/afternoons/audio/2018837801/fears-woke-media-is-undermining-democracy
A point no one really likes to bring up, on either side of the political spectrum, is that principals, teachers and parents (**SOME OF THEM**) prefer to have some of their bad eggs not in class so they do not have to deal with them.
because they’re not allowed to deal with them…how many pollies send their little darlings to the local state school…they probably have rules etc, ‘let the proles rot’ is the motto of the selects preferred institutions
also the obsession with measuring everything means if you exclude the dim and disruptive the ‘average’ goes up…talk about a perverse incentive.