Current Events > Australian Police Minister throws a tantrum over BLM posters in school

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https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5gp9w/blm-australia-posters-lindfield-david-elliot

Posters created by Australian primary school students in support of the Black Lives Matter movement have prompted a police minister to call for disciplinary action.

The placardswhich sported slogans such as Stop Killer Cops were created by Year 5 and 6 students at Sydneys Lindfield Learning Village in February as part of an exercise that asked them to reflect on what theyd read, seen or heard about key moments in recent Indigenous history.

Some posters featured the hashtags #JusticeNow, #WeCantBreathe and #EndWhiteSupremacy; others featured the Indigenous Australian flag and the clenched black fist often associated with the African-American civil rights movement. All of them were reportedly the original work of the students themselves, based on their own experiences of and reactions to contemporary news and current affairs.

In response to the media storm that ensued, the principal of the government-funded Lindfield Learning Village, Stephanie McConnell, sent a letter to parents and carers explaining their side of the story and clarifying that the comments on the posters were not taught to students.

That letter, seen by VICE World News, explained that Posters referring to police were created as part of a pre-learning activity aimed at identifying what Year 5 and 6 students knew before they started studying contemporary Aboriginal history Students at this school are not taught to fear or distrust police. We have a positive relationship with police, working with local police youth liaison officers regularly throughout the year.

Nonetheless, the imagery immediately drew the ire of New South Wales police commissioner David Elliott, who made short work of turning the childrens posters into a new front for the culture wars by accusing the schools left-wing teachers of racism, political bias and indoctrination.

Its very sad. This is the sort of indoctrination that distorts our education system; its the sort of behaviour coming from ideologues that work in the education department that want to skew what Australia stands for, Elliott told Australian breakfast news show Today. I cant believe that weve got these left-wing teachers out there acting racists themselves by saying white lives dont matterwell they do. Everybody matters. And we should be concentrating on reading and writing in these schools, not this sort of political indoctrination.

Hes now calling for the teacher who ran the class to be sacked.

During the course of his indignant Today show diatribe, Elliott insisted that NSW Police arent American police, that we [in Australia] have a much higher level of respect for our police because when they do the wrong thing there is a process, and that whats going on in America at the moment [is] not our war. Speaking to breakfast news show Sunrise, he further claimed that We dont have a race problem here in Australia.

That moment when the response says a lot more than the original 'controversy'

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It's always the same types of people who get upset when bigotry and hate is called out.
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Darmik posted...

when they do the wrong thing there is a process,

Well that's one way of putting it I guess

a pat on the back and a blind eye is a "process "

the lost generation was a "process "

Ask any minority in Queensland what they think

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He's not entirely wrong.
Politics should not be part of primary education.

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"We don't have a race problem here in Australia."

Oh ho ho.

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DocDelicious posted...

He's not entirely wrong.
Politics should not be part of primary education.

"Black people are being murdered and I want it to stop"
"Dude don't get political"

That's you

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I've been sick lately, so I've gotten to see the start of this whole thing while I've been bundled up on the lounge. Initially I didn't know what to think, but upon learning that it was a pre-learning exercise with content created by students without the guidance of a teacher, I can confidently say that this is a non-issue. This is the result of the times we live in, not a bias taught in the classroom.

Last night was the first time I slept the whole night in my own bed for three days, so I missed the morning shows today. But the Police Minister sounds like a fuckwit who doesn't understand the reality of the situation.

The worst part is how adamant he is to say "we don't have a race problem" over here - we do have racism over here, and we would be wise to keep an eye out for it. Whether it's some fat bogan named Dane yelling racial slurs down the street in thongs and a singlet, or a police officer in the Northern Territory driving an indigenous bloke for hours through the desert to get him to jail without adequate access to water, leading to the prisoner dying in the back of the vehicle due to dehydration - we need to stay conscious of racism and the effects it has on the people it affects, and we need to work to eliminate it. The fucking Police Minister shouldn't be getting his nuggets caught in a twist like this, it's not professional and it's a weak look.

I understand his point about America's troubles not being our "war". Ultimately, I do think that police in Australia are more trained than American cops are. I think the police are a more respectable institution in Australia than they are in America. Saying that, Australian police have their own problems - in particular, their track record with the indigenous population is appalling. There's a video of two indigenous women fighting in the street, pulling each other's hair and bashing each other, and the police are just standing there letting it play out. Their excuse was "that's how they settle disputes up here, and if we got in to break it up, it just would have festered and led to a harsher retaliation". I'd have to get a second opinion from a trusted source, but the image of two indigenous ladies flogging each other in the street while the police are doing absolutely nothing - literally standing a couple metres away and watching - is a very striking image.

I can only hope that most of the country swings Labor this election. The past 8 years of Liberal leadership have stripped this country bare - of its resources and wealth, of its integrity and of its dignity. And now we have that bald fuck Peter Dutton as Defence Minister - one of a small, small handful of people who walked out of Kevin Rudd's apology to the indigenous population, and the man who's responsible for the fact that we haven't had a Liberal prime minister who's sat a full term in 8 years because he keeps gunning for a power vacuum so he can take the job. The man's a creep, and he's an evil son of a bitch - and every time he's subverted the democratic process, he's moved one link up the chain of command. When you have a piece of shit like that as out defence minister - when you have such widespread corruption in the Liberal government, across all boards - is it any wonder that our Police Minister is a shit-for-brains Liberal puppet whose pattern of speech hems closer to Trump than it has any right to do?

DocDelicious posted...

He's not entirely wrong.
Politics should not be part of primary education.

They weren't told to do this, and they weren't taught this in school. They made these posters before taking Aboriginal studies, based on things they've seen in the news and in their lives.

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Racists: "We don't have a race problem."

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DocDelicious posted...

He's not entirely wrong.
Politics should not be part of primary education.

The lesson was about critical thinking and it was up to the students to write their message. In this instance it was a homework assignment I believe.

My wife is a teacher and knew it was about critical thinking and not BLM as soon as it came up.

It's not surprising the police minister doesn't like the idea of critical thinking.

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Another fun quote from this guy to show you his kind of character

Ive got young children and if I thought the police felt they were at risk of doing something wrong Id want them strip-searched, Elliott said.

Having been minister for juvenile justice, we have 10-year-olds involved in terrorism activity.

Figures released during budget estimates in February showed that in the five years to November 2018 nothing was found in 63% of strip-searches, but Elliott said he thought parents would be pretty happy if their children were strip-searched and found with drugs.

I think youd be pretty happy that they got found out, he said.

https://theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/06/nsw-police-minister-defends-strip-searching-of-children-saying-parents-would-be-happy

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SubtletyRefuge posted...

There's no greater indicator.

lol true

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