Yeah. Talk about a court battle waiting to happen. This, from the BBC:
An Italian court has ordered the government to pay 100,000 euros (£79,919) to a man who had to retake his driving test because he was gay.
Danilo Giuffrida, now 26, told doctors he was homosexual during a medical examination for military service.
The information was passed to the defence and transport ministries.
Mr Giuffrida was told to repeat his driving test or have his licence suspended because of his “sexual identity disturbance”.
Mr Giuffrida passed his test for the second time but his licence was renewed for just one year rather than the usual 10 years because of his homosexuality.
A court in Catania, Sicily, ordered the ministries to pay damages on the basis that Mr Giuffrida’s constitutional rights had been breached and that homosexuality could not be considered a “mental illness”.
The judge said the actions of the ministries showed “evident sexual discrimination”.
Mr Giuffrida welcomed the sentence as “a step forwards for civil rights.”
There are many reasons to be angry and disapointed with Jesse Jackson today.
First of all he went on Fox Fake News, as if it practices respectable news reporting; as if it’s never displayed out and out racism towards Obama, his wife and their daughters. Strike number 1.
Secondly, he spoke about the presumptive Democratic nominee as if he had committed some moral crime, which he hadn’t, and which displayed just how much of a bitter man Jesse Jackson is.
Thirdly, he, a man with the title, Reverend before his name, said he wanted to castrate Obama. Further, the image and violence associated with castration and Black men has…historic significance. That Jesse would invoke it was hsocking to me. He might as well have said he wanted Obama tarred and feathered. It was ugly, it was vulgar; 3rd strike.
Fourth, and most important to me at this juncture; he forced many of us, who otherwise would never do such a thing, to watch at least a few minutes of that muther&*%$#er Bill O’Rielly, who already has a special ring in hell awaiting his arrival, to find out just exactly what it was he said about Obama.
Fifth, and what many of us didn’t catch, is that the Rev said something so out-of-pocket about Barack, that FOX “wouldnt” air it….yet. Oh I know what Bill said, but please, trust me when I say I do not believe for one hot second that they won’t, eventually, play the rest of the tape.
If they weren’t going to, at some juncture, Bill would have never drawn attention to the fact that there was more tape to be seen.
Bill made a big deal out of this unseen clip. And so, I’ve been asking myself, just what else could he have said?
My first thought, was “house nigga” or “house negro”. If you are not familiar with this term, click here and here for the breakdown. If he said either of those things, it wouldn’t bode well for Jesse in the Black community, because folks are going to reject that term, or any association with Obama. All and all, he’s liked. And well, folks at Fox news would have a field day with that.
But I don’t think that’s it, because of the fact that it’s something they actually chose, for ratings not for tact, not to air at this point.
After having giving it a bit more thought and talked it over with some folks, we’ve settled on “Uncle Tom”.
Uncle Tom is a term used by black people to try to convince other black people that working, education, living well, and setting a good example for their children is selling out.
I have had folks asking me all day if I agree with what Jesse said; Obama was talking down to Black people.
Hell to the no, I do not agree with that at all. I don’t think Bill Cosby talked down to black folks when he stepped up to the mic at the NAACP image awards and told Black people to take some personal responsibility.
One reader, Fiona, had this to say:
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see how Obama’s call to all absentee fathers can comprise “talking down to black people.” Jackson seems to assume the challenge to be involved with one’s children is somehow uniquely unfair or unreasonable to black fathers. Which is, I submit, the same as saying that he assumes black fathers (a) are uniquely incapable of being involved with their children, or (b) should for some reason (because black children don’t need or don’t deserve fathers?) be given a pass on being fathers to the children they create.
Others have contacted me and asked “what is it about Black men not raising their kids?” I’m not an expert but I have some theories. As usual, it has to do with post traumatic slave syndrome. Historically speaking, the Black family was not permitted to stay together as one. Each member was litterally put up on the auction block, taken forcefully from the other members of their families, never to be seen again. Black men suffer from a post traumatic mentality that they can’t even explain, or understand. Most of them do not even know it is there.
Fatherless Black households is a generational epidemic that needs to be healed; but no one wants to touch it, no one wants to talk about it.
Black women learned to raise families without Black men, and Black men learned that Black women would “be okay”, if they weren’t around.
This is the sick pattern that Obama spoke up about, he just didn’t use the same words as I did. Because the fact remains, we’re not talking about 200 years ago, we’re talking about right now, today, and all the children who do not have fathers un the home, or who even out of the home, actively co-parent their children in a way that is healthy.
And we as a community, we let it happen. We call the women “baby mama’s”, and insist they’re too bitchy to deal with, so the brother has no choice but to stay away.
We allow the traps of social stratification to become an excuse for not fighting to get through adversity and do the right thing.
We deny we are at least partially responsible for this issue, and by doing so, we let the Black family fall apart.
Are there great Black men who take care of there kids? Of course. But there too many, simply too many, that do not, and the children suffer.
Are we not to discuss this problem? Are we not to consider how it may contribute to school drop out rates, drug use in teens, depesression in children, suicide, violence, and so on?
When Black children do not have a Black man who is active in their upbringing, they look elsewhere for what that image is. What do we see? We see images straight from rap videos. Young sistas dressed like tramps, and young men walking around looking life 50 cent, but with none of 50 cents money.
We see Black boys fighting “for fun”, hanging out on the corner after school when their asses should be at home. We see Black girls, pregnant at increasingly younger ages, and their mothers who enable them by providing transportation to the welfare office to get benefits. Why not take her for birth control, or better yet, teach her not to open her legs for some punk ass little boy who’s balls haven’t even dropped yet? Come on.
I don’t care if it seems crude. It is distressing to me. Not just because I care about children, but because I care about my Black children, and what they see around them, that they think defines them.
If my son tries to get a little bit older and start talking crazy to me, or staying out all hours, or letting his grades slip, or even entertaining the thought of not going to college- that will be the day you hear about me in the news, because I will take him out.
If my daughter tries that eye-rolling back-talk shit, and tries sneaking boys into my house, or making out under the bleachers at school, again, heaven help her. It’s not an option in this house.
This self hatred needs to stop. To be educated is to “act White”?
WTF?
To be self critical, or critical of others, is to be a sell out, or an Uncle Tom? No.
If Jesse Jackson doesn’t think Black people have issues, then he is one stupid, stupid man.
Here’s an excerpt of a note I sent to one reader:
Let me tell you something. We have our struggles and everything, we have things, as people of color, that are outside of our control, when you look at social stratification and institutionalized-isms, but there is also an accountability piece that is key.
What good does it do to run around and “blame” the white man? What good does it do to run around and blaim disproportionality for my woes, or my sista’s woes?
I know that racism exists. I know that the condition of Black people today, just like the condition of Native people today, is because of what White people did in the past. I can see that direct line, that strong thread, every day. But if I know that, then shouldn’t that make me smarter? If I know what I am up against, shouldn’t I have a greater chance of being able to make something of myself?
I stand by that. When we as a people are more aware of the issues we face, collectively and individually, we are then able to deal with those issues and move into a better space.
I’ve said all of that to say, that based on what we know Jesse said already, and based on what Obama said in his father’s day speech which irked Jesse so much, I would almost bet a paycheck that he called him an Uncle Tom.
Which leads me to my last conclusion; Jesse Jackson is a part of the problem, not a part of the solution. His personally internalized racism was there for everyone to see, and boy was it revealing.
The days of hiding dirty laundry need to end. I know quite a few Black folks, many, many of which come from Jesse’s era, that believe that talking openly about problems in the Black community, is selling out that comunity, or talking down to that community; lecturing that community, even if you’re Black and apart of the community.
I experienced that fully when I worked for the NAACP and I saw how the “old guard” would rather die than clean its house of problems. It didn’t want to take out the trash, because it didn’t want folks to know it had garbage in the first place. It led to the downfall of the organization.
We can’t solve these social problems unless we talk about them, and implement real solutions, and I believe that is what Barack is trying to do, among other things.
When we boil that away, we have to remember that the comments that Jesse made didn’t have anything to do with Obama “talking down” to Black people.
Jesse took Obama’s Father’s day comments personally. He is, after all, an absent father. He did, after all, step out of his marriage, and then tried hard to get out of his responsibility as a father to that child.
And we already know that Jesse is jealous of Obama. We know that, despite what he claims, he has not embraced this man, nor what he has accomplished, because Jesse wasn’t able to accomplish it himself. When Jesse ran for President, is was revolutionary. When Obama ran for President, it was simply the natural next step. Obama has accomplished more for racial understanding in 5 years, than Jesse has accomplished in his entire career. That must come as quite a blow. I think Jesse sees Obama as nothing more than a snot nozed punk kid with an Ivy league education who thinks he knows it all, but to Jesse, doesn’t know shit, because “he wasn’t there”, during the civil right movement.
That Jessee would even fix his mouth to say that what Obama said equated to “talking down” to anyone, he took his mask off right in that moment, and I’ll surely never see him the same again, because as it stands, Jesse Jackson is a part of the problem.
Dr. Boyce Watkins, who I respect, has another theory on this:
I don’t want to hear it. Do not send me any emails or comments telling me how sick I am, or how I speak ill of the dead. I’m just passing the message along.
In death, the sins of folks can be forgotten, white-washed and otherwise covered up. After days of hearing and reading nothing but praise about the late Helmes, I was interested in the article that was sent my way by Lisa Duggan of the Nation Magazine:
Did he plan it? Did he struggle on life support until after the midnight hour, timing his last breath? Or had he been dead for days, his associates keeping the body on ice for the holiday announcement? Jesse Helms, dead on the Fourth of July.
Helms would have appreciated the symbolism, confirming his own mythic identity as a Proud American, but Helms’s other legacy as a big fat bigot is well established. From his racist tirades on the radio and television in North Carolina during the 1950s and ’60s to his vicious homophobic rants of the 1980s and 90s, he left a highly quotable record of hate.
On the civil rights movement: “ ’Candy’ is hardly the word for either the topless swimsuit or the Civil Rights Bill. In our judgment, neither has a place in America–unless we have completely lost our sense of morality.”
“The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that’s thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men’s rights.”
On sexual politics and public health: “The government should spend less money on people with AIDS because they got sick as a result of deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct.”
In death it’s easy to dismiss Jesse Helms as a colorful buffoon or a relic of the bad old days of segregation and sexism, but that doesn’t do Helms’s bigotry justice.
Jesse Helms was an important bigot. He didn’t just fume and huff. He used the language of cultural politics–called “morality” or “values” or just “freedom”–to shrink the state, reduce the social wage, enhance the interests of ruthless corporate profit mongering and promote US military interventions around the world. He’s the poster boy for how cultural politics works, not as an arena separated from the “real” political economy but as the site of the language and emotion through which people live politics and economics everyday.
I don’t talk about it very much, but I had the very horrible honor of working with FEMA after Hurricane Katrina, so, it’s not just about what get’s reported in the news, it’s about what I’ve also seen with my own eyes.
If we learned nothing else from Katrina, it’s this:
1. If you wait for your government to save you in a natural disaster, you’ll likely die.
2. FEMA does not care, about the life, the home, the job, the family member you lost in a natural disaster.
3. “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people.”
Alright, I’ll admit I added that last one just for myself. On with it already.
This report from CNN:
Prisons in Mississippi got coffee makers, pillowcases and dinnerware — all intended for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
The state’s Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks took more coffee makers, cleaning supplies and other items.
Plastic containers ended up with the Mississippi Department of Finance and Administration.
Colleges, volunteer fire departments and other agencies received even more.
But the Mississippi hurricane victims who originally were intended to receive the supplies got nothing, a CNN investigation has found.
“It’s scary to know that there are supplies that they are harboring and people [are] in need right now as we speak today,” said Sharon Hanshaw, director of Coastal Women for Change, a nonprofit group helping storm victims.
Last month, CNN revealed that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had stored $85 million worth of household items in warehouses for two years. Instead of giving the supplies to victims of the 2005 hurricane, FEMA declared them surplus and gave them all away to federal agencies and 16 states in February.
The state of Louisiana — the most hard-hit by the storm — had not asked for any of the supplies, prompting outrage in the community after the original CNN report.
CNN’s investigation showed that Mississippi was one of the 16 states that took the FEMA supplies, but it did not distribute them to Katrina victims.
Jim Marler, director of Mississippi’s surplus agency, failed to return repeated phone calls over several months to explain what happened.
Agency spokeswoman Kym Wiggins said, “There may be a need, but we were not notified that there was a great need for this particular property.”
That doesn’t sit well with most aid groups in Mississippi. “You would have to be living under a rock not to know there is still a need,” said Cass Woods, the project coordinator of Coastal Women for Change.
Wiggins said that nonprofit organizations must meet federal guidelines and register with the state and that no such groups helping the needy or homeless were registered with Mississippi’s surplus agency.
“There is no specific designation outside of a disaster period that says we have to have sustained properties going to the disaster area,” Wiggins said.
CNN interviewed the leaders of eight nonprofits helping Katrina victims at a Biloxi, Mississippi, church used as a staging area for community groups. All said they had no idea these items were available, and most had no idea the surplus agency existed.
“We work so hard to help people in our community when the government is holding back stuff that we can use to give people,” said Glenda Perryman, director of United Hearts Community Action Agency.
Roberta Avila, director of the Mississippi Coast Interfaith Disaster Task Force, said, “It’s needed even more now than right after the storm.”
Records show Mississippi’s surplus agency received household supplies, including dinnerware sets, towels, shirts, pants, shoes and cleaning items.
Those are the kind of household items that Howard and Gloria Griffith said they could have used since the storm and still need. The Griffiths said they spent every penny to rebuild their home. But they can’t afford to finish it, so they’re still living in a FEMA trailer on their property in Biloxi with their teenage son.
“I’ve never seen none of it,” said Gloria Griffith after CNN showed her photos of some of the supplies that FEMA had kept in storage.
FEMA said it was costing more than $1 million a year to store the supplies, but officials have not been able to answer why the agency didn’t get the supplies to Katrina victims. Both FEMA and the General Services Administration said the items originally were purchased or donated for victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
In the wake of the CNN investigation, a FEMA official said the agency was launching an internal probe into the storage of the household supplies.
Bill Stallworth, executive director of the Hope Coordination Center in Biloxi that helps rehouse Katrina victims, said he’s astounded that the supplies were given away.
Stallworth and other community leaders said if they had known the FEMA items were available, they would have begged for them.
“And when I hear people stand up and just beat their chest and say we’ve got everything under control, that’s when I just want to slap them upside the head and say, ‘Get a grip, get a life,’ ” said Stallworth, who is also a Biloxi city councilman.
For me, he represents the “every family has one”, or the “crazy uncle”. As if mental illness wasn’t taboo enough, I come from a Black family, where the subject, like many other things, is ultra-taboo. To this day, even in my family of prosperous, educated, compassionate people, Uncle Mike is still taboo. His mental illness (caused bu a wicked drug coctail he made up in the ’70’s) often keeps him at arms length from many.
My first memories of Uncle Mike are from childhood. I remember seeing him at my grandparent’s house, and being afraid of his empty, yet piercing eyes, and knowing in my gut that he was different than everyone else. It wasn’t just his behavior that led me to this, but everyone elses behavior as well.
But back to childhood.
The telephone would ring. I would answer.
And the most gutteral screams would assault my ear.
It was Uncle Mike calling from the psych hospital, swearing, crying, begging.
The nurses were trying to kill him. That was his main message.
Get me out of here.
They’re trying to kill me.
I would quickly run for my mother, certain that some crazy nurses had my uncle held hostage, trying to slit his throat and stick him with needles.
She would sigh, roll her eyes, and walk to the phone, and then calmly explain to my Uncle Mike that no one was trying to kill him.
No one was after him.
The nurses were trying to help him.
Once she got off the phone, she would explain to me that Uncle Mike was sick in his mind, which, didn’t really make sense to me as a young child- I mean, either someone is trying to kill you or they aren’t, right?
When I hit my teen years, Uncle Mike was an embarrasment to me. It’s not like I spent that much time with him. Like most families, I only saw Uncle Mike during the holidays. By that time he was not in a hospital, but living, mostly on his own, even working a bit here and there. But to me, it was like he was put on the planet to embarass me.
Lke Christmas.
My family is so large that if we all bought gifts for everyone, we’d all go broke, so we do the standard drawing of names, and then buy gifts for the children as well. But not Uncle Mike. He had his own list in his own head, and he ran with it every year.
As a selfish teen, the gifts were never anything that I wanted. One year I got a brush. One year, a tacky doll that looked like it came from the 99 cent store.
Those gifts and many others paled in comparison to the box of Super Absorbant tampons I received one year for Christmas. Yes, that’s right, my Uncle Mike gave me tampons for Christmas. He wrapped them and put a pretty bow on them and sat, watching eagerly as I opened the gift.
I was mortified.
I was pissed.
I was humilated, because of course, such a gift drew great attention in a room of 40 or so people.
But none of that mattered. As a woman with children of her own now, who has worked in human services and with those who are cast aside, I’ve learned that, I love my Uncle Mike. I look forward to seeing him, because I know he looks forward to seeing me, and my children.
My children don’t have the same reaction to Uncle Mike that I did growing up, because they see my interaction with him, and do their best to model it, which makes me so proud.
Uncle Mike is fortunate that my grandparents are still alive, and still able bodied; I worry what will happen to him once they are gone. None of his siblings seem interested in taking on the care-taker role. But I am. It’s not something that I’ve ever said. I knowmy mother’s plan (as the only daughter) is to pay someone to care for him.
I disagree with that plan, but now isn’t the time to get into it. What I do know, is that Uncle Mike will always be close to my heart, and he’ll never be the crazy uncle that get’s locked away. He will continue to know my children and watch them grow, and I will continue to be fiercely protective, just as I am everyone else in my family.
Why am I bringing this up?
Because we all have a connection to those who suffer from mental illness, which isn’t necessarily the same thing as living with mental illness.
When someone is left to die on a hospital waiting room floor, they are suffering.
We have to be more open with this issue, we have to talk about our stories and the stories of our friends and loved ones, so that we can actively work to prevent what happened to Esmin Green. If that were my Uncle Mike in the video, I would be shouting from the mountain tops this very message.
So now you know my story;
What’s yours?
July 3, 2008**Note to Readers:
As always, your comments are welcome on this topic. My gentle suggestion to you is to not focus on the horror stories, but instead on broader solutions. I am sure we all have a story, or know someone who has a horror story about hospitals, malpractice, shittious medical care…I certainly have mine. But I’m not going to comment on it, because that is not the point of this post. This woman is an opportunity for much more.
Peace-
Sable Verity
Original Post:
I am feeling almost relieved to have a face and a name to put to what millions of people across this country and around the world saw this week; the death of a black woman in a NY hospital.
Her name is Esmin Green.
My immediate reaction to seeing her face…just seeing her face, and her smile, I heard in my head “this woman died…was a sacrifice to the nameless and the faceless…she is an opportunity for us all”.
I sincerely hope we take this opportunity, and demand better for anyone in this country who needs help, medical, psychological, whatever it may be. We simply have too much wealth, too many resources for things like this to go on. That they do, shows that as a county, our priorities are fucked.
This gut-wrenching report from CNN:
To people around the world who have seen the video, Esmin Green is a symbol of a health-care system that seems to have failed horribly.
Green, 49, is shown rolling off a waiting room chair at King County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, on June 19. She lands face-down on the floor, convulsing.
Surveillance video captures her lying on the floor for more than an hour as several hospital workers see her and appear to ignore her. She died there.
But to fellow members of her church, she was known as “Sister Green.” Together, they served as a family for her in the decade after she left Jamaica for New York.
Her oldest daughter, 31-year-old Tecia Harrison, told CNN that she cannot bear to think of her mother’s last moments.
“I haven’t seen it, and I don’t think I have the heart or mind to watch it because that’s my mother there,” Harrison said. “That’s the woman who gave birth to me 31 years ago. I cannot watch that.”
Green was involuntarily admitted to the hospital’s psychiatric emergency department June 18 for “agitation and psychosis.”
Friend Peter Pilgrim says he saw Green a few days before her death. He says she was struggling with losing her job at a day care center and had been forced to move out of her apartment.
“Esmin Green is a beautiful person,” he said. “She has a good heart. She loved people, and she loved children.”
Green’s pastor says she had been hospitalized with emotional problems once before and recently appeared to be in distress again. So the pastor called 911, a decision that haunts her.
Upon her admission, Green waited nearly 24 hours for treatment, said the New York Civil Liberties Union, which released the surveillance video of the incident Tuesday.
Her collapse came at 5:32 a.m. June 19, the NYCLU said, and she stopped moving at 6:07 a.m. During that time, according to the organization, workers at the hospital ignored her.
At 6:35 a.m., the tape shows a hospital employee approaching and nudging Green with her foot, the group said. Help was summoned three minutes later. Watch the surveillance video »
In addition, the organization said, hospital staff falsified Green’s records to cover up the time she had lain there without assistance.
“Contrary to what was recorded from four different angles by the hospital’s video cameras, the patient’s medical records say that at 6 a.m., she got up and went to the bathroom, and at 6:20 a.m. she was ’sitting quietly in waiting room’ — more than 10 minutes since she last moved and 48 minutes after she fell to the floor.”
The medical examiner’s office says it is still trying to determine what caused Green’s death. Her medical records will be the focus of an investigation. Hospital documents say she was “awake and sitting quietly” at the very moment she was actually struggling on the floor.
The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, which oversees the hospital, released a statement Tuesday saying it was “shocked and distressed by this situation. It is clear that some of our employees failed to act based on our compassionate standards of care.”
James Saunders, a spokesman for the corporation, said seven employees have been fired or suspended: the chief of psychiatry, chief of security, a doctor, two nurses and two security guards.
A Health and Hospitals Corporation spokeswoman said it was aware of the discrepancies in Green’s record when it began the preliminary investigation June 20.
The corporation pledged to put “additional and significant” reforms in place in the wake of the death.
A federal investigation is also under way, looking into abuse allegations at Kings County that were detailed in a lawsuit in 2007.
In May 2007, the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Mental Hygiene Legal Service sued Kings County in federal court, alleging that conditions at the facility are filthy. Patients are often forced to sleep in plastic chairs or on floors covered in urine, feces and blood while waiting for beds, the groups allege, and often go without basic hygiene such as showers, clean linens and clean clothes.
The lawsuit claims that patients who complain face physical abuse and are injected with drugs to keep them docile.
The hospital, the suit alleges, lacks “the minimal requirements of basic cleanliness, space, privacy, and personal hygiene that are constitutionally guaranteed even to convicted felons.”
Among the reforms agreed to in court Tuesday by the hospital are additional staffing; checking of patients every 15 minutes; and limiting to 25 the number of patients in the psychiatric emergency ward, officials said.
In addition, the hospital said it is expanding crisis-prevention training for staff; expanding space to prevent overcrowding; and reducing patients’ wait time for release, treatment or placement in an inpatient bed.
First of all, here is my two cents on this issue. I would be suing the hell outta the school, on behalf of the yearbook committee for this. I know some of you think that’s silly or even insane, but let me tell you something: I don’t care.
This report from the AP:
COVINA, Calif. - Phony “ghetto” names were printed under a yearbook photo of Black Student Union members at a suburban Los Angeles high school, leaving some angry students and parents calling for an apology and a reprint.
“Tay Tay Shaniqua,” “Crisphy Nanos” and “Laquan White” were among the nine names placed next to the club’s photo in Charter Oak High School’s yearbook, Charter Oak Unified School District Superintendent Clint Harwick said.
“A yearbook is very significant and something you always hold on to,” said Toi Jackson, whose daughter, Evanne, is a BSU member at the school in Covina. “When she shows it to her kids she will have to explain why she has the name Crisphy.”
School ended about two weeks ago, and authorities said the names were discovered only after the yearbooks were handed out.
“Someone was just trying to be funny, but it’s not funny,” said Jordan Smith, a BSU member. “It’s upsetting. It’s a mistake that should not have been overlooked.”
Board president calls it ‘atrocious’ The district office and the school were closed Friday. Joseph M. Probst, the school board’s president, called the incident “atrocious” in an interview with the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.
“I am sure the students will be spoken to and given an apology if they haven’t been already,” he said.
Probst said the student responsible for the names will be a senior next year. He did not know the student’s race or gender but said that “appropriate actions will be taken.”
Students were given printed stickers with the correct names to put into the yearbook.
But some of the BSU members and their parents want the books recalled and reprinted. Toi Jackson told the Tribune that on the last day of school, her daughter was given a handful of stickers and told to pass them out to her friends.
“How humiliating,” she said. “The school is responsible, and they ask the victim to pass out the stickers.”
Officials at the 2,000-student school about 30 miles east of downtown Los Angeles say the student body is about 4.5 percent black, 45 percent Hispanic and 30 percent white.
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Sable Verity
Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. -Barack Obama
Sable
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