{"id":20536,"date":"2016-10-07T17:26:45","date_gmt":"2016-10-08T00:26:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/?p=20536"},"modified":"2016-10-07T17:26:45","modified_gmt":"2016-10-08T00:26:45","slug":"from-dumfries-to-dimbaza-the-mothers-are-outraged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/?p=20536","title":{"rendered":"From Dumfries to Dimbaza, the mothers are outraged"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tidiani

Tidiani Epps Jr.’s drawing<\/p><\/div>\n

Children\u2019s mothers and grandmothers are outraged. They are organizing and refusing to let their children disappear into the night and fog of casual institutional educational violence<\/a>. They are tired of being tired of the injustice. These are three recent vignettes from the institutional war on children, told in the order of the children\u2019s age.<\/p>\n

In Dimbaza<\/a>, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, a ten-year-old child was found to have done something wrong<\/a>. He was accused of dangling a child over a bridge, a charge that he denies and denied at the time. According to the child, the principal then called on older boys to grab the child, strip him naked and parade him, crying by this point, through and around the entire school. The boy ran home and refused to return for two days. The boy\u2019s mother and grandmother are organizing to have the principal removed and to have the entire matter investigated fully. The mother explained<\/a>, \u201cI want harsh action taken against the principal. My child was abused and humiliated. He will be traumatised for the rest of his life.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Montgomery County, just outside of Washington, DC, 11-year-old Tidiani Epps Jr<\/a> was given an assignment to draw a picture about what he would like to see stopped or banned. Tidiani drew a picture of a lynching, of a Black man hanging from a tree with two Ku Klux members in attendance. Tidiani Epps Jr is Black. He wants police violence to end: \u201cIn this picture, I was trying to describe what was going on in the world, and what happened back then. It\u2019s what happened back then, and a piece of what happened back then is still here today in the present, like racism. I just want it to stop. I don\u2019t want to see this any more. Young black people get killed for no reason. It\u2019s not fair or right.\u201d<\/p>\n

The school responded by sending Tidiani to a counselor who called the family and recommended he go to a crisis center for a mental health evaluation. They decided that a young Black child who knows that there is violence in the world and understands he is a key target of that violence must be potentially suicidal. Tidiani\u2019s mother, Sade Green, sees it otherwise. She was livid at the school\u2019s treatment of her child and at what it portends for his future: \u201cMy child has to walk to school every day. He is a young black male. He will grow up to be a black man. I have to let them know what\u2019s going on in society. Nobody is safe. What kind of parent would I be if I didn\u2019t try to teach them the rights and wrongs of what\u2019s going on?\u201d What kind of parent, indeed.<\/p>\n

On the Virginia side of the Washington, DC, suburbs, in Dumfries, a middle school teenager, Ryan Turk<\/a>, forgot to pick up his milk carton and returned to correct that. A \u201cschool resource officer\u201d saw Ryan take the milk, stopped him and told him to go to the principal\u2019s office. When Ryan refused, the \u201cresource officer\u201d arrested him, put him in handcuffs and charged him with disorderly conduct and petty larceny. Ryan Turk was offered \u201cnonjudicial punishment\u201d, also known as \u201cdiversion\u201d, which he and his mother turned down, and so next month, Ryan Turk will stand trial for taking a 65-cent carton of milk that he was supposed to have. Ryan\u2019s mother, Shamise Turk, explained<\/a>, \u201cMy son is not going to admit to something he did not do.\u201d<\/p>\n

What are these three children, and all the children around them, being taught? Violence is good; spectacular violence is great; due process is for the birds, unless they\u2019re Black; and no one in charge gives a damn about you. Fortunately, the mothers and grandmothers are outraged and livid, and they\u2019re organizing. They\u2019re refusing \u201cthe deals\u201d offered to palliate and silence them. They\u2019re refusing the mis-education of their children and the destruction of the present as well as the future. As 11-year-old Tidiani Epps Jr explained<\/a>, \u201cIt\u2019s not just black lives that matter. Everyone matters, but for right now, in this era, so many black people have been getting killed for no reason. It matters.\u201d It matters.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(Photo Credit: Donna St. George \/ The Washington Post \/ Fairfield Citizen<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Children\u2019s mothers and grandmothers are outraged. They are organizing and refusing to let their children disappear into the night and fog of casual institutional educational violence. They are tired of being tired of the injustice. These are three recent vignettes from the institutional war on children, told in the order of the children\u2019s age. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4738,114,5713,556,5716,5715,5717,5714],"class_list":["post-20536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-blacklivesmatter","tag-dan-moshenberg","tag-dimbaza","tag-haunts","tag-ryan-turk","tag-sade-green","tag-shamise-turk","tag-tiding-epps-jr","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20536"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20537,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20536\/revisions\/20537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}