Lockdown at Locke High School
Is it just me, or does it seem like our country is getting increasingly violent? Four students are arrested after about 600 hundred are involved in a fight at Locke High School in the Los Angeles School District. Several students are injured but there are no hospitalizations. In one story I read, it was reported that school officials separated black from Latino students. Fifty LAPD officers, some in riot gear, assisted, as the high school’s regular police could not handle it.
So then the school is put into lockdown mode, and students are kept in their classrooms. No outsiders and NO PARENTS were allowed on campus.
What? No parents?
Imagine the panic. Did the parents know the fight was occuring? Were students texting as the fight was occuring, or texting from lockdown? If I had a student at that school, and received a text message from my child saying there was a big fight and they were in lockdown, I would have left whatever I was doing and I would have driven to that school. Then the school administrators were going to tell me I had no RIGHT to be on campus? What is wrong with this picture?
When parents choose to use the public education system, do they check their parental rights at the door? I think not. But do we now have to have a lawyer on call so we can go retrieve our children from a perceived safety threat?
Myanmar Repeats Japan’s Mistake
I was dismayed to learn of the government of Myanmar refusing some of the humanitarian aid being offered for the survivors of Cyclone Nargis. Whenever I hear of a government refusing food and medicine in a time of need, I cannot help but be reminded of Japan’s reaction to foreign humanitarian aid offered immediately after the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995.
I was living in Japan in January of 1995, about 160 miles east of Kobe in Kakegawa, a small town in Shizuoka Prefecture. The quake awakened me from deep sleep that morning. I was shocked to see the names of the dead being shown on television all day. There were so many names the broadcast of names was pulled down. The next day I walked around in disbelief as I grasped the enormity of the disaster. Over five thousand dead.
International relief began arriving in Japan soon after the quake. I was in shock when I learned that the Japanese government refused to let the foreign relief workers come to the aid of the search and rescue operations. The life-saving, sniffing dogs arrived at the airport. They were sent back to Europe. I watched in horror as the search and rescue efforts moved at a snail’s pace.
Now the government of Myanmar provides an encore performance. Cargo planes full of supplies for survivors are refused. So much more could be done. I am grateful the United Nations planes were given permission. Also glad to learn that one of the US planes is landing.
Sad, sad.
Another example of government NOT for the people.