Imagine this... a group of people clad in black hooded robes (or witch cloaks?), convening on Harrison at night to gather around their brightly burning hate signs...
@whaleknives Interesting. According to HarrisonArkansas.info, The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan are not racist, they are "only" pro-White and engaged in pro-American activities...
Apparently, "Only Whites" is simply being in support of White people, while "Black Lives Matter" is an attack on White people... funny how that works, huh?
@whaleknives Also "interesting" is FightWhiteGenocide dot com...
Yes, the town would have to be complicate in this signage for them to be posted on the same post.
Apparently, Arkansas does not yet have any legislation on hate crimes, so although there are 213,000 signatures on a petition to the billboard company (Pro-Signs Inc.) to take the sign down, they simply claim their customer's "first amendment rights".
@whaleknives
Also from HarrisonArkansas.info, weirdly biased statstics on "the country"?
They claim 97.6% of the country is White, 1.06% Hispanic, and 0.11% Black.
Meanwhile, Wiki claims 59.3% White, 18.9% Hispanic, and 12.6% Black.
Obviously the Harrison info is way out of whack, as anybody who has eyes in their head can see.
Why are they even talking about "the racial makeup of the country" on a page promoting a single small town in the USA, nevermind the insanely skewed misinformation?
@ned it's so bad there. Stopping for gas at a convenience store as a lone traveler, i felt absolutely on display and threatened. And i hadn't seen the sign on the way in, so didn't realize I had descended into kkk territory. I don't recommend anyone stop. Maybe try to bypass. I never drive through anymore, even when it adds time to the overall journey.
@Yup_Its_Holly Like traveling through Mississippi. The Whites-only borders lie invisibly along the highway about halfway between one town to the other (you'll notice if you watch the people in the cars that go by), so by the time you stop for gas in the wrong town, you're already smack dab in the middle of their territory.
@ned I know! They missed an opportunity there…but they aren’t really too smart, I don’t think. Ironically, we have to drive through Harrison to get to Eureka Springs, which is probably one of the most liberal spots in Arkansas. They decriminalized weed, long before medical marijuana was even a thing.
@girlfreddy@QueenValhalla@ned Many are fine with their kids working. They think it “builds character.” Their kids aren’t doing it because they have to, they are just working for extra pocket money. Most of my former students who worked were working to help buy food or pay bills for their families. One girl’s mother I had moved to Florida as soon as the daughter turned 18 during her senior year. Daughter had to move in with her sister ( only a couple yrs older) and help pay the bills.
Yes. Difference is those kids "have to" work vs rich kids who don't.
So make it a requirement that all kids fully capable of working but not already working, must complete 80 hrs of employment to graduate from high school. Find employers who need manual laborers, or picking up garbage, or washing city vehicles, etc.
If work is good to build character (which is an old trope from Calvinism's protestant work ethic) then every kid who can, should.
I get that. The problem is that for kids who already have a job, that means adding more work onto their plate. Ontario does the volunteer hrs thing and for kids with jobs it's tough.
I’m torn. She loves money. She has never as far as I know spent the money she got when she was old enough to start getting money for presents.
She sells gift cards on a website and saves that money also.
She wants to work to keep growing her savings (she said it’s around $3k) but she’ll work her whole life. Why rush into it? It’ll be her call but jeez.
Work doesn’t build character. Works builds compliance. Study builds character. Experiences build character. Mistakes and successes and losses and wins and tears and heartbreak and tears and joy all build character.
Can these happen at work? Of course. Do they have to? Not even remotely.
@bleakfuture@girlfreddy@QueenValhalla@ned I told all my students to not work as long as they could. They need to be a kid while they can. I started working at 14, and it was terrible. I missed out on a lot of experiences and memories because “I had to work.” When my oldest wanted to get a job, I let him, but I only let him work on weekends only one or two days a week. I wanted him to stay in band and have fun while he was in HS. Like you said, they have the rest of their lives to work.
@johnettesnuggs@girlfreddy@QueenValhalla@ned my kid is lucky in the sense that I was a victim of the hustle culture and as such have built a pretty comfortable life for my family - but it’s not fulfilling.
I have essentially decided that until retirement my job is that of stress sponge for my family. It’s the best thing I can really do. They don’t particularly even know what I do for a living because I rarely if ever talk about work when I’m home. This is intentional. When I’m home I’m theirs. Or I try to be.
I’d rather pay the kid myself than have her out there sweating in a July asphalt parking lot wrangling carts from assholes who don’t have the decency to use the cart return at 14.
14 year old girls should be hiding in their rooms and giggling with their friends and sobbing about what a jerk I am because I won’t let them get a job.
@bleakfuture@girlfreddy@QueenValhalla@ned I have had so many students say,”I couldn’t do my homework bc I worked all weekend.”I want to ask their parents don’t you want your kids to get an education so they don’t have to work at Sonic for their whole lives? In HS, you are learning enough to do well on tests to get scholarships & be able to navigate tbe first year of college. Which is more important? A job at Sonic or McDonald’s, or an education that can help you get through college?
Citizenship - vote like your life depends on it and be active and be an activist.
Finances - let’s learn about interest rates, student loans and why they’re predatory, credit cards and why they’re predatory and the damn magic of compounding interest.
I wish schools taught these things instead of worrying about the content of books 85% of the kids won’t read anyhow.
@bleakfuture@johnettesnuggs@girlfreddy@QueenValhalla@ned
Citizenship is one of the areas covered broadly in some of those books that a lot of folks might not otherwise read, books that deal with all manner of relationships and might form and inform the core of discussions about civics, responsibility, community interactions, personal relationships, history, geography, ethics...It's the meaning in the books rather than the content. Heck, there are even many cautionary tales about the pitfalls of financial chicanery and not all of them have Horatio Alger outcomes. One of the killers is repetition: US history in Grades 5, 8 and 11 with a heavily US centered Civics course in Grade 12, without mentioning the amount of fable and outright lies in what constitutes a lot of curriculum. There are ways to make all of this work a lot more in the long-term interest of students (hence parents and society in general), as well as allowing generous allotments of time and resources for a bit of foreign language, music, plastic arts and various pre-vocational courses where students learn to make stuff and repair it. Sorry about bending your eyeballs, but there's a lot to chew on!
Teaching civics in 12th grade feels a bit like teaching basic sex ed in 12th grade. That is far too late for a lot of the students who have already decided that they have it all figured out.
I think as my teen gets even older and my 9yo encounters more BS online the next lesson is in skepticism and critical thinking. Especially in the age of AI deepfakes and disinformation campaigns.
@bleakfuture@johnettesnuggs@girlfreddy@QueenValhalla@ned
Note that your kids are getting most all of the really essential stuff from home. The social interactions happen at school, including learning to exist in a highly hierarchical environment and dealing with a variety of personalities and backgrounds. Right on about Civics 12 and sex ed. It's always interesting to see what happens with young folks whose parents have pulled back the curtain without necessarily plotting the dance.
@danneau@bleakfuture@girlfreddy@QueenValhalla@ned I was raised to question everything. My dad was in the Navy for 20 yrs during Korea/Cold War/Vietnam and he was very cynical about everything. We were taught to do actual research instead of relying on just what was said, but being vaxxed was just part of military life. When my kids were born, both were vaxxed as recommended. The benefits of vaccines far, far outweigh the possible side effects. Myself and sons are all ND/Autistic, tho…🥴
Not that Canada is much better, but our laws are pretty explicit when it comes to racist signage like that. Otherwise wide swathes here would be covered with it as well.
They say that a decade before then is when the "Harrison's Community Task Force on Race Relations" began to help unseat the hate in this town, the seat of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
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