Don’t you just love Thankgiving traditions!

Thanksgiving Tradition!

Why the Work of Thanksgiving Is Worth It

Thanksgiving is my FAVORITE! it didn’t used to be so—I mean sure, as a child I loved to sing about the great, big turkey down on Grandpa’s farm, but mostly it was just a blip on the radar screen between Happy Halloween and Merry Christmas.

Growing up we’d make the trek to Grandma and Grandpa’s in Cache Valley, which felt like an eternal pilgrimage. . . .[snip]

[T]here was a magnificent feast to behold! Homemade rolls and pies covered every surface, the finest china and polished silver graced white lace tablecloths, and the breezeway pantry was filled with chocolate turkeys, homemade penuche, and dollops of merengue and divinity. The day was spent in prayer, chatter and hours and hours of filling our bellies, letting it settle for a bit, then topping it off again with a swig of Pepsi and “just one more piece of caramel.” We drove home happy, grateful. . . .

The years passed, and before I knew it, over the river and through woods morphed into half a block down the street, as my own parents became host and hostess. Then, they passed the torch to us. And suddenly I became Queen of List Making. Which started me wondering—Is it all worth it? This exhaustive attention to detail for just one simple day?

Right about that time I read an article about a family celebrating Thanksgiving. And though I can’t remember the words that were written, the pictures painted more than a thousand words—people milling about in pajama pants and stained T-shirts, holding paper plates and plastic utensils, standing at the bar around aluminum pans filled with beans and wienies, then gathering around the television to watch football, before figuring out their game plan for hitting the stores at midnight.

The dumbing down of America.

Then I remembered what my Grandma Sybil used to say, “Poor people have poor ways.” Even as a child I knew this meant we become poor when our customs become poor. . . it has nothing to do with money.

And suddenly, there was clarity. The fresh flowers and pressed linens . . the napkin rings and silver pitchers. . . the washed windows and scrubbed baseboards and nine eggs and six cubes of butter in every batch of rolls. . . those weren’t just exhausting “details.” They were gifts.

Gifts from pilgrims who found themselves alive and well in a new home and declared a celebration was in order. Gifts from pioneer ancestors who swept their dirt floors one last time before they were driven from their homes. Gifts from grandmothers who brought out the red velvet covered sterling and taught a child how to polish and shine each piece and from parents who demonstrated through word and action never to treat sacred things lightly.

An abundance from God, Family and Country, wrapped up in culture and tied with tradition, which must never be replaced with pajama pants and paper plates.

Bless every one of their hearts, for they have filled my cup to overflowing. And as I lay me down to sleep, I give thanks that no matter how small my bank account, I will never, ever be poor.

http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2012/11/why-the-work-of-thanksgiving-is-worth-it/#more-48231

Obama To Unleash Racial-Preferences Juggernaut

If your organization has a policy or practice that doesn’t benefit minorities equally, watch out: The Obama administration could sue you for racial discrimination under a dubious legal theory that many argue is unconstitutional.

President Obama intends to close “persistent gaps” between whites and minorities in everything from credit scores and homeownership to test scores and graduation rates.

His remedy — short of new affirmative-action legislation — is to sue financial companies, schools and employers based on “disparate impact” complaints — a stealthy way to achieve racial preferences, opposed 2 to 1 by Americans.

Under this broad interpretation of civil-rights law, virtually any organization can be held liable for race bias if it maintains a policy that negatively impacts one racial group more than another — even if it has no racist motive and applies the policy evenly across all groups.

Equal Outcomes

This means that even race-neutral rules for mortgage underwriting and consumer credit scoring potentially can be deemed racist if prosecutors can produce statistics showing they tend to result in adverse outcomes for blacks or Latinos.

Already, Attorney General Eric Holder has used the club of disparate-impact lawsuits to beat almost $500 million in loan set-asides and other claims out of the nation’s largest banks.

In addition to the financial settlements — which include millions in funding for affordable-housing activists — Bank of America, Wells Fargo and SunTrust have all agreed to adopt more minority-friendly lending policies.

Though the administration seeks equal credit outcomes, regardless of risk, across the entire banking industry, it doesn’t have to sue every bank to achieve its goal. As a prophylactic against similar prosecution, IBD has learned the American Bankers Association recently advised its 5,000 members to give rejected minority loan applicants a “second look,” which it says “can result in suggested changes in underwriting standards.”

Also, the administration sent a chill through the financial industry earlier this year when it announced its new credit watchdog agency will join Justice, as well as HUD, in using the disparate-impact doctrine to enforce civil-rights laws.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau chief Richard Cordray warned companies the agency will “protect consumers from unfair lending practices — as well as those that have a disparate impact on communities of color.” He added:

“That doctrine is applicable for all of the credit markets we touch, including mortgages, student loans, credit cards and auto loans,” as well as small-business loans.

Hiring Criminals

For the first time, the nation’s consumer credit reporting agencies, including Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, will come under federal review. CFPB examiners will subject these companies and others to an “effects test” to make sure credit transactions are racially balanced.

Those who reject minority applicants for credit cards or charge them higher loan rates had better be prepared to prove to Cordray’s diversity cops they aren’t racist. Many have already decided it’s safer to give black and Latino applicants preferential treatment, which of course is racism of another kind.

Other targets of the administration’s “racial justice” juggernaut include: standardized academic testing, professional licensing examinations, employee background checks, voter ID requirements, student disciplinary codes, prison sentencing guidelines — you name it.

The goal is to equalize outcomes based on race without regard for performance or merit.

According to Roger Clegg, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, President Obama is committed to “aggressively pushing the ‘disparate impact’ approach to civil-rights enforcement” through which “the federal government insists that the numbers come out right — even if it means that policemen and firefighters cannot be tested, that companies should hire criminals, that loans must be made to the uncreditworthy, and that — I kid you not — whether pollution is acceptable depends on whether dangerous chemicals are spread in a racially balanced way.”

Last month, moreover, the Education Department pressured the Oakland school district to impose “targeted reductions” in the number of black students suspended.

The department charged that Oakland’s disciplinary policy has a “disparate impact” on African-American students, who are suspended at higher rates for violent behavior.

The Oakland case is the first of some 20 such investigations of school districts across the U.S. “The Obama administration is pressuring school districts not to suspend violent or disruptive black students if they have already disciplined ‘too many’ black students,” said Competitive Enterprise Institute counsel Hans Bader.

Education is also investigating a “disparate impact” complaint recently filed by the NAACP alleging the entrance exam used by selective New York City high schools illegally discriminates against blacks.

Through disparate impact suits, Holder has forced banks to adopt racial lending quotas and even open branches in minority neighborhoods.

He’s authorized five more lending-discrimination suits, while opening another 30 investigations against banks. And he’s just getting warmed up.

“The question is not does (affirmative action) end, but when does it begin?” Holder said in February at a Columbia University forum. “When do people of color truly get the benefits to which they are entitled?”

Banks had hoped the Supreme Court would declare his actions unconstitutional.

But a landmark disparate-impact case was scuttled at the last minute this year when the petitioner withdrew it under pressure from Holder’s civil-rights chief.

Congress is probing the unusual arm-twisting — which included what appears to be a corrupt quid-pro-quo bargain — that led to the case being dropped.

Most agree that had the Magner v. Gallagher case gone forward, the high court would have struck down the use of disparate impact and effectively shut down the administration’s witch hunt against lenders.

On the campaign trail, Obama was mum about his disparate-impact strategy and rarely talks at all about race.

He’s no doubt aware of polling in his last presidential bid which found 56% of voters harbored fears he’d favor African-Americans. But his 2006 writings inform us.

To close the “stubborn gap that remains between the living standards of black, Latino and white workers,” then-Sen. Obama proposed “completing the unfinished business of the civil rights movement — namely, enforcing nondiscrimination laws in such basic areas as employment, housing and education.”

He added: “The government, through its prosecutors and its courts, should step in to make things right.”

http://news.investors.com/print/ibd-editorials-perspective/110812-632759-obama-to-wield-bigger-disparate-impact-club.aspx

Waking Up from the American Dream

A White Nationalist Memo to White Male Republicans

Do you get it yet?

Look, I know you probably despise us. You’ve been told your entire life – by your schools, your churches, and your heroes of sport, screen, and stage – that there is no greater sin than racism. You wanted to be a good person. Heck, you are a good person.

So you treated everyone with respect, no matter where they came from. You figured everyone should have an opportunity. You believed in playing by the rules. You believed in freedom. You believed in America. You thought that what makes this country great is that everyone, from whatever background, can make it together. You may have even voted for Obama that first time, despite some policy disagreements, because you really wanted to believe that race is irrelevant, that skin tone doesn’t matter, that the only colors we need are Red, White, and Blue.

You’re a conservative, maybe even a libertarian. But you don’t want to make “arbitrary” distinctions between people. After all, we’re all children of our Creator. So you gave Obama a chance.

Unfortunately, instead of hope and change, you got a national health care program that frightened you and would increase your health care costs. You got more racial division, not less. The economy didn’t improve – in some places, it got worse. There was a huge stimulus program – but you can’t say what all that money was spent on. And because you care about your country, you worry about the debt, and federal spending, and fiscal responsibility.

So you supported Mitt Romney. Perhaps you even participated in a Tea Party rally or two a few years ago, careful to stick to fiscal issues rather than divisive social concerns. You were embarrassed by how white the rallies were and did your best to bring in racial minorities. You liked Herman Cain. You liked Allen West. You wanted to get blacks off the Democratic Plantation.

The economy was collapsing so you supported a campaign focused on growing the pot for everyone. You said a rising tide lifts all boats. You talked about jobs, about growth, about making America proud again. You talked about how blacks are hit more than anyone else from the bad economy, how Hispanics in Nevada have been devastated by crushing unemployment, how a culture of dependency is taking root in entire communities. And you believed the conservative pundits that told you that America was rising, as one, to bring about real change.

And because you’re a patriot, you felt justified in being angry. You felt your blood boil when you read how Americans begging for help as terrorists stormed into our embassy were contemptuously ignored for hours. Your heart broke when you read about the mother of the Navy SEAL crying out in anguish that “Obama murdered my son” and a grieving father at his son’s funeral treated to our buffoon of a Vice President joking about testicles. Your jaw dropped when Bill Clinton gloated that the military is “less racist, less sexist, less homophobic” now that Barack is in charge. You watched in disbelief as the President of the United States palled around with interviewers on hip hop shows like the “Pimp With a Limp” on the anniversary of 9/11 and used former crack dealers turned rappers on the campaign. You knew something was wrong, but come Election Day, we’d “Remember in November” and America would be America again.

And then this.

So you’re probably in a state of shock. They all lied to you. It wasn’t even close. Ohio, Pennsylvania, even Virginia – Virginia! – the great Southern state of Washington, Jefferson, and Lee. All went to Barack Obama. And as you watched the gloating on MSNBC, the victory parties in the major cities, the undisguised loathing for you at the likes of the Huffington Post, or Gawker, or Slate, you felt a sick feeling in your gut that something was deeply wrong.

Mitt Romney won the same share of the white vote as Ronald Reagan. It didn’t matter. You worked your butt off at your church, your charity group, your neighbors. It was undone by some Somalis who can’t speak English that the Democrats bussed in and told to vote “Brown all the way down,” and they weren’t just referring to the Democratic candidate’s name.

Take a good, hard look at those Obama victory rallies. They are celebrating your dispossession, your displacement from the country your ancestors built. They don’t even disguise their hatred. And even though you don’t think in terms of race, they do.

Michael Moore called it a victory over hate. Howard Fineman gloated that America was turning it’s back on tradition, and thank God. Twitter erupted with black voters screeching in triumph, bragging that America belongs to them now.

Even the President of the United States said “voting is the best revenge.” Revenge for what? Aren’t we all in this together? Doesn’t this country belong to all of us?

Do you get it yet? It’s revenge against you – for existing. It’s revenge for “racism,” for conservatism, for success, for being strong, and proud and accomplished. It’s vengeance against the America that once was. They have their revenge for the fact that your country existed. Barack Obama is President of these states united, and was re-elected because, not in spite of the fact that he despises everything America was.

Look, I was like you. I was a patriotic, normal Republican. I knocked on doors for city council. I wanted Colin Powell to be President, because “a black Republican will help everyone get beyond race!” I was there too.

And then I started looking around.

It doesn’t matter if black unemployment is skyrocketing and their communities are devastated – they vote black. It doesn’t matter if Nevada has the worst economy in the country – they vote Hispanic. It doesn’t matter if candidates are running for re-election from the Mayo Clinic, or Congressmen think islands tip over if too many people are on them, or if blacks are worse off, by every measure, when African-Americans on in charge. It simply doesn’t matter.

There are vast swaths of the country where elections, policies, and good government simply no longer matter. Camden, NJ, Detroit, MI, Birmingham, AL, and other once proud metropolis are shattered wastelands, and they are lost – forever – regardless of how bad they get. Let’s make it perfectly clear – George W. Bush was probably the last Republican President this country will ever see. Once you go black, the country doesn’t come back.

Perhaps you think it will all be OK if the GOP just wins the Hispanic vote. After all, Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove tell you they are socially conservative and patriotic. Unfortunately, they favor Obamacare even more than they favor unrestricted immigration. They have their problems with President Obama – because he doesn’t support immigration enough. If you want to win the minority vote, you have to become more liberal on economic issues. Even the Beltway conservatives know it. And despite what your ministers and priests tell you about “Christian Hispanics,” they have higher rates of illegitimate births and abortions too.

Well, c’est la vie. America is still America. Government isn’t everything right? You can still have a decent life in this country, right?

Right?

You probably have a kid or two. Do you have any illusions about what he is learning in school? He is being taught that white people are uniquely evil, that he is the recipient of unearned “privilege” because he was born, and that to be a moral person, he has to turn his back on his ancestors – i.e. you. If you’re a Christian, you’re faithfully taking your child to church once a week – and five days a week he’s being taught about the glories of homosexuality, or the wonders of Islam, or how black people single-handedly built Western Civilization. None of it makes sense – except that it is all targeted against you.

Let’s say you send him to college. Well, you can look forward to paying off student loan debt for the rest of your life. It would be great if you could get free money for college on account of your race, but you’re white, so no one cares about you. This assumes your child can even get into a decent school, as every major school in the country fiercely defends anti-white racial preferences.

What will he learn there? Well, he will be carefully taught to despise you, that your religion is nonsense, and that his heritage is evil. Professors admit this is their job. But the fiscal crunch will cut the fat, right? Actually, schools are cutting mathematics and serious programs, while shoveling more money to anti-white programs. The school will pay tens of thousands of dollars of your tuition money to bring in guys like Tim Wise, who will gloat that “CONSERVATIVE WHITE PEOPLE, yr nation has left the building.” And all these professors, and anti-racist guest lecturers, and professional “activists” for causes you’ve never heard of will make more money than you ever will – and you’re paying their salaries.

Now that you’ve bankrupted yourself and burdened your child with student loans, it’s time to get a job. Unfortunately, there are few to be had. The government is still hiring, but unfortunately, your “white privilege” doesn’t extend to having a job.

You know who else defends them? Corporate America. The 1% is actually pushing anti-white racial preferences more than the universities. Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, Microsoft, and all the great “job producers” that you’ve been defending? They despise you, give money to your enemies, and discriminate against you because you’re white. When your right to be treated equally went before the Supreme Court, sixty-eight Fortune 500 companies filed amicus briefs to make sure you and your children can’t get jobs. Those are the people you want to give tax cuts.

Want to have a small business? Better not try to do anything with the government or from federal funds – those are set aside for minorities. Also, any of your nonwhite competitors get special financial benefits for operating so good luck competing. Incidentally, Barack Obama is going to dump some more regulations and taxes on you, especially through Obamacare. The Secretary of the Treasury doesn’t have to pay taxes, but, well, you do.

Well, maybe you want to be a cop or a fireman then. You can’t. Those jobs are set aside for minorities, even those who can’t pass the test. Especially those who can’t pass the test. Remember those heroic NYC firefighters on 9/11? Well, your government sued them for being too white and racist. Even dying for your masters doesn’t get you anything.

Let’s say against all odds, you manage to get a job. Well, better keep your head down. You never know when a co-worker will accuse you of racism or sexism. There doesn’t need to be a reason – it could just be out of spite. Or because you’re Republican. Or because you reported them for stealing or incompetence. If anything, count yourself lucky they don’t shoot you – the media will report that you, as a racist, had it coming. Every moment, of every day, you are on the brink of professional and personal destruction, because you are white.

At least you can come home to a loving family right? Well, if your children watch television, they are being carefully instructed to disregard anything you teach them. Even children’s programming executives laugh about how what they do is a “fuck you to the right wing.” When they grow up, they’ll worship celebrities of dubious talent who mock and despise you. You’re surrounded by filth – you can’t go to a restaurant or a store without background music from some bimbo relying on autotune to “sing” about S&M or threesomes.

Of course, that’s assuming your kids aren’t another victim of “random” crime by “youths.”

As a father, sitcoms portray you as an idiot. As a husband, commercials mock you as sexually undesirable because of your race. As a white man, movies openly call for you to be killed. And if by chance you do something admirable, why, Hollywood simply changes the race.

And what about your wife? Of course you love her. But what is the culture telling her? If she leaves you, she gets your kids, your money, and any future earnings. The culture tells her she has no obligation to you or your children. The law rewards her if she abandons you. The media tells you the real problem is a “war on women.” Maybe you’ve got a great girl, but just take a glance around the broken families and shattered men around this country, and ask yourself if the United States is a fit place for decent men and decent families.

Starting to get it yet? Every moment of every day, you have to bend the knee. Then, maybe, they’ll let you have your job so you can pay taxes to sustain people who hate you. Maybe, you’ll have the privilege of working long hours to pay the mortgage, which costs you more, because you’re white. Maybe, you can spend a few years with the children that the entire society is trying to turn against you. Maybe you can have a dinner with the woman you love and hope that she can ignore the culture telling her she’s a traitor to her sex by staying with you. Maybe you can avoid the doom that hangs over your head every second.

And then, you can die. In fact, hurry up and do it. The Democrats are more becoming bolder in just telling you these things.

The worst part is you had it easy compared to your kids.

Then, when it’s all over, your life wasn’t nothing. It was less than nothing. You actively contributed to your own destruction. Despite your surrender and respectability, you’ll be remembered as a racist, a relic of an evil society.

Want to change this? Well, you will never have the possibility of Republicans fixing the problem for you. Ever again.

This isn’t Network. I’m not going to tell you I don’t know how to make things better. I’m not going to tell you to get angry. I know you’re angry and it hasn’t done a damn bit of good for you or anyone else.

I’m going tell you what the solution is.

Everything you loved about what used to be your country came from one group of people. It’s the group you belong to. It’s the white race. And it’s not an accident that the same people who hate your country, your religion, and your family hate your race more than anything.

You’re a white man. “American” doesn’t mean anything anymore. If anything, citizenship is actually a burden. As a white American, you are a second-class citizen in jobs, education, and government benefits. No one cares about you and no one ever will. Those in power will deny that your suffering even exists. So why are you fighting for these people?

The nation you loved is still there. But it’s not in the flag of a government that hates you or in the guns that serve people who don’t care about you. It’s in the faces of the white people that built this country and that sustain it today. That’s what you have to fight for.

You need to fight for a country of your own. We need revolution if ordinary people anytime, anywhere are to have anything even close to a moral and pleasurable life. And it makes more sense than spending your rapidly diminishing days shuffling through this horrifying nightmare that used to be your country.

You aren’t alone. We’re fighting for it right now. I can’t force you to join us. I don’t know where you are in your life.

But I want you to know one thing. You can’t pretend you don’t know anymore.

You can’t kid around with talk about “taking back the country,” or “freedom,” or “liberty,” or the “Real America.” This is the Real America now. This is freedom. This is what it led to. This is the only thing it could have led to. What happened to the American Dream? It came true. “Equality” is being taken to its logical conclusion – and all you can ever hope for is serving the people who hate you.

You can’t pretend this is still your country or that you are a free man. You aren’t.

You can’t pretend that you can keep playing by the rules and somehow win. You won’t.

I’m not saying you need to drop everything. I’m not pretending I know exactly what to do. But I’m saying you need to remind yourself each morning that you are a slave and people who hate you rule you. I’m saying you need to recognize that America today is a filthy lie, the most vile and despicable fiction ever foisted upon decent people. I’m saying everything good and generous about you is being used to kill you. I’m saying there are people out there like us who really care about you and want to help you. Your government and your society does not.

You can ignore me. Wave the American flag and pretend everything is going to be OK. But it won’t be. Turn on the TV. Listen to the radio. Look – really look ­– at the culture that surrounds you. I think you know it too.

Do you get it yet? America, your America, is finished. But you don’t have to be. It’s time to fight for what comes next. It’s time to fight for a country of our own.

It’s time to stop being Americans. It’s time to start being White Men again.

What Are You Prepared To Do?

White 59% Romney
Black 93% Obama
Latino 71% Obama
Asian 73% Obama

The End of European America

http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2012/11/the-end-of-european-america/

Russian Nationalists Mark Unity Day With Rallies

MOSCOW — Police in the Russian capital say some 6,000 people have participated in a march of nationalists to mark the National Unity Day holiday, one of dozens of similar events across the country.

The rallies — both sanctioned and unsanctioned — were being held under the title “Russian March.”

Organizers of the sanctioned rally in Moscow claimed that as many as 20,000 people participated in that event.

Some 25 marchers were reportedly detained in the capital for wearing banned Nazi insignias, and police reported that some marchers set of fireworks, flares, and smoke bombs.

It was the first time the authorities allowed the march to proceed in the center of Moscow.

“They only hear us when there are a lot of us, when we take to the streets,” one of the organizers of the Moscow rally, Vladimir Tor, said of President Vladimir Putin’s government. “Unfortunately, our democratic system is ruined. The country lacks democratic institutions. The [Central Election Commission] has become a band of falsifiers and consequently the president and the Duma are only conditionally legitimate. This is a very hard situation. At this time, Russian people need to unite and create their own civil society institutions, parallel to democratic institutions.”

Tor also repeated the nationalists’ call for restricting immigration from Central Asia.

“We demand that the wave of immigration from Central Asia is stopped,” Tor said. “It’s essential to implement a visa regime with the countries of Central Asia and to halt heroin traffic and other opiate traffic from Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and other Central Asian countries.”

Prominent anti-Kremlin blogger Aleksei Navalny participated in the Moscow demonstration.

In the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, some 90 marchers were detained at an unsanctioned rally.

Other arrests were reported at an event in Novokuznetsk.

Some 30 people were detained for conducting an unsanctioned rally in the Tatarstan capital, Kazan.

About 100 people marched in a sanctioned march in Pskov under slogans such as “Russian Power To Russia” and “The Future Belongs To Us.”

The ruling United Russia party was also holding events in many cities with the participation of local authorities.

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill led a service in a cathedral in Moscow’s Kremlin.

http://www.rferl.org/content/russian-nationalists-rallies-unity-day-detentions/24760087.html

Yea for ‘equal outcomes’!

Hartford Schools, Police Sign Agreement To Curb Student Arrests

Police Chief James Rovella and Superintendent Christina Kishimoto have signed a document that promises to reduce the number of city students who are arrested at school and cast into the court system for minor offenses.

City officials and juvenile advocates said they hope the agreement can help curb the incarceration of Hartford’s youth.

“This has been very important to me,” Kishimoto said. “I don’t want any of my kids having an experience with the police on a negative level.”

Hartford’s agreement is based on a model memorandum of understanding that has been distributed by the Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee, a panel under the state Office of Policy and Management that has been among several groups aiming to reform the juvenile justice system in Connecticut.

Federal law requires states to address the disproportionate number of minorities, compared to white youth, who come into contact with the juvenile courts.

The two biggest feeders into the state’s juvenile justice system are Hartford and Bridgeport. One analysis in Connecticut found that about 40 percent of juvenile arrests referred to court were rooted in school incidents, officials said, including many cases where punishment might have otherwise been counseling or a sitdown with the principal.

“A lot of them were for fairly minor stuff, like swearing,” said William Carbone, executive director of the judicial branch’s Court Support Services Division. Other examples include carrying cigarettes in one’s pocket, wearing a hat and refusing to remove it, and a scuffle.

“Kids bump into each other, push each other and no one’s hurt — there’s no need for the courts to get involved in that,” Carbone said. “Kids live up to… societal expectations. And what that often means is that the behavior escalates” if they are labeled as criminals.

“It disrupts your family relationships, it disrupts your school,” said Martha Stone, executive director of the Center for Children’s Advocacy, a nonprofit legal group affiliated with the University of Connecticut School of Law in Hartford.

“Usually, the kids need services,” Stone said. “They don’t need incarceration unless it’s the most serious juvenile offenses.”

A year and a half ago, the Center for Children’s Advocacy, working with the Center for Children’s Law and Policy in Washington, D.C., organized a group that includes leaders from the Hartford school system, the city and police department, the state’s judicial branch and the probation department to track the high number of school-based arrests in the city.

From March to June 2011, there were 113 arrests of Hartford public school students that were referred to court, according to Stone. All but one were Latinos and African Americans. Stone said arrests have since declined.

During the last school year, from September 2011 to June 2012, there were 141 court referrals to juvenile court for Hartford residents who were arrested at school, data from the judicial branch show. Among those referrals, 117 of the arrests were at Hartford schools.

Third-degree assault, which is typically a fight, was one of the most common charges, said Cathy Foley Geib, manager of clinical and educational services for the court support services division. Others were second-degree breach of peace, threatening, criminal trespass — or being somewhere in the school where a student wasn’t allowed — and disorderly conduct.

Hartford Public High School had 26 court-referred arrests, the highest number among city schools. There were 18 such arrests at Weaver High, 15 at Bulkeley High and 13 at Rawson, a K-8 school.

Hartford’s memorandum of agreement outlines a graduated response model in which schools “should involve the police as a last line of defense” after first opting for in-school intervention for misbehavior such as defying school rules, truancy and harassment.

“HPD should only be involved if the misconduct rises to the level of a criminal violation,” the agreement states. “Involvement of the police does not necessarily mean arrest and referral to court.”
Hartford Schools, Police Sign Agreement To Curb Student Arrests

“Whenever possible, students should be taken into custody out of sight and sound of other students” if police officers must make an arrest at school, according to the document.

Court support services, the state Department of Children and Families and the Department of Education are funding a program that trains school staff on behavioral interventions and how to recognize mental health issues instead of resorting to law enforcement, Foley Geib said.

The School-Based Diversion Initiative is at Hartford Public and Weaver this year after being implemented in communities such as Bridgeport, East Hartford and Southington.

Judicial and probation officials have also called on police departments across Connecticut to seek alternatives, such as a town’s juvenile review board or social services, before seeking court punishment for minor offenses.

Statewide, more than 300 juvenile cases have been returned to local police over the past year with the message that “this does not rise to the level” of the courts, Carbone said.

In Hartford, there have been only four court referrals for city students during the first six weeks of the current school year, Foley Geib said. “It’s too early to say what that means.”

Mayor Pedro Segarra said the memorandum between the schools and police “will go a long way to ensure that our kids are held to a certain level of accountability [without] criminalizing the conduct as the first option, because the consequences are far too great.”

http://www.courant.com/community/hartford/hc-hartford-juvenile-arrests-1102-20121102,0,1601352,print.story