(no subject)
DISCLAIMER - I don't personally know any of the people involved in this story, despite living around the road from the main woman. My opinions are based purely on what made it onto the news.
On September 4th this year, Christchurch was rocked by a reasonably major earthquake. There was huge damage and downright destruction in some places. We lost power, water, and for a little while, even the phone lines were down. In the midst of all the chaos, small community centers were established for people to stay in if their house was uninhabitable, or if they were just too scared to be by themselves.
On the news, a couple of days after the quake, there was a small article about a family of 33 who had been asked to leave a community center for reasons unexplained. Nothing further was said, and to be honest, if you weren't obsessively following the news for any and all mention of the quake the way I was, you might have even missed it.
The next night, a woman gets on the news, and she's clearly very worked up, and what she has to say is that she's the woman who got kicked out, and that she got kicked out because she and her seven children are black.
Let's stop and take stock before I go on. The initial news piece makes no mention of race whatsoever, so if she hadn't put her hand up and waved the race card around, no one would have been any the wiser.
Over the next couple of days, more of the story starts to come out, both via the news and through various messageboards. Firstly, they weren't squeaky clean, the ones who got kicked out. It's made clear that their behavior wasn't acceptable, but they still don't tell us what they actually did.
A politician from the Maori Party gets on the news and her message is, "I don't know what happened but I'm VERY ANGRY, and as soon as I get the facts we'll be demanding an apology." Well done. You're a politician, and you've just gone on the record stating that you don't know what went on, but that you're determined to get an apology from someone regardless. You know what this is? It's the Maori party having another cry, looking for their opportunity to jump out of the bushes and claim oppression over a race of people who are in the minority of the population, but the majority of crime, welfare and unemployment.
For a long time it's been like this. You hear stories, you know? About a "white" person and a maori person walking into a job interview and the maori person automatically getting the job because they're a minority, despite the "white" person being the better fit for the job. There's the whole hoo hah with the Treaty of Waitangi, and how apparently the white man stole their land, but I say to that, I am not that white man. I didn't do anything to the Maori people, and I don't think it's fair to insist that millions of innocent people be expected to pay for the sins of the father.
It's not just jobs, either. It's the same with formal, higher education. People like me, get warned that it doesn't matter how good your grades might be, universities have to hold a certain number of places for the maori people, and I'm not sure if my guidance counselor was pulling my leg or exaggerating or what, but the fact that she even said it at all speaks volumes about the way race equality is perceived in this country.
But anyway. The earthquake saga goes on, as it does with any attention seeking drama whore like the one who put herself on the news, because she can't let sleeping dogs lie. She tells everyone the the mayor, Bob Parker, called her despicable, and she wants everyone to know what a bad man he is. "He called me despicable! He called my children despicable!"
Do you know what he actually said? "I find their behavior frankly despicable." (NB NOT A DIRECT QUOTE but the meaning is the same).
And later it comes out WHY they were kicked out of the community center. Firstly, this woman's SEVEN children, were running amok. The center staff tried on a number of occasions to quiet them down, but they refused to listen, even though they were disturbing other people in the center, and the mother got quite angry at the staff for daring to say anything to her children.
Meanwhile, Grandpa is a member of Black Power. For those of you who aren't from NZ but are reading this, Black Power is the closest approximation we have to a real gang, kind of like the cast of Shortland Street and Gary McCormick are the closest things we have to real celebrities. Viva NZ, not. Black Power is a notorious Maori gang, renowned for their antisocial behavior. Grandpa says, "well, I left my gang patch in the car."
To me, that's crap. To have earned that gang patch in the first place, he must have had to have committed some truly heinous acts - I don't pretend to know specifics, but I've heard enough to know they're BAD. And I don't see why someone who willingly commits atrocities against a community, can turn around and expect that same community to support him when the tables are turned. It's not an eye for an eye or anything, but it should have been "how sad too bad, you should have though about that when you were earning your gang patch" or something to that effect.
I don't believe that applies to the children, however. They were just poorly behaved, they weren't gang members. Just putting that out there.
Then add to the mix, the fact that there were THIRTY THREE of them, and they refused to be split up to lighten the load on the community centers who were, as I understand it (but I'm probably going to get proved wrong) entirely run by volunteers. I find it hard to believe that in a family of 33 people there wasn't some small room where a few of the truly homeless could have bunked. It's not like the whole city fell down - my street, for example, is completely untouched.
Then it comes out that the older members of this 33 strong family are using gang intimidation tactics on the other patrons of the center. For what? The best blankets? Anyway they're frightening and intimidating the other people, and generally creating an HORRIFIC atmosphere. THAT'S why they were asked to leave. NOT because they were black.
They refused to leave. On what grounds? The mother, the woman who got on the news, said her house was uninhabitable. The council workers went around and checked it out, and she got a green card, meaning her house was fine to live in. She was asked to leave and refused on the grounds that a pipe had broken in her front yard, and she couldn't keep her kids from playing in the sewage.
What happened to NO? So her discipline problem has to become fear, disruption and intimidation for all these other people? The upshot of this is that she says she won't leave until the Red Cross has checked her house out. I don't know why she thought the bandaid boys would know any better than the council worker engineers, but whatever. The Red Cross trotted out the next day and pronounced her house, no surprises, fit to live in. And she still refused to go. That's when they called the police and served them with a trespass notice, giving them something like 12 hours to vacate.
And the Maori Party wants an apology? For what? Protecting the rights of the other people in that center? I say, fuck off. And furthermore, how the fuck can they call themselves a POLITICAL PARTY? Pity party is more fucking like it. Call me crazy but I thought political parties were supposed to be based on political opinions and policies, not on what color your skin is. The thing that drives me the craziest is that they say they're working toward equality. They don't want equality. They want handouts. They want to run the country and drive the rest of us out. I don't think we're going to have anything like true equality until we stop with this "oh, woe is the Maori" bullshit and start believing that the past is the past, and now is now, and now we are all people, and no one is better than anyone else.
So fuck this country. Fuck it and its stupid shaky ground, its whining crybaby racist politics and its namby pamby reporting who allowed this to get as far as it did.
On September 4th this year, Christchurch was rocked by a reasonably major earthquake. There was huge damage and downright destruction in some places. We lost power, water, and for a little while, even the phone lines were down. In the midst of all the chaos, small community centers were established for people to stay in if their house was uninhabitable, or if they were just too scared to be by themselves.
On the news, a couple of days after the quake, there was a small article about a family of 33 who had been asked to leave a community center for reasons unexplained. Nothing further was said, and to be honest, if you weren't obsessively following the news for any and all mention of the quake the way I was, you might have even missed it.
The next night, a woman gets on the news, and she's clearly very worked up, and what she has to say is that she's the woman who got kicked out, and that she got kicked out because she and her seven children are black.
Let's stop and take stock before I go on. The initial news piece makes no mention of race whatsoever, so if she hadn't put her hand up and waved the race card around, no one would have been any the wiser.
Over the next couple of days, more of the story starts to come out, both via the news and through various messageboards. Firstly, they weren't squeaky clean, the ones who got kicked out. It's made clear that their behavior wasn't acceptable, but they still don't tell us what they actually did.
A politician from the Maori Party gets on the news and her message is, "I don't know what happened but I'm VERY ANGRY, and as soon as I get the facts we'll be demanding an apology." Well done. You're a politician, and you've just gone on the record stating that you don't know what went on, but that you're determined to get an apology from someone regardless. You know what this is? It's the Maori party having another cry, looking for their opportunity to jump out of the bushes and claim oppression over a race of people who are in the minority of the population, but the majority of crime, welfare and unemployment.
For a long time it's been like this. You hear stories, you know? About a "white" person and a maori person walking into a job interview and the maori person automatically getting the job because they're a minority, despite the "white" person being the better fit for the job. There's the whole hoo hah with the Treaty of Waitangi, and how apparently the white man stole their land, but I say to that, I am not that white man. I didn't do anything to the Maori people, and I don't think it's fair to insist that millions of innocent people be expected to pay for the sins of the father.
It's not just jobs, either. It's the same with formal, higher education. People like me, get warned that it doesn't matter how good your grades might be, universities have to hold a certain number of places for the maori people, and I'm not sure if my guidance counselor was pulling my leg or exaggerating or what, but the fact that she even said it at all speaks volumes about the way race equality is perceived in this country.
But anyway. The earthquake saga goes on, as it does with any attention seeking drama whore like the one who put herself on the news, because she can't let sleeping dogs lie. She tells everyone the the mayor, Bob Parker, called her despicable, and she wants everyone to know what a bad man he is. "He called me despicable! He called my children despicable!"
Do you know what he actually said? "I find their behavior frankly despicable." (NB NOT A DIRECT QUOTE but the meaning is the same).
And later it comes out WHY they were kicked out of the community center. Firstly, this woman's SEVEN children, were running amok. The center staff tried on a number of occasions to quiet them down, but they refused to listen, even though they were disturbing other people in the center, and the mother got quite angry at the staff for daring to say anything to her children.
Meanwhile, Grandpa is a member of Black Power. For those of you who aren't from NZ but are reading this, Black Power is the closest approximation we have to a real gang, kind of like the cast of Shortland Street and Gary McCormick are the closest things we have to real celebrities. Viva NZ, not. Black Power is a notorious Maori gang, renowned for their antisocial behavior. Grandpa says, "well, I left my gang patch in the car."
To me, that's crap. To have earned that gang patch in the first place, he must have had to have committed some truly heinous acts - I don't pretend to know specifics, but I've heard enough to know they're BAD. And I don't see why someone who willingly commits atrocities against a community, can turn around and expect that same community to support him when the tables are turned. It's not an eye for an eye or anything, but it should have been "how sad too bad, you should have though about that when you were earning your gang patch" or something to that effect.
I don't believe that applies to the children, however. They were just poorly behaved, they weren't gang members. Just putting that out there.
Then add to the mix, the fact that there were THIRTY THREE of them, and they refused to be split up to lighten the load on the community centers who were, as I understand it (but I'm probably going to get proved wrong) entirely run by volunteers. I find it hard to believe that in a family of 33 people there wasn't some small room where a few of the truly homeless could have bunked. It's not like the whole city fell down - my street, for example, is completely untouched.
Then it comes out that the older members of this 33 strong family are using gang intimidation tactics on the other patrons of the center. For what? The best blankets? Anyway they're frightening and intimidating the other people, and generally creating an HORRIFIC atmosphere. THAT'S why they were asked to leave. NOT because they were black.
They refused to leave. On what grounds? The mother, the woman who got on the news, said her house was uninhabitable. The council workers went around and checked it out, and she got a green card, meaning her house was fine to live in. She was asked to leave and refused on the grounds that a pipe had broken in her front yard, and she couldn't keep her kids from playing in the sewage.
What happened to NO? So her discipline problem has to become fear, disruption and intimidation for all these other people? The upshot of this is that she says she won't leave until the Red Cross has checked her house out. I don't know why she thought the bandaid boys would know any better than the council worker engineers, but whatever. The Red Cross trotted out the next day and pronounced her house, no surprises, fit to live in. And she still refused to go. That's when they called the police and served them with a trespass notice, giving them something like 12 hours to vacate.
And the Maori Party wants an apology? For what? Protecting the rights of the other people in that center? I say, fuck off. And furthermore, how the fuck can they call themselves a POLITICAL PARTY? Pity party is more fucking like it. Call me crazy but I thought political parties were supposed to be based on political opinions and policies, not on what color your skin is. The thing that drives me the craziest is that they say they're working toward equality. They don't want equality. They want handouts. They want to run the country and drive the rest of us out. I don't think we're going to have anything like true equality until we stop with this "oh, woe is the Maori" bullshit and start believing that the past is the past, and now is now, and now we are all people, and no one is better than anyone else.
So fuck this country. Fuck it and its stupid shaky ground, its whining crybaby racist politics and its namby pamby reporting who allowed this to get as far as it did.