Teacher Fired For Anti-Semitic Comments At 'Occupy' Rally
By Claire Gordon, Posted Oct 19th 2011 @ 4:44PM
Text Size A A A 6623250621inShare.9919 CommentsThe Occupy Wall Street camp at Zucotti Park harkens to the early kibbutzes of Israel. It's a self-sustaining scrappy community, with members eating, sleeping, and living collectively, braced against harsh climes, while dreaming up and playing at a better way to live. But in another sense, they aren't like kibbutzes at all. In the sense that few kibbutniks ever harbored unpleasant feelings towards Zionist Jews, given that they were them.
This week, a Los Angeles school district fired a substitute teacher for anti-Semitic remarks she made at a recent Occupy Wall Street offshoot in Los Angeles. In an interview Oct. 12 with Reason.tv, Patricia McAllister (pictured above) said, "I think that the Zionist Jews who are running these big banks and our Federal Reserve, which is not run by the federal government, they need to be run out of this country."
No Tolerance For Intolerance
The L.A. schools Superintendant John Deasy said he respected that these were McAllister's private opinions expressed in her private time as a private citizen, but he nonetheless said in a statement Tuesday that it was important to emphasize "to our students, who watch us and look to us for guidance, to be role models and to represent the ideals by which LAUSD lives, that we will never stand for behavior that is disrespectful, intolerant or discriminatory."
As a day-to-day substitute teacher, McAllister was an at-will employee, which means her employer could discharge her "for good cause, for bad cause, or no cause at all." It did.
That same day, approximately 200 protesters, according to the Los Angeles Times, marched to the Los Angeles Unified School district headquarters to protest budget cuts and layoffs under the banner "Occupy LAUSD."
There, in another interview, McAllister defended her remarks to local TV station KTLA.
By Claire Gordon, Posted Oct 19th 2011 @ 4:44PM
Text Size A A A 6623250621inShare.9919 CommentsThe Occupy Wall Street camp at Zucotti Park harkens to the early kibbutzes of Israel. It's a self-sustaining scrappy community, with members eating, sleeping, and living collectively, braced against harsh climes, while dreaming up and playing at a better way to live. But in another sense, they aren't like kibbutzes at all. In the sense that few kibbutniks ever harbored unpleasant feelings towards Zionist Jews, given that they were them.
This week, a Los Angeles school district fired a substitute teacher for anti-Semitic remarks she made at a recent Occupy Wall Street offshoot in Los Angeles. In an interview Oct. 12 with Reason.tv, Patricia McAllister (pictured above) said, "I think that the Zionist Jews who are running these big banks and our Federal Reserve, which is not run by the federal government, they need to be run out of this country."
No Tolerance For Intolerance
The L.A. schools Superintendant John Deasy said he respected that these were McAllister's private opinions expressed in her private time as a private citizen, but he nonetheless said in a statement Tuesday that it was important to emphasize "to our students, who watch us and look to us for guidance, to be role models and to represent the ideals by which LAUSD lives, that we will never stand for behavior that is disrespectful, intolerant or discriminatory."
As a day-to-day substitute teacher, McAllister was an at-will employee, which means her employer could discharge her "for good cause, for bad cause, or no cause at all." It did.
That same day, approximately 200 protesters, according to the Los Angeles Times, marched to the Los Angeles Unified School district headquarters to protest budget cuts and layoffs under the banner "Occupy LAUSD."
There, in another interview, McAllister defended her remarks to local TV station KTLA.
