Several hundred anti-fascist activists gathered in Lownsdale Square, a small park in downtown Portland, Oregon, on February 8 to oppose a Ku Klux Klan rally organized by Steven Shane Howard, a former imperial wizard of the North Mississippi White Knights. But after local anti-fascist groups mobilized to counterprotest, Howard contacted the Portland Police Bureau to cancel his event. When the KKK didn’t show up, we held a victory party instead.
Unfortunately, while we anti-fascists in Portland danced to a brass band dressed in banana costumes (the beloved Banana Bloc), more than a hundred members of the white nationalist group Patriot Front marched through the National Mall in Washington, DC, wearing white masks and chanting “Reclaim America!” and “Life, liberty, victory!”
In the aftermath, #AntifaTerrorists trended on Twitter. The hashtag tends to emerge when the right has an optics problem and needs to spin the narrative. An optics problem like, for example, white nationalists marching through the nation’s capital.
For all of the right-wing hand-wringing over people dressed in black wielding silly string and oranges, nearly all the domestic terrorists in the United States emerge from the extreme right. A 2019 report from the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism showed that all 50 of the extremist killings in the United States in 2018 had links to right-wing extremists. Since 2001, the extreme right has killed 109 people. Over that same time period, anti-fascists are responsible for zero deaths.
Kaia Rolle was sitting, listening to a school employee read her a story when two officers came in the room to arrest her.
“What are those for?” the 6-year-old girl asked the Orlando police officers.
“They’re for you,” Officer Dennis Turner said about the zip ties, before another officer tightened them around her wrists. Kaia immediately began weeping.
“No … no, don’t put handcuffs on!” she wailed in body camera footage from the arrest, which Kaia’s family shared with the Orlando Sentinel Monday evening. The arrests of the girl and another 6-year-old at Lucious & Emma Nixon Academy in September drew national headlines and widespread condemnation, leading to the officer’s firing.
“Help me, help me, please!” the girl choked out through tears. The officers continued with the arrest. Employees at the Orlando charter school stood by.
After Kaia was placed in a police SUV to be taken to the Juvenile Assessment Center, Officer Turner returned to the school’s office and spoke to administrators, who were concerned about Kaia. He downplayed the juvenile detention center, saying it’s “not like you think.”
He told them he had arrested 6,000 people in his career — the youngest, to that point, was 7. When school employees told him Kaia was 6, not 8 like he thought, he did not seem concerned.
“Now she has broken the record,” he said.
Kaia, a first grader at charter school, had a tantrum earlier in the day where she had kicked and punched three school employees, leading to her arrest on a charge of misdemeanor battery, according to her arrest report. However, by the time Turner and another officer approached Kaia to detain, cuff and arrest her, the girl had calmed down, the video shows.
The school staff member who had been reading to her told Kaia she had to go with the officers, and that her grandmother would pick her up later.
While walking with the officer to the car, Kaia continued to cry, “I don’t wanna go in a police car.”
The second officer, who has not been identified, replied, “You don’t want to? … You have to.”
“Please, give me a second chance,” the girl responded, still crying.
The officers put her in the backseat of the police SUV.
Turner then returned to the school’s office, reminding one employee that he will need a statement from her, and said she will likely get a subpoena. The woman agreed, though she said she was upset.
The arrest report Turner completed said that a member of the school’s faculty, Beverly Stoute, had requested to press charges against Kaia, something the school has denied. The video does not show any staff member attempting to stop the arrest, though several are obviously rattled.
“The restraints, are they necessary?” one school employee asked.
“Yes,” Turner said.
Then, he added: “If she was bigger, she would have been wearing regular handcuffs.”
He then told the school administrators that the youngest person he ever arrested previously was 7 years old, a boy who he had caught stealing at an Albertsons. He said he arrested the boy because he “thought it was a joke" while the other children caught in the act had started crying.
Officials have said that Turner also arrested a 6-year-old boy at Nixon Academy the same day as Kaia for misdemeanor battery in an unrelated incident. However, the boy’s arrest was halted by superiors before the child made it through the full arrest process.
Details about the boy’s arrest have not been made public.
Orlando Police Department officials have said Turner violated agency policy on arresting children younger than 12, which requires officers to get a supervisor’s approval — something Turner did not do. However, his decision was not illegal as Florida currently does not have a minimum age for arrest.
Meralyn Kirkland, Kaia’s grandmother, said she is hoping that when people watch the footage of her granddaughter’s arrest, they will support a proposal to change that law by making 12 the minimum age for arrest. She said she would also like to see school resource officers receive more training and preparation, especially to work with young children.
“I knew that what they did was wrong, but I never knew she was begging for help,“ Kirkland said in an interview Monday night about the video. “I watched her break.”
The body camera footage still upsets her, Kirkland said, especially when Turner “callously” talks about arresting children.
“You’re discussing traumatizing a 6- and 7-year-old — and that’s a boasting right for you?” she said. “These are babies.”
Kirkland said her granddaughter had sleep apnea, which could cause her to act out in school — a condition that Kirkland had repeatedly worked with the school to manage, she said.
Kaia was completely processed at the county Juvenile Assessment Center, where the girl’s mugshot and fingerprints were taken, Kirkland said, adding that employees at the center had to use a step stool so Kaia could reach the camera for the mugshot.
Kaia has since re-enrolled in a private school, after refusing to attend a school with an officer on campus, Kirkland said. She said she worries about how the trauma from the arrest will affect her granddaughter in years to come.
Turner, who was fired days after the arrest became national news, had worked in OPD’s Reserve Unit, which is made up of retired officers who are required to work a certain amount of hours at the agency per month and can pick up extra-duty jobs for pay.
Over the course of Turner’s 23-year tenure at OPD prior to retiring last year, he was disciplined seven times for violations of department policy that ranged from unsafe driving to a child-abuse arrest in which he was accused of injuring his 7-year-old son. He was also accused of sending threatening text messages to his ex-wife in 2009 and racial profiling, records show.
This is uncalled for. #KaiaRolle #BlackLivesMatter
That’s child abuse. Dennis Turner needs to be charged with child abuse. As well as the teacher who called the police. That person needs to be fired and never allowed to be an educator ever again, anywhere.
AND! And are you seriously telling me that in the state of Florida it’s theoretically possible to legally arrest a 5yr old child??? How about a 2yr old who acts up in daycare?? What age is too young? Wow. Wow wow wow. Talk about school-to-prison pipeline.
That’s not a pipeline. It’s a fucking Fisher-Price slide from the playground directly to the jail.
Beverly Stoute was told pressing charges against a child is bad and not to do it and she did it anyway.
Needs to be fired.
Cop there needs to choke on his own tongue and die.
Just because a SMALL child is “acting out” it does not excuse the cop for arresting her as if she were an adult. Black children are never seen as children in the eyes of law enforcement and INjustice court systems for many years, and this situation won’t be the last time either.
Oh my g-d
I’m a babysitter
I’ve been kicked, scratched, strangled, hit, hit with objects, had my stuff destroyed
Not ONCE have I EVER felt the need to ask for ANY kind of backup in dealing with a kid having a tantrum
if you need to call the fucking police to handle a six year old, you should not be working with kids
I’ve also worked with severely developmentally disabled kids who are more at risk of police violence no matter how THEY behave and the point still stands.
there has never been a need to call for any kind of backup
After spending his last day working for Aramark on Tuesday, Lucas Mello said he has never been happier.
When
the 21-year-old UF history junior was hired to work at the Reitz Union
Starbucks owned by Aramark, he said he was not paid for training or
overtime. But he said he was supposed to be. Customers weren’t allowed
to tip.
Nobody taught him to separate milk
types such as soy and dairy in different blenders like when he worked at
a corporate Starbucks in Miami Springs, he said, leaving students
purchasing drinks vulnerable to allergens and contaminants.
Aramark
is a food service giant with a stock value of $7.8 billion, according
to Forbes. It caters to school districts, correctional facilities,
workplaces and universities nationwide. UF is one of the universities it
is partnered with, and all food service locations on campus — excluding
Krishna — are owned and operated by Aramark.
But
allergens aren’t the only thing students have to worry about. Employees
have filed complaints against Aramark for wage theft and withholding
benefits from employees, said Jeremiah Tattersall, a field
representative from North Central Florida’s American Federation of Labor
and Congress of Industrial Organizations.
The
Alligator tried getting in touch with at least 15 Aramark workers for
comment, but they did not speak out for fear of being fired.
Problems with Aramark’s dining experience
Zona Ahmed felt like a fool for purchasing a meal plan.
While
browsing through the vegetarian options at the Fresh Food Company
during Preview, the biology freshman said she felt safe getting a meal
plan because she thought there were options to accommodate her dietary
restriction.
At first Ahmed, 19, said
everything was fine. But a month into her first semester, she said the
vegan options stopped showing up as often in the dining hall.
“I’ve been eating out more often, even with the dining plan,” she said. “It’s not really what it seems.”
Gator Dining’s cheapest
residential meal plan cost $1,765 for a semester that includes 10 meals
per week, which is what Ahmed has. The most expensive residential meal
plan cost $2,300 per semester for unlimited meals every week and extra
Flex Bucks.
Tattersall, who has helped
many Aramark workers file their complaints to the Florida Department of
Labor, said the food provided on campus also isn’t fresh.
The 2019 Food Service Master Plan conducted last Spring through Brailsford & Dunlavey and Petit Consulting confirmed the same. The two services exist to evaluate critical problems on college campuses and offer solutions to fix them.
The
report read that 81 percent of UF students with residential meal plans
were dissatisfied because of the low food quality, and 69 percent said
the disappointment was due to the low food variety — a problem for those
with dietary restrictions.
This is why 52 percent of the meals went unused in Fall 2018, the report read.
Student
satisfaction with Gator Dining is 62 percent, which is below the
national benchmark of 71 percent identified by the National Association
of College and University Food Services, the report read. It suggested
that UF provides healthier food options on campus.
After
analyzing this callout from the report, Aramark might not be the food
service provider anymore, said Curtis Reynolds, the vice president of UF
Business Affairs. He did not name what company may replace it.
The university renewed its 10-year contract with Aramark,
which began in July 2009, to December 2020, Reynolds said. It gives UF
about 10 percent of gross revenues and control over meal prices.
But the contract doesn’t give UF a chance to control Aramark’s food quality, according to the food service master plan report.
Reynolds said UF wants to have higher food quality and will include that in future negotiations.
When
The Alligator asked if UF plans to negotiate more control over the
programs and operations of its food service provider, Reynolds did not
give a direct answer, yelled into the phone and hung up on the reporter.
Problems with wages and labor practices
Tattersall
said the clients he has met with from Aramark said they were initially
told they would work 30 to 35 hours a week. Instead, they work overtime
and are not paid for the extra hours, according to complaints Tattersall
has processed.
The U.S. Department of Labor
mandates that employees who work more than 40 hours a week must be
given time and a half pay. Otherwise, the company is committing wage
theft.
Wage
theft coincides with hour manipulation, in which managers document
fewer hours than the employee actually worked that week, Tattersall
said.
Good Jobs First is a national policy resource center that collected data of Aramark’s offense types. It reported
that Aramark had 24 records of wage and hour violations with a total
penalty of more than $9 million and 40 records of labor relations
violations with a total penalty of $967,042 since 2000.
The
workers who do not receive benefits struggle to maintain families or
even their own lives, Tattersall said. About a dozen Aramark workers he
spoke to depend on a food pantry to eat.
Reynolds said UF has no more than 1,350 employees under Aramark.
Tattersall
said that since UF is going to go into negotiations with new food
service companies, there is an opportunity for change.
“Aramark’s
allowed to do whatever they want,” he said. “Now we have the
opportunity to say: We’re going to be a top-five institution, we need a
top-five dining experience, which means that workers need a living
wage.”
Rally at President Fuchs’ office
Last
Friday, workers and students decided they were fed up. Nearly 50 people
showed up outside President Kent Fuchs’ office — and although many
different groups were involved, everyone had one thing in common.
No one was a fan of Aramark.
The rally brought together Aramark
employees, members of Graduate Students United, the Young Democratic
Socialists of America, United Faculty of Florida, the Alachua County
Labor Coalition and North Central Florida’s American Federation of Labor
and Congress of Industrial Organizations.
Ashley
Nguyen, the coordinator for the Alachua County Labor Coalition, said
she emailed Fuchs twice to set up a meeting to discuss the possibility
of a living wage and once more to invite him to the rally.
“It
would not be appropriate for me to meet with the Alachua County Labor
Coalition,” Fuchs wrote in an email reply. He did not respond to The
Alligator’s emails, and UF spokesperson Steve Orlando said he had no
comment.
Charles Karcher, a 19-year-old UF
international studies and English sophomore, said he believes that it
is unfair that Aramark workers get such low wages.
“It’s
important for us as students who aren’t threatened by Aramark as a
company to stand up and try to improve the conditions of the people that
are working for Aramark on our campus,” Karcher, the co-chair of the
Young Democratic Socialists of America, said.
However,
the rally last Friday was meant to support the living wage campaign and
to advocate for Aramark workers on campus receiving fair pay depending
on the calculation from the MIT calculator for Alachua County, Nguyen
said.
The MIT calculator
determines a living wage based on factors like how many adults are in
the household, who is working and whether or not they have children.
“For
the living wage as a campaign as a whole, you shouldn’t operate without
paying your employees a wage that will help them survive without
struggling,” Nguyen, a 22-year-old UF international studies and
political science senior, said.
Negotiating
for a living wage is possible. Aramark at the University of Virginia,
as reported by The Cavalier Daily, originally paid its employees an
hourly wage of $10.65 — but the university negotiated for Aramark’s
employees to earn a living hourly wage of $15 this year.
What’s next?
The food service master plan recommends for UF to have local vendors for fresher food.
Reynolds said that UF will begin advertising in late June for food service vendors and should start negotiations by this Fall.
UF
should close out the existing operator agreement by next Spring and
have a new contract with a new food service provider starting next
Summer, the food service master plan report read.
Marcus
Milani, a 19-year-old UF political science and biology sophomore, said
that while he works with the Young Democratic Socialists of America, he
will continue to hand out flyers to students, promote the cause on
Turlington Plaza and reach out to other organizations to partner in
advocating for the living wage campaign.
“The
university is aspiring to be a top-five public institution,” Milani
said. “I don’t think that’s possible without having contracts with
companies who run fair and ethical practices — which is not Aramark.”
“Friendship is nothing else than an accord in all things, human and divine, conjoined with mutual goodwill and affection, and I am inclined to think that, with the exception of wisdom, no better thing has been given to man by the immortal gods.”
— Cicero, Laelius De Amicitia (via philosophybits)
