Everyone in New York has seen the little kids selling candy on the train. You could report on that story by suggesting that people carry cash to help them out. You could cover it by asking why the federal government blocks their parents from working. You could wonder, “What’s the longterm impact of letting them go without school?”
Or, you could do none of those things and obliquely blame their parents, virtually painting them as savages who don’t know any better, exploiting their kids. Guess which route the New York Times took?
They Sell Candy Instead of Going to School. New York Isn’t Stopping Them.
Letting children work in the train system during school hours breaks several laws and rules. But a series of agencies said it was not their place to stop the practice.
No shit.
The Department of Education has “attendance teachers” who work to ensure families send their children to school, but they do not go out on patrol. “I think I’ll refer you to the N.Y.P.D. on this,” a spokeswoman wrote.
Wow! Great idea. Usually the NYPD tackles and beats up Black kids for jumping tunstiles, this will be a change for them. Pretty much the only interviews in the story are people in various states of judgement about the parents.
Some, she said, wrongly assume that their children can miss a semester of school and catch up easily. Some face delays getting their children enrolled because of paperwork and vaccination records. Some, she said, sold candy with their children back in Ecuador and are simply doing the same thing here as a temporary measure.
“The families are not saying they don’t want to put their kids in school,” Ms. Sibri said. “What they’re saying is they haven’t figured out the paperwork that they need to be able to put them in, and some of them aren’t trusting the system.”
Uh no. They’re doing it because they are prohibited from working. That is the fault of one Joe Biden. Another reason might be that their parents have to reapply to shelter every 60 days, which means get yanked around different parts of the city, away from their schools. You can thank Eric Adams for that.
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