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Although today is the day Occupy LAUSD heads to the Los Angeles Unified School District's headquarters to begin their "occupation," there have been many people affiliated with the district participating in the original Occupy L.A. encampment and protests. One such participant, substitute teacher Patricia McAllister, has come under fire for remarks captured during a video interview from the City Hall Occupy L.A. site.
In her ReasonTV interview, McAllister singles out the "Zionist Jews" who she says run the nation's banks, and calls for their removal from America.
McAllister says:
"the Zionist Jews who are running these big banks and the Federal Reserve, which is not run by the Federal Government, they need to be run out of this country.”
The clip of McAllister speaking to ReasonTV made the rounds online this week, and in comment threads and message boards McAllister was taken to task for her controversial statement.
Today, LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy has issued a statement of response about McAllister's remarks, concluding that her professional relationship with the LAUSD has been severed by the district.
Here is Deasy's statement in full:
As Superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), I want to emphasize that we condemn the remarks made recently by Patricia McAllister. Her comments, made during non-work time at a recent protest rally, were her private opinions and were not made in the context of District services. At LAUSD, we recognize that the law is very protective of the freedom of speech rights of public employees when they are speaking as private citizens during non-working time.
I further 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, Ms. McAllister was an at-will employee. As of today, she is no longer an employee of the LAUSD.
An ugly old tradition is back: exploiting anti-Semitism to break the backs of popular movements that threaten the power of the wealthiest 1 percent of our population. It is being used to undermine the Occupy Wall Street movement, which has conservatives in a state of near panic. [...]
Because utilizing anti-Semitism directly would not succeed in this country today, the reactionary defenders of the economic status quo are using the flip side of the coin: the fear of being labeled anti-Semitic. They are accusing Occupy Wall Street of anti-Semitism, relying on the old myth that Wall Street is Jewish and hence that opposition to Wall Street’s agenda is just opposition to Jews.
