Sparks residents have an opportunity this Wednesday to do something about Nevada’s endemic racism.
Republican Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Adam Laxalt are hosting a public event at the Peterbilt truck place, 2272 Larkin Circle, 3:45 p.m.
Registration is required via EventBrite.com. Politicians do that to get your info into their campaign databases but mostly to control the crowd.
Demonstrators may be consigned to the streets, of course. That’s where they belong.
Earlier this week, Mr. Laxalt announced a 17-county tour to promote his campaign. Maybe he’s just trying to look more macho with a backdrop of 18-wheelers behind storm fences.
If you can get in, ask him what he plans to do about overt racism in Yerington which is rapidly reverting to its original name. Barbwire readers have been informed for the past two weeks and it’s gotten worse.
NAACP investigators have gathered evidence that state and federal laws continue to be broken wholesale. The first complaint to hit Laxalt’s desk involved Yerington police intentionally destroying reports filed by the family of two African-American girls whose lives have been made Confederate hell. (They are not alone.)
A fellow student called one a “dumb nigger” as recently as last Monday. Another illegally looked up black student records in the Yerington High offices.
Another reportedly used the infamous n-word in front of a teacher.
Local elected officials have told journalists “that’s just how it is.” Somebody call security.
Do they allow blacks, browns, yellows, and reds to use the sidewalks in that town?
Alas, and alack, it looks like the venom from the old Anaconda copper Superfund waste pit has polluted the minds of the otherwise educated.
Mr. Laxalt’s stock response may well be “I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation.” I hope he does better. Even if no one can get in to pose the questions, they have now been published in the Sparks newspaper of record.
In addition to the FBI, complaints have been forwarded to the NAACP legal department back east and to local civil rights attorneys. Lyon County taxpayers will be on the hook big-time all because law enforcement, school administrators, parents, and teachers have failed miserably. Some have even participated in the racist taunting and hazing.
As I noted on Oct. 18, this all came to light because of stupid kids doing stupid things. A teenager posed in his underwear with guns and a knife in a photo captioned “The redneck god of all gods we bout to go nigger huntin” (sic, sic, sick).
The father of the Snapchat kid imitating Anthony Weiner is a former Yerington police officer and now a local athletic coach. Yerington High suspended only the teen who posted the photo. That student’s father is an active Lyon County deputy sheriff. Those smoking guns may be accessed via the expanded web edition of this column at NevadaLabor.com/
The toxic waste pit leaching into Pizen Switch groundwater is bad enough. Now, Yerington economic diversification’s true potential is going to shine just in time for Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., to hand the locals huge tracts of public land for development. I vote no.
I can see a big new national media campaign: “Plantations R Us.” That’s just how it is in Cow County Nevada. I vote no.
I don’t blame the kids. They merely reflect their upbringing as Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein II wrote in “South Pacific”: You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late, before you are six or seven or eight, to hate all the people your relatives hate, you’ve got to be carefully taught.
I’ve been there and I know. (See “I was teenage racist,” Barbwire January 12, 1990.) It takes a long, long time to wash the toxic waste from your mind.
Stay tuned.
Be well. Raise hell. Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Barbano is a 49-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and SenJoeNeal.org/ He serves as first vice-president of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. E-mail <barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us> Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988.
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