There’s uneasy tension at Russellville, Arkansas, where a six-year-old was thrown out of daycare for wearing a shirt with the inscription, “Black Lives Matter.” After attending daycare at ‘His Kids Preschool’ for six months, Journei Brockman was informed on Friday she was no longer wanted, Fox 16 reported.
Journei’s mother, Deval Brockman told the local Fox News affiliate an employee from the daycare called her last Thursday after her daughter wore a “Black Lives Matter” shirt and told her: “’I don’t like it, I don’t agree with it, and I would prefer it if you didn’t send her to school in it again.”
The next day Journei went back to the daycare in another shirt with a raised fist printed on the back. According to Fox 16, Brockman was told the shirts were encouraging and fueling racism. “I got very upset. I’m just like are you serious? Over a T-shirt?” she said.
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At the point Brockman reported the matter to the state and was told the six-year-old could continue wearing the shirts “as long as there was no profanity on it,” the outlet reported.
“If I’m supporting something, I’m going to wear it, my child is going to wear it, to help say that our voice needs to be heard,” said Brockman.
The school defended its action in a statement issued by Patricia Brown, the daycare director. “Due to the threat of allegations and under the advisement of the council, His Kids Learning Center will only be releasing this written statement concerning The Brockman’s: We feel a childcare environment is not a place for a parent’s political views to be addressed or played out, regardless of race,” the statement read.
The #BLM movement has reignited over the past few weeks after the death of George Floyd, the 46-year-old Black man who lost his life after Minnesota cop, Derek Chauvin, was filmed kneeling on his neck for almost nine minutes, despite pleading he could not breathe. Floyd’s death sparked protests against police brutality and systemic racism in the United States.
Not long ago, a Carmel priest, The Rev. Theodore Rothrock, was suspended from public ministry for calling Black Lives Matter demonstrators as “maggots and parasites.”
Rothrock’s suspension followed comments he wrote on the website of the St. Elizabeth Seton Catholic Church in a weekly bulletin.
In the fiery comments, Rothrock derided the organizers of the Black Lives Matter protests, stating that the only lives that matter are their own and the only power they seek is their own.
“They are wolves in wolves clothing, masked thieves and bandits, seeking only to devour the life of the poor and profit from the fear of others. They are maggots and parasites at best, feeding off the isolation of addiction and broken families, and offering to replace any current frustration and anxiety with more misery and greater resentment,” wrote Rothrock, who was assigned to St. Elizabeth Seton Catholic Church in Carmel, Indiana.
