City Union Members Use Witchcraft in Negotiations
A Santeria Birdseed plot has resulted in one non-union idiot being fired and another one in hot water.
From the MiamiHerald here:
Two North Miami Beach police department employees allegedly tried to cast a spell over the city manager’s office.
A note to prospective municipal employees: If you’re looking for a way to help out beleaguered colleagues, casting a spell on your boss is probably not the way to go. Two North Miami Beach employees — one a police officer, the other a department office manager — are in hot water after trying to enlist some supernatural aid in the form of what they believed to be a Santeria practice.
Their alleged target: City Manager Lyndon Bonner, whose plan to slash the police budget prompted protests and union outrage this fall.
Their mystical material: handfuls of birdseed which, according to an internal affairs report, they hoped to scatter in and around Bonner’s fourth-floor office at City Hall. But when they tried to recruit a janitor to sprinkle the seeds, she balked — and turned them in.
Officer Elizabeth Torres told investigators she meant the manager no harm: “I want to clarify, that it’s nothing malicious and nothing intended to hurt that person.” She was told last week she faced termination over the August incident, which took place against the backdrop of a contentious budget season. Unionized city employees must go through an appeal process before they can be fired.
Office manager Yvonne Rodriguez, who is not a member of the union, was fired last week for her role in the plot.
While Santeria practitioners have argued that their practice constitutes a legitimate religion and bristle at depictions of the practice as black magic or witchcraft, they acknowledge that public displays of their traditions can spook non-believers. And both adherents and experts say that the Afro-Cuban religion, itself an amalgamation of Catholicism and African spiritual traditions, does not count malice — such as casting harmful spells — as one of its principles.
So if their fake religion of Santeria wasn’t going to harm the City manager, what the hell was the purpose of getting the stupid birdseed then? It most certainly wasn’t going to be a blessing or a which for success for the manager, now was it?
