Hashtag of the Day: #ENOUGH

Yesterday, in cities across the United States, students walked out of school in solidarity against gun violence and the lack of effort by politicians to combat it.



There were several signs of solidarity outside of the protests, too.  Commentators and activists were, for the most part, singing the praises of the students.  Even the U.S. children's cable channel Nickleodeon showed its support for the protests...

As you heard in the last of the four videos above, not every school was in sync with the protests.  Some threatened punishment -- the most frequent one I heard was detention, but I also heard of threats of suspension -- for any students who went outside to protest.  It is, we need to be mindful, against school rules to just walk out of the school for anything other than a school activity, a fire drill, going home sick, or the end of the day, and many students were willing to accept the punishment for their actions.

Allow me to highlight one school who felt the right to publicly assemble, standing up for your rights, and wanting to be safe in school are not that important.

This is the entrance to Council Rock High School North.

It is located in eastern Pennsylvania, in the town of Newtown, roughly thirty miles north of Philadelphia.

The school administrators there felt that joining the protests was a no-no, so they decided to block the front door entrance.  (A student at the high school took these pictures.)

(Can you say fire hazard?)  In addition, they put the school on lockdown from 9:30 am. to 10:30 a.m.   The time of the protest, in each of the time zones, was 10:00 a.m. 

Conflicting reports stated that the students could exercise their right to protest, but then they were told that morning that any who did exit the building would receive "disciplinary consequences".  The high school's Community Relations Specialist said that the desks were put where they were to facilitate "a system for student accounting after the event".  In other words, a means by which they could take down the names of those who participated, so they would know who would receive those "disciplinary consequences".

Still, a number of students went outside to join in solidarity, anyway.

© 2018 Newtown, PA Patch

The principal of the high school said that there were reports of non-students possibly entering the building, so they needed to exercise caution.  Fair enough, although creating a potential fire hazard seems an odd response.  The principal did decide that, since the students who did protest were so well-behaved, he'd waive any consequences for them after all.

If a school wanted to give detentions for students who protest, fine and dandy.  It is their prerogative and the students are, after all, breaking a school rule to do so.  That is a small price to pay for standing up for something that includes, but is larger than, yourself.  That is an act of bravery.

I did not watch the video, but I did see a thumbnail for a video on YouTube, in the right-hand preview column, of a Fox News commentator saying that these walkouts were not an act of bravery.  (I will not say who because I feel confident that that commentator's voice is not alone on that network.)  Look back in this country's history for a moment.  Look at the protests -- whether marches, school walkouts, or school sit-ins -- against the Vietnam War in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  The students' voices, joined in with by many others over time, put enough pressure to eventually get us out of that war.  The East Los Angeles high school walkouts fifty years ago, which protested unfair treatment in schools for Mexican and Mexican-American students, was a continuing echo of just because you are in the same building, it does not mean you get treated the same.  Look back to the R.R. Moton High School walkout in Farmville, Virginia, in 1951, when black students protested that not even the buildings were the same.  (The high school had erected tar-paper shacks built on a campus to try and accommodate a student body 2 1/2 times of what it could handle.) 

What about the Birmingham Children's Crusade in 1963, which protested segregation?  It included scenes of schoolchildren being forcibly blown around by high-pressure fire hoses, being attacked by police dogs, and being beaten by police.  Images of these were spread across the country, angering much of the nation and creating a backlash.  That was a huge part of the desegregation movement in the country.

Just about all of these, and others, to be sure, took place before this commentator was even born.  Does that excuse his ignorance?  No.  And yet, it is ignorant to say that the long tradition of protesting, which includes student walkouts, does nothing ... that they never accomplish anything.  Very, very few changes, whether stemming from a walkout or otherwise, come quickly, of course.  Tenacity is key ... and these kids have tenacity.  I sat, watching the images of those students yesterday, sometimes with tears in my eyes, feeling very proud of them.  What they have accomplished so far (i.e. major retailers stopping sales of semi-automatic and fully automatic rifles, a Republican governor [Rick Scott from Florida] signing a gun control bill [albeit a weak one] thus bucking the NRA) from just their protesting is nothing short of amazing.  They have accomplished more than the grown-ups (i.e. politicians) in a short period of time.

And yet, more, much more, still needs to be done.  These students will fight for it.  Yes, they will fight for it!  They are on the right side of history and they will fight for it!

To that Fox News commentator, I say that sitting behind a desk on a TV set and delivering divisive, revisionary, and ignorant commentaries is not an act of bravery.  These students shouting ENOUGH! and doing something about massacres, however, is!

Terry