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US: High School students threatened with suspension for antiwar activity
 international |
rights, freedoms and repression |
other press
 Thursday April 27, 2006 17:37 by Cian - Socialist Youth ComradeCian at eircom dot net Limerick 085-7077919
URGENT Solidarity Appeal
Across the Twin Cities, thousands of students are planning to walkout tomorrow, April 28th, against the war in Iraq and against military recruitment in schools. This will likely be the largest youth antiwar demonstration in Minnesota since the Vietnam era.
But in recent days reports of repression and disruption tactics from school authorities has gone way up. Under police pressure, a big peace concert scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, as part of the walkout events at Minneapolis Technical and Community College (MCTC), is being shut down.
Below are two urgent appeals from students at two local schools (Central and Jefferson) were threats against students came to a head yesterday. Please read these, act on their request for solidarity, and forward this appeal for help on to others.
Students from these schools are holding a press conference this afternoon at MCTC's "Free Speech Plaza" at 3:30 PM. Please come and show your support!
*** Please call & email their District Superintendents RIGHT NOW to support students free speech rights. Numbers are at bottom of the letters from the affected students, below.
Appeal from Jefferson High students
We are three students Jefferson High School in Bloomington, MN. We are being threatened with suspension for passing out fliers advertising the April 28 walkout. We aren't allowed to wear shirts that say "I'm walking out for peace." We aren't even allowed to SAY the word walkout.
First we attempted to get posters a lit approved through official ways. We got called in and told that advocating the walkout by distributing any material or voicing any knowledge of it happening was going to cause a disruption to the school learning environment.
We got a National Lawyers Guild lawyer to write a letter to our principal explaining that Tinker vs. Des Moines gives us the right to organize the walkout in school, but this made no difference. In our meeting with the Principal today [4/26] their lawyer had given them a response to the NLG letter, claiming that it does not fall under protected free speech.
Our right to free speech and protest, as well as the rights of our fellow Youth Against War and Racism chapter members, have been denied. Basically we refuse to be censored for our right to practice our political freedoms including telling people an event is going on. We will continue to pass out leaflets and they will probably continue confiscating or suspending people handing them out.
Here's what we'd like for you to do: call our administration. Demand that our rights are supported. Flood their offices with phone calls and emails reminding them that teenagers are people with rights, because they seem to have forgotten. The numbers are below.
Bloomington Schools Superintendent,
Gary Prest
952-681-6402
[email protected]
Peace and Love,
Alex Uhrich, Libby Tousignant, Ben Zabel
Jefferson Youth Against War and Racism
Contact us at: [email protected]
--------------
Appeal from Central High Students
At St. Paul Central High School, our chapter of Youth Against War and Racism has been planning for the antiwar walkout on Friday, April 28 in solidarity with other Twin Cities YAWR chapters. We are protesting against military recruiters in our schools as well as against the war as a whole.
We have produced a variety of leaflets explaining our cause and encouraging students to join us. Over the past week, we have begun to pass the fliers out more intensely. As a result, our school administrators and our principal, Mary Mackbee, have attempted to prevent us from passing them out.
On Wednesday, April 26 before school, many of our fliers were confiscated by Ms. Mackbee while they were being distributed. We were told that we would be punished if they were found passing out any more fliers. The school staff have been instructed to assign detention to any student caught distributing fliers. Later in the day, when we attempted to get back the fliers that had been confiscated, we were then told that, if we were found passing out leaflets, we would be suspended for "willful disobedience".
Our First Amendment rights cannot be ignored. Regardless of any claims made by the school that we are under their supervision, our fundamental democratic right to freedom of expression cannot be abridged. The schools might claim that we are creating a disruption, however a much greater disruption is being created for us by the military recruiters in our schools and by the loss of funding that our schools must deal with due to taxpayer money being spent on war instead of education.
We cannot allow them to continue to prevent us from expressing ourselves. For this reason, we ask that you help us to protect our democratic freedom and our right to free expression.
We ask that you call or e-mail our District Superintendent, Lou Kanavati, and demand that we be allowed to exercise our basic right to expression and distribute antiwar fliers, brochures, or other documents free of censorship or threats.
Superintendent Lou Kanavati
651/767-8150
[email protected]
Thank you,
Sean Foltin and Shane Davis
Central High Youth Against War and Racism
Contact us at: [email protected]
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Comments (4 of 4)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4Hi,
I am a high school student in Limerick, Ireland. I am writing to follow up a call I made earlier today to register my disgust at the victimisation of political students in your school. I believe it is a fundamental right for all people to distribute material, to agitate, to educate and to organise people (whether students, teachers or whatever) and to organise protests. This is especially the case when students lives are directly effected by the issues such as with the war in Iraq and military recruiters in schools. The reality is the fundamental right to distribute leaflets and to protest overrides the authority of any individual, especially school authorities who are unaccountable to students.
I demand, and intend to get friends of mine to do likewise, that you withdraw all threats of punishment, return all leaflets, cancel any punishments and recognise that this is an exceptional case where there are much more fundamental things than school rules. I am very passionate about this issue as twice I have had to deal with it in my school. Once me and 7 others were threatened with punishment for distributing leaflets against the use of Irish airports by US warplanes to transport soldiers and bombs and to transport people to torture facilities. Through campaigning work and shaming the school they backed down then. Then later in the year me and 3 others were served punishment notice for organising a walk-out in our school, so we could attend a national trade union protest against an employer who was trying to decimate pay and conditions. Again we organised protest work using media and organisations, and again the school was forced to recognise that the right to organise is more fundamental than their authority. Also in that case they were forced to recognise that it is the students decision whether they want to protest or not and that parents don't have a veto over students political ideas or freedoms. I have attached 2 articles I wrote on these incidents for a national paper of Socialist Youth, an organisation I am a member of over here.
Thanks,
Cian
PS I urge you to realise that world is moving forward, old ways and tyrannical student control mechanisms are outdated and unacceptable, even to many conservatives. Schools in Ireland have wised up, I hope those in the US do too.
FEBRUARY 2006
Student action defends right to protest
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Cian Prendiville
In recent weeks, students from Ardscoil Ris, Limerick have fought for the right to protest and we won. On the day of the protest against Irish Ferries slave labour plans there were 20 to 30 students ready to walkout to defend our futures. Unfortunately the school scared some but ten of us joined the huge protest.
Then a month later, three of us were singled out for punishment, presumably for leading the walkout. We refused to accept the punishment and decided to fight back.
We quickly got support from Socialist Youth, and Socialist Party public representatives wrote and phoned to complain. We used Indymedia and local and national media to get our story out there, we even managed to get on the front page of the regional paper.
We also contacted trade unionists and public representatives and convinced them to help us out. The school was bombarded with phone calls, letters, faxes and emails so many that they refused to take any more of the calls! With this stream of complaints, media attention, union demands and possibly staff pressure, the principal was left with no option but to give in.
In Ardscoil we have seen this kind of treatment before back in September over the right to leaflet (see October issue of the Socialist online). The reality is schools are scared by the growing anger of some young people and our political ideas. Its not only in school that we are under attack: companies are driving down our wages and the government are criminalizing us with ASBOs. Our victory shows that we can beat attacks on our rights through organisation and struggle.
What we need is to organise throughout the country, spreading the ideas of struggle and socialism but also setting up school student action groups and by getting involved in Socialist Youth.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OCTOBER 2005:
Victory for school student action
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Cian Prendiville, Limerick
In recent weeks secondary students in Ardscoil Ris, Limerick stood up against ageism and totalitarianism in schools and we won.
Eight of us gave leaflets to students from our school as they left school. Then the principal tried to punish us, thinking she could get away with it, but she was wrong.
We were reprimanded and our parents were called. The real issue, however, was clear to some parents: there is no reason, law or rule stopping us leafleting on public property in our own time. This is to be expected from the ageist, conservative and undemocratic school officials. We refused to let this go and decided to take a stand. Through the web, SY and other groups, hundreds of supporters emerged in a mater of hours. We also had some media, solicitors and Socialist Party representatives on our side.
We prepared a campaign, which included phone calls, letters, emails and press coverage - hitting them from all angles, and we won the right to leaflet our school.
This important victory shows how we can beat education officials in future by standing up and fighting our ground. Now what we need is to organise throughout the country - setting up student action groups and linking up into a national, fighting school students' union and political force.
--------------------------------------------------
Cian Prendiville
[email protected]
085 7077919
We know what it feels like to plan and go on walkouts.
Solidarity!
look what happened when school students wanted to mark American national hero Ceser Chavez on his official holiday http://www.indybay.org/news/2006/03/1812719.php - Cesar Chavez Day harressed corralled and arrested by gang squad.
solidarity with the comrades. the twin cities indeed have a proud history of opposition to war and fascism. and even more so a prouder history of labour agitatation. the books by farrell dobbs on the teamsters struggles, Local 544, in the twin cities in the 1930s and 1940s are an invaluable addition to labour history.
the piece below deals with confronting the silver shirts:
"One of these profascist groups, the Silver Shirts of America, was of special concern to General Drivers Union, Local 544. It was started in 1932 by William Dudley Pelley, who opened a headquarters in Asheville, North Carolina, and published a weekly organ called Liberation....
Apparently this caused a section of the boss class in Minneapolis to become interested in the movement; and Pelley was encouraged to send one of his aides, Roy Zachary, to the city in the summer of 1938 to launch an organizing drive. Two Silver Shirt rallies followed in quick succession, on July 29 and August 2, at the Royal Arcanum hall....
It became known immediately that Zachary's main theme had been to call for a vigilante attack on the headquarters of Local 544.This situation called for prompt countermeasures. So Local 544, acting with its customary decisiveness, answered the threat by organizing a union defense guard during August 1938.... "
http://www.themilitant.com/1998/6241/6241_30.html
Heres a piece about resistance to war in the twin cities:
"In 1941 the Roosevelt administration, working in concert with the top International officials of the Teamsters, moved against the class-struggle leadership of the Minneapolis Teamsters. This leadership had refused to retreat from its position that labor must organize itself and set its priorities independent of the needs and prerogatives of the capitalist government and political parties. It continued to argue for the formation of a labor party based on the unions. It defended the colonial freedom struggle and championed the fight for the rights of oppressed nationalities in the United States. And it fought every move to sap the power of the labor movement by bringing unions under the control of government agencies. "
http://www.themilitant.com/2001/6546/654650.html
Farrell Dobbs wrote four books on class struggle in the twin cities in the 1930s and 1940s, in particular involving the Teamsters Union Local 54: Teamster Rebellion; Teamster Politics; Teamster Power; Teamster Bureaucracy.