Group organizes walkout by students to protest war
By Nick Perry
Seattle Times staff reporter
A planned student walkout Wednesday to protest the Iraq war is causing friction and uncertainty in some schools. An advocacy group called Youth Against War and Racism is organizing a rally and march in downtown Seattle as part of a national protest on the first anniversary of President Bush’s re-election. Organizers, who want high-school students to walk off campus at noon, said they’re expecting as many as 2,000 students from 30 schools in Seattle and beyond.
Organizers plan to begin the rally at 1 p.m. at Westlake Center, then at 2 p.m. march to the Capitol Hill Arts Center for workshops, a concert and speeches. School officials are not sanctioning the walkout, which is also meant to protest military recruitment in high schools.
“Obviously our goal is to have students in class,” said Peter Daniels, a spokesman with Seattle Public Schools. “Kids are going to have to make decisions about whether they attend. Each school has attendance policies.”
If students are absent without parental permission, it will result in a mark against their attendance record, Daniels said. Even with parental permission, some schools will not allow students to be absent for protests, he said. Each school has autonomy in how to deal with such situations, he added.
But protest organizer Carrie Hathorn said that for students, most of whom are too young to vote, walking out of class is one of the few ways to express their political views.
“We let them know that this is an act of civil disobedience, and then let them decide,” she said. “There could be punishments or repercussions. It’s in the hands of the students.
And Michelle Malkin has more on this as well as past protests using children too.
Wild Thing’s Comment………
So when it is 10 years from now and little Dick and Jane want to cut classes, want to hang out on the street and have no ambition. When they are asked who the President is and they only know the latest pop star and they are 22 years old. We will know who to blame right? YEP you got it! It won’t be the Republicans, it will be the Democrats, the left socialist, communist Democrats that are totally and completely to blame!
The sad fact is that these liberals are interferring with the education of these children and thus America’s future. Not only that but they are forcing them to protest against our Military and our Country. They are teaching them NOTHING about why we live in a free land, and what it cost our Veterans, our Troops today, our POW’s and MIA’s. What it cost families of those that fought to let us be a land of the free and stay that way.
Hey Liberals, know what??!!?? The terrorists want you just as dead as they want those of us dead that support the troops. They are not your friends and you have chosen the wrong side to be on. You are Traitors To America! Check it out you Liberal freaks, go to my Traitors to America page at my web site!