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Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Bainbridge High School Student Walkout

I went over to Bainbridge High School to see the student walkout this morning.  Here are some pictures and a bit of video.

















Students lying down in protest for 17 minutes of silence.
















Community members were gathered across the street from the school.


And I got the video at the end as the students were getting up and going back to class.  






4 comments:

  1. So what's the buzz in Alaska with all this going on?

    The qualitative difference in living somewhere, within a place and people, versus hearing about it or reading news and bits isn't the same, is it?

    I've lost touch with the old country in ways subtle and welcome. I think of this national action and my brother talking of the national guard and tear gas used against him and the hundreds of thousands marching against the Vietnam (conflict) War years ago and feel...

    I don't know. It just seems America is mad about its guns and its military-civic culture that grows it. Many of us here ask, is this freedom?

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    Replies
    1. Not sure, we only just got back last night. But I do know that everyone talks about groups of people as if they were all of one mind, like "GOP worried after Pennsylvania election." There are lots of different types of GOP. And America isn't a group we can really talk about as a unit. People are split in many ways, from region and state, to economic status, race, religion, etc. But you know all that.

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    2. Indeed. And yet, out of these many all swear allegiance to the US Constitution and its first set of amendments. Sadly, I'm losing patience in explaining here how a unique American civic religion around its second amendment has transformed AR-15s into freedom-fetish.

      In tandem with its constitution, Americans have been schooled to believe in (natural-law) rights of the governed to abolish tyranny and establish liberty (Declaration of Independence). Given this, the American ethos is reasonably sceptical of government. All this is fine and well but its dark side, which can be argued from Jefferson Jones and Paine, is that freedom must be purchased ultimately by the citizen’s gun.

      Cue today’s NRA. It’s no longer the hunting and sport-shooting association in which my father was a life-time member. No, its emerging doctrine now asks Americans to be armed in order to protect liberty and individual freedoms from the threat of tyranny once more.

      At least, that’s how it looks for a lot of folk here, if I’ve got it right. Are we wrong?

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    3. There's the rule of law and then there is the more inherently human rule of emotion with loyalty to one's group as the key factor that applies here. Rule of law - whether religious law or governmental law is an attempt to curb the most human impulses. So while many do value the constitution, many others only value those parts of the constitution that supports their human instincts - fear and self-protection for those who revere an absolutist version of the 2nd Amendment.
      What the US needs right now is therapy to unwrap the fears and desires that make people vulnerable to simplistic and divisive rhetoric. (That all just slipped out of my fingers here, take it with a lot of skepticism.)

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