stay in school, kids
I’m sitting there in conservative Eastern Washington, watching local news the last year and some months back, seeing how some rural districts were circumventing the big “day of action” walkout for students on gun control measures, in one way and another. I was particularly fascinated by this hard headed macho-inflected principal who — at the hour of the National Walk Out (surely encouraged by various urban school districts in liberal climes) — held an assembly — a “Salute to First Responders”. Video footage of school gym with men in uniforms decked on the stage. I don’t know if it’s impolitic to point it out — and I do this while wanting to give a good deal of manuevering room for failures in split decisions of no-win scenarios such as Parkland may represent — but the First Responders there botched their job — so much so that the local gun advocates surrounding Parkland in opposition to the anti-gun activism that sprung up will deflect from guns to this botched job — so, if part of the school assembly’s subtext was “These kids and their misguided activism need to stay in school” (and honor their superiors) — what were they honoring for whose political aim?
The next flush of inspiration saw that astro-turf grassroots hybrid — just as “March for your Lives” — on behalf of their second Amendment Rights. A scattering of coverage for students’ school day protests — completely absent from the liberal blog news feed in the “shut out of the Overton Window because to cover it is to promote it” view — until some leaked discovery showed it was partially or largely organized by (gasp) adult political advocacy groups. As a matter of principal, the hard headed principal would have been obliged to shut this one down too — with what school assembly, I don’t know. (Maybe rerun the “Salute to First Responders”?)
I suppose the “Climate Activists” can’t have a counter-demonstration. (Maybe I “I want my Plastic Straws!” demonstration?) Assemblies — who knows?