[Marxism] Solidarity Appeal: Teachers Threatened with Termination for Antiwar Student Walkout

[Dan DiMaggio <dannydamage@xxxxxxxxx>]

PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY!

*Urgent Call for Solidarity*

    Defend Teachers Threatened With Termination for Antiwar Student
Walkout

    BRIEF BACKGROUND:
    On November 16th, over 1,000 students in Washington State walked
out to protest the war in Iraq and the presence of military recruiters
in public schools. Students at Foster High School in Tukwila,
Washington organized and 150 walked out, saying ?Money for Schools, Not
War.? (For more info, see www.yawr.org)

    Foster students rallied at the school flagpole, marched down to the
I-5 overpass, and then marched to the Tukwila City Hall. The march and
rally were student generated and entirely peaceful.

    In reaction the Tukwila School District has done the following:

    ·    Suspended one Social Studies teacher, Brett Rogers, who
supported his students in a student generated democratic movement

    ·    Threatened administrative action against five other teachers

    ·    Threatened to discipline students for exercising their First
Amendment Right to free speech

    When Brett Rogers was asked if he had a personal stake in the war,
he said: ?It?s an illegal war and my cousin is deploying December 4th,
and I?m not happy about it.? 

    Please call and email the Principal and Superintendent now!

    Tell them they need to:

       1. Reinstate the teacher Brett Rogers who has been put on
administrative leave!
       2. Drop the disciplinary hearings against all six teachers who
face investigations!
       3. Support the initiative and moral fortitude of students who
took a stand against the effects caused by this war to their
communities!
       4. Take no disciplinary action against students who participated
in the walkout!

    We request that you flood the school administration with phone
calls and emails. Tell them to halt all disciplinary action against
students and the Tukwila Six!

    CONTACT:

    Foster HS Principal George Ilgenfritz:  (206) 901-7905
ilgenfritz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

    And Interim Superintendent Ethelda Burke:  (206) 901-8000, (206)
901-8006, burke@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 

    Please send a copy of protest emails to us at
tukwila.teachers.solidarity@xxxxxxxxxxx so we can count how many
protest emails have been sent in.

    If they refuse to answer your call, call Foster HS Assistant
Principal Daryl Wright (206) 901-7902 and Foster HS Office Manager
Darlene Aguiluz (206) 901-7915.

   
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

     MORE BACKGROUND INFO:
    On Friday, November 16th, more than a 1,000 students in Washington
State participated in a nation-wide student walkout to protest the war
and military recruiters in schools. This included around 150 students
at Foster High School, just south of Seattle.  Foster is part of the
Tukwila School District, of which 71% of the student body is low-income
and eligible for the free and reduced-cost school meals. Since the
beginning of the Iraq War, the U.S. military has been assigning ever
greater numbers of recruiters to lure young people into signing up for
this bloody, costly and illegal quagmire in Iraq, especially in
marginalized schools like Foster High School.

    Student made signs, walked out, marched to an I-5 overpass and the
Tukwila City Hall for a civic and peaceful assembly. Now the principal
and school district superintendent have begun a witch-hunt against
students and at least six of their teachers and threatened to suspend
students who walked out. The students took a bold stand against the war
and these teachers have stood up for their students, some of the most
disenfranchised in the state, both inside and outside the classroom.
Students who walked out are threatened with truancy, and their
teachers? jobs are on the line. Now, who will stand up for these
students and teachers?

    One teacher was put on administrative leave on Monday, November
19th. On Tuesday, November 20th, at least five more were delivered
memos notifying them that the Tukwila school district was
?investigating reports of possible misconduct relating to you in
connection with the student walk-out.? These teachers were further
notified that they were not to discuss ?this matter with any District
students or staff? under threat of being terminated. Several of these
teachers were completely unconnected with the walkout, but because they
have been previously marked out as individuals that speak their minds,
they are being lumped into the teacher hunt. ?Investigative interviews?
are to begin this Tuesday.

    ·       With a ?No Child Left Behind? Act of 2001 provision forcing
principals to give up the private contact information of young people
to military recruiters, students and teachers have the natural right to
protest.

    ·       With a bloody and illegal war, where the soldiers that are
killed and maimed are disproportionately minorities and victims of the
?poverty draft,? students and teachers of Tukwila have the natural
right to protest. 

    ·       With more than $500 billion dollars and the lives of more
than a million Iraqis having been utterly wasted on a failed war, with
schools in marginalized areas falling apart, we should all be
protesting with the slogan: ?Money for Schools?Not For War!"

    ·       With 75% of the American people polling against the war
according to the latest Washington Post poll, and a Democratic Congress
still making excuses for why it can?t cut off funding to bring the
troops home, we must support the young people who speak out against
their future being bombed away. 

    ·       And we MUST support their teachers whose only misconduct
was making their lesson plans truly relevant to the lives of their
students.

    If this Principal gets away with this attack on these workers and
students, it will embolden more bosses to try to further undermine
workers? rights, wages, and benefits, and it will intimidate more
people from speaking out against injustice?this is an attack on all
students and workers. These teachers are union members of the Tukwila
Education Association, and there are measures being taken to try to
ensure their defense through this channel, BUT A STRONG COMMUNITY AND
NATION-WIDE RESPONSE IS CRITICAL!!!

    How can we give thanks to those on the REAL frontlines of freedom
in America?

    Call and email the school officials above! 

    And please forward this alert to supportive organizations and
individuals!

    ------------------------------------------------

    YET MORE BACKGROUND INFO:

    The memo from Interim Superintendent to at least 6 teachers
essentially says:

       1. In the next couple days, we will summon you to a meeting
because we are ?investigating reports of possible misconduct relating
to you in connection with the student walk-out.?  There could be
disciplinary consequences pending completion of this investigation.

       2. You are not to discuss ?this matter with any District
students or staff,? or else you could be terminated.

       3. You have the right to have a union representative present
with you during the investigative interview in case you feel your
rights might be violated.

    The administration is clearly trying to isolate the teachers and
students from one another to try to divide them and weaken them.  They
are trying to use the tactic of divide and rule.  They are also
blatantly violating the teachers? right to free speech.

    The teachers have been careful to abide by the Interim
Superintendent?s directive not to talk with any District students or
staff about these matters.  But nothing in the Superintendent?s letter
said teachers could not talk with their union representatives or
community supporters.  In fact, the letter explicitly says they could
talk with the union.

    Some teachers who received letters were simply on their lesson
planning hour and therefore were not scheduled to teach class when the
student walkout happened.  These teachers went outside just to see what
was going on when the students walked out, but they did not walk out or
promote the walkout.  So the school has no evidence against some
teachers who received the threatening letters.

    It appears the administration is targeting these teachers in a
political with-hunt because they have spoken their minds in the past
over other issues.  For example, two of these teachers were banned in
the past from sending out school-wide emails because they spoke their
minds in school-wide emails that the administrators did not like.

    Iraq Veteran
    The husband of one of the teachers who received the threatening
letters is an Iraq veteran.  He went to Foster High School on November
16th and spoke to the students from first-hand experience about the
truth of the Iraq War that the government and corporate media are
actively hiding from the American people, and he walked out with the
students.

    As the Iraq veteran left the building, he was confronted by a
security guard who identified himself as a police
officer/veteran/federal marshall who said: ?Don't even start with me,
I'm a veteran.?

    The school administration is disciplining a teacher whose husband
is a veteran whose life was put at serious risk in Iraq and who has now
turned against the war.  This is very disrespectful to the veteran, his
family, and the working-class students who are being forced to shoulder
the burdens of this war.  The school administrators are more concerned
with trying to having power over teachers and students than letting the
communities who have been hit the hardest by the war speak out against
the war and the predatory military recruiters in their schools. 
This?after the American people voted the Democrats into Congress to end
the war, but the Democrats are still making excuses about why they
cannot cut off funds for the war and direct those funds toward
education and other desperately needed social services.  When the
leaders of our country will not end this unjust war, then it becomes up
to ordinary workers, parents, students, and soldiers to end the war.

    The attendance secretary at the school also refused to excuse the
absences of students who had permission slips signed by their parents
to miss school, which is a flagrant violation of parent and student
rights. 

    Principal George Ilgenfritz also told one student that she didn?t
know anything about war.  (Ironically, the student is from an immigrant
Somali family who has family in the war-torn country of Somalia.)

    On the Tukwila School District?s website, the following message has
been posted by Interim Superintendent Ethelda Burke: ?We believe in the
historic mission of public education within our democracy?  Our schools
are expected to encourage and prepare students to be productive
citizens.   We believe the challenge is to transform every child ? to
give every student a chance to become an autonomous, thinking person
and a self-governing citizen.  We are all here to work together to
provide the best education for the most prized commodity of our fine
city ? the students of the Tukwila School District.?

    Yet when the students participate in an act of peaceful civil
disobedience in the best traditions of Martin Luther King and the Civil
Rights Movement who challenged unjust segregation laws, now the
Superintendent is hypocritically trying to discourage students from
being ?self-governing citizens? and standing up for what is right. 

    We need to match the determination of these courageous teachers,
students and the Iraq veteran with all the support we can!  Please take
a few minutes now to call and email the Principal and Superintendent at
the numbers and emails at the top of this email!

    YouTube video of Foster High School student rally for peace:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOuLz3kKExI 

    Report on Washington State Nov. 16th student walkouts against the
war:  http://yawr.org/nov16/seattle.html

    Articles on Youth Against War and Racism student victories against
military recruiters in schools:
    http://yawr.org/victory/victory.htm#tacoma
    http://yawr.org/victory/victory.htm#kennedy
    http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/article13.php?id=611 

    Please forward this email widely to supportive organizations and
individuals who might be able to help!

    For more info, contact the Tukwila Teachers and Students Solidarity
Committee: foster_nfo@xxxxxxxxxxx (253) 573-9252
    Please leave a brief message and we?ll get back to you as soon as
we can.



"There is no native criminal class except Congress." - Mark Twain

"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor 
freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up 
the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning... Power concedes 
nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." - Frederick Douglass

www.socialistalternative.org


      
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