The note was meh to me, but Dash was ok with it. He didn’t really like her public apology because he said she seemed to be trying to make it about her. The principal is wonderful, and so were the staff members we met with. Before anything was done, the first thing they said to Dash was that he was right and the…

Thank you so much. Yep, there was no way that I was going to accept some back room apology. You want to be loud and wrong? Well, keep that same energy when it’s time to be held accountable.

It became bigger than he expected, and with the year he’s had—moving to another state, my husband’s cancer diagnosis, Hurricane Harvey and being evacuated by boat, staying in the shelter after, and having to move and change schools because we lost everything and his school flooded—I wanted to listen to him and what he…

This was amazing. Brava.

Ah, nostalgia, 52 years ago I got booted out of 7th grade home room for declining to parrot the Pledge of Allegiance. So nice to see the youths of today keeping the tradition alive of actually thinking about what you’re being told to recite. Go Dash go!

Sounds about witte...

What cracks me up is the how blindly hypocritical the people are who get angry about folks taking a knee. If only they got half-as-angry about black folks getting killed indiscriminately by police, “take a knee” wouldn’t have been a thing in the first fucking place. Note I didn’t even necessarily claim innocently,…

I did this in grade 7. I’d written an essay explaining why, in prep for being asked. My Mom was totally on board with the school giving me a 3 day in-school suspension as a punishment for not standing.

Good for you. You sound like a good teacher, one who will to live up to the title.

Tamir Rice was shot and murdered at 12. So they’re old enough to die but too young to cause her some minor discomfort. I’m so happy your son has received support. It’s vital he knows we’re out here even if we aren’t in the same city and we will fight to make sure nobody takes his rights away.

My Dad’s a disillusioned vet and my mom doesn’t believe in pledging blind allegiance to anything (especially not a piece of cloth which she, not unreasonably, considers idolatry). So their children did not do the Pledge. They didn’t force their beliefs on us. They explained their thinking and we compared it to the…

I started sitting for the pledge in high school. The reason for me was very simple, there is not liberty and justice for all. I had other students looking at me crazy. The teacher actually had a conversation about it for the entire class period. No one brought up the military in the conversation and eventually…

Bra-vo! I wanna stand up and shout after reading this. 1st, you are a phenomenal mother and as such, your kids’ strongest ally. Demanding apologies-PUBLIC and documented ones is very important. I would’ve done the same thing. I constantly blast people in the workplace who say negative or critical things that are…

My pops is a vet too. His “brothers in arms” did nothing to defend his freedoms at home when he couldn’t get that union job, find housing, or was called out his name. Not one of them checked their peeps.

Kids shouldn’t have to deal with that faux patriotic bullshit. Presumably it’s intended to help prepare the next generation of canon fodder, ready for another war to make the corporations richer.

It has always seemed weird to me, and I was born here!

The pledge is some fascist shit in its own right. It has no place outside of a tiki torch rally.

an indoctrination pledge

When I was in junior high/high school, a teacher pulled me aside to discuss why I didn’t stand during the pledge. He mentioned something about soldiers or some shit; I told him that my father is a Vietnam vet who was drafted along with half of his Black neighborhood, including mentally disabled people, and he had no…