UPDATE 11-29-07
Teachers Threatened
with Termination for Anti-war Student Walkout
PLEASE FORWARD
WIDELY!!!
(new information
on the principle being on the warpath)
READ text
below on how student peace activist had the cops called on them
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***URGENT CALL FOR SOLIDARITY***
***CAMPAIGN UPDATES***
***CALL OR EMAIL TUKWILA SCHOOL DISTRICT***
On November 16th, more than
125 students from Foster High School in Tukwila, WA answered a nation-wide call
for a student walk out protesting the war and military recruiters in schools. (See student-made video below) In response,
the Tukwila School District threatened students with suspension, but their main target was teachers. Disciplinary investigations
threaten the firing of SIX teachers and administration placed one of the six, Brett Rogers, on administrative leave. We put
out a call for support for the Tukwila Six and students.
Hundreds of emails and phone
calls of solidarity have had a MAJOR IMPACT on the Tukwila School Board.
At a Tukwila School Board
meeting Tuesday the 25th, students and community members jam-packed the room, passionately demanding NO repression of students
and DROP ALL DISCIPLINARY PROCEEDING AGAINST THE TUKWILA SIX! (See below for video clip)
Media coverage has brought
a spotlight to Principal Ilgenfritz’s REPRESSIVE instincts to the DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION of students and against ACADEMIC
FREEDOM of teachers.
Because of PUBLIC PRESSURE,
the solidarity campaign has won a partial victory—popular teacher Brett Rogers was been TEMPORARILY REINSTATED Tuesday.
However, the disciplinary investigations continue and some of the teachers are still in their probationary period, so pressure
must be put on the school district to retain the Tukwila Six this year AND next. (See Seattle Times article below)
___________________________________________
***WEDNESDAY
UPDATE***
"Principle Ilgenfritz
calls cops on peace activist students"
***WEDNESDAY
UPDATE***
___________________________________________
Also Wednesday, when students
tried to meet at the Foster commons after school to discuss the crisis, the principal brought in eight police to break up
and disperse the meeting. Student posters were torn down by the principal, and
students were told that they are not allowed to hang up posters. Teachers have been told that they may not discuss the crisis
with colleagues or students. One girl talking about teacher Brett Roger’s situation was loudly threatened by Principal
Ilgenfritz with suspension. All these incidents are blatant violations of students' and teachers' constitutional rights to
free speach, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly!
The phone calls and emails
must continue- this is not over. These teachers' livelihoods are still at stake and the students' rights are clearly under
attack.
(More detailed information
at bottom of email)
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The Tukwila Teachers and
Students Solidarity Committee URGENTLY requests that you again FLOOD the administration with phone calls and emails with the
following DEMANDS
1. Fire NO teachers!
2. Drop all disciplinary investigations against teachers NOW!
3. KEEP ALL THE TEACHERS THE REST OF THIS YEAR AND NEXT YEAR!
4. When politicians lie to us and continue their oil-driven war against the people's will, student walkouts
and other forms of civil disobedience are justified and necessary. SUPPORT THE STUDENTS' INITIATE. No discipline for any students
who walked out and took a stand against this war!
5. End attacks on Foster
Student Rights to Free Speech and Assembly.
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Please call
or email NOW!
Foster HS Principal George
Ilgenfritz: 1 (206) 901-7905
ilgenfritzg@tukwila.wednet.edu
And Interim Superintendent
Ethelda Burke: 1 (206) 901-8000, (206) 901-8006,
burkee@tukwila.wednet.edu
Please CC these Tukwila School
Board:
mfertakis@comcast.net
pmaltsberger2000@yahoo.com
jasminkakujundzic@yahoo.com
wahlsea@yahoo.com
Please send a copy of protest
emails to us at
tukwila.teachers.solidarity@hotmail.com
so we can count how many protest emails have been sent in.
If they refuse to answer
your call,
phone Foster HS Assistant
Principal Daryl Wright 1 (206) 901-7902 and Foster HS Office Manager Darlene Aguiluz 1 (206) 901-7915.
VIDEOS:
Student-made Walkout Film:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGSDzDF7xoY
Footage on Foster Walkout,
Tukwila Six and After School Board meeting:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrhRplEvW4w
KIRO 7:
http://www.kirotv.com/education/14714796/detail.html
(click where it says "video")
NorthWest Cable News:
http://www.nwcn.com/video/news-index.html?nvid=196453
NEWS ARTICLES:
Seattle Times Article: "Protesting
teacher back at Tukwila school" Thursday, November 29th
seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/education/2004041566_tukwila29m.html
Seattle Post-Intelligence
Nov. 16th Walkout Article:
seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/340003_peace17.html
FOUR articles on walkouts
at:
socialistalternative.org
Further background information:
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 125+ 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.
· 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
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For further background on
walkouts organized by Youth Against War and Racism, go to:
www.YAWR.org
To
contact the Tukwila Teachers & Students Solidarity Committee
Email:
tukwilateachers@yahoo.com
Call:
253-573-9252
(Please
leave a brief message and we will respond as soon as we are able).
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MORE BACKGROUND INFO:
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.
The memo from Interim Superintendent
to at least 6 teachers essentially says:
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.
You are not to discuss “this
matter with any District students or staff,” or else you could be terminated.
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!
SAMPLE
PROTEST LETTER:
Dear Principal
Ilgenfritz,
I am writing
to demand that the Tukwila School District support the initiative and moral fortitude
of students
who took a stand against the effects of the Iraq war on their communities. The
student
march and rally
on November 16th were student-generated and entirely peaceful.
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.
These teachers
only misconduct was making their lesson plans truly relevant to the lives
of their students.
On the Tukwila
School District’s website, the Interim Superintedent posted the following message:
“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
school district is hypocritically trying to discourage students from being
“self-governing
citizens” and standing up for what is right?
You should
immediately:
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. Take no disciplinary action against students who
participated in the walkout!
Please write
me back saying that upon further investigation you realize that there is no
need for disciplinary
action against these students or teachers.
Sincerely,
Ramy
Khalil
Youth
Against War and Racism
Member
of the Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 587
Committee
for a Workers' International
(206)293-8389
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This
movement is being "tracked by www.joe-anybody.com
To
keep the peace community informed and to show my "solidarity" ...I will be archiving all "Tukwill Six" Information on my website
to the best of my ability
~joe
Three obvious war crimes being committed by the U.S. Immpeialist led co-allition are, 1) targeting and killing civilians, 2) torturing and killing prisoners of war, such as Abu-Graib, Guantanamo Bay, and hundreds of illegal imperial detention centers run by the C.I.A. in Iraq, Afghanistan, and thoughout the middle east and beyond, with flights to extraordinary rendition to torture, 3) collective punishment, such as Shock and Awe, the bombing of villages, towns and cities throughout the middle east Holylnad to rubble because the peoples who abide there have legitimately, according to the Geneva Conventions of war, taken up the right of armed struggle against the illegal foreign invasion and occupation of their countries. The Geneva Conventions say further that there must not be a regime change in those countries and that the occupation forces cannot treat the peoples there in a mean or degading way, and are responsibe for their well-being while the occupation is in control to the occupied country.
The Nuremburg Trials, chaired by U.S. judge Jackson condemns aggressive war as the supreme criime on the planet earth as it actuates all other cimes high or low, big or small in a worst cast reaction globally. The planning and doing of aggressive war itself is the supreme war crime, and it is so whether Germany does it or the U.S.A. says judge Jackson. That makes the invasions and occupations of middle east countries by the U.S.A. a war crime which breaks the high crimes and misdemeanors clause of the U.S. constitution, and the international laws that are the anti-fascist covenants, signed on to by the U.S. government and the majority of governemtns in the world, including Canada, and Britain.
The United Nations Charter, the raison d' etre of the United Nations also says that it is set up to ensure that democracy as collective agree and negotiation takes place as a new way forward for the peoples of the world to settle relations between nations, and that further it intends thereby to make the terrible horrors of modern warfare only a long distant memory for comming future generations. This covenant the U.S. Imperialists have also violated by their discredited policy of implementing the former axis powers core militarism, such as I) Might makes right, 2) Unilateralism, 3) Pre-emptive strikes, all of which the UN Charter was brought into being by the worlds' anti-fascist fighters to end, and set instead the goal of the UN and all countries to liberate themselves by abolishing aggressive war itself, and its machinery and manufactury, in each country. The security council is controlled by the Minority Imperialist powers with a veto and huge reserves of money. It uses those to levers to end the democracy of the majority of commonwealth nations globally, in general assembly and thereby taking away the original purposes of the United Nations itself, and turning it into a war making tool instead of a peaceful making tool to abolish war by Charter reason of being. This same process of subversion was done to the League of Nations , and was commented on by Albert Einstein during the twenties of the last century, when he remarked that the league had become a war making tool for the imperialist war making powers, and so now both organizations have been subverted to the agendas of Imperialist empire builders out of the majority peacemaking peoples hands, by executive power vetoing the democratic majority.
The International criminal court and the world court of the hague has found the U.S. Invasions of the middle east as criminal acts as measured by the anti-fascist covenants, and GW Bush has said that international law will never find any U.S. soldier guilty while he is president. That is only the exta territorial laws of empire building and that is why he is appointing the judicary to uphold , might makes right, and giving the green light to them to allow the breaking of the anti-fascist covenants to which he is sworn to uphold.
These students and teachers that walk out in protest of the criminal unjust , illegal wars that Bush and his lying buddies have put in place, are the true heroes of the peoples of the world and the United States , they are the living, breathing true practicioners of the liberation side, and are no way criminals to be fined, disciplined, dismissed or explelled. We need to show maximum solidarity with them and their just cause to end the aggressive war and bring the troops home now, and begin to impeach Bushco for their high crimes. End pollution wars, not endless wars for more polluiton. Re-tool to wind, tidal, and solar power.