Posted on 11/01/2001 5:29:16 PM PST by WVNan
Charleston AP -A Sissonville (WV) High School student who was suspended after trying to start an anarchy club says she wants people to know she supports world peace - not violence.
"I don't want war, I'm not for Afghanistan," 15-year-old Katie Sierra said after a hearing Wednesday in Kanawha County Circuit Court before Judge James C. Stucky. "I think that what we're doing to them is just as bad as what they did to us, and I think it needs to be stopped."
Closing arguments were to begin Thursday morning concerning Sierra's fight to form the club and wear T-shirts with hand-written messages opposing the attack on Afghanistan, criticizing the government and calling for tolerance.
"It's about the First Amendment being challenged in Sissonville," said Roger Forman, Sierra's attorney.
Sierra and her mother, Amy,filed a complaint in Kanawha County Circuit Court Tuesday against the county Board of Education.
The lawsuit accuses school officials of denying Sierra her constitutional rights, subjecting her to public abuse and jeopardizing her ability to get an education.
Sierra and her mother are seeking the protection of her right to form the club and wear her T-shirts, and as well as an order to remove the suspension from her school record.
Katie Sierra was suspended from school for three days last week.
Principal Forest Mann said the action was taken "because she was told that she could not in any way foster, try to advance, try to start an anarchy club. She had fliers sitting on her desk in a classroom, which is quite inappropriate."
Sierra, who wore a white T-shirt Wednesday with the messages, "World Peace," and "Abolish; Racism, Sexism, Homophobia," said she has been the target of negative comments on the radio this week concerning her beliefs.
"They wanted to kill me, they wanted to shoot me in the head, they wanted to send me to another country," Sierra said.
Amy Sierra said her daughter - who has uncles and a grandfather with military backgrounds - is against terrorism, and Sierra supports her daughter's right to express herself.
"She shouldn't be singled out," said Amy Sierra, who wore an American flag sticker on her shirt.
On Tuesday, Mann ordered Katie Sierra not to wear a T-shirt with messages that include, "When I saw the dead and dying Afghani children on TV, I felt a newly recovered sense of natinal security. God Bless America."
James Withrow, the school board's attorney, said the whole issue has caused disruption at Sissonville.
"It's the buzz of the school," Withrow said. "Public schools are not the same as...(a) public square."
Mann agreed.
Teachers tell me when students come into class they're discussing it," he said. "It's very difficult to get students into a teaching and learning frame.
Mann said some of his concern stems from his interpretation of anarchy, which includes terrorist attacks against the government. He said students might associate anarchy with evil.
The manifesto for Katie's proposed club states that it is meant to express interest in peaceful revolution and "will not tolerate hate or violence."
Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines anarchy as the "absence of government," a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the absence of governmental authority" and "a utopian society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without government."
But anarchists want a sort of spontaneous order which I think history has shown is not particularly robust. Hence I myself am a minarchist -- minimist government, police, courts of last resort, and national defense.
Clearly we have to kill the terrorists before they kill us and impose Islam on the survivors. So even us miniarchists say "bombs away!" We are not pacifists. We believe in self-defense.
I know lots of youngsters are pacifists -- its a fallacy of thinking that they can grow out of. :-)
Katie, they stole the silverware and we asked for it back- then they stole some antiques, and then we wanted those back, ...
and if Bill had a chance he would steal a mummy about as old as you and go out with her--it really needs to be stopped, don't you agree?
Makes sense to me!
I guess it's a good thing we don't have a democracy in this country where the majority could vote to send a person to another country for holding views contrary to theirs.
The girl is fifteen years old and thinks like it. She is wrong, IMO, but her views should not subject her to the loss of her first amendment rights. Whether or not she is allowed to do certain things on school time is an entirely different matter.
She is just looking for attention and is almost certainly apeing the views of one or the other of her parents. My guess is that very few would join her club in any case.
People have died to insure that unpopular opinions can be expressed. I would assert my second amendment rights in defense of her uninformed and wrong-headed opinions.
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