Unpopular Speech

by Isabel Estrada/PNN Youth in the Media Intern

It was my third day in Middle School. I remember walking into the classroom with my friend. She was my friend because we were both coming into sixth grade at a k-8 school where everybody else knew each other. There was one chair open at the popular girls’ table. I know it both rushed through our minds. Either we could leave the other girl to sit alone and dash to that coveted chair or we could stay together and make our own unpopular girl table. Before I could decide, my friend had already moved. I couldn't feel too betrayed because I probably would have done the same thing.

I felt in my stomach the agony of pulling out the chair as everybody stared at me. My feelings quickly transformed into a tremendous urge to throw up. I sat down slowly. The sound of the zipper on my backpack ripped through my ears. I clenched my jaw in an effort to hold back the tears as I set my new binder down on the huge, empty table surrounded by five empty chairs. I refused to lower my head like my friends might have done. It was even worse because I was right next to the boys. Throughout the whole class everybody would be able to observe the contrast between their rambunctious laughter and my complete silence.

I cringed every time the teacher called on me because then the whole class would turn away from their conversations to peer at me and my empty chairs, from their full tables. I hated when the school librarian or a child from another class would come in to deliver a message. You could see the questions in their eyes. What’s wrong with her? Why is she sitting all alone?

These are the first memories that come to my mind when I think of school. I can imagine how Katie Sierra, a sophomore at Sissonville High School might have felt being openly threatened by her classmates simply because she held different views from them and because she expressed them openly.

After the events on September 11th, while the majority of teachers and students at Sissonville High stand behind George W. Bush and his war Katie was voicing her anti-war stance. She was suspended from school by Principle Forrest Mann for three days for passing out flyers for an anarchy club and she was told that she wasn't allowed to wear t-shirts with anti-war and anti-Bush messages.

One shirt that Katie wore stated "When I saw the dead and dying Afghani children on TV, I felt a newly recovered sense of national security. God Bless America". Many students responded by signing another t-shirt that one boy wore to school that read, "Go Back Where You Came From".

A local judge ruled against her claims of free speech, stating that this right is not absolute in a school setting. I can’t imagine a more ridiculous statement but perhaps that is because I grew up in San Francisco. I have always taken it for granted that school is precisely the place where you speak openly and debate issues you do not agree on. How else are students supposed to learn analytical thinking skills? Or is the question, in times of war, whether or not we are supposed to learn how to think?

When I spoke to John Leanos, a teacher at School of the Arts
High School, where I graduated last year, he said that having anarchist tendencies himself, his approach to a student like Katie Sierra would be to provide a space for discussion and to encourage students to read and get to know information from a different perspective. He believes that debate is especially important since mainstream media has in essence tried to "monopolize perspective". The corporate media is constantly reminding the American people that, in Leanos’ words, "You’re either with us or against us. They like to make it seem unpatriotic to question our system when in fact questioning is an important aspect of our constitutional right to Freedom of Speech."

The United States is famous for it’s hypocrisy. While our government and the mainstream media love to blame other regimes for restricting freedom, the Taliban included, our schools are allowed to suspend a 15-year-old girl for attempting to start an anarchy club in her high school, and are also allowed to prohibit her from wearing anti-war t-shirts.

The other day at POOR Magazine’s community newsroom we were discussing the fact that the Taliban still beheads people. Well, the United States still electrocutes people, and has viewing rooms so that people can watch. The Taliban does not make use of the American due process of law for those on trial, but then again neither does the United States justice system. Two examples are in the cases of Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal. Peltier was denied his rights because he was targeted by the FBI and Abu-Jamal because he was targeted by the Philadelphia Police Force.

>When I spoke to another POOR writer, Gretchen Hildebran, she told me of how in the ninth grade at her high school in Vermont, she along with two other girls and one boy were put in a debate in front of the entire school, pitted against a group of three boys and one girl, all of whom were seniors. They were debating the state’s equal rights amendment.

While Gretchen’s team had been prepared by a levelheaded history teacher, the opposing team was headed by a reactionary Science teacher. Once in front of the school, as Gretchen’s team started to argue points about the issue, the senior boys started yelling at them and calling them sluts and bitches. Soon many of the students watching joined in as well. Gretchen went into that debate an energetic teenage girl ready to fight for what she believed in and left completely defeated. She wouldn't involve herself in any more school activities for the rest of high school.

Similarily I entered into a huge fog of depression for the rest of Middle School. In this case it was unfortunate that I refused to give up and go to another school. But now, at 18 years of age, I am here working at POOR Magazine and those experiences are just another part of my life that I can use as material for my writing. I don’t know how Katie Sierra will handle her challenges, but hopefully she will also turn it into something positive. We’re still following her.

I never did lower my head all the way.