School kids protesting ICE puts Republican hypocrisy on full display | Opinion
Last month, hundreds of Kansas schoolchildren were pulled out of class by their teachers and administrators, loaded onto school buses and transported to the Capitol in Topeka to protest against ICE.
Just kidding.
The part about kids being pulled out of class and taken to the Capitol for an adult-organized protest is all true.
But they were private-school students, and what they were protesting was that their parents don’t get state tax money to help pay for their exclusive educations.
They make this political pilgrimage to the Statehouse every year, with the full-throttle support of the Republican Party.
So why are Republican heads exploding over public school children organizing and carrying out their own protests against ICE?
You tell me.
It’s come up several times in recent weeks as students from the Wichita, Goddard and Maize school districts have taken to the schoolyards and streets protesting the Trump Administration’s brutal crackdowns on immigrants across the nation.
The latest example comes to us courtesy of the Sedgwick County Republican Party, upset over a student walkout on Friday by seventh and eighth graders at the Wichita school district’s Christa McAuliffe K-8 Academy.
“Eighth graders, this is completely unacceptable!” the party organization railed on social media. “Another reason why we MUST have school choice NOW!”
The post drew more than 800 comments on Facebook.
Numerous Republican commenters called it “indoctrination,” like this guy, who wrote: “The libtard teachers have been doing it with everything, removing the American flag and putting up the gay flag, bringing in drag queens to library’s, making them turn their patriotic shirts inside out, are you really so dense you haven’t been seeing this happen?”
Others postulated that it’s all a ploy by the students to get out of school by protesting an issue they don’t understand. Typical comment: “I doubt there is a child there that can tell you what ICE stands for and (they) certainly can’t explain the legal process to enter our country legally.”
First off, nobody can explain how legal immigration works these days, because the Trump administration either changes the rules or outright ignores the law on a daily basis.
Second, two-thirds of the students at McAuliffe are racial minorities. I’d be willing to bet they all know what ICE is, that it’s targeting people who look like them (maybe their own family), and they can’t rely on the law to protect them, because the same people who are supposed to uphold the law are the ones violating it.
And speaking of educational indoctrination, let’s go back to that Topeka event.
The same Sedgwick County Republicans page that blasted the McAuliffe kids for speaking out shared multiple congratulatory photos of the private-school kids at the Capitol speaking out for their issue.
Beyond the obvious — one group is pushing a conservative cause and the other isn’t — there were significant differences between the two groups, including:
1) The McAuliffe protest ran about an hour and kids were out of class for the last period of the day. The private-school kids got a whole day off from their schoolwork.
2) Under USD 259 policy, missing class time to protest is considered an unexcused absence. Consequences can include a note home to parents and denial of the opportunity to make up for missed tests or in-class assignments. There are zero consequences for private-school students for going to the annual pro-voucher protest, which is organized, paid for and encouraged by the schools and national political organizations.
3) The McAuliffe kids waved hand-lettered signs they made themselves. The private school kids were supplied with professionally printed signs and matching yellow knitted scarves. Interestingly, those signs and scarves exactly match the swag that’s been distributed to pro-voucher demonstrators in multiple states, dating back to at least 2017.
So, Republicans, tell us again who’s manipulating schoolchildren for political purposes?
Speaking of education, I think you’ve taught us all a valuable lesson in political hypocrisy, so thanks for that, I guess.
