To the editor:<\/p>\n
Across our nation people are horrified by masked \u201cofficers\u201d killing citizens and by small children taken and held in \u201cdetention\u201d centers. Across the nation it is children who suffer most \u2014 not just the children of those who have been detained and deported without due process, \u00a0but also the friends, classmates, relatives who care about them and empathize with their pain. And yes, children no matter their situation are afraid they may be taken, too.<\/p>\n
Brave, outraged students from Lee County schools are now protesting the presence and actions of ICE in our home county. They walked out of school to declare publicly where they stand; they exercised their rights as Americans. They are supporting the rights of those who have and may be targeted.<\/p>\n
I applaud these students for their stand and for participating in our democracy by taking action. \u00a0Our State Department of Education has a new, required curriculum on \u201cCommunism.\u201d \u00a0Certainly these students learned their lessons well. They are putting their understanding of the civil rights we all have in a democracy \u2014 no matter our immigration status \u2014\u00a0into action. No protest like this would ever be allowed under a communist system of government. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s see what our School District does to facilitate peaceful protest and encourage in-depth, fact-based discussion of these events we are all aware of. The district can\u2019t just say NO to protest. \u00a0The District can\u2019t pretend that this is not happening across our county. Now they need to free our educators to help our students understand what\u2019s going on and help them channel their emotions into positive actions that will go beyond a walk-out \u2014 perhaps even to a change of policy. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Madelon V. Stewart<\/p>\n
Fort Myers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To the editor: Across our nation people are horrified by masked \u201cofficers\u201d killing citizens and by small children…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210],"class_list":["post-155596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}