Support for Kieran King and Student's Rights

A couple of letters were published today in the Regina Leader Post and the Saskatoon Star Phoenix, respectively.


Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Marijuana and free speech

Published Letter
The Regina Leader-Post

As one of the protesters at the high school in Wawota in support of student Kieran King's civil liberties on June 12, I felt like I was in Selma, Alabama, in the 1960s or in the Soweto township in South Africa in the 1980s.

But this was Wawota, Saskatchewan, in 2007 with the Parkland high school under lockdown because a handful of patriotic Canadians had chosen to highlight the anti-democratic jackboot policies of the school's principal.

We are told by our government that our troops in Afghanistan are killing and being killed for the "freedoms we all enjoy", but our children in Wawota are not permitted to discuss soft drug policy without fear of intimidation or harassment by their own teachers!

Perhaps we should redeploy our troops to Wawota from Kandahar to defend freedom and democracy closer to home. (OK, they have not been invited, but then again I don't think they were invited to Afghanistan either).

For our desire to demand freedom of speech, we were accused of being "B.C. hippies" intent on spreading the "drug culture" -- this by a so-called public health nurse who seemed to make herself some self-appointed spokesperson for Wawota's parents.

Instead of discussing her perspective in a reasonable and constructive way, she yelled at us and attempted to belittle us with inferences of being alien and foreign.

This is something -- despite being born here -- I have had thrown at me a fair amount for "my different ways" in this province. It has been used to assail me, marginalize me and degrade me, but the anger and hate I felt in Wawota was the closest I have felt to being overwhelmed by such sentiment. All this because a modest number of folks from around the province wished to defend the right of a young man to explore all sides of an issue.

What is our beautiful, once-free nation becoming? A land of fascist-inspired no-fly lists where you cannot even discuss the potential rationalities of a nonprohibitionist soft-drug policy in a place of education?

May the spirits of true democracy and truly free education save us from ourselves!

Richard Wooldridge
Edenwold

Contact: letters@leaderpost.canwest.com
Contact: http://www.canada.com/reginaleaderpost/letters.html

reginaleaderpost


The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon, SK)

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR


Principal violates rights



The StarPhoenix
Published: Tuesday, June 19, 2007


What kind of neo-Stalinist gulag is principal Susan Wilson running at Wawota Parkland School that she would suspend a student for espousing his views on marijuana?

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the right of all individuals to "freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression" -- and that includes students.

Rather than encouraging students to think for themselves, Wilson seems intent on fashioning them into mindless, obedient "citizens" who will accept the party line and always do what they're told.

She might be running the show at the school, but that doesn't allow her to violate her students' constitutional rights in the process. Perhaps, Comrade Wilson is the one in need of some "re-education."

Keith Solomon

Saskatoon




© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2007