A school in Arkansas offered students protesting gun violence the option of suspension or corporal punishment—they chose the latter. And they're not done protesting.
This article was made possible because of the generous support of DAME members. We urgently need your help to keep publishing. Will you contribute just $5 a month to support our journalism?
DRILL – Active Shooter Drill: RUN, HIDE, FIGHT…
That’s what the phone in my office on campus reads. I teach, but growing up I knew all about run hide fight.
In fact, back in January, I wrote a call to action If You’re in The Fight Get Ready to Work.
I ended my statement by saying that the real story that tells itself over and over again is that you cannot whoop us. We already have wounds inside and outside of our bodies. We have already been inoculated against hatred. We are immune to fear. That is, we have it, but it will not stop us.
If it were your child, your mother, your father, your sibling, who was going to be torn from you. If you had seen The Man—some officer, some uniformed person—and heard that The Orders had been made, and you had only until the end of this month to make good on your promise to keep your family intact, how fast could you walk? How soon could you knock on doors? How many conversations could you have with friends and neighbors, with the little cooing baby in your arms, the small hands grasping at your chest? You would not break. That wail a baby makes when she is thrust into the bleak state of need, drumming at your neck. Play the long game. Be the unbreakable one we’ve been waiting for.
I say all this to say, I am beside myself with respect, and adoration for young Wylie Greer who chose to walk out of school yesterday and, when offered the choice between suspension or some form of corporal punishment, chose the latter.
While it might sound shocking (or medieval) to most, according to this paper published with the U.S. National Library of Medicine, school corporal punishment is currently legal in 19 states, and over 160,000 children are subject to corporal punishment each year.
Fuck run. Fuck hide. FIGHT. FIGHT. FIGHT.
In doing so, his voice and his action did not end yesterday afternoon. It just began. He sent DAME this statement and asked that it be published in its entirety:
