Students Host Guantanamo Exposure event-Administration Makes Teachers Teach "other side"

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Sam, Revolution Club Organizer (and teacher)
January 25, 2008 650-269-0886 revmedia3 [at] gmail.com

Student Activist Leaders Challenged by Administration at Leadership High School
Exposure of Truth about Torture at Guantanamo Bay Deemed "Extreme" – Teachers Must Now Teach Justification for Torture/Guantanamo Bay

San Francisco, CA - January 25- In the week leading up to the January 11 national day of action against torture (called for by ACLU, Amnesty International, and more), student organizers with World Can't Wait and the Bay Area Revolution Club spoke in classes and distributed orange armbands at several Bay Area high schools. Larry Everest (contributor to Revolution Newspaper and author of Oil, Power, & Empire) was invited by students to give a presentation on January 9th at Leadership High during an advisory period with approximately sixty students in attendance (4 teachers brought their classes). The talk focused on what is taking place at Guantanamo Bay. He engaged students in dialogue and role-playing about the role of torture in U.S. governmental policy.

When approximately 50 students took up the call to wear orange in opposition to torture/Guantanamo Bay, students were told by administrators that they had to remove their orange bandanas or the bandanas would be taken away. They were told that they look like "gangsters." Students refused to take off their bandanas and more began wearing orange. A handful of students came, dressed in orange jumpsuits and black hoods, to the Jan. 11 action in downtown San Francisco.
See images of Leadership High students at action here: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/12/18471950.php

After the presentation about the abuses going on at Guantanamo Bay, teachers were instructed by the Administration to take students back to their classes and "debrief." At least two of the teachers told their students that Larry's presentation was "one-sided" and "extreme." The Administration then sent a letter home to all parents of students who attended the event stating: "We know that the information presented was not balanced with alternative view points. Additionally, the speaker used the opportunity to voice extreme personal views on the nation's political climate and administration…" Describing the presentation of facts about torture as "one-sided" and "extreme", teachers will now introduce a curriculum to teach the "other side" of torture, which one of the teachers described as the "Bush Administration's point of view."

At least one of the teachers has already started teaching this. Student organizers have felt continued pressure by both teachers and administration over organizing this event and encouraging other students to wear orange in resistance to torture.

Students are working on a petition that upholds the message of the presentation: that torture is unjust and immoral, that Guantánamo must be shut down and the Bush regime must be driven out because of these crimes. And students are organizing to wear orange and displaying it everywhere.

Interviews available with students/organizers
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