Cottage Grove High School Walkout

[Oublei]

I'm so excited, I figured I'd post.

In conjunction with the nation-wide walkouts, Cottage Grove High School walked out at noon. We had over 100 students out of the building, but the administrators and police officers drove about half of the students back into class. There's also reports of administrators forcing students back in the building.

Anyway, about fifty of us walked. One student was almost arrested. When he was yanked off of the sidewalk (for no real reason), about ten students took pictures of the officer yanking him and slamming him into the car. It was a frenzy to which the officer replied, "quit taking pictures or I'll arrest you!" After the officer repeatedly called the student he accosted an asshole, he let him go because he had no warrants.

At the park we met at, we had Northwest Veterans for Peace that spoke (came all the way down from Portland!), a youth activist from Eugene, an individual who's camping on the University of Oregon's campus for peace, and a number of individuals from local political groups attended.

Despite the intimidation the school and police tried to place upon the group of students (including driving by the park we had a permit for, over, and over, and over), the environment extremely positive (the food might've helped, too). Overall, we recruited fifty more individuals who are perfect material to be youth activists.

I shall send the articles. We're going to send in pictures and press releases to all of the local papers of the officer yanking the student and slamming him on the car. Should be extremely interesting!

(x-posted)

I'd also like to add that we all called Wyden's office and left messages to encourage him to endorse Harry Reid's bill.