According to MercuryHills.com:
All the brouhaha stems from Wednesday, when four teens wore red, white and blue garb on Cinco de Mayo, a day when many Latino students wore red, white and green to honor the defeat of the French military in Mexico in 1862.
Reached by cell phone today, one of the boys, Matthew Dariano, 16, said he was not at school today fearing there might be violence on campus. Instead, he and his mother were at a hotel doing satellite interviews with Fox News. He insisted that despite reports that he and his friends said unkind words to Latino students, “We didn’t say anything at all. We just wore our shirts.”
The assistant principal had asked the boys to turn their shirts inside out or go home, saying the clothing was “incendiary” on the Mexican holiday, and that he feared for the safety of the students. The boys thought that was “disrespectful” and two went home; their mothers called the media.
The boys are Dariano; Dominic Maciel, 15; and Daniel Galli and Austin Carvalho, both 16. Two of the boys are of Mexican heritage and two are not.
Dariano said he and his friends have not received any disciplinary actions for their behavior, but they have not received any type of apology either.
Wesley Smith, superintendent for the Morgan Hill Unified School District, said in a statement Thursday that the incident was “extremely unfortunate” and the boys should not have been disciplined for wearing “patriotic” clothing.
Free speech experts agreed with the district, saying political speech is protected even on a school campus as long as there is no basis that it will cause violence or physical harm.
About 100 Latino students walked out of class Thursday and marched to Morgan Hill City Hall to protest the boys’ action.
When does it just become the better part of valor to wear a neutral shirt?
The NY Daily News reports the same story with a little stronger flavor added:
A handful of California students got an unexpected lesson at their high school this week: Don’t wear your stars and stripes on Cinco de Mayo.
Five Morgan Hill, California students were asked to take off their American flag bandannas and turn their T-shirts inside out after students complained, according to NBC news in San Francisco.
Many members of Live Oak High School‘s large Mexican-American student population that felt it was offensive for the students to wear the American flag on a day that’s supposed to celebrate Mexican heritage.
When the boys refused to take off their flag t-shirts and bandannas, they were ordered to go to the principal’s office.
“They said we could wear it on any other day,” Live Oak student Daniel Galli said, “but today is sensitive to Mexican-Americans because it’s supposed to be their holiday so we were not allowed to wear it today.”
The alleged concern was that the T-shirts would lead to fights on campus.
“They said if we tried to go back to class with our shirts not taken off, they said it was defiance and we would get suspended,” said Dominic Maciel.
The chastised teens’ parents were furious.
“I think it’s absolutely ridiculous,” Julie Fagerstrom, Maciel’s mom, said. “All they were doing was displaying their patriotic nature. They’re expressing their individuality.”
Morgan Hill Unified School District released a statement saying it does not agree with how Live Oak High School administrators handled this incident and that the boys would not be suspended.
Funny how 2 different reports seem to give a totally different version of an incident. I still want to know why kids are being allowed to wear bandanas. Gang attire alert.
This area is a suburb of Silicon Valley. It is not a barrio. It sounds to me like kids are being kids and schools are being schools. And some folks on both ‘sides’ know exactly which buttons to push. And the entire nation is at war over it.
Good for the kids who wore neutral white. It looks like maturity set in. No one wants their school to be an armed camp.
UPDATE: according to a video on Foxnews.com, the students say they were not suspended over the shirts. They chose to go home rather than change their shirts.
It’s right to ban the bandannas. But I don’t care why the kids wore the flag shirts, they had every right to wear them as long as they behaved themselves.
My son was not allowed to wear an “Operation Enduring Freedom” shirt a few years ago because it had a very small depiction of a soldier’s rifle. His dad served in Afghanistan, but the school was too fixated on the potential for the shirt to cause another Columbine-like attack to allow such an evil thing to be worn in school.
There is a video on fox news that I cannot imbed. It shows them wearing the bandanas. grrrrr. I will continue to try to snag the video. Lots of room for social commentary there.
I think the kids had the right to wear the shirts also and I believe the school mishandled the situation. I also would hope that the students who wore the shirts out of patriotism would do it on other days also and not just on Cinco de Mayo. In fact, I hope it was part of their everyday behavior.
Having the right to do something and having the wisdom to not always excercise that right are 2 very different things.
Schools also have the right to ban anything that causes a disturbance. The courts have allowed that flexibility. For instance, if Mary’s lamb got run over and a gang of kids hated her and wore lamb shirts to rub it in, the school could put a temporary ban on lamb shirts ….til the tensions eased. Silly example but…off the top of my head.
Mixed feelings on the Operation Enduring Freedom shirt. Often institutions have to do rule of law thing (well, school’law’) so that everyone is treated equally. I wouuld have pinned a piece of cloth or put a flag pin over the rifle and been done with it.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/05/07/california-principal-apologizes-forbidding-flag-shirts-mexican-holiday/
The above link has a good video and shows yet another point of view.
re the gun ban on attire. Here’s how it works: Your kid, Em, wears an Enduring Freedom shirt with a tiny, harmless rifle. No problem. No one notices. However…Big Ralph comes in with an AK-47 blazing across his shirt. He gets sent home. His parents sue for his first amendment rights…..and they go back to your kid and say well Em had a gun on his shirt….
So Em is banned from wearing his Enduring Freedom shirt to keep Big Ralph from being able to glamorize his weapon.
Fair? No. Reality? Yes.
Is it not very sad that the wearing of an American flag in an American school by American students is considered to be “incendiary” and a potential cause for disturbance? Did they also take the American flag down from the school flagpole on Cinco de Mayo? Oops. Forgot. They did that at Montebello High School in Pico Rivera — replaced Old Glory with the Mexican flag. Nice that. I dare anyone to try that same stunt in reverse in Mexico. California is sick.
@Wolverine
I don’t doubt for a minute that there was some ‘stir up’ in the ‘dust up.’ That’s kids for you. However, No one should have to hide the display of the American flag as long as they are in this country.
Someone, like the government teacher, needs to take the young lady aside from the second video and give her a history lesson. Any other group/ethnicity may celebrate their culture, national feastivals etc in the United States. However, the world isn’t going to stop spinning because it is going on and we will never lower our flag to it.
She suggests that we should put our flag away for Cinco de Maya. She doesn’t get it. It is our flag that symbollically gives her the right to celebrate Cinco de Maya in the USA. Her thinking is erroneous and dangerous. However, she is a student. Her ignorance needs to be corrected by those in charge of her education. Her ignorance should not be perpetuated and encouraged.
Well, “rubbing their faces in it” is exactly what those parading around with the Mexican flag are doing to the US citizens! Somehow no one makes comments about that, but God forbid we wear the American flag for we might offend someone? Huh, in our own country no one should be offended by the presence of OUR nation’s flag, period. If it offends you than you must not be loyal to this nation otherwise you would support its display. Similar to what others have said, if you don’t like our flag you’re probably an illegal.
Go ahead, keep taking the ‘high’ road in this type of situation by NOT wearing the American flag, and eventually you will find yourself NEVER wearing the flag! It is those in THIS country that need to change THEIR attitudes and accept that they must become Americans in mind and spirit otherwise they will never be considered Americans and garnish the respect they so demand. This BS of Americans having to conform to whatever group they may be amongst is ridiculous. It is up to those who come to THIS country to conform to OUR culture if they want to be accepted by us. After all this is AMERICA, and I’ll be damned if someone is going to tell me I can’t celebrate that fact. America stands for freedom for ALL including American citizens, and if we take priority, too freaking bad! I don’t have the option of going back ‘home’, this is my home, and if we don’t get smart we just may become homeless.
The issue of whjether we are going to allow parts or whole ethnic segments of America to believe that they are their own entity and that no Anglo should “hurt their feelings” by wearing an American flag is not some small issue that can be papared over. It does and will go way beyond these kids and their shirts.
This issue is not going away. Frankly we are on a path towards what I’ve always wanted to see – a national consensus to stop coddling illegal immigrants and encouraging them to stay here. Inevitably, they’re going to come to understand that they don’t belong here and that citizenship will not be forthcoming. The logjam is breaking, and the pro-Amnesty/forgiveness crowd has no idea how to react or what to do next. Hence all the rhetoric about how terrible Arizona’s rather fair law is, but no real way forward against it.
There seems to be some fatal leap that most of these kids in this school are illegal immigrants and that those celebrating Cinco de Mayo are ‘illegals?’
Where did this come from? That kind of logic makes me want to go screaming off into the sunset. I expect most of the kids that attend that school are US citizens.
I honestly am beginning to think that ‘illegal’ is a euphamism for ‘Latino’.
Immediately after 9/11 many of the first people to put up an American flags were the hispanics in the Westgate area. Many immigrant families have dual loyalties. I would think it strange if they did not. Cinco de Maya isn’t even celebrated everywhere in Mexico. It is celebrated more in this country by those of Mexican heritage than it is by people living in Mexico. It is almost never celebrated in other countries predominently latino.
Principal Rodriguez, if he is honest, will discipline all the children that left school for that “protest” march. If he’s willing to suspend children for wearing the American flag, then those kids need to be punished for leaving school.
If it does not break the school dress codes, then those kids with American flags should have been left alone. Heck, “Cinco de Mayo” isn’t even a big holiday in Mexico. Its been promoted by the beer companies to sell beer. Its a celebration of the Battle of Puebla where Juarez’s forces beat a French force. And then proceeded to lose all the other battles. France left Mexico because President Andrew Johnson put 50,000 Civil War vet soldiers on the Texas border and told the French that they were violating the Munroe Doctrine. He said this in 1865 and they were gone by the middle of 1866.
So all of those, apparently, AMERICAN kids celebrating “their” culture and flag need to be taught some history. The AMERICAN flag is their flag. Respect flows both ways.
Personally, I would have forced the school to suspend my kid without cause. And then gone to court. If you want to punish a child, make sure that they are actually doing something wrong, first.
As to the “gun” shirt, I wouldn’t care if little Johnny came to school with an AK-47 on his shirt. My only objection would be to any portrayal of acts of violence.
My daughter has a great shirt with Hello Kitty holding an AK. Kalashnikitty rules!
“I honestly am beginning to think that ‘illegal’ is a euphamism for ‘Latino’.” If you want to make that connection, then I don’t think it’s by accident, but rather by common understanding of geography and perhaps the evening news when they dare to mention it. Being ‘illegal’ and acting ‘illegal’ produces the same outcome in my book. These kids are mirroring their parents who very possibly entered the country illegally. How do you feel about the Latino originated anti-American club that is supported by the same school? Do you not see a common thread with all of this? The T-shirts have just brought the true issues to light as has the Arizona law. Now it’s time for us to face the chilling facts of what is taking place and throw PC out the door before we face similar circumstances in every school in our country, or what used to be our country!
The assistant principal’s actions gall me than anything the kids did on either side. If anything, he turned it into more of a provocative situation than it needed to be.
Maybe that is why he is an ASSISTANT principal.
He mishandled a situation for sure. I expect he will be lucky to remain an assistant. School system love to find fall guys, just like the military.
Cargo, most schools here forbid depiction of guns or weapons on attire. It should be enforced. Otherwise, don’t have a rule if it isn’t enforced equitably. There are ways to cover small things. They do the same thing with drugs, cigs and alcohol.
The Am flag kids weren’t suspended for their clothing. I think they were going to be suspended for leaving campus without permission. one account said that is why they were punished. Another account, repeated by one of the kids who needs to learn how to speak English, says they were going to be suspended for insubordination.
Actually, the kids should have done what they were told to do. You don’t get to cherry pick what rules you are going to obey. They should have gone home, told their parents, and their parents should have gone up and raised hell.
Giving kids permission to disobey the rules is most of the problem in schools nowadays. Then everyone’ standard becomes ok. Don’t like the principal? Then give your kid permission to call him a mo-fo. NOT!
@Second-Alamo
SA, you said if you dont like the American flag then you are illegal or something like that. It is very normal for immigrants to have divided loyalties. I see nothing wrong with that.
I also see nothing wrong with Mexicans nationals or Mexican-Americans celebrating Cinco de Mayo. Suggesting that no one should have an American flag out is insane. Trying to irritate the Mexicans is irresponsible. Turning the issue into a national one through mishandling…inexcusable, based on what we know. I hope I find out Rodriguez wasn’t quite as off the cuff as reported.
“Trying to irritate the Mexicans is irresponsible.” So you’re suggesting that there are times when the American flag should be placed out of sight in AMERICA, so as not to offend the MEXICANS (your words). That’s the problem they’re Mexicans first and Americans last. You are still blind to that basic fact. The Mexicans should have embraced the American flag along with the Mexican flag not exclude it. If only one national flag is to be flown in this country, then it is the American flag. Other flags can be flown also, but not to the exclusion of the American flag. Maybe it’s my ‘sick’ opinion, but then I like to think that those men behind the names on that black granite wall in DC didn’t die for the MEXICAN flag!
I think the school acted stupidly. Though it’s still a tempest in a teapot, the school’s actions inflated this to a “story” where there had been no story.
MH, here a link to the anti-American club sponsored by that high school. If you take the time to investigate the movement behind the clubs existence you couldn’t possibly condone this being allowed in this country. Don’t just pass it off as BS simply because you don’t agree with the site. You used to be rather neutral in your points of view and opinions, but I’m starting to see this left leaning train of thought. If you have no negative opinion on this then I’ll know you’ve completely placed your support south of the border.
http://concrave.com/content/00123-flag-shirt-controversy-high-school-sponsors-mexican-nationalist-group
SA, you are trying my patience with that reading comprehension issue. I know you don’t have one so you are doing it to irritate me.
Obviously you saw that I wrote Suggesting that no one should have an American flag out is insane.
I can have an American flag on my porch or I can be shoving it up someone’s nose. We all know how to goad. Some of us are even experts.
I never said I was neutral. I don’t think it is left leaning to try to have kids get along. I would be willing to bet my next paycheck that those 4 boys aren’t always in patriotic garb.
My guess is that the garb was an attention seeking behavior. Had it been their normal garb, who would have even noticed.
Now, having said that, I think everyone is wrong: Principal Roderiguez, the 4 flag boys, and the Mexicans who expect Americans to hide their flags. Have I left anyone out?
Oh, the people who decided to wear white t-shirts…the peacemakers.
Bubberella is on to something. A story has evolved where there should be none.
SA, few immigrants hang up the flag of their country of origin. I expect even Einstein had a hidden German flag somewhere. I don’t think we should expect them to.
Concrave is not a reliable news source. The first sentence is inaccurate. It is junk news. Certainly we don’t believe everything we read on the internet. Give me mainstream media any day. There is a way to hold them accountable.
Go listen to the videos. The kids say they weren’t suspended over the shirts. Who are you going to believe? The kids or some right wing blogger who doesn’t have his facts straight? That is a biased website. Please don’t ask me to use it as a source. That would be like asking me to use the dark screen as a reliable news source.
The real result of all this is that the Latino kids at Live Oak High School did serious damage to the Latino community itself. The only thing they accomplished was to feed more ammo to non-Latino anger against that community. In my opinion, they also gave a boost to the new law in Arizona. A very wrong-headed show by those kids and that school administration.
Bubberella is absolutely right. In this country of instant communications, such actions are no longer local but are magnified a thousand fold in a matter of minutes. It is time these Latino kids started playing it a lot smarter. They can begin by ceasing to follow the lead of radical adults in that same California community.
In our personal search to find ways to end this immigration crisis, Wolverine and Mrs. Wolverine have become supporters of the Dream Act as one way out of this mess. But if the Latino kids continue to pull stunts like this, they make it a lot harder to convince others of the merits of that measure. The people we have to convince are Americans, natural born and naturalized, who are proud of this country and its flag. That business at Live Oak did not help.
I’m tired, I think I’ll go home now. All this flag waving has worn me out! Most of my points are bypassed anyway, so why make the effort to write them. I think I’ll just sit back and watch what happens in 80 plus days. It will be interesting to say the least.
Wolverine, I can’t blame just the Latino kids. I don’t think the 5 did right either. Of course it was their right to dress that way. Was it the wisest? I don’t think so. Displaying your flag and shoving it up someone’s nose are 2 different things.
Administration just put the match in the can of gasoline.
The real heroes are the kids who chose to wore white to calm things down. There really should be no story here.
Moon, much depends here on what those five boys actually did. They had every right to wear clothing with the flag printed on it any day of the week. Even the school superintendent now admits that. This was not a case of walking into an NAACP meeting wearing a KKK emblem on your shirt or into a synagogue with a swastika armband. Unless someone can show me that those boys actually used that clothing to taunt the Latino kids directly through words or actions, I will not fault them simply for wearing a version of the American flag in their own American school on American soil where the flagpole has an American flag flying from it. So, that is a good question. Did they just wear that clothing or did they actually “shove it up someone’s nose”? If the former, then no one, including those Latino students, has any call to try to deny them their constitutional rights. Even if you claim the clothing was being used as a “statement”, you have no right to try to abrogate the rights of those wearing it. Let us not forget that, during the Vietnam War, anti-war protesters marched through the streets of Washington carrying North Vietnamese and Viet Cong flags. They were not arrested for that, nor were they told by the authorities to get rid of those flags.
Was it a good idea to do this on the Cinco de Mayo, since you might be the cause for a disturbance? I don’t particularly like that attitude since it implies a concession to the intimidators. If Group A is exercising their constitutional rights within the law, and Group B shows signs of causing a disturbance in reaction to it simply because they do not like it, it seems to me that the logical thing for authority to do is address and change the potential behavior of Group B rather than try to force Group A to surrender their rights. The other way around and you are going after the potential victims and caving in to those who are threatening to interfere in the rights of others. If I lived on a street full of Anglos and the sole Mexican on the block chose to fly a Mexican flag and if those Anglos started to threaten the Mexican, my view is that the authorities are obliged to bring the Anglos into line, not force the Mexican to take down that flag.
In my view, the Latino students should have just shrugged off the American flag shirts and enjoyed their Cinco de Mayo festival to the fullest. Then, indeed, you would have had no story. Instead, their demands turned the situation into one in which many now see their efforts as attempted intimidation and as an attempted violation of someone else’s’ rights. And that vice-principal just played right into it. He is the one who should have counseled those Latino students to shrug it off and perhaps given them an American civics lesson at the same time.
I don’t see what the argument is. I said anyone has the right to display an American flag in this country. The fact that things got calmed by down fairly quickly speaks highly of the administration’s ability to calm things down.
In fairness, the school superintendent wasn’t in the mix to start with. He had to come along and mop up the mess on behalf of his school system.
You assume that the Cinco students were intimidators. I have no idea. I wasn’t there. All the videos I have seen indicate it was one of those culture clashes that was heightened because of immaturity and lack of knowledge about rights–with both the live oaks and the cincos.
I stand by the fact the Live Oak 5 (and video suggests there were more) had every right to wear an American flag or the confederate flag (wince). I seriously question if that was their normal attire. I seriously question if it was a wise thing to do. And the Cincos need a good history lesson also.
Schools have been give the authority by the courts to temporarily suspend things that disrumpt the equanimity of the operation of the campus.
Live oaks and cincos both wanted a little action; a little stir up for a dust up from what I can tell.
Forthermore, someone should have jerked up that little so and so who was wearing the south shall rise again shirt and booted him right in the tail.
@Second-Alamo
Second Alamo, I created a post for you. Where IS your gratitude?
Wolverine, 2 of the live oaks boys were Hispanic. Not sure where that fits in the mix. The flag guys weren’t all anglos.
Actually wearing the American Flag as a shirt is against the proper way to display a flag, so the codes adopted long ago were violated. This shows how little those who want to use the flag in such a manner not only show a lack of proper use of the flag, but make themselves look pretty silly.
Welcome Herb Sarge Phelps! I have been thinking what you just said throughout this entire discussion. In times gone by, wearing the american flag as a print on clothing was very much frowned on and not proper flag display. Thanks for your contribution. I hope you will post regularly.
Thanks MH, but I can see there is no point trying to engage in debate with those who view illegal immigrants and their offspring as having no impact on the sovereignty of our nation, and so I tire of the effort. My efforts in debate would be better spent with those who see this as a major problem, and are trying to determine a real world solution. Not a PC solution, but one with our nation’s future as the only thing that matters.
I don’t think any group of immigrants can be seen as having no impact. I think we see the impact as having different consequences, many times. For example, I see the drug cartel violence as being far more serious than the lawn care workers who are not here with documentation.
I want to fix things so people can come here as guest workers. I want people to be able to immigrate legally while at the same time I want our immigration patterns to be based on our economic and labor needs. I want families to be able to be together.
Do you want any of the same things I want? Do we have any areas of agreement?
SA, if you debated with those who agree with you then you would be preaching to the choir rather than having a debate.
Thanks Moonhowler after the way Elena did on my show, I was glad to add to it. By the way the podcast of the show is up at http://smcws.podbean.com if Elena or anyone wants to listen or download.
Thank you so much, Herb. I have been looking for that podcast!!
@Moon-howler
my pleasure she did a great job. By the way I just go by Sarge.
“This shows how little those who want to use the flag in such a manner not only show a lack of proper use of the flag, but make themselves look pretty silly.”
Every year around July 4th Old Navy sells T-shirts with flags on them for $5 or less. Many Americans, I presume millions, buy and wear them. Welcome to the new world. If you hadn’t realized that things like this were going on, it makes you look pretty silly.
Sarge, I don’t know how old you are; but I do remember the era when there was flag etiquette — such things, inter alia, as never letting the flag touch the ground and lowering the flag at sunset. But, my friend, that changed a long time ago, way back in the 1960’s. Having been raised and having lived in those changing times, both as a Boy Scout and later a war veteran, I do not recall being particularly upset at seeing the flag on a shirt from the 1960’s onward. I still don’t, although I do feel a twinge of disgruntlement when I see it covering someone’s behind in the form of a bathing suit. How have things changed? Look around at all the private homes which fly the flag. Rarely is that flag taken down at sunset and raised again at dawn as prescribed in the etiquette of old days. We now even debate whether the burning of our flag is a legitimate form of protest protected by the First Amendment. Things change. People forget.
Interesting historical coincidence for me and Mrs. Wolverine in this debate and all the brouhaha about SB 1070 in Arizona. One of Mrs. W’s relatives-by-marriage was a member of the famed Mormon Battalion during the Mexican War. He served under General Stephen Kearney. He was given the honor of being the first to raise the American flag over a certain captured Mexican garrison town in Arizona — you guessed it — Tucson, Arizona.
Wolverine,
I support the right of people to burn the flag. I also support the right to put it out in any way I deem to be safe……like rolling the battered body of the flag burner over it……..
Sarge, we are glad you are here with us.
Wolverine, I think the rule is you don’t have to take the flag down if illuminated. Those solar lights are great for that task.
MH – this is not the first time that you have argued that control of the violence is your primary concern. I don’t think anyone disagrees. A few (hundred) killers killing killers makes news, but the distrust is that the argument appears to be more an effort to shift the focus away from the bigger problems (tens – hundreds of thousands) caused by what many view as an illegal and preventable alien invasion, with its assoicated welfare, health care, crime and other entitlement costs. If the left would support the security of our borders and the rule of law, we might find some common ground. As it is – the only countries effectively without immigration or guest worker controls (quotas) are Mexico and the few other southern nationalities that slip in. Opposition to the actions of PWC and Arizona do not suggest a recognition of the illegal alien impact on our communities, but rather suggest that American soveriegnty is expendable subject to political advantage and the progressive agenda. We have talked about the incentives that need to be put in place to reduce illegal alien entry into the United States; from worker/employment issues to the census, from access to beneifits (like education) to the conveyance of citizenship to alien children. Again, every such discussion eventually gets made into a racist (latino or hispanic discrimination) argument. That is just wrong and prevents any rational discussion of law enforcement. First, Stop the bleeding, then administer antibiotics, reset the bones/structue of the law back to its origional intent and then let the patient heal — before going out again to play. Allowing illegal alien entry to continue is not acceptable. Allowing those already here illegally to flaunt the law and displace those that would come legally is not acceptable. If you want immigration reform as a part of the mix – fine – but lets start with mirror imaging laws– meaning, we will handle your illegals here the same way you handle them in your country.