Videos of the confrontation show a smiling young man in a red MAGA hat standing directly in front of the man, who was playing a drum and chanting. Other kids could be seen laughing, jumping around and making fun of the chants. "I did not feel safe in that circle," said Kaya Taitano, a student at the University of the District of Columbia who participated in the march and shot the videos.
According to reports, the teens were chanting things like "Build the wall" and "Trump 2020."
Taitano said the whole incident started when the teens and four young
African-Americans, who'd been preaching about the Bible nearby, started
yelling and calling each other names. To defuse the tension, Nathan
Phillips, an elder with the Omaha tribe, started playing his drum and
chanting a prayer for peace and healing.. Phillips walked through the
crowd, and things were starting to calm down until he got to the
grinning boy seen in the video.
"This one kid just refused to move and he just got in Nathan's face," Taitano said. Other boys circled around, she said. "They just surrounded him and they were mocking him and mocking the chant. We really didn't know what was going to happen there." Phillips is a Vietnam veteran who says he served between 1972 and 1976. "I was scared, I was worried for my young friends. I don't want to cause harm to anyone," Phillips said. "I don't like the word 'hate.' I don't like even saying it, but it was hate unbridled. It was like a storm."
The crowd kept growing as Phillips and the boy stood face to face, but Phillips kept on chanting and playing his drum. "What the young man was doing was blocking my escape. I wanted to leave. I was thinking, 'How do I get myself out of this? I want to get away from it,'" Phillips said. Taitano said the standoff continued until a chaperone came and led the teens away.
Some of the boys could be seen wearing hoodies and jackets with the name of Covington Catholic High School, an all-boys' school in Northern Kentucky. The school's website said a group of students had planned to attend Friday's March for Life rally in Washington.
After the video started going viral, the Diocese released a statement saying it condemned the boys' actions and promised that the matter would be investigated and appropriate action taken. According to the school's disciplinary policy, acts of harassment or or off campus can be punished with suspension or expulsion.
This incident reminded a lot of people about the lunch counter sit-in protests in the 60s, when brave activists like Dion Diamond was surrounded by whites organized by American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell.
Other critics have pointed out the following:
This is a group of adolescent young men who went to the nation’s capital for the explicit purpose of demanding that the government remove basic human rights from half of the nation. The entire purpose of their presence in DC was entitled, arrogant, smug and violent.
Long before there was a Trump presidency, there was the March for Life, and marchers who participated in this annual antichoice festival demonstrated exactly these values. Year after year. Particularly the men.
Yes-- they have been emboldened by the atmosphere that has been created in this country in the past couple of years, but the anti-choice movement is precisely where this kind of behavior is taught to kids from very young ages. So when you see people asking the question “where were they radicalized?“ The answer is that they were radicalized in a Catholic school that has taught them from the youngest age to fetishize fetuses as the ideal of humanity and hold everyone else’s humanity as conditional.
Their participation in this annual assault on human rights makes it very clear that the driver of their behavior is their investment in a belief that they are righteous because of their inherently misogynist, white supremacist beliefs around abortion. There is no way to decouple participation in the religious antiabortion movement from misogyny and racism. None. It is integral to the beliefs, the actions and the twin desires to control and punish that drive the movement.
Covington Catholic High School is the same school that graduated Jacob Walter, who was arrested and charged with rape and sodomy or an assault he committed while a senior.
If you want to tweet about your reaction to this incident, you can mention the following accounts in your tweets, even though they're private:
- Covington Catholic High School — @CovCathColonels
- Mike Clines, Diocese Superintendent of Schools — @SupMikeClines (was on the trip with them)
- Michael Hennigan, school chaplain — @FrHennigan
Please contact the Covington Catholic High School and the Covington Diocese and let them know how you feel about their students disrespecting and harassing Native American elders.
Covington Catholic High School
1600 Dixie Highway
Park Hills, KY 41011
https://www.covcath.org/
Phone: (859) 491-2247
FAX: (859) 448-2242
Principal: Bob Rowe browe@covcath.org
Dean of Discipline: Sam Beiting sbeiting@covcath.org
Diocese of Covington
1125 Madison Avenue
Covington, KY 41011-3115
Phone: 859-392-1500
Bishop of Covington: Roger J Foys email: info@covdio.org
On the Niche website, you can leave a review of the Covington Catholic High School and give feedback on how such an institution can produce such evil, heartless brats as those we saw taunting and harassing elderly Native Americans.
Covington Catholic High School also has six corporate sponsors, who can be contacted as indicated:
St. Elizabeth Healthcare (guy.karrick@stelizabeth.com 859-301-6315)
Global Business Solutions (info@gbs-inc.com 859-491-5900)
Ortho Cincy (drhoad@OrthoCincy.com 859-301-2663)
Barleycorn's Restaurants (joe@barleycorns.com 859-442-3400)
U.S. Bank (lawrence.chappell@usbank.com 859-578-6030)
Schrudde & Zimmerman, Inc. (Facebook 859-331-3160)
Covington's financial information can be found here.
No comments:
Post a Comment