Day in and day out, politicians, parents and corporations are whittling away at the education system. What was once a shining example for the world has now become a joke. We were crippled by policy created by zealots who fear anything that diverges from the normal box, or by politicians with corporations in their pockets who wish to funnel money into private hands. None of these people are trained educators making decisions based on what’s best for kids and their futures.
I was informed this morning that if I go ahead with the assignment I have given you, my position would be terminated. This is therefore your last assignment you will be assigned by me and tomorrow will be my last day in the class. If my actions can help one of you understand how important it is to stand up for your principles, then all of this will be worth it.”
Your teacher, Mrs. Athena.
Chapter 14
Kona High School
Reed was dreading class today because he thought how uncomfortable Mrs. Athena’s departure made him. She was by far his favorite teacher and the thought of her leaving kept bringing him to tears. He stepped into the class and was taken aback by what he saw. All of Mrs. Athena’s personal belongings were gone and sitting at the desk was the vice principal.
“Aloha,” he said, smiling. “As you may have heard Mrs. Athena and the school district have agreed to go in different directions and she will not return. I understand you have papers to hand in.”
The class sat silent and stunned. The once vibrant classroom was stripped bare and left looking more like a prison cell than a place of learning.
“Go ahead and hand your papers forward.”
You could have heard the wings on a fly had there been one in the room. The students passed each paper up the rows to the front of the class.
The vice principal collected the papers, walked over to the waste basket and said, “I’m sorry you wasted your time last night on these.”
He dropped them and they floated down into a neat pile on the bottom of the waste basket.
“Now please open your books,” he ordered.
Katrina didn’t let him finish, “Sir…Sir…” she waved her hand vigorously, “Sir…”
“Yes, Miss Sanchez?” he said with a huff.
“Excuse me, but I don’t understand why our teacher was fired.”
“She was not fired; she made the choice to resign.”
“Yeah,” Tristan interrupted, “but she only resigned because she was sticking up for us, for our future.”
“Your future,” he sputtered as his face became flush with anger. “The common core is designed to help assure your ability to compete with students in the new global market.”
Leila raised her hand, declaring, “Maybe we don’t want to compete for low wage jobs, maybe we want to think and create our own path, start a business, or invent the next major technology or medical cure. Does the common core prepare us for that?”
“Absolutely, and don’t get us wrong. None of us wanted Mrs. Athena to resign, but her insistence on defending an antiquated part of the American Constitution ultimately led to her departure.”
Reed raised his hand, and asked, “Are you saying that it’s against district policy to teach about the second amendment?”
“Yes, under the current climate in our country a hot button issue like guns or drugs should be left to adults to decide.”
Reed shot back, “And that is because the adults are doing such a great job, right?”
The class clamored with laughter and whispers and the vice principal changed techniques. He pronounced, “If you have concerns, I suggest you take it up with the School Board. Now please open your books to chapter three.”
Chapter 15
Kona, HI, 2022
Reed hurried into his room, turned on his laptop, opened his backpack, and pulled out the stack of papers he had retrieved from Mrs. Athena’s waste basket. One after the next he fed them through his scanner, then uploaded them into his cloud account along with a video from his phone. Apparently he recorded the whole scene in the class room early that day and was ready to make a statement.
He had no idea the implications this story would have. Soon both the article he released and his video were trending at the top of every major social networking site.
***
Two days later the first major arrest of a teacher was plastered on the front page of every paper and was the top story on every news channel, with the title, “Treason in the classroom.” The headline caught Reed's eye as he walked past his dad reading the next morning.
“What’s that story about?” Reed asked.
“Your teacher was arrested.”
“Mrs. Athena? For what?”
“Apparently someone posted papers your class wrote online and they are saying her actions are treasonous. They are even transporting her to Guantanamo Bay.”
“What?” Reed’s face turned red, but he didn’t get a chance to say another word. The sound of glass breaking came from every direction and canisters spewing smoke landed at his feet. A rush of intense pain washed over his face and pierced his eyes. Suddenly, he was slammed down onto the ground and he could see his dad being dragged across the carpet. He tried to scream, but the tear gas and a mouth full of carpet made any attempt futile.
Mrs. Athena and Reed’s family were the first in a long line of arrests by the Feds using the Patriot Act as an excuse to deny anyone who disagreed with our Fascist government their right to due process. The war against teachers finally started to make sense. Over the past thirty years, academic freedom had been systematically legislated away and replaced with standards aimed at creating mindless workers instead of thoughtful leaders. The vast propaganda machine was used to discredit and vilify any teacher not willing to stay within the script. Playing on our fears, the plutocrats fed us a steady stream of programming that made us retreat into the darkest beliefs of our history, opting for dogma over reason.
Like the German citizenry before us, we were complicit in all atrocities carried out under our watch. We failed to stay engaged, or to stand up when injustice is perpetrated on another. Our safe, secure lives were too perfect to worry about the slave labor it took to create the smartphone we so desperately needed. We became addicted to our own perception and failed to walk in the shoes of another.
The right to bear arms is one of many rights under attack and only a small ripple in the coming tsunami that will wipe out our remaining rights if we do not open our eyes.
The End of The Gun Games
The Freedom Files
Berkeley, 2191
Dax’s studio apartment.
After I put The Gun Games down, I was still convinced that the 2nd Constitutional Congress made a mistake in keeping the 2nd amendment. I called Abby to get her thoughts and she agreed. As members of the big cities we saw non-violence as the way we had gained independence. We discussed at length how the people of the countryside that kept the flame of freedom burning by adhering to a simple creed, death before slavery, held a very different view. These loose knit rebels relied on small firearms, bow and arrows, and the cover of the great forests to fight the corporations for generations. In their view, it was the 2nd amendment that allowed them to own the guns that helped them survive and in the end that was how they gained their independence. I could see it from both perspectives, but thought it common sense that now that we had defeated the enemy, we could finally have peace.
We went out twice after that conversation and we didn’t discuss it once. Our relationship was maturing and we kept away from the class issues this week. In retrospect,t we were both uncomfortable with the idea of allowing just any individual to own a firearm. I know that prohibition never actually worked, but I just couldn’t agree with that, not after seeing how many people had been killed by a gun. Instead, we talked about the future and the stars and the things we dislike and like, and the rotation of the earth, mathematics, romance. Words danced off our tongues and pirouet
ted into a symphony of thought. Together we had endless bridges to cross.
The Freedom Files
Class 5
University of California, Berkeley, 2191
When class began, the former President put up a hologram of the 2nd amendment and read it to us. She explained how she was once and ardent supporter of anti-guns and an absolute believer in non-violence. She detailed how in her first year in charge of the resistance she had directed the largest nonviolent protest in the history of the world. Her second in command and leader of the military arm, Harley, was the one who finally convinced her to change her mind. Before we knew it, Harley Matthews was on the stage and the audience was on their feet clapping. I felt tears well up in my eyes and Abby’s tears also flowed freely. Harley Matthews hadn’t done an interview or been seen in public for nearly ten years. She wasn’t a politician; she was a warrior. Her demeanor was often bristling and aggressive, so when she felt she could fade away from the limelight she took it. Today, she was a comet flaming bright enough to hide the darkness of the subject.
Harley held forth, “Thank you. Please be seated, and let me start by thanking my dear friend Olga Verduzco for having me here today. Now let’s get started. When I was being beaten at the police station the week after our first protest, I began to have doubts about non-violence and the prohibition of firearms. It was on the third night of beating that the guards decided to rape me.”
Gasps filled the auditorium and one woman screamed.
“I spent one full week in jail. I was raped hundreds of times by guards. When I was finally released my body and my spirit were broken. For months I tried to ignore it, to push through in the name of non-violence, but people were being killed and raped and beat into submission. I thought back to the lessons we learned in school about the protests of the early twenty first century and how they were used to try to curb police brutality and the rising police state. In those cases, non-violence actually proved to be a very powerful tool.
I started to dig into the past, and found that only one time in history did a non-violent revolt result in a successful revolution. That, of course, was Mahatma Gandhi’s struggle for India’s independence. The sheer number of revolutions we’re talking about in the thousands, proved to me that if we wanted to succeed, we need to embrace at least at some level acts of violence. Olga didn’t agree and we pushed on until we received the intel from the capital and Wall Street. It said that they would just continue to allow the demonstrations and walk outs as long as they remained non-violent, because in the long run, the people would just get frustrated and give up, like the 60’s. We made it to Denver that week, and I was introduced to the members of the existing resistance. They were heavily armed and had been fighting a war for nearly a hundred and fifty years. Of course none of us knew there was a resistance. It was easy for the cities to hide it. The states and provinces that wouldn’t cooperate were sometimes literally blown up and sometimes they were treated more as a nuisance. Colorado and much of the Midwest had to be preserved for the watershed and natural resources, so Denver survived.
It was there that I shot my first gun and it was empowering and intoxicating. It was at the Denver Library where I decided once and for all that guns were not only a right, but they were the key to long term freedom. Thomas Jefferson wrote, ‘No freeman shall be debarred from the use of arms,’ and most of the founders hinted at the importance of the right to bear arms as the most important factor in the revolution and continuing tutelage of the ruling class. This wasn’t to say that I thought guns should be used in all cases. That certainly wasn’t the case. I thought some non-violent techniques could be used in the cities, then use our presence with weapons on the outside as leverage to create a checkmate scenario. We told them ‘we will not go back to work and if you don’t hand over the keys to the cities they will be invaded and the non-violent protestors will storm the penthouses and mansions of the elite.’ My colleague here needed to have her own close call with death before she would finally agree to such a drastic action. She was flown into a demonstration to rally the front, when a sniper tried to assassinate her. Luckily the first bullet took out her guard and the second hit her in the back. The Kevlar vest saved her life. She witnessed dozens of killings that day. What she learned is that when a government has no one to answer to, non-violence will only lead to martyrdom. Any questions?”
Hands shot up. Harley called on someone in the front.
A tall thin man stood up and asked, “Why didn’t we disarm everyone once the corporations were defeated?”
Harley smiled, and asserted, “Because as history has shown us, there will come a day again in the future when we may need them again. Are there any more questions?”
She called on Abby, who stood up and asked, “How are we interpreting the 2nd amendment differently than they did in the twenty first century.”
Harley responded, “Good question. We didn’t change the second amendment at all, but we do look at it differently. We view it as the right and duty of every citizen to have a registered firearm that they can use to participate in local militia training. The firearms citizens own can be stored at their home if they provide a child-proof safe or they can store them with the local militia armory. It has been the policy of the second United States to allow the states and municipalities themselves to make the determination about carrying of a weapon. Most of our largest cities do not allow guns to be carried by anyone who enters the city limits, while in the more rural areas you may see people openly carrying a weapon. We don’t, however, allow someone who isn’t participating in a militia to obtain a license to own a gun until they have undergone a training course and demonstrate that they understand the federal laws that prosecute anyone who willingly or unwillingly allows their firearms to be used in a crime. Again, we did not change the second amendment. Instead, we stepped away from the constitution and looked in another direction. We used our new education system and included firearm and archery training to all public schools. We gave our older citizens this choice: if they wanted to own a gun they could take the classes or they could forgo their right until they had the time to take the classes.”
She stopped took a deep breath and continued, “I don’t think guns should be the answer to our everyday policing, or to any of our personal disputes. I believe it should be used as a last resort only in the defense of freedom. If I had to say the biggest difference between our interpretation and that of the twenty first century, comes down to the last resort vs. the go to. The policing policy of that time put a gun in every officer’s hand and the streets were flooded with cheap black market guns. The populace wasn’t trained to use guns and had no respect for the power and consequences that came with firing one. Everyone out of fear and ignorance used their guns as the ‘go to’, solution. We don’t do that now; we train our whole populace to respect and revere the firearm and understand that it is a last resort. It should be noted that none of our peace officers now carry a firearm even if they own one personally. Any more questions.” she asked Abby.
“Yes, Ma’am,” Abby said, realizing that she was speaking directly to Harley, “What happens if one of the militias decides to revolt and people get killed. Will that change your position?”
Harley smirked, responding with, “absolutely not. We mustn’t let our fear drive us. If one of the militias rises up, then we as a people have failed that region of the country. Revolution isn’t something that springs from nowhere and it isn’t something that happens overnight. The new mandatory 20 year Constitutional Congress should help all regions continue to feel that they had a hand in shaping their own future. A return to civic virtue has also helped us shape a citizenry who is engaged and willing to take their grievances through the legislative process as opposed to using violence which is again the last resort.”
She paused then turned to the president and said, “The bottom line is when the world has fallen to tyranny and
there is no shining beacon on the hill. Who will stand up for those who choose to use non-violence as their only option? We found out the hard way that in order for non-violence to work there must be an existential entity that can put pressure on the oppressive regime to change. In the twentieth century the UN and United States served as the watchdogs who would threaten countries with violence if they didn’t allow for peaceful demonstrations. In the United States, it was considered a given that all protest be non-violent and violence was looked down on by most of the citizenry. What many fail to recognize is that without that outside pressure from the rest of the world non-violence is useless against tyranny because a government who is practicing the tyranny has no repercussions if they respond with violence.
Many people point to the great moralist Jesus of Nazareth and say look what he accomplished with non-violence. I always respond to the Jesus assertion in this way. Under that model the leader or leaders of a non-violent movement would have to become martyrs for anything to actually come from it. We can see many instance of this in our history. Martin Luther King Jr, for instance, led the most successful non-violent movement in US history to gain civil rights for people of African descent, and yet even in a country where they enjoyed the rights guaranteed by the constitution, his life was in constant danger and he was eventually killed. Mrs. Verdusco and I both went into the second revolution with violence off the table because we were both idealists who thought that if enough people were to walk off their jobs and halt the machine that was the corporate world, we would force them to change. We were proved wrong and a lot of good people died as a result.”