Esquivel and his much ado about nothing

Defendant Marty Esquivel would like people to believe that I once wore an elephant mask to a board meeting and scared the living hell out of everyone in the room.

In fact, there were two masks and two wearings.  Upon the first wearing, I was the victim of their derision, link.  Upon the second wearing they arrested me. No charges were filed because of course, I hadn't broken any law.  According to the judge, it was they who broke the law when they arrested me.

Standing silently and civilly against a wall wearing a poster about the elephant in the room, the double standard of conduct, the message was being ignored; by the board and by the media.

Neither of them want to begin a discussion about the double standards of conduct that bind students and their senior-most adult role models; school board members and the superintendent.  This because that discussion cannot help but end with school board members being held accountable to higher standards of conduct that their own character and courage can support.

Holding up a poster, if the message on the poster is found "threatening" by a school board member or senior administrator, is against board member law.  They will dispatch members of their publicly funded private police force who will follow their orders to interfere with a constitutionally protected human right to petition your government by any legal means.

Posters didn't work, maybe the elephant in the room (rev 2) would.

I'm sorry, but it is against our law for you to hold up a Character Counts!
poster while standing silently in the back of a public meeting being held
in order to gather public input. You and the folks with you are going to
have to stand down with your posters or be arrested.

OK then, you and your friends who won't put down
their posters, are under arrest.

The first rev of two.

Frankly I don't give a damn what anybody thinks I should or should not have done eight years ago. 

The point is; not only was what I did legal; free expression under the first amendment, but it was ethical in every sense.  I would not be in the least ashamed if any one of the thousands of students to whom I tried to teach Character Counts!, watched a videotape of my peaceful, civil protest and arrest.

Whether people who were not there, and who cannot begin to imagine much less comprehend what I was up against, and who, most importantly, have never done anything themselves to expose the double standards of conduct in the APS, agree with or support what I did is of no consequence to me.




photos Mark Bralley