Thursday, April 10, 2003

Strangling dissent

The violence level edges up another little notch, today in Forest Grove, Oregon -- against a kid from a military family:

The thoughtful debate on war continues
On April 2, Larson was reading "Great Expectations" after school in the high school commons when he was surrounded by a different group of students. They got in his face.

"This time, their position was I hate America, and I should get out," Larson said. "One of them started strangling me. He had his hands pretty firmly around my neck. I couldn't breathe for a minute or so. Then he hit me with his belt, twice on the legs. `

"The only thing he said was, 'George Bush is your daddy,' which seemed delightfully random."

Only one student, a friend of Larson's, tried to intervene. Two more groups of kids swung by to badger him before he escaped the commons, but no one else touched him. While all this happened 40 feet from the school office, no administrators were on the scene.