LEGISLATION BY LAKEWOOD HIGH STUDENTS PASSES ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE
By Dave Wielenga
SACRAMENTO—By the time the sixth aye vote was cast late Wednesday afternoon, the one that officially moved Assembly Bill 1174 out of the Education Committee and into the Appropriations Committee, the Sacramento Seven had been flying high for three or four hours. Not that they’d actually arrived at the airport for their return trip to Long Beach.
But the seven students from Lakewood High School who had come to Sacramento as representatives of their 45-member Civic Voice class—the creators of AB 1174, a piece of school-safety legislation—to dutifully lobby and testify for the bill, departed the Education
Committee Room having defied the gravity of their self-doubt. It didn’t look as though they’d be coming back to Earth anytime soon.
AB 1174 would make it a misdemeanor for a person to willfully disturb a public school activity—including students’ arrival and departure from campus during school hours—and the advocacy by the Lakewood High contingent had tightroped the delicate line between the safety of minors and freedom of speech.
“Your presentations were excellent,” said 55th District Assemblyman Warren Furutani, who has mentored the Lakewood High students’ legislative effort, when the group reconvened in his office for a debriefing. “You were simple, clear, calm, direct and sincere. Very impressive.”
Sort of redemptive, too.
Although they’d been nicknamed the Sacramento Seven, and while exactly that many of them jetted from Long Beach to the state capitol early Wednesday morning, they were most definitely not rocking any superhero style when they rolled into the Capitol Rotunda.
Despite dreaming of this day since the start of the school year and preparing for it since returning from winter break, the immediate prospect of testifying before the Assembly Education Committee seemed to have drained these kids of enthusiasm. They were perhaps understandably sleepy, but also disconcertingly uncertain.
Their principle spokesperson, Terrell Snead, had inherited that position rather suddenly only a week or so before, when his predecessor had to opt out of the trip to Sacramento because of a scheduling conflict—his role in the school play.
Like everyone else in the Lakewood High contingent, Snead was struggling to find the right words, well, not so much to describe the bill, but to, well, you could say, tell people that it’s good, and stuff. After sharing a classroom for eight months, they didn’t appear to be united by much more than a general perspective.
But the path to the Education Committee Room rambled up and down the halls and stairs of the quirky Capitol Building and ran in and out of the offices of most of the committee’s members. In the course of lobbying these lawmakers to support their bill, the Sacramento Seven worked out their ideas—and the exercise transformed their flabby opinions into well-defined positions.
By lunchtime, Kaitlyn Miller could feel the difference.
“Before, it was a project,” she told her young colleagues, who had gathered in Furutani’s office for a final strategy session and pizza. “Now it’s a passion. I realize that this isn’t a freedom-of-speech issue—it’s a public safety issue.”
That’s the way the entire Sacramento Seven played it throughout their Education Committee appearance. The plan was for Snead and Miller to give two-minute presentations, but when Brandon Perez saw there were three seats available at the table, he secured the blue ticket that entitled him to one, then rushed out into a corner of the lobby to hurriedly put together an address.
Snead went first, staring for a moment into faces of the 11 legislators perched above him on a horseshoe-shaped dais before he starting to speak.
“My name is Terrell Snead and I am a sponsor of Assembly Bill 1174,” he began. “This bill is about safe schools. Our schools should be solicitor-free. AB 1174 offers protection against adults soliciting minors outside our schools. It protects students from other disruptive activities on their way to and from school.
“Current law only provides safety for students when they are on campus—there is no method for protecting them off campus. This bill will protect them when a responsible adult is not present.”
Miller went next.
“Students are a captive audience,” she pointed out. “They cannot simply choose to walk away from solicitors outside their schools. They have to go to school as mandated by the state. I have personal experience with this—being handed Bibles or fliers, being late to school because people were soliciting me and blocking my pathway to get to school.”
Then came Perez, who had been reading and re-reading the mini-speech he’d just composed on index cards right up to the moment that all attention landed on him.
“My name is Brandon Perez, and I am asking for your support of AB 1174,” he said. “This bill proposes a safety net for students traveling too and from schools. People say [that minors interacting with adult solicitors] could be a learning experience. But the opinions of these solictors are usually biased and they don’t allow input from students to make learning experience. There is no guard or filter to the information.”
After the four other members of the Sacramento Seven paraded to the microphone to lodge their support for the bill, the students heard from opponents to the bill—principally, the American Civil Liberties Union, which objects on the grounds that it would infringe on freedom of speech.
This may have been the hardest part, the students reflected afterward.
“That was horrible to sit through,” said Terrell. “I kept wanting to respond.”
“I had the urge to run up and grab the microphone!” chipped in Andrew Stockwell.
Teacher Wendy Salaya smiled. “I’m glad you restrained yourself,” she said.
Furutani let everybody blow off steam for a bit, but eventually refocused attention on something they may have forgotten for a moment. It’s not over for AB 1174—nor for the Sacramento Seven.
“Our next stop is the Appropriations Committee,” Furutani said. “We need to start the next discussion.”
13 Comments
In Torrance, Furutani’s town, a teacher was charged with, “Annoying a Child” for an improper comment to a female student in a classroom of seniors. He said her, “nipples” were showing. After the jury trial, some of the jurors shook the teachers hand when he was found not guilty. If found guilty, he would have had to register as a sex offender. There was not much more to it, other than some student witnesses were coached by school administrators. This is the danger with this type of law, in that it could be carried to extremes by some, for political reasons. In this case the administration was looking for a way to fire the teacher. In the end, taxpayers paid for a loose and absurd interpetaion of a law concerning children. 17 years old in this case.
Liberals want to restrict free speech when it disagrees with their views. One does cringe when thinking about small children being frightend by people who are against abortion, but I always though liberal met more rights not less.
Let’s hope this bill goes nowhere. It is bound to be an expensive court case if it does pass. It is a good example of why many people rate the Legislature very low in the polls.
Regardless of how one feels about the content of the Bill, this is an excellent lesson and practical exercise in civics and citizenship for these students! What a great opportunity and potentially life-changing experience for all of them!
considering the known correlation between extreme christianity and pedophilia this law cant come soon enough.
howardx: Are you able to prove any sort of reasonable connection between extreme christianity, pedophilia, and the folks who sometimes exercise their right to free speech on public thoroughfares in front of our public schools?
Or are you simply seeking to connect those dots in the minds of readers with zero factual proof in a blatant and entirely fallacious attempt to demonize the latter?
people can read the papers daily and get all the proof they need that extreme christianity is full of pedophile rapists, they dont need me to show them, however i will provide one example
heres bill donahue of the catholic league attempting to whitewash the rampant pedophilia his own branch of extreme christianity
“The refrain that child rape is a reality in the Church is twice wrong: let’s get it straight—they weren’t children and they weren’t raped. We know from the John Jay study that most of the victims have been adolescents, and that the most common abuse has been inappropriate touching (inexcusable though this is, it is not rape). The Boston Globe correctly said of the John Jay report that “more than three-quarters of the victims were post pubescent, meaning the abuse did not meet the clinical definition of pedophilia.” In other words, the issue is homosexuality, not pedophilia.
http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/bill-donahue-priest-sex-abuse-victims
is this a guy you want hanging around outside your childs school? a guy who is willing to whitewash child rape to defend extreme christianity? while “rapeth not the children” isnt in the bible who can doubt that it should have been ?
howardx: You have not-so-artfully dodged the question I asked you. I will try once more:
Are you able to prove any sort of reasonable connection between extreme christianity, pedophilia, and the folks who sometimes exercise their right to free speech on public thoroughfares in front of our public schools?
greet you can support the 1st amendment rights of potential pedophiles all you want, im too busy applauding these youngsters and the novel way they have chosen to defend themselves against the predations of extreme christianists.
howardx: You have deflected from the question I have now asked you twice. The reasonable conclusion one must draw is that you cannot, in fact, prove any sort of reasonable connection between extreme christianity, pedophilia, and the folks who sometimes exercise their right to free speech on public thoroughfares in front of our public schools.
Instead, you now allude to people you consider to be “potential pedophiles” but still conveniently avoid identifying who these people are. Perhaps they are all hanging out with all of the “potential” murderers, “potential” thieves and “potential” rapists you also fear.
Quick, somone call Tom Cruise and his “Future Crimes Unit”, howardx has some “potential” criminals that need to be rounded up!
I support everyone’s 1st amendment free speech rights so long as they are otherwise abiding by the law in exercising those rights. Apparently you do *not* support this.
When people behave unlawfully , they should be held fully accountable, at all times and in all cases.
Greet is right about this being a good experience in Civics for the kids. On the other hand as a retired vocational instructor, I see the rules and laws being passed in Sacramento discouraging work and vocations. The Legislature and State School Board, has the idea that all students should, and are, “entitled” to go to college. Of course, that is our national debate right now as to what citizens are entitled to, however, the public schools in my opinion, push this idea of, “entitlement” so strongly that students look to the government for their future too much, compared to their own unlimited potential. The schools are bastions of, “Progressivism” and we know what that is a code word for.
Howardx, thank you for making my intial points.
Agreed, Paul. College is not for everyone and vocational professions are no less important to our society and should be considered no less valuable or worthy of due consideration. The emphasis some government officials place on college while, perhaps, well-intended, is sometimes ill-considered.
State-run (Government-run) schools, particularly those of higher education, are decidedly more politically liberal in philosophy than they are politically conservative. I think there is a specific reason for this. Liberalism promotes bigger government and government-run schools promote political liberalism.
Liberal political philosophy of the 18th century was a very good thing. From it our own greatest of nations was birthed. But modern-day liberal political philosophy bears zero resemblance to its predecessor.
Liberals from our history believed in a relatively small, tightly controlled and closely monitored centralized federal government that had only a very few, very specifically-enumerated powers. Political liberals of today consistenty seek quite the opposite.
I applaud teacher Wendy Salaya, Warren Furutani and all the students at Lakewood High in this Civics Class. Not only is this a great lesson in lobbying and government but it is a very important issue. I am all for free speech, but I do not want my kids solicited and harassed right outside of their school. I don’t want peace protestors, bible pushers or Fred Phelp’s group outside their school as they are trying to arrive or depart from school even if I agree with what they stand for. This issue is about protecting our kids, not about Christians, pedofiles, or school administrators “influencing” students. Congratulations to everyone involved and good luck in your journey.
Very well said Mr. Greet. Ms. Tanaka, no one is against protecting children. The points were that some people could use abuse standing laws met to protect children to their own ends. Sadly, we see the “children” used for issues that they should not be, such as taxes, proper school finance, teacher pay and benefits, on and on. Free speech is one of the foundations of our liberty. Furitani stepped on that with this law. So the issue is about every citizen of this country, including some of the bad ones that you listed. I would hope that teacher Salaya teaches more about our Constitution and Liberty than about what are unfortuanate issues, but something allowed in a free socitey. It one thing to say, “There ought to be a law” and go off to Sacramento, but this one takes some deeper thought. I don’t think Mr. Furitani did that, and went for the photo op with the kids.
paul your a douche watch when your kids get kidnapped then well see what happens then.