Students at the Bronx Lighthouse College Preparatory Academy wrote a letter objecting to a visit by Republican Presidential candidate Ted Cruz, and the school canceled his visit.
Cruz, no doubt, hoped to use the charter school as a photo-op for his New York campaign.
The students, however, had other ideas.
They wrote:
A group of students will be leaving during 4th period, as act of civil disobedience in regards to the arrival of Ted Cruz to BLCPA. We have all considered the consequences of our actions and are willing to accept them. We respect you and all the staff at BLCPA as well as the expected guests. But we want you to understand that as passionate students, we have ideas and principles that should be heard and respected. This walk out isn’t a reflection of our discontent with BLCPA but our opportunity to stand up for our community and future. This walk out is taking place because we as students all share a common idea.
The presence of Ted Cruz and the ideas he stands for are offensive. His views are against ours and are actively working to harm us, our community, and the people we love. He is misogynistic, homophobic, and racist. He has used vulgar language, gestures, and profanity directed at a scholar and staff members, along with harassing and posing threats to staff and scholars according to the Disciplinary Referral slip. This is not to be taken kiddingly or as a joke. We are students who feel the need and right to not be passive to such disrespect.
One commenter said the students were censoring Cruz; others congratulated them. Civil disobedience is an honorable tradition. Cruz has many other opportunities to speak. Bravo to the students for not letting themselves be used to prop up the Cruz campaign. He needs to learn about what he disparagingly called “New York values.”
Last December, something similar happened to Rahm Emanuel, when he tried to use Urban Academy charter school as a prop to burnish his reputation after the bad publicity associated with the shooting of Laquan McDonald. Students interrupted him by repeatedly shouting “Sixteen shots.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
A woman in Florida recently confronted Rick Scott in a Starbucks, called him an expletive, for his refusal to expand Medicaid to the working poor in the state. It is good that angry citizens are getting angry for our representatives that seem to ignore the needs of regular people, but they always do the bidding of corporate interests. Let’s hope this indignation translates into an engaged electorate that votes in their own best interests.
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Wow, what a powerful statement these students are making! So inspiring, I love it! Way to stand up against being used as a photo op and helping Cruz gain some kind of points for being connected to this school and its students. The reality is much different, they don’t agree with what he stands for, and they are bowing out of his public campaign and photo op.
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Good for those students. Their school and their parents should be proud of them.
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Bravo for these students! They are an inspiration for how to peacefully dissent. They recognize that Cruz may exercise his freedom of speech in whatever crass ways he chooses, but they may also exercise their freedom not to listen. These stories lately of students protesting give me hope.
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The principal and the students should have listened to Cruz, and then asked him the tough questions. What are the students and this principal afraid of? The students and the principal had an opportunity to expose this person. The students screwed up. The principal needs a course in civics.
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Riiight, because I’m sure Cruz would have stuck around for that. No, the students did the right thing. Cruz isn’t entitled to use their school for his platform.
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Cruz was coming to the charter school for a political campaign speech, not a give and take about ideas. His views are already widely known from debates, policy statements and media accounts. By offering the school as a stop on his campaign route the school would have been in effect promoting him and his political goals which the students made it clear they strongly oppose.
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Dienne & sallyo15:
What y’all said.
Thank you for pointing out the blatantly obvious.
😎
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Students are tired of being used a political props for cynical and reptilian politicians. The kids Did the Right Thing.
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Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Ted Cruz is called out as a misogynistic, homophobic racist by protesting children. I wonder what they’d say about Donald Trump who is considered the lessor of these two evils.
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I wonder what these children would say about Donald Trump, that I have repeatedly read, is considered the lessor of these two evils. Is this why so many voters are supporting Trump in the primaries, because DT is the lessor of two horrid evils? On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the most repugnant does that mean Trump is a 10 and Cruz is off the scale higher than a 10?
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Reblogged this on Politicians Are Poody Heads and commented:
Good for these students. They effectively gave Cruz a “Bronx cheer” by exercising their right to dissent and refusing to listen to his campaign propaganda. It is students like these who give me hope for our country’s future. Kudos to them!
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Bravo! Can a group of Bronx school students really “censor” Ted Cruz, who has the power and money of the Republican Party behind him? One of the salient–and incredibly bizarre, under the circumstances–characteristics of far-right Republicans is their capacity to see themselves as victims. When I’m at the gym and glance over at Fox News, I see this in their whiney, politics-of-resentment and grievance “reportage,” a term I use so charitably as to be erroneous.
At this moment, I am proud to be a resident of The Bronx….
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Ted Cruz displayed his true colors when he basked in Wisconsin after the establishment helped to ensure him with a win in the Badger State.
Who was standing beside him after offering an endorsement?
None other than Scott Walker…the billionaire-supported proxy who has gleefully and joyously neutered unions and the working class from his plush offices in Madison.
The grim reaper who has slashed funding for students to Addison the University of Wisconsin.
Perhaps Scott Walkers’s next gig can be to start up the Broad Visionaries with Visions for a Revisionist society for Subdividions of the Citizens of Wisconsin.
The title itself might be worth $500,000 per year. (With added bonuses for destroying labor and public eduction.)
I’m sure Walker would be licking his chops!
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Cruz came out and spoke like he was the winner in 20 consecutive beauty contests, and his supporters cheered like he was speaking gospel. It was odd to watch.
Anyhow–yay for these kids….they are very very astute.
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This story can’t be true. Everybody knows that charter schools produce drones ready for brain-dead subsistence work who submit to authority, not independent and creative thinkers who question it.
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