Saturday, August 29, 2009, from 11AM-2PM Republican Congressman Gus Bilirakis will hold his 3rd Annual Military Fair at East Lake High School in Tarpon Springs. The fair is used to glorify military service and weaponry to children. We will not passively stand by as our public schools become centers for military indoctrination. Public schools should be centers of academic and personal growth, we won’t allow them to be used to showcase and glorify the military. Last year, Bilirakis allowed gun dealers there on the school grounds selling weapons and letting kids play with them. ***This event makes no sense when there are ZERO TOLERANCE POLICIES in regards to possessing weaponry on school campuses.
The law states that if a child so much as displays a plastic pirate sword during a Halloween party on school grounds, he or she gets expelled. Yet, they allow the military to set up weapons displays and invite gun dealers to have booths where children can point weapons at each other at our public schools. The larger context is even more alarming. The decades long defunding of public education, the resultant decline of K-thru-12 systems across the country, and the growth of the charter school movement has produced a situation in which the Military creep into the wreckage with an offer many parents cannot refuse. Desperate parents enroll their children in programs they believe will teach them "leadership skills", fearing they have little or no other option.
Militarism is an issue that must be confronted with long-term strategies, and challenged on the National, as well as neighborhood level. Our goal is to inhibit the power of the military-corporate-educational complex by slowly and positively transforming an interventionist and imperial foreign policy. We start by refusing to allow military exhibitions in our neighborhood schools.
We will not raise our children to kill another mother’s child!
In solidarity, please JOIN CodePink Tampa Bay, St Pete for Peace, Florida Green Party members, Veterans for Peace, St. Pete for Peace, FLPAN and other local peace action groups on Saturday, August 29th, 2009. We’ll meet at 10:30AM at the entrance to East Lake High School at 1300 Silver Eagle Drive in Tarpon Springs, FL 34688
For more information email:
codepinktampabay@yahoo.com
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TAMPA: Congressman Bilirakis's ANNUAL MILITARY FAIR @ EAST LAKE HIGH SCHOOL in Tarpon Springs, FL 8/29/09
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