Obviously, I agree with the idea: you don’t smoke in front of nor around young children. Period. That’s pretty obvious to me, most parents, and smokers of all kinds everywhere. Yet I have some fond memories of sitting with Grandpa after dinner at the ranch, sometimes inside and sometimes out on the porch, watching the sun go down over the lake, the sweet smell of his pipe a perfect compliment to fading odors of the fried fish and greens Grandma used to cook for him. I suppose it’s a small sacrifice to make, to know that my nieces and nephews will be healthy nonsmokers with no romantic or foolish notions about why smoking is “cool.”

Still, I call bullshit. There are a hundred better ways to ’protect the children.’ Starting with universal health care and programs for poor parents to help them quit smoking. You and I both know how this law will be used: when they can’t find another legal reason to pull over some black or brown person, bingo! Time to Protect the Children! We can add “Smoking while Black” to “Driving while Black” and the rest of that long list of Laws for Thee but not for Me. Yes, I’m sure some poor White folks will get tagged by this too, but trust me- you won’t see a lot of rich smokers worring about this.

I’ll point out that cars themselves produce quite a large amount of poisons that one breaths while around them or in them. Are we rushing off to regulate their emissions, punishing automakers for failing to employ the cleanest technology and make the air safer for even those kids who walk and take buses? No, of course not. But we can pass laws that punish the poor regressively, and give even more opportunity to racist cops to crack heads, all to “protect the children.”

“We’ve worn handmade peace shirts every Thursday since the first week of school, without fail,” Skylar said.

But what started out as a light-hearted gesture soon started to be taken out of context.

Students started approaching the group members, yelling obscene things at them, said Lauren.

“People just turned on us like that,” she said. “At least 10 boys stood up and yelled things at me at once, and we couldn’t even walk through the halls without a harsh comment being made.”

The heckling began early in the school year, according to group members. They said they were putting small posters promoting peace on friends’ lockers with their permission.

They thought it was OK, because the cheerleaders and football players had signs on theirs. Eventually, though, group members said they were told by the school’s administration they could no longer hang up the posters.

“People tore them down and drew swastikas and ‘white power’ stuff on them,” Lauren said.

Skylar had similar things written on her posters.

“Someone taped an ‘I Love Bush’ sign over my ‘Wage Peace’ sign,” she said. “So I tore it down, threw it away, and the whole commons starting booing. I walk by later and find that someone has completely tore my sign down and placed an ‘I Love America, Because America Loves War’ sign up.”

—Students Wear Confederate Flag Shirts To Oppose Peace-Shirt Group, commondreams.org | sombrero tip to C&L

IT SAYS SOMETHING very revealing that there are young people who think that symbols made immortal by Adolf Hitler are a valid response to a peace sign today. Who see the confederate flag (and it is not being used here to represent “heritage,” if you don’t mind) as a sane response to a peace symbol. Who feel that White Supremacy is the counter-argument to those who ask to live without war between nations. And maybe those pundits who entertain the notion that the USA is engaged in wars of “Liberation” and such should look to the children, who so often lead the way. When we care to pay attention, that is. Because clearly, the kids are not misled. Not by our equivocating fairNBalanced frenzies. When they go crazy it is because of the binds we provide, a series of traps to which we’ve often long been blind. But those newer, more naive, less compromised and cluttered minds always suss out the truth behind our apathy-weighted sighs and rationalized diatribes. And they know what these wars are about. No, not about Freedom, or Peace, or Liberty, or Democracy, of course. Those are soundbytes for Fox-Watchers, para-citizens on brain vacation. The wars of our dear United States of America are about that dark desire that moves mobs to cheer a lynching; they are about about colonialism and imperialism and genocidal impulse and an all-too-human lust for dominance and violence and power at any cost.  Read more