To: Brian Rowe, Principal of Covington Catholic High School
Reject hate and violence. Add your name to this open letter to the principal of Covington Cathol...
Covington can be known as having raised a white supremacist mob and, a few years back, having handcuffed and violently traumatized children with disabilities. Or it can be known for something far different: building to a higher ground without hate and violence.
Why is this important?
Principal Rowe,
Your students travelled to Washington, D.C. and rather than supporting life, they became a mob that desecrated life and reveled in fear and hate. I understand that you have issued a condemnation of their actions and promise to investigate and take action. In this moment, you must all do far more.
I urge you to root out the foundations of such unacceptable and hateful behavior and to teach your students to treat every person they encounter - and particularly elders - with dignity, humanity and respect.
I urge you to engage every one of your students - and specifically all those who attended the march and surrounded Veteran and Elder Nathan Phillips at the Lincoln Memorial - in understanding the legacies and the values of the man who stood before them in song and the man at whose memorial they gathered.
I urge you to remind them that hate and violence, racism and misogyny, have no place in the Catholic faith. I urge you to take this opportunity to show your students their privilege in even being able to travel home - when students of a different race who have engaged in far less have been arrested or attacked or worse.
I urge you to lead the people of Covington to honor one another, and to forge a path forward where violence towards Native peoples or children with disabilities or the poor or the vulnerable is simply no longer.
Covington can be known as having raised a white supremacist mob and, a few years back, having handcuffed and violently traumatized children with disabilities. Or it can be known for something far different: building to a higher ground without hate and violence.
That is the only building you and your students should be screaming for.
More information on the 2018 settlement on the use of handcuffs on students with disabilities in the Covington public schools: https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/kenton-county/covington/aclu-kenton-county-sheriffs-office-agrees-to-settlement-in-school-handcuffing-case
Your students travelled to Washington, D.C. and rather than supporting life, they became a mob that desecrated life and reveled in fear and hate. I understand that you have issued a condemnation of their actions and promise to investigate and take action. In this moment, you must all do far more.
I urge you to root out the foundations of such unacceptable and hateful behavior and to teach your students to treat every person they encounter - and particularly elders - with dignity, humanity and respect.
I urge you to engage every one of your students - and specifically all those who attended the march and surrounded Veteran and Elder Nathan Phillips at the Lincoln Memorial - in understanding the legacies and the values of the man who stood before them in song and the man at whose memorial they gathered.
I urge you to remind them that hate and violence, racism and misogyny, have no place in the Catholic faith. I urge you to take this opportunity to show your students their privilege in even being able to travel home - when students of a different race who have engaged in far less have been arrested or attacked or worse.
I urge you to lead the people of Covington to honor one another, and to forge a path forward where violence towards Native peoples or children with disabilities or the poor or the vulnerable is simply no longer.
Covington can be known as having raised a white supremacist mob and, a few years back, having handcuffed and violently traumatized children with disabilities. Or it can be known for something far different: building to a higher ground without hate and violence.
That is the only building you and your students should be screaming for.
More information on the 2018 settlement on the use of handcuffs on students with disabilities in the Covington public schools: https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/kenton-county/covington/aclu-kenton-county-sheriffs-office-agrees-to-settlement-in-school-handcuffing-case