Thursday, December 15, 2005

SALVATION ARMY INCORRECT

Third-grade students at Chavez Elementary School in Madison rang bells for the Salvation Army the past couple of years, but because a parent complained about it this year, the kids won't be doing so this holiday season. Principal Howard Fried said the school administration didn't stop teachers from making the field trip in the past, but the complaint changed the way of thinking by school officials and the district headquarters clamped down. "When the objection was raised, the administration downtown told us, in no uncertain terms, not to allow it," Fried said.

Hundreds of students from throughout Dane County join the "red kettle brigade" and help ring bells to raise funds for the Salvation Army at Christmas time, with many student groups volunteering as part of their commitment to community service. The third-grade class at Chavez was going to take a field trip to ring bells but the parent objected to public school children helping a "religious-based" charity.

Madison Metropolitan School District spokesman Ken Syke said School Board policy is very clear on keeping church and school separate. "Contributions by students to the community are very valuable, but we have to keep that separation," Syke said.

Ruth Ann Schoer, development director for the Salvation Army, told The Capital Times many schools throughout Dane County, both public and private, including Madison Metropolitan School District students, ring bells every holiday season to help the organization in its fundraising drive. "Hundreds of students ring for us," Schoer said. "Historically, every year, we have many student groups help us out." Schoer said student councils, including one at Madison La Follette High School, use bell ringing as their community service project.

The third-graders from Chavez, on the city's far southwest side, weren't signed up individually to volunteer as bell ringers, since their teacher put her name down as the volunteer and the kids would do the bell ringing. Fried said Chavez students just finished their annual food drive, collecting over 3,500 items. "Last year we collected the most of any elementary school in Madison," he said. "It's a real nice tradition this time of year."

So is bell ringing, but not for the third-graders at Chavez this year. "The teachers are coming to grips with the disappointment of not being able to do it," Fried said.

Schoer said bell ringing is something that's very easy for kids to do, and they get a big kick out of doing it, especially when people fold up dollar bills to put into the red kettles. "It's pretty exciting to a little kid when someone puts a $1 bill in, and when it's a $10 bill, they feel it's the best thing in the world," she said. Schoer said it's disappointing that people believe the Salvation Army, founded by a Methodist minister in England in 1865, is simply a religious organization. "All of the money we raise goes to feed, shelter and clothe people," she said. "It doesn't go to promote religion."

More here



PERVERTED BRITAIN

Comment from Mark Steyn

All over the United Kingdom, right now, real crimes are being committed: mobiles are being nicked, front doors are being kicked in, bollards are being lobbed through bus shelters - just to name some of the lighter activities that add so much to the gaiety of the nation. None of these is a "priority crime", as you'll know if you've ever endured the bureaucratic time-waster of reporting a burglary.

So what is a "priority crime"? Well, the other day, the author Lynette Burrows went on a BBC Five Live show to talk about the government's new "civil partnerships" and expressed her opinion - politely, no intemperate words - that the adoption of children by homosexuals was "a risk". The following day, Fulham police contacted her to discuss the "homophobic incident".

A Scotland Yard spokesperson told the Telegraph's Sally Pook that it's "standard policy" for "community safety units" to investigate "homophobic, racist and domestic incidents" because these are all "priority crimes" - even though, in the case of Mrs Burrows, there is (to be boringly legalistic about these things) no crime, as even the zealots of the Yard concede. "It is all about reassuring the community," said the very p.c. Plod to the Telegraph. "All parties have been spoken to by the police. No allegation of crime has been made. A report has been taken but is now closed."

So no crime was committed. Yet Mrs Burrows was "investigated" and a report about the "incident" and her involvement in it is now on a government computer somewhere. Oh, to be sure, the vicious homophobe wasn't dragged off to re-education camp - or more likely, given budgetary constraints, an overcrowded women's prison to be tossed in a cell with a predatory bull-dyke who could teach her the error of her homophobic ways.

But, on balance, that has the merit of at least being more obviously outrageous than the weaselly "community reassurance" approach of the Met. As it is, Lynette Burrows has been investigated by police merely for expressing an opinion. Which is the sort of thing we used to associate with police states. Indeed, it's the defining act of a police state: the arbitrary criminalisation of dissent from state orthodoxy.

Mrs Burrows writes on "children's rights and the family", so I don't know whether she's a member of PEN or the other authors' groups. But it seems unlikely the Hampstead big guns who lined up to defend Salman Rushdie a decade and a half ago will be eager to stage any rallies this time round. But, if the principle is freedom of expression, what's the difference between his apostasy (as the Ayatollah saw it) and Mrs Burrows's apostasy (as Scotland Yard sees it)? ....

The trouble is the British police are a lazy lot and, if it's a choice between acting against intimidating thugs who've made the shopping centre a no-go area or investigating the non-crime of a BBC radio interview, they'll take the latter.....

Hollywood stars are forever complaining about the "crushing of dissent" in Bush's America, by which they mean Tim Robbins having a photo-op at the Baseball Hall of Fame cancelled because he's become an anti-war bore. But, thanks to the First Amendment, he can say anything he likes without the forces of the state coming round to grill him. It's in Britain and Europe where dissent is being crushed. Following the murder of Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands, film directors and museum curators and all the other "brave" "transgressive" artists usually so eager to "challenge" society are voting for self-censorship: "I don't want a knife in my chest," explained Albert Ter Heerdt, announcing his decision to "postpone" a sequel to his hit multicultural comedy Shouf Shouf Habibi!

But who needs to knife him when across Europe the authorities are so eager to criminalise him? No society with an eye to long-term survival should make opinion a subversive activity. Here's a thought: we should be able to discuss homosexuality, Islam and pretty much everything else in the same carefree way Guardian columnists damn Bush's America as "neo-fascist".

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