As NFL kneels, Chandler teen sits for the Pledge of Allegiance
Devin Booker has been sitting for the Pledge of Allegiance since the first day of her junior year at Chandler High School.
Now a senior, Booker, 17, says she rarely has encountered issues with her silent form of protest.
Until this month.
Booker was sitting during the Pledge of Allegiance when she said her teacher asked her to stand. Not wanting to disrupt class and cause a scene, she continued to sit without saying anything.
Booker said the teacher asked her to step into the hallway to talk, questioning why she felt the need to sit during the pledge.
“I personally don’t stand for the pledge just because of everything that’s been going on in the African-American community, with police brutality and protests that have turned violent,” Booker said.
She said her teacher asked her to find another form of protest, saying that sitting was disrespectful to soldiers.
“I have immense amounts of respect for people who fight for this country,” Booker said. “I don’t see how standing honors them. I can honor them in other ways.”
Afterward, she said the teacher asked her to stand in the hallway during the pledge from then on.
Both Booker and her mother said that the incident was handled swiftly by Principal Larry Rother, who was apologetic about the incident and said he was proud of Booker for standing up for what she believes in. The teacher later apologized to Booker in class.
The situation in Chandler is reflective of a national conversation that began a year ago, when then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick opted to kneel during the national anthem to shine a light on police brutality and race relations.
President Donald Trump’s comments and tweets on the issue began Friday and tore through the nation and the NFL, sparking further protests and outrage on both sides.
Booker’s mother, Danielle Gilliam, called Rother upon hearing that her daughter’s teacher planned on sending her into the hall each morning.
“It was extremely upsetting to me as a mother, a mother of color, and just as someone who knows their rights,” said Gilliam, who is the NAACP Arizona State Health Chair and president of the Phoenix chapter of American Diabetes Association.
Booker started the Black Student Union at Chandler High School and always has been involved in trying to understand the inequities that persons of color experience, her mother said.
“My child is in the top 4 percent of her class, in the International Baccalaureate program and one of the elite students at Chandler that gives them that A+ rating year after year,” Gilliam said. “Knowing that she is being targeted by a person of authority, it’s exactly what she’s protesting against.”
Rother said that even teachers who have been teaching for years may never have come across a situation of silent protest and sitting for the pledge, and are unclear about how best to respond.
“This teacher did what they thought they should have, and we simply had to clarify what a student’s rights are and how we should handle those situations,” Rother said.
After the incident, Rother said he reiterated to teachers and faculty that sitting for the pledge is a student’s right.
“We wanted to make sure all of our
teachers are on the same page,” Rother said. “Students don’t leave their rights at home when they come to school.”
Gilliam lobbied for educating teachers and students.
“How many students think that they have to stand for the pledge?” she said. “They do it out of fear of being sent to detention or being ostracized in front of their peers. A lot of people don’t know their rights and are unable to express them.”
Before this incident, Booker said she had received backlash from only one substitute teacher, who told her, “You’re not Colin Kaepernick.”
Criticism of Kaepernick has been loud and swift, with many vowing to boycott the NFL, calling his actions disrespectful and unpatriotic. Kaepernick became a free agent but has yet to be signed by another NFL team this year.
The president reignited the controversy last week at an Alabama rally.
“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now,’ ” Trump told the crowd. “Out. He’s fired. He’s fired!”
The president continued to tweet on the issue through the weekend and Monday. The NFL’s response included sweeping protests throughout the league on Sunday, with an estimated 204 players kneeling or sitting during the anthem.
Protests have also spread to Major League Baseball.
Oakland Athletics catcher Bruce Maxwell became the first MLB player to kneel during the anthem.
Maxwell is the son of a U.S. Army veteran and was born on a military base in Germany. He implored every NFL player to kneel for Sunday’s games, in the name of freedom of expression.
The Oakland Athletics were quick to defend Maxwell, releasing a statement saying, “We respect and support all of our player’s constitutional rights and freedom of expression.”
Booker’s mother sees value in the athletes’ protest, as she does in her daughter’s.
“We know from a historical standpoint that figures in the sports arena are often emulated, they’re raised to a higher standard,” Gilliam said. “Because of that, they’re the perfect individuals to actually get this message across.”
It is well within a student’s First Amendment rights to sit for the Pledge of Allegiance, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona.
In 1943, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in West Virginia State Board of Education vs. Barnette that students have the right to refuse to salute the flag.
“If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein,” the opinion reads.
“This is about as basic as it gets when it comes to the First Amendment,” said Steve Kilar, communications director for the ACLU of Arizona. “Students cannot be compelled to display patriotism. It’s still shocking to me that somehow this information doesn’t make it to teachers and staff at schools.”
The last time the ACLU encountered this issue in Arizona was last year in the Kingman Unified School District, when a teacher yelled at a student that her son had fought and died for the student’s right to stand and recite the pledge, according to the ACLU of Arizona.
The student responded that the teacher’s son had fought for a student’s right to not stand for the pledge.
The ACLU sent a letter to the Kingman Unified School District, calling its actions “illegal, improper and unconstitutional.”
Booker and her mother said that while their experience ended positively, they hope that this experience opens a dialogue about the reasons behind this silent form of protest.
“I have yet to see a more effective way of making people aware of what’s going on,” Booker said. “People will come up to me and it opens up a conversation about why I’m doing it. I feel like it’s the best thing I can do at my age in my position.”
“I have yet to see a more effective way of making people aware of what’s going on.” DEVIN BOOKER SENIOR AT CHANDLER HIGH SCHOOL, ON SITTING DURING THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE