Page 5 - Florida Sentinel 2-22-19

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11-Year-Old Florida Boy Arrested For Refusing To Stand For Pledge Of Allegiance
Judge To Rule Tuesday In Chicago Obama Library Lawsuit
An 11-year-old Florida boy was arrested and now faces charges after refusing to stand for the Pledge of Alle- giance and creating a distur- bance in the classroom on Feb. 4, police said.
According to USA Today, the sixth-grader from a Tampa suburb allegedly told his substitute teacher at Law- ton Chiles Middle Academy in Lakeland that the flag is “racist” and the national an- them is offensive to black people, Bay News 9 re- ported. In response, the teacher asked him: “Why if it was so bad here he did not go to another place to live.”
He replied: “They brought me here.”
The substitute, Ana Al- varez, then suggested, “Well, you can always go back because I came here from Cuba and the day I feel I’m not welcome here any- more, I would find another place to live.”
Alvarez reportedly said she
The mother of an 11-year- old boy who was arrested is working to get the charges dropped.
called the school’s office be- cause she “did not want to continue dealing with him.” A school resource officer placed him under arrest for being non compliant and the child was taken to a juvenile detention center and sus- pended for three days.
“The student became dis- ruptive and the teacher con- tacted school administrators for assistance,” Kyle Kennedy, a spokesman for Polk County Public Schools, told the news outlet. “The school’s resource deputy also
became involved.” Kennedy noted that stu-
dents are not required to stand for the pledge, but Al- varez was apparently not aware of this. She will no longer be employed at any of Polk County’s schools, he added.
A Lakeland police spokesman confirmed the charges against the boy in- cluded disrupting a school function and resisting arrest without violence. He is also accused of threatening his substitute teacher, Patch re- ported.
The boy’s mother, Dhakira Talbot, has slammed the teacher and wants the charges against her
son dropped.
“She was wrong. She was
way out of place,” she told Bay News 9. “If she felt like there was an issue with my son not standing for the flag, she should’ve resolved that in a way different manner than she did.”
Former President Barack and the Obama Presidential Center rendering
A federal judge will rule on the city of Chicago’s request to toss a lawsuit aimed at halting President Barack Obama‘s museum and li- brary from being built in a public park.
U. S. District Judge John Robert Blakey heard oral arguments last week in the case and said he would issue a ruling Tuesday. Protect Our Parks wants to stop the $500 million Obama Presidential Center from being built in the
selected location. A ruling in favor of the group could sig- nal that the Obama Presiden- tial Center is in real trouble.
The parks advocacy group accuses the city of illegally transferring park land to a private entity, The Obama Foundation. City lawyers say Protect Our Parks misread the law, has misrepresented how the approval process worked and exaggerated po- tential environmental disrup- tions.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2019 FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY PAGE 5-A