The Maine Republican Party posted a statement to Facebook yesterday criticizing student protestors across the country, including at dozens of schools in Maine, who are heeding the calls of the Parkland survivors and planning mass walk-outs for tomorrow, Wednesday, March 14th. The unattributed statement claims Maine students are being used as “props” and “a recruiting pool for a left-wing political agenda” and the party blamed a “national left-wing political group” for fomenting the protests.
The statement comes at the same time as District 57 Republican State House candidate Leslie Gibson is making national news for savaging survivors of the Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in Parkland, Florida on social media, as first reported in the Lewiston Sun Journal. Gibson, who lives in Sabattus and has a long history of bigoted online comments, called one Parkland survivor a “skinhead lesbian” and another a “baldfaced liar” after the students spoke out for gun reform.
The Maine GOP has not denounced Gibson’s remarks.
Maine students aren’t letting the rhetorical attacks (or a looming snowstorm) slow them down. Student leaders from six Bangor-area high schools and middle schools held a press conference at the Bangor Library on Monday afternoon to lay out plans and goals for their demonstrations.
“With our walkout, we intend to protest the continued slaughter of our peers and the inaction of our legislators in preventing it,” said a student from Orono High School who spoke at the event. “The current laws and regulations have failed to stop these events from occurring time and time again.”
The 17-minute walkouts are planned for 10 a.m. and will be held on Friday at the same time if schools are closed due to snow.
Bangor-area students prepare protest signs for school walkouts. Photo by Karen Marysdaughter.
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