California elementary students forced to wear microchip ID by power-mad principal (kids should do what Gandhi did and burn 'em)

This is one of those stories that I had to make sure wasn't from The Onion. It ain't, folks.

From KFWB News 980 in Los Angeles comes this:

School Officials Make ID Badges Mandatory for Elementary Students

SUTTER, Calif. (AP) 1.28.05, 9:50a -- Parents of Sutter elementary students told school officials Thursday they're concerned about the school's new policy that requires students to wear security badges.

Brittan Elementary School District Superintendent Earnie Graham said the school is doing a test run to see if the technology improves campus security.

The badges contain a "passive antenna" that emit radio waves to a reader mounted above the doorway in each classroom. The readers picks up the child's ID number and sends it to a handheld computer that tracks attendance.

But parent Dawn Cantrall said the badge was "creepy and cumbersome," and complained that it had too much information on it, including a student's picture, full name and identification number.

"Now somebody can come up to her, see her name, and tell her, 'Your mom told me to pick you up,"' she said.

The school board approved the trial run last summer for kindergarten through eighth grade students. All staff members and volunteers also wear badges, said Graham.

The school board approved the free test run unanimously last summer. Graham held a special meeting Thursday for parents who had concerns about the new policy. Graham apologized for the scant notice given to parents, but said it was to increase school security.

"It's not an option," Graham said. "(The badge) is just like a textbook, you have to have it. I'm charged with running the school district and I get to make those kinds of rules."

The badges are supplied by InCom, a technology firm based in Sutter. The owners offered the school a small donation for the inconvenience of testing the badges and attendance scanners.

"I get to make those kinds of rules."

Read that again: "I get to make those kinds of rules."

Just the polite way of saying "I am a government official with power over your children, meaning that I have power over you. If I want your kid to be nothing but a numbered piece of meat, that's what he'll become and there's not a damned thing your or anyone can do about it, because I have more money and power and lawyers and men with guns than you'll ever scrape together. Who the Hell do you think you are to question my power anyway, you pathetic little plebian. Now shut up and take your number like a good serf should."

It's people like this guy who honestly don't believe that they're doing anything wrong. And they'll insist that they were always innocent right up to the moment that they're lined up against the wall or marched up the scaffold.

Let me put this another way: no children of mine will ever be in a public school. But if they were, and the principal tried to force THIS to them... I would kill him. And anyone else who'd attempt the same.

These people are in the same mindset as the Nazis were, except they're worse: see, they've chosen to be this way, despite all the history that they can't possibly claim ignorance of. The way I figure it, we either put the fear of God in them now, by ourselves if we have to, or we shoot 'em. The only other alternative is to be in fear of them and wait for our turn to be shot or gassed or bayoneted, whatever.

I went to Brittan Elementary School's website and found the latest school newsletter. Regarding the badges it says that "The badges are very durable, but students who lose or destroy their badges will be accountable for the cost of replacing them." About as galactically a STUPID a thing to impose on kids as there is, 'cuz kids being kids are naturally going to LOSE something like this somehow or another. But what the &$%# sick kind of bastiches FORCES something THIS expensive on ANYONE, much less SOMEONE ELSE'S CHILDREN and then dares tell them that they will PAY for something that THEY DIDN'T BUY, EVER APPROVED OR WOULD HAVE PROBABLY WANTED ANYWAY!?

Hey, why not just stick this radio ID chip in their forehead or right hand? That'll keep 'em from losing it for sure, no doubt.

Here's the badges themselves in action, by the way. There's more info about 'em at InCom Corporation's homepage about their "InClass" product:

"Badges? We don't need no steenkin' badges!"
But before we resort to the bullet box, we still have the soap box. So this is what the good people of Sutter should do against their would-be masters...

A hundred years or so ago, Mahatma Gandhi burned his British-imposed pass that all non-white people in India were forced to carry. It was the beginning of the "passive resistance" that ultimately saw an independent India.

This was the the parents of Brittan's students should encourage their kids to do, not just for themselves but for children all over this country: have a public burning of these damnable badges. They are nothing but glorified versions of the same passes that Gandhi and those he inspired burned: if they didn't have to live under that kind of rule, then our kids sure as Hell don't deserve it either.

Burn 'em, folks. Do it in front of God and everyone. Make sure this principal and his kind know that you're doing it. Thumb your noses at them and don't apologize for it. Let 'em know damned well that the children do not belong to the school or the government or anyone else but to God and their own families.

If that ain't worth fighting, however that fight is carried out, then I don't know what is.