By Mark Potok, Southern Poverty Law Center Senior Fellow It happened again this week. A woman in Louisiana told police that she had been set afire in a horrifying hate crime Sunday — only to have police, after a full-tilt investigation,say yesterday that she had fabricated the story.Sharmeka Moffit, 20, set herself on fire in a park in Winnsboro, LA, Police Chief Lester Thomas told a news conference late yesterday. She earlier told police that she had been attacked by three men of unknown race who were wearing “T-shirt hoodies.” A racial slur and the letters “KKK” were found daubed on her car when police arrived within one minute of her call to 911. A major investigation involving the Winnsboro Police Department, the Franklin Parish Sheriff’s Office and the state police was launched.
Blog
October 30, 2012 - 12:26pm
Not In Our School began Bullying Prevention Month with the powerful PSA, “Break Bullying” to stress the serious impact of bullying. We end the month with a focus on SOLUTIONS!
Krista King is the co-adviser with Kurt Dearie of Carlsbad High School's Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) in Carlsbad, CA. Last February, King and Dearie went to the Center for Excellence in School Counseling and Leadership conference and were inspired by the Not in Our School presentation. In the session, they watched and discussed the video titled, "What Do You Say to That's So Gay?"
Back at Carlsbad High, King teaches Graphic Design and Photography. One of the Visual Arts California Content Standards for California high school students is to design a campaign. She put a lot of thought into how to approach this project, asking around to others for their ideas. From there, they began brainstorming. They wanted to create a campaign that the whole school would want to take part in.
October 29, 2012 - 12:37pm
By Becki Cohn-Vargas, Not In Our School Director
All of us have experienced cruel behavior, either as a participant, victim or witness. The Not In Our School “Break Bullying”public service announcement, donated by the MAKE ad agency, appears to bring back those bad memories. The announcement depicts adults in a professional environment re-enacting the personal middle school bullying experience of the director, Mike Nelson. His point: If we would not stand for this at work, why do we stand for it happening to kids in schools? The purpose of the PSA is to make us want to do something—to intervene, unlike the co-workers who watch their colleague pushed to the floor.
October 26, 2012 - 11:49am
Bully Project: Not In Our School Launched in the Philippines
They call themselves “a community of ex-bystanders in the Philippines who have made the decision to take a stand.” This month, they launched a combined Bully Project and Not in Our School campaign to raise awareness about the issue of bullying in the Philippines. By joining the campaign, each individual makes a promise: “I will not be a bully, I will help the bullied, and I will speak up about bullying.” They have over 537 likes on Facebook so far! You can check out their Facebook fan page here.
October 22, 2012 - 5:29pm
Mix It Up Day at Lunch Day—an annual event hosted by Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance program—was recently called a “nationwide push to promote the homosexual lifestyle in public schools” by The American Family Association. The AFA is an anti-gay evangelical group that is asking parents to keep their children home on Oct. 30 to avoid Mix It Up Day activities, according to the New York Times.
This week, Not In Our Town Executive Producer Patrice O’Neill spoke with Teaching Tolerance director Maureen Costello about the controversy and why activities like Mix It Up Day pave the way for accepting and safe schools.
Patrice O’Neill: What’s the idea behind Mix it Up Day?