this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2025
1115 points (99.4% liked)
196
17419 readers
1056 users here now
Be sure to follow the rule before you head out.
Rule: You must post before you leave.
Other rules
Behavior rules:
- No bigotry (transphobia, racism, etc…)
- No genocide denial
- No support for authoritarian behaviour (incl. Tankies)
- No namecalling
- Accounts from lemmygrad.ml, threads.net, or hexbear.net are held to higher standards
- Other things seen as cleary bad
Posting rules:
- No AI generated content (DALL-E etc…)
- No advertisements
- No gore / violence
- Mutual aid posts require verification from the mods first
NSFW: NSFW content is permitted but it must be tagged and have content warnings. Anything that doesn't adhere to this will be removed. Content warnings should be added like: [penis], [explicit description of sex]. Non-sexualized breasts of any gender are not considered inappropriate and therefore do not need to be blurred/tagged.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact us on our matrix channel or email.
Other 196's:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yeah I stopped doing it in High School after realizing that it's some North Korea level bullshit. Got a few other kids in my homeroom to stop too, which really angered our teacher. She was a military spouse and would actually yell at us for refusing to participate. In the end, we compromised by standing but not reciting it. Was the begining of my political and social awakening.
I had an amazing American Government and Politics teacher in senior year of high school, but I knew about her much earlier. She kept a file of print-outs of the section of State law which codified that no child could be forced to participate in the pledge. She was so awesome. I happened to just arrive at her class after the first plane hit on 9/11. I don't think there could have been a better place for me to be trying to make sense of that.
how did it go down for you that day given you were in her class?
It was really hard to process. I was about to turn 18. So I didn't know shit about shit, but I sure as shit thought I did.
A friend ran up to me in the hall when we were changing classes and says dude a plane just hit the world trade center. I started laughing, imagining some idiot in a cesna. He gave me an ugly look and walked away. I got to class and it was on the TV. Our amazing teacher was clearly in shock in retrospect, but she tried to guide us and we had a little discussion on terrorism and the US involvement in war in the middle east. We talked about how Bush was going to handle it.
We had only one conservative in class who was also loud out and proud gay. This was unusual for the time. He had a big personality but even he was quiet. I remember talking to a friend trying to estimate casualty numbers.
We watched the second plane hit and the towers fall live. Saw all the people jumping out the windows. The rest of the day is a blur. We got sent home early. I rode the bus home and watched live TV all night.