Help Needed! Tell The Maine Senate, We Need LD 944 Because The Locals Are Out Of Control

A die-hard Skowhegan _____ Pride member laying down at the edge of a very busy road on Sunday, April 28, 2019.

As you may know, the school board in Skowhegan -- MSAD 54 -- has been targeted by the mob clinging to their now retired Native mascot and team name. Threats were shouted, specifically at Chair Dixie Ring, at their last meeting when they voted not to hold a referendum on the mascot issue. You can see this disgraceful treatment of the recently re-elected Ring of Canaan in this video.



(If the embedded video doesn't work for you, view it here on Somerset Community TV 11's YouTube channel.)

What you can't see:

* The drunk husband of a school board member who organizes Skowhegan _______ Pride threatening the wife of another school board member as he leaves the meeting (some say, was asked to leave by one of the five -- yes, five -- uniformed Skowhegan police officers on duty that night). It is now considered dangerous to hold a board meeting in Skowhegan without a strong police presence.

* Me peeking out the door to check if it was safe to go to the parking lot, seeing police officers and, as a white person, thinking, Yup, it's ok to walk to my car alone now.

* Another board member -- the one who sounds the most incoherent and angry in the video -- giving the middle finger to a Skowhegan Area High School teacher who favored change and was driving past the area where the S_P group protests on Sunday (see photo of one of them above).

How can you help?

Write to the Democrats in the Maine Senate TODAY.

I expect that they will vote on LD 944, An act to ban Native mascots in all schools, on Tuesday, so time is of the essence!

It will help quell the mob in Skowhegan if this bill, which has already passed the House, is enacted.

Here is a handy web page with a contact form for each Maine senator whose vote we need to pass this legislation:

If you copy and paste your message into each senator's form, it goes rather quickly.

Note that I heard back from Senate Majority Leader Nate Libby in the affirmative when I wrote to him a few weeks ago:

In case you think this is a slam dunk, the Republican senator representing Skowhegan got the vote on the bill delayed last week -- on the thin pretext that it was a day of mourning for Corporal Eugene Cole who was killed by a drug addict in nearby Norridgewock a year ago -- but really so that more arm twisting could ensue.

Please help the MSAD 54 school board, which has done the right thing at last, stand firm in the face of local control that is more like local out-of-control. Civil rights are at stake. Thank you.