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dalton99a

(93,882 posts)
14. The article is a must read. Just one example:
Thu Feb 13, 2020, 10:52 PM
Feb 2020


For Ashanty Bonilla, the damage began with the response to a single tweet she shared 10 months ago.

“Unpopular opinion,” Ashanty, then 16 and a sophomore at Lewiston High School in rural Idaho, wrote on April 9. “People who support Trump and go to Mexico for vacation really piss me off. Sorry not sorry.”

A schoolmate, who is white, took a screen shot of her tweet and posted it to Snapchat, along with a Confederate flag.

The next morning, as Ashanty arrived at school, half a dozen boys, including the one who had written the message, stood nearby.

“You’re illegal. Go back to Mexico,” she heard one of them say. “F--- Mexicans.”

Ashanty, shaken but silent, walked past as a friend yelled at the boys to shut up.

In a 33,000-person town that is 94 percent white, Ashanty, whose father is half-black and whose mother is Mexican American, had always worked to fit in. She attended every football game and won a school spirit award as a freshman. She straightened her hair and dyed it blond, hoping to look more like her friends.

She had known those boys who’d heckled her since they were little. For her 15th birthday the year before, some had danced at her quinceañera.

A friend drove her off campus for lunch, but when they pulled back into the parking lot, Ashanty spotted people standing around her car. A rope had been tied from the back of the Honda Pilot to a pickup truck.

“Republican Trump 2020,” someone had written in the dust on her back window.

Hands trembling, Ashanty tried to untie the rope but couldn’t. She heard the laughing, sensed the cellphone cameras pointed at her. She began to weep.

She seldom attended classes the last month of school. That summer, she started having migraines and panic attacks. In August, amid her spiraling despair, Ashanty swallowed 27 pills from a bottle of antidepressants. A helicopter rushed her to a hospital in Spokane, Wash., 100 miles away.

Recommendations

0 members have recommended this reply (displayed in chronological order):

Stomach churning. dewsgirl Feb 2020 #1
This made me cry. democrank Feb 2020 #2
"Public pedagogy" B Stieg Feb 2020 #3
It's the Hitler Youth 2.0. CaptYossarian Feb 2020 #4
Not to mention pollution and poisons bucolic_frolic Feb 2020 #5
I live in a purple area of a blue state renate Feb 2020 #6
I've wondered how children are reacting to the hate coming out of the White House. spanone Feb 2020 #7
Parents aren't blameless either. mwooldri Feb 2020 #8
It's not DENVERPOPS Feb 2020 #9
If only we had a first lady with a mission to stop bullying flibbitygiblets Feb 2020 #10
And a proven liar. Lied about college degree, stole Laura PourMeADrink Feb 2020 #16
Sadly, Trump doesn't care & neither do Republicans dlk Feb 2020 #11
Not to mention the sterling example set by the first nude lady for our daughters to emulate. Farmer-Rick Feb 2020 #12
My husband thinks the same. But he confesses Laura PourMeADrink Feb 2020 #13
I don't mind a foreign first lady...I guess at first all our first ladies were foreign born Farmer-Rick Feb 2020 #15
The article is a must read. Just one example: dalton99a Feb 2020 #14
Wow, incredibly sad and makes one feel so helpless. Laura PourMeADrink Feb 2020 #20
Bullying I_UndergroundPanther Feb 2020 #17
OMG, I am so so sorry. Laura PourMeADrink Feb 2020 #18
I share your pain... IngridsLittleAngel Feb 2020 #19
Things like this are, to me, the worst part of Drumpf's reign of terror. IngridsLittleAngel Feb 2020 #21
Thanks for sharing all this. I am sorry for your pain. How Laura PourMeADrink Feb 2020 #22
You're welcome, and, thank you for your kind words IngridsLittleAngel Feb 2020 #23
You and your dad, very astute! Laura PourMeADrink Feb 2020 #24
Disgusting ck4829 Feb 2020 #25
A toxic model... Fyrefox Feb 2020 #26
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