Erin Gruwell can show him what to do - get "from hate to harmony";
OC "delinquents" do Oprah to pay for college


Stand For Children

media seesaw, activist quandry
the new playground: every child a public figure by default;
maybe class action suits to regain privacy are the key to restoring kids' rights

"These students want the media to know that the actions of one student should in no way be reflective of all the other students here today," said Long Beach Teacher of the Year Erin Gruwell, who escorted the group to the nation's capital.

On Road to Unity With Freedom Writers

A teacher's modest effort to give teens a lesson in tolerance
blossoms into life-changing experience for them and those they inspire
by DENNIS MCLELLAN LA Times staff writer Feb 13 2000

Gruwell is a former English teacher at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach who took her students on a unique classroom experience: a four-year journey from racial prejudice to understanding after encountering racism in her classroom.
Inspired by the diaries of Anne Frank and Bosnian teenager Zlata Filipovic, students in Gruwell's classes between 1994 and 1998 began keeping diaries. The students, some of whom were gang members or other at-risk teenagers with dim hope for the future, penned gritty personal stories of friends being killed, parents doing drugs and jail time, molestation, parental abandonment, anorexia, homelessness, racism and despair.
They dubbed themselves the Freedom Writers in honor of the '60s civil rights activists. As their racial attitudes changed, they became mentors to younger students, advising them to avoid gangs and to do well in school. They also spoke to aspiring teachers about not making judgments of students based on skin color and clothing. And as graduation drew near, their diaries reflected new-found hopes and dreams.
Today all 150 students are in college.

The Times chronicled the Freedom Writers' story. So did televisions' "Primetime Live" and "The View." This week, Gruwell and five of her former students will make their first two Orange County appearances.
It's the tail end of a national book tour that has taken Gruwell and company to more than a dozen cities, including a stop in Ohio where her former students shared their stories with juvenile inmates in a maximum security prison in October. In November, the congressional leadership committee invited Gruwell and several of her students to speak before Congress. And in December they made an appearance on the "Rosie O'Donnell" show and taped a segment for "Oprah Winfrey" that has yet to air. On top of all that, Gruwell decided to run for Congress, declaring herself a Democratic candidate for the 38th Congressional District in December.

"I was encouraged to run solely based on what we've been able to do with the success of the Freedom Writers in raising the bar in academics and raising expectations," said Gruwell, 30, a former Newport Beach resident who now lives in Long Beach, where she is a distinguished teacher-in-residence at Cal State Long Beach.
"By raising the bar, my students were able to raise their expectations and aspire to change themselves and their community," she said. "I realized if you can change a classroom you can change a community, and if you change enough communities you can change the world." Gruwell, the current California Teacher of the Year, said she was encouraged to run for Congress by House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) when she and her students were in Washington in November.
"The amazing thing is that John Lewis, one of the original Freedom Riders, is now a congressman from Georgia," she said. "We met him, and he and I cried the entire time my students spoke. He said he was so touched that the Freedom Riders of the '60s had been able to inspire the Freedom Writers of the '90s to follow in their footsteps and to fight the good fight."
Proceeds from the book's sales are going to the Tolerance Education Foundation, which was established to help pay for the Freedom Writers' college tuitions. Before they met Gruwell, few of her students were bound for college.
"The majority were not even anticipating graduating from high school, let alone living, due to the gang violence in our city," she said. "Now they've turned into scholars and political activists."

The odyssey of the Freedom Writers began in 1993 when Gruwell, then 23 and fresh out college, was assigned to her first classroom as a student teacher. One day she intercepted a demeaning caricature someone had drawn of an African American student in class. Outraged, Gruwell told the students that such stereotyping is what led to the Holocaust. Surprised by the ensuing silence and blank looks, she asked how many students knew about the Holocaust.
Not a single hand was raised. Because of that experience, Gruwell threw out the regular lesson plan the next school year and fashioned her own, one that focused on tolerance. She received district approval of the new lesson plan, which allowed her to work with most of the same students throughout their high school years. She took the students on a field trip to the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. She brought in guests such as Miep Gies, the woman who hid Anne Frank and her family during World War II. And she assigned the students to read "Schindler's List," "The Color Purple" and other books.

In the process, Gruwell said, she saw grades and attendance dramatically improve. "One student went from a 1.5 to 4.0 [grade point average] and now wants to be a pathologist," she said. While still in high school, the Freedom Writers, with the help of corporate sponsorship, visited Washington, where they hosted the secretary of education at a dinner. They also held a candlelight vigil at the Washington Monument for victims of senseless violence and visited Holocaust museums and war memorials.
During their senior year, the Freedom Writers traveled to New York City, where they received the Spirit of Anne Frank Award. And the year after graduation in 1998, Gruwell and some of her former students visited Auschwitz in Poland, the Amsterdam attic where Anne Frank hid and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Gruwell said reaction to the Freedom Writers' book, for which she wrote the narrative thread, "has been amazing." She's received letters and e-mails from all over the country, some from school superintendents wanting to make her "teaching tolerance" course part of the curriculum. Other teachers are initiating journal writing in their classrooms.

"It's struck a chord with so many people," she said of the book. "I think it's in a strange way the ultimate Cinderella story where good triumphs over adversity, and it makes people realize that anyone at any time can change." Gruwell and five of the Freedom Writers will make a presentation, read excerpts and sign copies of their book at noon Wednesday at the Cross-Cultural Center at UC Irvine, which is Gruwell's alma mater. Information is available at (949) 824-7215.
They'll also appear at 7 p.m. Thursday at Barnes & Noble in the Huntington Beach Mall, 7777 Edinger Ave., Huntington Beach, (714) 897-8781.

Kennedy kin, 39, defendant in murder, headed for juvenile court

By Denise Lavoie ASSOCIATED PRESS January 20, 2000

The 39-year-old nephew of Robert F. Kennedy was arrested Wednesday in the 1975 slaying of Martha Moxley, a 15-year-old neighbor and childhood friend in Greenwich who was bludgeoned to death with a golf club.
Because Skakel was 15 at the time of the killing, he will be treated, at least initially, just like any other juvenile. The court proceedings will be closed to the press and public, and prosecutors will not even be allowed to speak his name publicly.

The first hurdle for prosecutors is to get the case transferred to adult court. But the complications don't end there. The question of whether he can be punished as an adult is so complex that according to at least one expert, Skakel could actually be convicted and walk away with no punishment at all.
The hefty, mature Skakel who entered the Greenwich police station to surrender Wednesday was a stark contrast from the scrawny schoolboy seen in photographs that have appeared in newspapers since the slaying 24 years go.
Skakel is the oldest person ever to be treated as a juvenile in Connecticut courts. The notion of a man pushing 40 appearing in court next to teen-agers has prompted some chuckling in Connecticut legal circles.

But experts in juvenile law said the case may create a legal morass that could make it difficult for prosecutors to transfer the case to adult court. Most legal experts said Skakel will be subject to the laws in effect in 1975, when the crime was committed.
Under 1975 law, he would face a maximum of only four years if he were tried as a juvenile. If he were tried as an adult, he could get 25 years to life. In 1975, prosecutors were required to present evidence at a hearing to convince a judge that the case should be transferred to adult court. Under current law, murder cases are automatically transferred to adult court.

While some attorneys think it is highly unlikely that a judge would agree to keep Skakel's case in juvenile court, others said the state may have a long road ahead to get the case moved to adult court.
David Rosen, a researcher at Yale Law School, said there is even a possibility -- albeit a small one -- that Skakel could be found guilty and get no punishment.
" The juvenile court, under that 1975 law, did not have authority to send him to an adult facility. Therefore, he might not be subject to punishment decades later for crimes committed as a child -- no matter how terrible the crime, " Rosen said.

Rosen said there is also a question as to whether the adult courts can punish him, even if the case is transferred there.
" The adult court doesn't have authority over him unless the juvenile court is allowed to transfer him, but it's only allowed to transfer him, it seems to me, if he's a child," Rosen said. He explained: " The reason we're going around in circles is that the law at that time was designed for the protection and correction of children so that they would not become criminals in their adult years. It was designed for rehabilitation, not punishment."

Hillary Bargar, a juvenile prosecutor in Bridgeport, said Skakels' lawyers could keep the case in juvenile court for a year or more if they fight the transfer to adult court.
"The situation of a 40-year-old was never anticipated by the law," she said. "This could take a very long time to resolve."
Skakel attorney Michael Sherman insisted he hasn't decided whether he will fight to keep the case in juvenile court. But many lawyers said it is unlikely that a judge would agree to keep the case in juvenile court, given the high-profile nature of the case and the fact that Skakel is now 39.
"Judges don't operate in a vacuum, and in this case there is tremendous pressure to deal with it openly and in an open courtroom," said Hugh Keefe, a New Haven defense attorney.

The Moxley case remained unsolved for more than 24 years. Skakel, whose father, Rushton, is the brother of Kennedy's widow, Ethel, was charged Wednesday after a judge acting as a one-man grand jury completed an 18-month investigation by finding grounds for his arrest.
On the night she was killed, Martha was among a group of teen-agers who visited the Skakel house. Her body was found the next day on her family's estate. She had been beaten to death with a 6-iron that was later matched to a set owned by the Skakel family.

interminable oxymorons

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