First and foremost I must say that we here at The Strengthening Project are not fans of violence. What happens in this video is sickening on both ends. 

I’m going to break this video down moment by moment because this video nearly invoked a flash back to my childhood. This very incident could be replaced by any of the hundreds of memories I have.

1. A bully (the smaller child) feels the right to approach a boy and ask him if he’s been “talking sh*t” The larger boy says that he has not been “talking sh*t” 

Whether this true or not is irrelevant. Words do not justify violence. But in my experience, bullies were justified in their belief that “if someone says something mean about me, I’m aloud to defend myself by punching that person.” They believe that because they are rarely punished for it, or rarely punished effectively, bullies tend to lie. If they say someone was saying mean things about them who’s going to prove them wrong? So in their attempt to escalate the bullying and torture they will lie.

All of this was pre-meditated. Obviously. The bully got one of his friends to record what he was about to do. The bully thought that he was going to get a good video and be a hero among his fellow bullies.

2.  The bully starts striking the larger boy in the face and body. He’s laughing at him. He is hopping around like a boxer laughing and taunting him. 

This, is so very common that I was literally brought back to it all. I could see the bullies from my past doing this, they always did this. It was there way to assert that they were faster than their target. Speed was always considered the be all end to fights. If you’re fast you can’t be beat. The way he pumped his fist in “I’m gonna hit ya, ooh I didn’t, maybe now, huh huh huh?”

3. The larger child reacts, almost out of nowhere. He is clearly trying to simply supress the the bully, put him down. The bully continues to fight back and so the larger child picks the smaller bully up and slams him down on to his head.

This is a move I have done, not quite the violent ferocity in this particular video, but a lot of times, when you are being hit, and you afraid that you may be outnumbered (there were other kids, on the bully’s side off camera.) you want to put the aggressor down and walk away. 

4. The larger boy walks away, cautiously.

After you have put your aggressor down walking away is dangerous. He may get back up. His friends may attack you. A third boy, larger than the bully and a little taller than the large boy steps between them, whether he was going to attack or making sure it didn’t continue I do not know. Until…

5. A bystander who walked up towards the end steps between the tall boy and the larger boy and gets into the face of the tall boy and says “thats enough”.

This leads me to be the tall boy wanted to continue the fight in the name of his friend. Just from experience and logic. The bully staggers around ,walks into a wall and the bullied boy has already walked away.

This video upset me. The fact that all of this is still going on. Apparently people have rallied around the bullied boy. At last I heard the Bullied boy (larger) got a 4 day school suspension while the Bully (smaller) got a 21 day suspension (and suffered no serious bodily injury). I agree with this. This feels just.

As someone who was attacked like this so many times, and often did not even fight back, I am happy that he stood up for himself and that the school authorities took the proper action and punished the bully properly.

There needs to be a zero tolerance against all forms of bullying. Because in all honesty, the smaller kid could have been paralyzed by an act of self defense, and that would have been a tragedy.

Stand up for yourself, stand up for strangers. The violence can be avoided.

For all those that are supporting us by spreading the word, and all those that support the cause in general.

We received 81 submissions from all over the US, Canada, England and even a submission from The Phillipines. While my esteemed panel of readers toils away through out the next month we are working ways to get the word out and some supplements to go along with the book. We are putting together a teaching resource for teachers to use in class with writing prompts aimed at getting students not only writing poetry but also thinking about the problem of bullying and how it affects everyone.

We are very excited to get this project out to everyone and anyone.

Take care.

Truly

dmd

We’ve been silent for the last few weeks as we sift through the 80 submissions we received for the Bullying Anthology from poets of all ages and backgrounds.

As time goes by, the bullying talk starts to die down, but I’m still reminded, every day of what growing up with it was like.

People magazine’s October issue was a bullying “special” which included articles on Phoebe Prince, Tyler Clementi along with a few handy sidebars about bullying survivors and some information on where to get help.

I took issue with the portrayal of the bullies in these articles. The entire issue seemed sympathetic to the people, who were now “suffering a great deal” (which I am trying not to be too cynical about) for what they had done. The opinions of fellow classmates of Phoebe Princes bullies and Tyler Clementis roommates are all but saying outright that they do not deserve to be made pariahs for what they have done.

In the sidebars containing the children who had “survived” bullying their blurbs couldn’t help but seem like they were forced into portraying a happy ending. As if the racism, the homophobia, the jealousy, the hatred stopped when these kids merely admitted that they were being bullyied. And whether they had told the whole story or not, remains to be seen but the bullying they spoke about was name calling, some defacing of property and throwing paper wads. All of these are unacceptable forms of harrassment. But it lead me to confront the type of bullying that has not been talked about at all. The very violent form of bullying that I myself suffered as a kid. I have scars on my forehead from skateboards to the face. The joints in my hands and feet are constantly sore from punching kicking back in self defense. I’ve been beat up by as many as five kids at once for the purpose of “beating the fat out of me”. And this went largely unchecked under the guise of “kids will be kids.” My mother did what she could to get justice for me (when she knew about it) but was stonewalled by the “kids will be kids” excuse and it did not help that I was made to feel like I had brought it all upon myself simply for being overweight at a young age by the Superintendent of the school district I lived in.

It has to stop. No one should be pushed to edge of suicide for any reason, let alone just for being a kid.

It has become popular for cynics to call the victims of bullying over dramatic. Countless tweets, facebook status’s, comments on our own facebook page saying that people like Phoebe Prince and Tyler Clementi were weak.

To them I say, their death should weigh on your conscience too.

Thats right folks. Just 31 hours left until the submissions deadline for the as of yet unnamed Bullying Anthology.

Enjoy your Halloweens, but don’t forget to submit your poems by midnight tomorrow (October 31st) night to bullying.submissions@gmail.com

Can’t wait to get to reading all this beautiful pieces.

Let everyone know!

-dmd

The following is a poem by myself Dain Michael Down that I wrote back in April of this year. Enjoy.

Phoebe Prince was a 15 year old from County Clare, Ireland. On January 15th 2009 after just four months in the United States, she took her own life. Bullying related charges were brought against nine of her classmates.

Dear Phoebe

They will never call you martyr
Never canonize you Saint of the Tormented
There will be no colorful ribbon assigned to your once prominent heart beat
Some will even call you coward

There are those who will say they saw it coming
Make excuses as to why they did nothing
But look to bask in your quickly dimming lime light

And as your name sits heavy on my tongue, I have questions

When you got home that day and tied the rope to the banister
Did you create comfort in the contact of 18 hands pushing you over the edge?
Were their names on your lips as you dangled?
Were you resolute in your belief that this was the only way to end the torment?

I will not defend your actions to strangers
Your life, a hot button topic in a non election year
Legislation in your name will come too late to comfort your family
It always does
Everything done now, is too late
We will forget you too soon

And when this happens again
And it will
You will be no more than a reference point and link on a website

But there are 9 children
No matter how calloused their hearts
Who will keep your name, and final breath, bitter on their lips for a lifetime

The cruelty of children is a two sided rite of passage
And your side of the coin left you black and blue in all the spots not even a coroner could find

It is a lot in life no one chooses
And escaping with your lugs still full is just as hard as you imagined
The scars become stories that you lie about
and your childhood a fantasy

Phoebe, your name has disappeared from the world since I started writing this poem
But girls and boys just like you are being sacrificed on the altar of childhood
Tears are being shed into pillows
Blood into sinks
Will into nothing
Life into air

We are not whipping post
We were not born unto this world for the pleasure of others
Our lives, not worth any amount of laughter

Phoebe
I wish I had more answers
Wish I had the cure-all for childhood cruelty
But our stories are all I have

NBC Nightly News has just reported that 43,300 teens were surveyed on bullying. 50% have bullied, teased or taunted someone at least once in the last year. 47% have been bullied, teased or taunted at least once. The government has finally said “it isn’t just a part of growing up.” Those numbers are disturbing, but we knew this.

The Federal Governmant has also released a 15 page document and delivered it to 15,000 schools and 5,000 universities.

If the story becomes available on youtube (it aired less than 5 minutes ago) I will post it here.

sucre:

because these kids have names and they have stories. they’re real people with families and hopes and dreams that were stamped out by hate. may the reason for the color not be forgotten.

Tyler Clementi

He was a 19 year old student at Rutgers University.
After his college roommate tweeted “roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into Molly’s room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay.”, he lived-streamed Tyler having sexual relations with his boyfriend.
Tyler threw himself off a bridge after finding out.

Raymond Chase

He was a 19 year old student at Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island.
He hung himself in his dorm room.

“Raymond Chase was a person who liked Harry Potter and Rugrats and was a member of the popular facebook group “I cant spell “bananas” without singing hollaback girl.” (source)

Seth Walsh

Seth Walsh was a thirteen year old middle school student.
He was bullied to the point that he could not bear to live.

“He spent a lot of his life frightened.” It was in person, through the internet, through phonecalls. His peers were relentless. He was perpetually picked on for his mannerisms and his style of dressing, even before he came out as gay.
His mother found him hanging from a tree in their backyard. He spent over a week lingering on life support before he died.

Asher Brown

He was a 13-year-old eighth grader at Hamilton Middle School outside Houston His family says that he was “bullied to death”.

”Asher was tormented for being small. For his religious beliefs. For the way he dressed. And for being gay. His bullies acted out mock gay sex acts in phys ed class.”His parents repeatedly contacted school officials on his bullying. Nothing was ever done.
He shot himself in the head.

Billy Lucas

He was a 15-year-old freshman at Greensburg High School in Indiana.
“Everyone made fun of him.” Like Asher, his school administration knew but did nothing.
A friend says the bullies would call Billy “gay and tell him to go kill himself.” Homophobic hate messages have been left on his facebook memorial page.


and there are more

The death toll for this school year is already at 7.
Seven kids who have lost their lives because of hateful peers.

It’s horrible that it’s taken tragedies like this to finally wake this nation up.