Posted on November 26, 2014

School Board Member: ‘We Have Prepared Our Students’ to Protest in Ferguson

CBS St. Louis, November 25, 2014

Democratic Missouri senator and University City School Board member Maria Chappelle-Nadal says she and local education officials have been changing their curriculum to “prepare” students to protest the Ferguson decision.

Speaking with MSNBC on Monday, Chappelle-Nadal said local schools have been transformed to provide a safe outlet for protests in the wake of the grand jury decision not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown.

Chappelle-Nadal said in the midst of “St. Louis’s race war,” area schools have prepared students to protest and march against the “systematic racism that we have in our state government.”

“We have been changing our curriculum,” Chappelle-Nadal told MSNBC. “We are providing safe spaces for our students in our school district so they can protest, not necessarily being at ground zero, but within our own communities. We want our children to experience their First Amendment right, and they’re eager to do that.”

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The Democratic state senator has promised to change several “excessive force” laws in Missouri and also conveyed the anger and frustration many of her constituents feel in the wake of the grand jury decision.

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