Republicans left a message at King Middle School in Portland
PORTLAND — Students in King Middle School’s “Four Freedoms” learning expedition are getting a first-hand education in free speech after last weekend’s state Republican convention.
While the convention was held at the Portland Expo, GOP organizations from Maine’s 16 counties were each given private meeting spaces in King classrooms.
One of those classrooms is run by Paul Clifford, an eighth-grade social studies teacher, who said he was surprised when he returned to the room on Monday to find that a poster celebrating the labor movement had been removed and replaced with a Republican sticker.
The poster had the following quote from union leader Eugine Debs: “Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation.”
“In it’s place was a large sticker that said ‘Workers Vote Republican,’” Clifford said. “I thought it was cute until I realized the poster was gone. We can’t find it and it hasn’t been returned.”
The amusement further diminished when Clifford found a note on his desk.
“(It) said ‘A Republican was here,” Clifford said. “And then it said, ‘What gives you the right to propagandize impressionable kids. A Republician.’”
The note was an apparent reaction to several student-made collages in the classroom, Clifford said – personal expressions related to a specific expedition.
Clifford said the classroom was used by the Knox County Republicans, the group largely credited with convincing the state party to adopt a platform calling for abolition of the Federal Reserve and Department of Education, and closing the nation’s borders.