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San Luis Obispo mayor asks children to skip school and strike

March 13, 2019

Mayor Heidi Harmon

By JOSH FRIEDMAN

In her latest call for social activism, San Luis Obispo Mayor Heidi Harmon posted on Instagram and Facebook an appeal to local students to skip class on Friday and participate in a global strike in which youth will demand action combating climate change. [Cal Coast Times]

“I stand with the next generation,” Harmon said in the social media post. “On Friday, March 15, students and youth from around San Luis Obispo will strike from school to demand real climate action. From 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., students, young people and supporters from an array of local organizations will rally outside the SLO County Board of Supervisors building.”

The demonstration taking place locally is expected to occur in conjunction with students striking in approximately 40 countries around the world, according to international media reports. The initiative was started by Swedish 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, who last year, skipped class and sat outside Sweden’s parliament with a hand-painted banner, kicking off the global school strike for climate movement, according to The Guardian.

Harmon’s social media post has been met with both praise and criticism. SLO Councilman Aaron Gomez came to Harmon’s defense on Facebook, saying the school strike is a student-led international movement.

However, critics have said it is irresponsible for Harmon to instruct students to skip school and that the San Luis Obispo mayor is using children to promote her political agenda.

When criticized for “encouraging kids to ditch school,” Harmon posted a link to an article reporting students in 40 countries will take place in the strike.

“The next generation understands that if we can’t solve climate crisis their education will be worthless anyway,” Harmon wrote on Facebook. “They are doing what they can because the adults have not done their job.”


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Wouldn’t it be more productive to have a moratorium on all the bars throughout the city on Friday night? Think of all the vehicles emissions and farting that would be avoided. All of these patrons are at least voters. If she was serious about climate change she would take on the Chamber of Commerce and all their members who contribute more to climate change than a bunch of school-age children. Just another publicity stunt.


36

Is her job to make every other local mayor look like a damn Saint?


18

More power to her and the youth movement to open adults eyes to what is happening to our precious Pale Blue Dot. As a result of our deteriorating atmosphere, increasing CO2, our oceans are becoming more and more acidic, which will eventually destroy the vital marine life it contains. This would be the death nell for human survival. Over the past 50 years we have increasingly learned the major damage humans have been causing and are continuing to cause to our tiny planet, the only home we have. We must be taking strong action over the next 10 years. I am all for the climate science youth movement, as they are not hung up like adults are. They need to look out for their future, because we “intelligent” adults (NOT) couldn’t care less about our children’s future. Let’s start a new campaign to cut-off the head of the anti-climate movement snake, the poster child of the Ugly American who spends his days in the White House Oval Office tweeting, watching TV and traveling to and from Mar A Lago, and not giving a hoot about the future survival of America or our planet.


-76

Sayeth the business owner in SLO who’s livelyhood depends on tens of thousands of tourists coming to your community,polluting the air,overloading the infrastructure, vandalizing the neighborhoods, in hopes they empty their wallets so that you can survive in your so called paradise.


16

You don’t even live here.


0

You’d be right, we couldn’t stand the corruption, hypocrites and pretentious a’holes who reside there ;)


4

The first step in investigating or evaluating human failure is applying a substitution test. If Keith Gurney or some random old white man republican stood there in a picture advocating that students play hooky, would you allow that to go unchallenged? Heidi still has to time to apologize for being overzealous, urge kids to stay in school and learn from her mistake. Otherwise, her own kids are forced to defend their mother’s attempted manipulation of their com-padres.

I certainly care about my kids future. Interesting that you chose a violent statement like “cut-off the head…” of The Donald. I hope that’s not the thought process you are embedding in your kids. One of many mental tools is to think of 5 things to be grateful for every day. If you don’t, you won’t be able to move out of this counterproductive blaming others type victim loop. Ultimately, this can affect your health and relationships. Take it from me, a cancer survivor.


6

Who does this stuff? An attention obsessed fear monger who has no problem costing our schools and teachers money. She’s already said she wants to lower the voting age to 16. Could she now be expanding lowering her target to 8 year-olds? Sheeesh!


56

I can hear the explanations now: “If kids don’t stand up and protest, it won’t matter if they go to school or not…we’ll all be underwater, being chased by polar bears.”


Teach the kids that they’ll all die if people keep driving non-electric cars or use plastic straws and then also tell them that if they don’t skip school, people will keep driving and using straws….


At one time, long, long ago, public officials did “serve” the public. Not perfectly, not without some corruption here and there….but without coercion and without a self-centered, high-mindedness that assume that everyone needs to believe exactly what the official believes.


Nowadays, politics is thoroughly corrupt at all levels and coercion is mistaken for “leadership.” No one ever speaks about why government exists in the first place: To Protect Individual rights.


No, now people assume that government exists to empower change, shape society, tax, pick winners and losers, etc.


We’re doomed whether the kids march or not. BTW, if this silliness actually happens, my kids will miss school and go to the beach, or ski, or whatever. We don’t belong to the church of Global Warming and we also believe in the separation of church and state.


57

She has become a victim of climate change for sure. it comes under the heading of Air Head. It just speaks for itself telling dependent children of responsible adults to not go to school. If her cause is so serious maybe she should give up on going to city hall and help save us all.


65

It goes something like this:


“Hurry up Junior, I need to drive you to school…”


“No need for that today, we’re striking 4 the climate!”


“Well, let’s drive down to the mall and do some shopping instead.”


“Great idea! My wardrobe is a few weeks out of date.”


33

That’s fine. Just tack on an makeup day at the end of the year. Let’s see what the teacher’s union would say about that.


44

I mean this will all sincerity…..what’s it going to take to get decent human beings running our governments? This woman is a fruit loop!


60
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