Sen. Kerry: The fight against bullying continues

[Mass]

Thanks to senator Kerry for this editorial, this deserves to be published by all newspapers in the state. While bullying affects GLBI young people more than straight people, it concerns all of us. It could be our kid who gets bullied.

http://www.baywindows.com/index.php?ch=opinion&sc=guest_opinions&sc2=news&sc3=&id=120316

Sen. Kerry: The fight against bullying continues
by John Kerry
United States Senator
Wednesday Jun 1, 2011
Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover was like a lot of 11-year-olds in Springfield. You could find him at Boy Scout meetings, tossing around a football, or sprinting down a soccer field. But like too many young people today, Carl also faced painful and unrelenting bullying in school. He took his own life two years ago, just a week before he would have turned twelve.

As a parent, senseless tragedies like this shake me to the core. They’re heartbreaking reminders that too many children across our state are waking up today with a crippling fear of what they might face in their school’s hallways and classrooms. They’ll spend the day removed from their peers, retreating away from their friends and themselves to protect against the hurt of hate-filled language and physical intimidation. They’ll go to sleep at night with the biting words of a text, tweet, or wall post swirling in their heads. It’s a new generation of bullying, and we need to do more as parents and communities to understand the pressures facing our kids and be there for the children who need us most.

The sad facts speak for themselves. One in four kids in Massachusetts is harassed, intimidated, or bullied in school, with the number of cases of physical violence significantly increasing for gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendere youth. Kids victimized at school are five times more likely to show signs of depression, and students harassed once or more in the past year are significantly more likely to consider or attempt suicide.
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On another topic, I hope that all of you in Massachusetts stayed safe in these storms. They seem to have missed the Boston area, but my MIL's area got two tornadoes touching ground. Crazy,