Montini: Gov. Doug Ducey disses student protesters ... lesson learned

EJ Montini: Students who walked out of their classrooms and later staged a sit-in in Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey's office got what they wanted. But they learned a valuable lesson.

EJ Montini
The Republic | azcentral.com
Gov. Doug Ducey

They didn’t accomplish what they hoped to accomplish, but the students who staged walkouts Wednesday to demand school safety and sane gun regulations, along with the 45 students who more or less “occupied” Gov. Doug Ducey’s office, learned a valuable lesson.

It is this:

Full-grown adults, particularly full-grown adult politicians, can be jerks.

Who matters, who doesn't

Unless you can vote, or you have campaign money – and mostly it’s just the money – you … don’t … matter.

The governor could have indulged the protesting students with a conversation. He could have engaged them in a dialogue. Answered their questions.

DEBATE:Will protesting students accomplish what adults can't (or won't)?

Instead, he was nowhere to be seen and the students were left to chant "Shame on Ducey!" "Vote them out” and “Never again." Three things I hope they remember when they are of an age to take control.

Which won’t be long.

Your time is coming

I hope.

"We have been here since 8 a.m. and they have ignored us!" shouted 17-year-old Jordan Harb, a student at Mountain View High School in Mesa who was at the Capitol on Wednesday.

Exactly.

They’ve ignored you. The Legislature also has totally ignored the most common sense gun regulation proposals.

For example, the Republicans in control refused to allow a vote on whether there should be a federal background check on every gun sale; or on whether a judge can be petitioned to keep someone with mental-health issues from possessing a gun; or on a bill that would have required domestic-violence offenders to give police any weapons they possessed while on probation or while they are under an order of protection.

Also, they won’t ban bump stocks.

Remember students, the key word in Lesson No. 1:

Jerks.

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