16 November 2002 LEFT FOR DEAD: A YOUNG MAN'S SEARCH FOR JUSTICE FOR THE USS INDIANAPOLIS by Pete Nelson, Preface by Hunter Scott, Random House/Delacorte Press, May 2002

"Oh look outside the window, there's a woman bein' grabbed,

They've dragged her to the bushes, and now she's bein' stabbed,

Maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain,

But Monopoly is so much fun, I'd hate to blow the game,

And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody,

Outside of a small circle of friends." --Phil Ochs

Every morning at homeroom, to fulfill the requirement that there be a patriotic observance, I've been turning students onto some of the good words of Americans that have inspired me over the years. For instance, I've used excerpts from The I Have a Dream speech, the speech by Susan B. Anthony after being convicted of voting in the presidential election of 1872, Hugo Black's Supreme Court opinion in the Pentagon Papers case, Emma Lazarus' The New Colossus, and Mario Cuomo's 1984 keynote address in San Francisco. I've also used Robert Caro's new book to talk about the senority system and why it takes so damn long for change to happen in Washington. We've done some dissection of the Declaration of Independence (using the great new Scholastic book by Sam Fink), as well as the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

They'd surely tell you that some of their favorite mornings are those "when Richie sings to us." The I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag, I Ain't A Marchin' Anymore, I'm Gonna Say it Now, and The Times They are a-Changing, along with This Land is Your Land (ALL the verses!) are the kinds of songs that I've been sharing with them, accompanied by tales of my own forays into the world of activism.

A week ago I missed homeroom. I was in Sacramento for the California Reading Association convention. Highlights of my day included a reading by Sonya Sones, a slide show by Mark Teague, and the entertaining "Valerie and Walter Show." But the event that really moved me was Molly Bang's presentation centered on her 2001 book NOBODY PARTICULAR: ONE WOMAN'S FIGHT TO SAVE THE BAYS. If you are not familiar with it, NOBODY PARTICULAR is the illustrated true story of Texan shrimper and mom Diane Wilson, who took on the multinational chemical corporations that were poisoning the land and bays of Calhoun County and the politicians who were allowing it to happen.

Molly and I got to spend some time talking about harnessing that intense personal sense of justice that many middle school kids have and turning them into activists--first in their own communities, and then in the world at large.

Psyched up, I went back to school, told the 1964 story of Kitty Genovese, and sang them the song (above) which Phil Ochs was inspired to write after reading about Kitty--assaulted three times over a half hour period and ultimately killed while 38 fellow New York City residents looked on, neither coming to her rescue nor even calling the cops. (Fits right in with our recent discussions regarding THE MISFITS and SPEAK, about how students need to take care of each other, whether or not they're in the same clique or grade.)

LEFT FOR DEAD: A YOUNG MAN'S SEARCH FOR JUSTICE FOR THE USS INDIANAPOLIS is this year's great and true tale of a young activist who took on the country's politicians and military bureaucrats to literally change how history will recount the issues surrounding the sinking of the USS Indianapolis at the end of World War II.

In 1996, Hunter Scott, who is eleven when he first hears of the Indianapolis (while watching the movie Jaws), begins his involvement with the Indianapolis by producing a history fair project for which he contacted the ship's elderly survivors, and ends up on Capitol Hill, testifying in his quest to restore the good name of the doomed ship's Captain Charles McVay. McVay who was blamed for the sinking was the only WWII naval commander brought up on such charges and was convicted despite the testimony on his behalf by the Japanese commander whose submarine was responsible for sinking the Indianapolis! Sadly, the Captain took his own life in 1967.

Pete Nelson recounts the events and now-known facts (thanks to Hunter Scott) that led up to the sinking of the ship, and Hunter's campaign to set the record straight.

The Indianapolis was the ship to deliver the atomic bomb, that was later dropped on Hiroshima, to the island of Tinian. From that point, the US Navy royally screwed up, both in giving McVay further orders to sail the Indianapolis unaccompanied by other ships into waters where American ships had recently been attacked, and then by totally forgetting about the ship. The Indianapolis sunk and nobody wondered why it didn't show up at its destination! It was only random luck that the remaining survivors were found days later, floating in the Pacific.

Having grown up in the years of such shows as McHale's Navy, Hogan's Heroes, and MASH, it is a shocker to see that the bureaucratic screwups portrayed in such sitcoms were so eerily right on target. Yup--tax money at work and young people's lives at stake.

Molly Bang talked about attending a movie, Real Women Have Curves, and bemoaned hearing how so many of today's girls spend their time obsessing about weight rather than life-and-death issues. So many of them and their male counterparts (who, of course, contribute to that weight obsession) sit at their computers and play games in their isolated fantasy worlds, rather than raising their voices in the real world.

Hunter Scott is a tremendous role model. This is a kid who really did his homework! LEFT FOR DEAD is a captivating read that will inspire young people to get off their butts, look outside their windows, and do something about problems and injustices.

Richie Partington

http://richiespicks.com

BudNotBuddy@aol.com