Students in Colorado are fighting to learn about – and exercise – their right to protest

After the Jefferson County Board of Education decided to censor history textbooks, students immediately staged a walk out. When school board officials refused to back down on their plan to make textbooks more "patriotic," students took the fight straight to their door. Earlier this month, more than a dozen young people used civil disobedience to show that they value learning about our national history of protest. At that meeting, board members refused to let students speak, so the kids stood up, one after another, and recited historic acts of civil disobedience from their unedited history textbooks. When that group was asked to leave the meeting, another group of kids stood up and recited the Pledge of Allegiance. After all of the students left the meeting to protest outside the building, someone inside turned on the sprinklers to try and make them leave – but the kids refused. This amazing action by the students of Jefferson County shows exactly why civil disobedience and our nation's history of protest are so important.

By Thom Hartmann