When he stepped off the bus that afternoon and I asked why his eyes were so swollen, he informed me that he would probably be suspended, but possibly also expelled and arrested. No one called me as this unfolded, even though Sam cried for about six hours straight as staff members parked him in vacant offices to keep him away from other students. At the administratorвЂ™s instruction, that man ushered Sam into an empty room, handed him a blank sheet of paper, and instructed him to write a вЂњstatement of guilt.вЂќ SamвЂ™s guidance counselor pulled him out of his next class and accused him of вЂњbreaking the law.вЂќ Before long, he was in the office of a male administrator who informed him that the exchange was вЂњillegal,вЂќ hinted that the police were coming, and delivered him into the custody of the schoolвЂ™s resource officer. A girl at the table overheard their private conversation, misconstrued it as a sexual reference, and reported it as sexual harassment. One morning during first period, a male friend of SamвЂ™s mentioned a meme whose suggestive name was an inside joke between the two of them. Standard stuff for sensitive middle-schoolers. Their group-text chain pulsed 24-7 with observations about alternative music and the robotic conformity of other classmates. In the taxonomy of our local public school, his close group of friends was tagged edgy and liberal: One of them came out as gay during a class presentation another identified as trans for a while. The problems had started when Sam was 13, barely a month into eighth grade. IвЂ™d always preached to him the importance of seeing things for yourself before making a decision, of talking to people individually to understand what motivated them. In fact, they were perfectly (too perfectly?) reverse-engineered to match my own values. His case was well thought out, his explanations admirable. The rally was just a half-hour Metro ride from our home in WashingtonвЂ™s outer suburbs-so he could make the trip alone, he assured me, flashing the transit app on his phone. As he would tell me later: вЂњI wanted to be part of something big.вЂќ His favorite school subject was history, he reminded me, and he hungered to witness a genuinely significant event firsthand. I can still see him standing in front of me, the longing apparent in his big brown eyes. HeвЂ™d anticipated my automatic veto and readied reasons in favor of attending-not as a participant, he stressed, but as an observer. Sam knew exactly how I would react to his request. Police there were unable to protect citizens I couldnвЂ™t reasonably expect this gathering in DC to be any different. I couldnвЂ™t shake off the shock of her violent murder, or of watching men with tiki torches shout racist slogans across the University of Virginia grounds. At CharlottesvilleвЂ™s Unite the Right rally only a month earlier, a neo-Nazi had killed counterprotester Heather Heyer. Not only was this not how I wanted to spend a Saturday-like almost everyone I knew, IвЂ™d been devastated by the 2016 election results-but I had serious concerns about safety. The pro-Trump event was billed as a demonstration to preserve вЂњtraditional American culture,вЂќ and white supremacists were expected to show up in force. When my son Sam,* who was then 14, asked me to take him to the Mother of All Rallies on the Mall in September 2017, I said no.

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