Our son Jeremy almost died at age 7 from a bullying act at his elementary school that caused a skull fracture and multiple brain bleeds. Mercifully, he survived his ICU stay and the craniotomy he needed for treatment. We are lucky he is still with us today, and we are grateful that he continues to live a full and joyful life despite this incident.  www.facebook.com/justiceforjeremynow . Thank you for all of those who have shared their stories with us, and have reached out with encouragement and support. 

The parents of the other child and the school district has decided to blame my son and a pencil for his life threatening injuries, to protect themselves from liability. This further victimized my son, and leaves my family with open wounds. We've learned from the stories of others that that these wounds do not heal without repentance, or hope for divine forgiveness. Painfully, their continued denial of our incident, and of similar prior incidents, enable the continuance of further bullying behavior on their campuses. 

Because of the unchecked power of the school district, they are able to continue institutional bullying against families and teachers to protect their self interests. From the national and global responses we've gotten from our media coverage, we've unfortunately realized how often this type of bullying occurs. It is disheartening how resistant many public school districts are to even wanting to acknowledge or address the problem of bullying. The fight against the systemic corruption of the public school systems is hard, and too often fruitless. But we will try and do what we can civilly, politically, and legally to hope for change. 

Individually this is impossible. We need to embolden the few who have been harmed by bullying to help raise awareness among the masses. We want to clearly show how damaging bullying is to our society. It often is the root cause of mass shootings, racism, domestic violence, sexual abuse, addiction, bigotry, political gridlock, socioeconomic oppression, and injustices of all forms. 

Of course the other avenue is prevention. The earlier the intervention the better. Helping build the foundation of mutual respect among our children, and empowering all our children with self-respect may be the best, and maybe only way, to cure the cancer of bullying for future generations. I support efforts to bring anti-bullying programs to preschool and elementary levels. 

We want to do what we can to overcome local hurdles to bring anti-bullying education to Arcadia schools, and promote a more humane community locally.

What is so sad is how few upstanders there are to fight this problem. On the surface it seems so easy for the majority of people who are good and kind-hearted to be able to stand up against the few bullies that ruin it for everybody. Instead, the majority has let ignorance, apathy, and fear let this problem grow out of control, and permeate into all aspects of our society. 

Thank you, The Bully Project, and all it's supporters, to be present here, and to gather those of us who are fed up with the inhumanity. It is time to figure out together how we can rid ourselves of this plague, and act on ways to promote our collective healing. 

Regards, 

Eli