This is the text of an e-mail received by a Tucson school principal Tuesday:
Miss Godfrey,
I say how would you like to have 100 Nazis, klanners, skins and Aryan Nation members marching and protesting in front of your school? I personally find the idea exhilarating. Nothing makes me happier than exposing some a–hole for being an illegal minority, anti-American, commie puke. How will your neighbors view you when your own neighborhood gets targeted with fliers that have your face and your anti-American actions on it?. Now, unless you stop this complete and utter lunacy, I will bring my boys down there and make your life a living hell, you un-American piece of s—. I will call every paper within 200 miles, every news station, put our Internet notices all over your state, calling for a protest of you and your school’s action … I trust I am crystal clear on this issue. Quit being a stupid anti-American b—- . Do your job that Americans hired you to do. Teach the kids in English, our language, and shut up.
It was signed by a man claiming to be a member of the National Socialist Movement in Ohio.
What set him off? An on-line alert from a Tucson-based Minuteman, Lance Altherr, who is upset over a learning exercise taking place in his son’s second-grade class at Gale Elementary School. For more than a decade, teacher Anne Lee has had her students recite the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish. Mind you, that’s after they do it in English first. And they also recite it in sign language.
Altherr and ProEngish, a group that advocates for English as the nation’s official language, is threatening a lawsuit against the Tucson Unified School District if Lee doesn’t stop the practice. TUSD and the principal have received 450 e-mails and phones calls on the issue, mostly from people outside the community. While the missive above was the worst and was forwarded by TUSD to police, the tone in most of the e-mails is the same, according to a district spokeswoman.
Read more about this in my Friday column.