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World Net Daily
School officials in Wisconsin were caught on video trying to intimidate parents into closing down a weekly “Jesus Lunch” for hungry kids in a local park, and now the police are involved.
Mothers in Middleton have been hosting a Jesus Lunch 16 times per year since 2014 in Fireman’s Park. Students from Middleton High School, who may eat at local dining establishments, often choose a free lunch provided by the mothers. The religious message shared with meals was the catalyst for targeting the gathering, which has grown from a small handful of students to hundreds.
“We are asking you to allow our legal counsels to consider this together because this is certainly a question you contend is a First Amendment right,” Donald Johnson, the superintendent of the Middleton-Cross Plains district, recently said to the mothers after blocking the park entrance with hazard cones. “We contend that this is really an issue of our ability to exercise our lease for the city. We think that cooperation is really the way to go.”
Johnson was then presented with a letter from the group’s lawyer, another from the City of Middleton, and a lease agreement to use the park, the education watchdog EAGnews.org reported last Friday.
“[Officials] coned up the parking lot, waited there and confronted my clients and told them to leave,” Phillip Stamman, an attorney representing the moms, told the website. “[The parents] responded how I recommended. They walked right past them. The superintendent repeatedly tried to confront them. He was the first one. But they just moved on.”
The video also shows the Johnson simultaneously lamenting the parents’ lawyers while saying his desired resolution would entail their removal from the park.
“Fireman’s Park – a public park owned by the city of Middleton – remains accessible to everyone in the public for the purposes of assembly and free speech,” lunch organizer Beth Williams said in a statement. “By law, the lease agreement between the city and the school district of Middleton does not privatize the park.”
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