TRI In The News
School Bus Driver Fired for Flying Confederate Flag from Truck; 'I'm a Redneck. It's a Way of Life'
From The New York Daily News
Original article available here.
An Oregon bus driver fired for flying a Confederate flag off his truck is calling in the conservative cavalry to get his job back.
Ken Webber was canned Tuesday from his job driving kindergartners to school after he refused an order from school officials to remove the giant flag, which is emblazoned with the word "Redneck."
The Rutherford Institute of Charlottesville, a conservative civil rights organization in Virginia, backed Webber up, sending a letter Wednesday to the bus company demanding he be reinstated on First Amendment grounds.
"These are important free speech issues," institute President John Whitehead said. "We are facing a crisis in this country of political correctness."
Webber said school officials had asked him once before to take the flag off his pick-up truck, which he parked in a bus yard owned by the school district.
The self-proclaimed proud redneck wrote on Facebook Tuesday night that he was tossed after he refused a second time.
"Today I was called into the bus yards office where I was asked to remove the flag (I think y'all know the answer to that) so I got Fired!!!" he wrote. "I am now unemployed for standing up for my rights and what I believe."
Phoenix-Talent schools Superintendent Ben Bergreen said the flag violated a policy prohibiting symbols that could be offensive to minorities, according to The Associated Press.
Webber, who is married with four children, said that he didn't mean for the flag to be racist.
"It's just who I am. I'm a redneck. It's a way of life," he said. "When you've got the word 'redneck' going straight across [the flag], it takes away that whole thing. It's just about standing up for what you believe in.
"It ain't coming down," he said.
In a November case, a U.S. appeals court upheld the decision by a Tennessee school district to suspend a student for wearing a Confederate flag T-shirt and belt buckle.
