To be American… does it mean that you “have” freedom? You own it? Is it a thing you can grasp with your hands? Or does it mean that others may not grasp you – and that is your ‘freedom’? Freedom is freedom, I would think, when it applies to everyone. If you were in Iran or Pakistan and wanted to listen to your favorite music but were not allowed to due to some religious law, but someone else is allowed to listen to their favorite music, then that is not freedom. But the ability to protest a law like that, to be free and even encouraged by your fellow countrymen to protest that which you deem as unfair, unsafe, or immoral is freedom – that is American.

The United States was born from a protest against British taxes, religious oppression, and aristocratic, unmeritocratic sovereignty. Our most famous protest was the Boston Tea Party (and it was only quasi-peaceful, as many crates of some merchant’s tea were tossed into the ocean, which made that protest one of financial destruction, too!). I would argue that there is little that is more fundamental to being American than peaceful protesting. To be American is to have an opinionated voice, which we may use in a conversation without fear of consequence. 

Just months ago when ICE was on a rampage: waiting outside of immigration court for immigrants who were following the law, only to deport them and denying immediate medical aid to protestors who they shot in the back – I drove by the Millard water tower on my way to work with children, and I saw teenage students holding signs along the road, protesting what ICE was doing. Days later, I saw an even larger group of youth near 185th (ish) and L street right near the high school, what I would say was nearly 80-100 children with their own signs, protesting the same. 

They were exercising their chief American rights: freedom of assembly and freedom of speech, from which all other rights are born. 

A few months back, when the season of unending ICE-montages of overweight jackboots ignoring lawful orders from judges, while simultaneously, overzealously upholding immigration law, there was a protest at Hamilton High in Phoenix, Arizona. Students had organized a walk-out of classes, and then a masked and (visibly armed with a handgun and carrying multiple magazines) man entered the protest. Children went over to police officers who were monitoring them to report the masked man with the gun – that the man was approaching multiple students, telling them to “grow up”.. Which is when it was found out that the masked man was an off-duty Phoenix police sergeant, Officer Mullen. 

Arizona’s Family News reported that Mullen refused to leave when the other officers spoke with him and told the officers that he had spoken to other people who were also going to bring firearms. In the police report, it was listed that Mullen told his fellow officers that he planned to let students assault him so they could all be arrested. 

Dear Reader, under all the stars of heaven, is there a world where things end well in a situation when you put an adult with a titanic ego and a gun around… teenagers, and it ends well? He got his wish when a teenage girl threw water on him, and she was arrested for assault and disorderly conduct. Thank God that it was just that. Somehow it was just that – and, somehow, Mullen was just placed on administrative leave. His attorney is demanding that the leave be rescinded on the grounds that Mullen was within his rights to “attend” a protest and counter-protest himself.

Growing up in America, I witnessed men cringe or balk at charging someone with assault over something like throwing water. You don’t have to agree with me; this is just my empirical witness. And I also spoke with conservatives who were madly against Black Lives Matter protesters wearing masks, arguing in part that masks made it hard to tell the criminals apart from the good protestors, and then ICE came swinging in 2026 with their own masks, and high school children decided they too were in agreement. 

And then we have a masked man with a gun admit it was his intent to get assaulted so children could be arrested? 

As a centrist raised by a conservative father, I ask you conservatives: 

What is it? Are masks only bad when used by Liberals? How about protests? 

How short-sighted is it to make the next generation the enemy of your own ideals? As a single, simple example: to carry firearms into the heart of teenage hormones with the ideation of starting combat, because you disagree? 

I am not asking conservatives to shout down this specific man, but I am begging them to wonder what the path forward is regarding their school children. Like an abusive and controlling parent, the thoughtful and ardent child will strive to be nothing like them. The future is only yours insofar as you live, and if you speak ill of teenagers or wish ill upon them for views you find unfavorable, they will not want to carry your culture or future forward. 

Like religion, it is only carried forward into the future by many growing members who support each other. So is culture. 

The teenagers who stage walkouts when it comes to real political schisms in the United States should not be abhorred or neglected, but lauded for using their American voice to champion the future they see as just and kind. 

Austin Petak is an aspiring novelist and freelance journalist who loves seeking stories and the quiet passions of the soul. If you are interested in reaching out to him to cover a story, you may find him at austinpetak@gmail.com.

Opinions expressed by columnists in The Daily Record are not necessarily those of its management or staff, and do not constitute an endorsement or recommendation. Any errors or omissions should be called to our attention so that they may be corrected. Contact us at news@omahadailyrecord.com.