Lawyers representing the 14-year-old Texas boy who was arrested, suspended for school, and perp walked in front of the national media because a jumpy English teacher thought his science project was a bomb have served demand letters on the City of Irving for $10 million and the Irving Independent School District for $5 million. Read story here.
I’ll bet the fact his name is “Ahmed Mohamed” and he’s brown (see photo) had something to do with how he was treated. After all, this was Texas. So the case could be worth a lot of money, especially in federal court. Maybe not $15 milion, but I’ll bet he gets $1 million from those jerks for violating his civil rights, and maybe with false arrest and defamation thrown in. Meanwhile, “The family accepted a foundation’s offer to pay for Ahmed’s education in Qatar and has since moved to the Persian Gulf country,” CBS News says. After that, his next gig may be a student slot at MIT or Cal Tech; this kid clearly is going places. Maybe Fate intervened, because he’s clearly too good for Texas, a state* where Republicans bar college professors from vetting public school textbooks.
* It’s not altogether clear whether Texas is a “state”. Legally it is, but sentimentally it’s not; they think their side won the War of Secession, and are given to calling their patch of sagebrush “the Republic of Texas,” whatever that signifies. It’s a leadpipe cinch they don’t mean Texas is still part of Mexico; they don’t like any brown people, even those who don’t have Arab-y names. Texas was, in fact, an independent republic from 1836 – 1845, which happens to coincide with the social thinking of Republicans in general — they’re roughly 170 years behind the rest of us. That’s better than ISIS, which is stuck in the 7th century. They do have electricity in most of Texas. It’s mainly used for running oil pumps.