Mary Beth Tinker, plaintiff in the case of speech school, going on tour

WASHINGTON - Mary Beth Tinker was only 13 when he spoke against the war in Viet Nam by the use of a black armband to school Iowa in 1965. When the school suspended him, she took his case for freedom of speech all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States and won. Now 61, she has left her part-time work as a nurse and will travel the country telling her story.

Tinker will visit her first school on Monday in Philadelphia. After that, she has scheduled to travel by RV to 18 States and the District of Columbia as part of what is called the "Tinker" tour. She can enter 10,000 to 15,000 kilometers, the equivalent of driving around the country three to five times, before his tour ends on 25 November in a suburb of Kansas City. Along the way, she stopped in towns of more than three dozen, most of the schools, and she plans a tour of schools in Western States in the spring. His message: students must take action on issues important to them.

"Is best for all our society when children have a voice," Tinker said in a recent interview at his home in Washington.

The tour, which will include participating in the celebrations of the day of the Constitution on Tuesday in Philadelphia and visit their former school in Iowa, not marks the first time that Tinker has spoken to young people. After a career as a technician in piano, a nurse and a nurse for the Service Employees International Union Organizer, Tinker began speaking more to the students of a decade ago.

It says young people "That one person can make a difference", and "you are important. You're someone".

He said that the foot is not only "practice for the future," but something children can do today. And students have a variety of concerns, he said, it is school uniform, bans on chewing gum, or in a school who visited, the fact that there was not enough sand in the sandbox.

Fall of the Tinker tour leg is expected to cost about $50,000, and backed by a number of groups of the first amendment and journalism, including Washington's Newseum, which donated $3,500 for black bracelets that Tinker sign and give. The American Civil Liberties Union, which originally took the case of Tinker to the Supreme Court, is among the organizations supporting the trip.

The main sponsors of the tour is the Student Press Law Center, an advocate of Washington non-profit first amendment rights student. A lawyer for the group, Mike Hiestand, will join Tinker in the tour to answer legal questions and talk with groups of students newspaper about censorship and other issues.

HIESTAND, who has spent over 20 years working with students of journalism, called a "rock star" Tinker. He said he had spoken of his case with students for a long time before I met her three years ago. The decision of 1969, in his case, said, was a high watermark for student speech. Decision famously says students not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of expression at the school gates". But Hiestand said that since then, the law has changed drastically and rights of students have been reduced.

Tinker said that "every time you turned," there appears to be a case where "a child is in trouble for something that is expressing." But said that she will tell students to get up anyway: "You have a lot of energy if you will use it".

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Tinker Tour: http://www.tinkertourusa.org

Student Press Law Center: http://www.splc.org

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Follow Jessica Gresko at http://twitter.com/jessicagresko

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