While we understand and respect our local police department for providing essential services for our town, we believe that recent "crackdowns" on young local skateboarders have been carried too far.

When kids are riding skateboards in our local parks, they're constantly subjected to interference, citations, and being told to leave...while all around them, other kids on bicycles and roller skates are left alone.

There are often sound reasons to prohibit skateboarders from using areas like public sidewalks to ride on - safety, liability and pedestrian traffic issues are all valid reasons that we respect. But the rules about wheeled equipment should be used equally among all parties, and there's nothing stopping either the Sylva Town Board or the Jackson County Board of Commissioners from setting aside parks and sidewalks that are available to skateboarders.

It's time to eliminate the flimsy legal justification that is currently being used to gloss over this injustice.

When kids have gone to local business and offered to paint over their graffiti and help beautify our town - for no charge - most of us don't care what they're riding or wearing. We just want them to stay around.

Instead, the local police tell them to go home and stop causing trouble.

If crimes have been committed, then by all means, we expect that those who are sworn to "serve and protect" will bring those responsible to justice.

But justice never says a kid is bad just because he's riding a flat board with four wheels and wearing clothes that are different from ours. Targeting these youth, continually expecting terrible behavior, and refusing to give them so much as the freedom to enjoy our public spaces is not only a travesty today.

It is a lasting mistake that will haunt this community in the years to come. If we simply stand by and shake our heads, we will be the ones left watching as our children grow up and move away and refuse to come back...and we think that is the larger crime.

We ask that both the Town of Sylva and the Jackson County Board of Commissioners consider setting aside portions of existing parks where skateboarding is allowed. 

We also ask that the targeting of skateboarders for using their boards in public parks be either stopped or applied equally, including to children on bicycles and roller skates, so that the application of the law will at least be fair.

Essentially, we ask that these young men and women have the chance to prove that they can be, not only respectful, but invested members of our communities and neighborhoods, without our society condemning them on sight. 

"I have no right, by anything I do or say, to demean a human being in this own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him; it is what he thinks of himself. To undermine a man's self-respect is a sin."

 - Antoine de Saint-Exupery