They Want to Tell You a Kid With a Spider-Man Backpack Is Evil |
Courtesy of Columbia Heights Public Schools
Anyone with a child in the spitting-distance age of a preschooler is likely to be familiar with Spidey and His Amazing Friends, the animated TV series that follows grade-school versions of Peter Parker, Miles Morales, and Gwen Stacy as they take on baddies across New York City. Their kiddo fans might even break out in song and try to talk to you about Patrick Stump.
Such is the intense patronage that Spidey inspires among today’s youngest kids, and by extension, their parents, willingly or not. So when news emerged that ICE had detained Liam Ramos, a 5-year-old Minnesota boy, it was the photos that broke me. Here is a literal preschooler wearing a Spider-Man backpack, just like all of our kids, as the hand of a much larger masked ICE agent holds onto his backpack, as if he were a flight risk. An oversized blue hat with bunny ears partially covers his face as he stares ahead blankly. Liam and his father........