#HatNotHate is an anti-bullying campaign where students knit blue hats (the movement’s symbol to eradicate bullying). Its goal is to distribute 25,000 hats to schools by Oct. 7.
Students Knit For Anti-Bullying Campaign
#HatNotHate Goal: Distribute 25K Blue Knit Hats By World Day Of Bullying Prevention
By PATRICK RAYCRAFT The Hartford Courant
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — After Louis Boria heard about the student knitters of Hartford, he came to Connecticut with a message — and a challenge.
"Fall in love with your passion. Love yourself first," Boria — the founder of his own knitting company, Brooklyn Boy Knits — told students at New Visions School in Hartford during a recent visit when he explained how knitting became an obsession after he awoke from a vivid dream in 2011.
"I had never so much as tied a knot let alone knit or purl," recalls Boria, who wore his trademark "fisherman's cap" during his Hartford visit. After teaching himself to knit using YouTube videos, he took his knitting projects everywhere. A photograph of him taken by Broadway performer Frenchie Davis knitting on a subway train last year went viral.
Boria challenged the students to knit as many blue hats as possible for #HatNotHate, an anti-bullying campaign that has embraced his message together with his artistic flair and passion for knitting. The students would first have to learn about the "stockinette stitch," which requires alternately knitting and purling rows.
"No one should have a fear of doing what they love because of fear of judgment from others, or what others may think. For me, one of the best 'side effects' of my knitting is that I'm helping to break down barriers and expectations about gender roles. Loving what you do shouldn't be limited by what's considered 'normal' based on gender," he says.
Boria, 43, promised the students at New Visions that he would return this spring to help them refine their knitting and purling skills so they, too, could perfect a "fisherman cap" for themselves.
When he came to New Visions, Boria brought blue yarn, knitting needles, and a challenge to the dozen or so students in the knitting club, an elective class for expelled Hartford students who learn to knit for two hours each Tuesday morning at the alternative school, where the motto is "find your purpose."
New Visions principal Oscar Padua asked retired Hartford Public Schools special needs teacher Wilma Hoffman to consider starting a knitting club last December. It has quickly become a refuge for students with disciplinary issues who say that knitting has given them a meditative outlet for their anger, depression and trauma.
Boria says he primarily works with students in New York City schools but decided to take a day off from his job as an administrative assistant at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan and visit the knitting club after reading a Courant story that was followed by several Instagram invitations. He described his upbringing in tough Brooklyn neighborhoods where, as a young Puerto Rican kid, he was pressured to be macho and tough.
"Our main goal is for students to stand up to bullying," says Shira Blumenthal, 30, a New Yorker who created the #HatNotHate campaign and who accompanied Brooklyn Boy on his visit to Hartford. Blumenthal shared how being bullied nearly drove her to take her own life as a fourth-grader. Her parents had to move her to a different school. "Bullying affects us all," says Blumenthal, adding that "all of us at some point have either been bullied, witnessed bulling or even been a bully. But the important thing is that we acknowledge it and stop it."
Blumenthal's goal this year is to shine a light on bullying by distributing 25,000 blue knit hats to schools nationwide by Oct. 7, World Day of Bullying Prevention. The hats are the movement's symbol to eradicate bullying. The color blue represents awareness, peace, and solidarity, says Blumenthal. "With every stitch you're making a very big difference. Every stitch counts," she told the students.
Some students in the knitting club who have struggled with being bullies themselves, who brought weapons to school, who threatened and, in some cases, injured students as well as staff members, are now stepping up to stomp out bullying.
"We're not bad kids," says senior Njah Rivera, 18. "I was struggling. I had lost my dad, my grandfather and my uncle," she says about the grief and trauma that led her to making poor decisions and to being expelled. "Being in the knitting program helped me," says Rivera about her dream of becoming a teacher. She now tutors younger students like Solange Smith, 15, a sophomore, who has been knitting for three weeks after being expelled for fighting.
"I get mad too fast. I always fight," says Smith, a quick study who tried on Brooklyn Boy's Fisherman Cap and got some one-on-one instruction from him. "I want to save lives," she says about her goal to become a police sergeant in New York.
"Focus and patience," says sophomore Nathan Awuah, 16, about his takeaways from knitting. Awuah plans to return to Prince Tech and his football teammates in the fall with dreams of one day playing in the NFL.
"These kids are amazing. They're anxious to learn," says Boria, who encouraged the student knitters to continue to help and to teach each other.
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Online: https://bit.ly/2J0RaSh
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Information from: Hartford Courant, http://www.courant.com
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