Mom and teachers say they are proud of a 14-year-old girl who flipped off anti-mask protesters outside her school last week.
Fiona Downey just started her first year at Champlain Valley Union High School but she was exasperated by the mob of adults outside her school each morning protesting mask-wearing on campus. So, on Friday she flipped them the bird.
VT Digger photographer Glenn Russell captured the photo which was used as the image accompanying a story about the protests. The image of Downey raising her middle finger at the protesters from inside the school bus went viral.
Her mom and teachers are proud.
“This has been particularly hard on adolescents,” her mom Meagan told Seven Days. “They’re coming of age, they’re old enough to see what’s happening, but they don’t have a lot of control. I think in that moment, my daughter did have control over what she could do with her hand, and she chose to use it.”
Fiona’s science teacher was the one who brought the original VT Digger story with her photo to her attention in email. The teacher recognized the sliver of glasses and the forehead looking out the bus window, according to Seven Days. She told Fiona she was proud of her.
“It’s just so hard to see them not taking safety precautions seriously and trying to persuade kids to do the worst of the worst,” Fiona said of the protesters.
