Not as simple as good vs. evil: Geeks take on bullying at Comic-Con

I can pinpoint the exact moment that put me on a path to moderate San Diego Comic-Con's first anti-bullying panel last weekend. It happened 32 months ago, when I published a blog post about my first-grade daughter Katie, who was taunted for carrying a "Star Wars" water bottle and backpack.

It was the post that launched a thousand geeks, and then 5,000 tweets. Over the next weeks and months, I read a near-constant stream of e-mails, letters and messages from people around the world who wanted to share their own stories of bullying and peer victimization. The story touched the collective nerve of a very motivated and tech-savvy group of people, who took my daughter in as one of their own. My husband and I like to say that we were the first ones to adopt Katie, and the self-proclaimed geeks and nerds adopted her six years later.

The kindness of strangers to our family served as the catalyst for my transition to full-time work as an anti-bullying advocate. After interviewing hundreds of people, including parents, teachers, kids, bullies, victims, bystanders, researchers, psychologists, lawmakers, celebrities and social workers, I wrote a book about why bullying persists in our culture and how we can end the cycle of fear.


http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/23/living/parents-comic-con-geek-bullying/index.html?eref=rss_mostpopular&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_mostpopular+%28RSS%3A+Most+Popular%29