JAY — Brandon Baldwin asked middle school students Tuesday to think before they speak so their words won’t hurt others.

Baldwin, head of the Civil Rights Team Project in the Attorney General’s Office, spoke to students at the Spruce Mountain Middle School.

The school’s Civil Rights Team, one of about 200 teams in the state, and their co-advisers Catherine Siggens and Sally Speich are hosting No Name Calling Week this week.

The roughly 14-member team and advisers put together a list of events for each day of the week to encourage students to think before they speak and to spread kindness.

The team invited Baldwin to help them create a safe and welcoming school.

But before he was introduced, team members told their peers why they joined the Civil Rights Team. The reasons stated included not wanting people to be picked on, wanting to stop bullying and to educate others on tolerance.

Baldwin told students that the power of words left him cold when he a fifth-grader.

He talked about his red, puffy jacket he and his mother had agreed to buy.

He loved the jacket that had a bright, shiny White Stag deer dangling from the zipper, Baldwin said.

“It was red. It was puffy, like marshmallow puffy,” he said. The jacket made him feel secure in his warmth and that he was wearing something special, he said.

He got on the school bus one day and friends of his older brother teased him.

They called the jacket gay, he said.

What was the coolest thing he ever owned getting on the bus turned into something he never wanted to wear again when he got off.

The incident didn’t scare him or scar him, Baldwin said. It didn’t tempt him to take revenge against his tormentors.

He was hurt and learned to dread the bus ride to school and he never wore the jacket again.

“The power of words is something we don’t think of all that often,” Baldwin said.

People talk a lot but they don’t stop to realize the power words have, he said.

The mission of the Civil Rights Team Project is to increase safety for every single student that attends school, he said.

The project is part of the attorney general’s effort to prevent violations of the Maine Civil Rights Act. The focus is on bias, prejudice and issues related to race/color, national origin/ancestry, religion, physical and mental disabilities, gender and sexual orientation. But it expands into harassment and aggression.

Words equal power, Baldwin said. Words can be hateful and hurt others, he said.

Baldwin asked students to stand up if they knew of any students using hateful words, name-calling and slurs related to race toward other students. Nearly, if not all, of the students stood up.

Not as many stood up when the same question was asked about religion. And many stood up when it came to mental disabilities and sexual orientation, but not all.

Words should come with a damage warning label, he said.

Derogatory words can be so dangerous, Baldwin said.

He spoke about cases in the state where students have been charged with hate crimes and words and actions used to harass people.

Harassment includes verbal abuse, he said.

Baldwin told students they have the power to make the world a better place.

He ended his talk on a positive story of eight little words.

There was a 9-year-old girl, who was Jamaican. She was teased on the school bus about her clothes, hair and speech.

Girls in the back of the bus teased her relentlessly ever day. The girl told her mother and she talked to the teacher, bus driver and principal.

Finally the little girl was crying and another little girl, Sally, asked what was wrong. Sally went to the back of the bus and spoke to the girls.

“Stop it. She’s my friend. Your words hurt,” Sally said.

It stopped.

Sally was 7 years old and the girls in the back of the bus were juniors and seniors in high school, Baldwin said.

After No Name Calling Week is over, it is up to you, Baldwin told students.

Think about the power of your words and the warning label, he said.

dperry@sunjournal.com

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