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I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

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I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

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I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

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I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

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I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

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I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

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I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

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I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

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I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

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I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

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I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

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I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

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I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

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I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

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They don't give you any choice.

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It's either Hitler or it's freedom.

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And you've got to pay the price for freedom.

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I think you can't not have a contract.

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And I think that you can't not give somebody

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We have a chance to have a contract and negotiate it.

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What I think we're talking about here is whether or not the teachers are going to exist in the building

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under a contract that spells out fairly clearly what policies and procedures are and what appeals procedures are

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and how the teaching staff and the administration can work together and how they can mend differences when they occur.

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I think what the Board wants is the right to arbitrarily decide anything they wish,

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when they want, how they want, why they want, in relation to whom they want,

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to hire and fire people and make decisions regarding the working conditions and situations of people based on their own whims.

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From the first day of the strike, the teachers felt increasing pressure.

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Malograms and threatening letters seemed to be legal procedures,

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but the Board's real intent came through when they repeatedly delayed or canceled bargaining sessions or failed to bring in new proposals.

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Most threatening to us were the administrators' around-the-clock preparations to open the schools with replacements and, in effect, destroy the Union.

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I don't want to see our Union broken.

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Wesley Gibbs came to a faculty meeting several years ago and said this,

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I am not your friend. If you've got a good Union, you better have a good Union.

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And get into it, because I'm not your friend. And every administrator in this district has adopted that philosophy.

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He said that all we would be doing by firing these teachers is taking some unemployed people and switching them with others.

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We are trying to conduct an education in a situation where the system is valued and people are secondary.

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The system is the antithesis of what we try to do in our classrooms, what we try to do in our homes.

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No way. I don't care the consequences.

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Well, it was harder to think of going in. I couldn't. We were up to the door.

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I couldn't go in. I can't.

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The mood of this group is the feeling you get walking with these people.

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It's just the spirit and the enthusiasm, the courage. And we're all here. And that's what's going to make it.

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I was terrified, just terrified, the week before we went into the strike. But I feel better every day.

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At this stage of the game, I'm prepared to stay out as long as we have to stay.

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I feel better because I have a greater sense of solidarity with the faculty.

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I have talked to people that I hadn't talked to in maybe six or seven years here.

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I think it's very rare to see everybody out here risking so much for moral principles.

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It's difficult for the community to understand that we're not out here for money.

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My neighbors have been calling me in Glenview, just hearing about the strike on TV.

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How much do you want and what's really going on? Is it really true that you're not out there for money? And it is.

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They say some of the teachers in this school don't use their free time for kids.

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Some of the teachers in this school duck out early.

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Some of the teachers in this school are incompetent, so let's treat them all that way. I resent that.

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Mrs. Garland has said this is not a crisis situation.

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There is no way that you can have teachers come in right now and just pick up the classes.

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It's going to hurt the kids' education because you can't get as qualified teachers as this.

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This has got the experience of the years they've taught here.

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The personal strength we gained from each other on the Pickett Line became union strength with the help of an honest leadership

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that provided full information, laid it on the line that we probably would be fired, and left us freedom of choice.

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But I'm very deeply offended at what the board is doing, the way they're treating the faculty of this school,

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like a bunch of incompetents or a bunch of children or a bunch of people with no human rights.

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Now, I would like to believe that all the administrators in the district will make those decisions based on what's best,

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what's the best educational plan for students and for the district and for the school.

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We have sacrificed our lives, our professional lives.

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By God, we were ready to make that sacrifice, and I did not see one administrator sacrifice one damn thing.

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The security of the teaching staff is going to be dependent upon how much they can ingratiate themselves

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with their respective immediate administrators and principals and with the superintendent.

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I don't want to have us living in a situation where people are unable to disagree with an administrator

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because they think an administrative suggestion is a non-efficient one or a poor one,

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and if I disagree with that decision, that the response I'm going to get is going to be a personal threat.

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Dr. Gibbs is finding the problems that are associated with this managerial system they put in.

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These curriculum models and objectives are garbage.

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440 teachers strongly are all against it, but they don't listen.

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They say, you do it. I will put a letter in your file.

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I've been here for 13 years. In 13 years I've given my guts to this district.

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The doctor gives it into nothing. I'm teacher number 1065 to that man.

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As a total studies teacher, I appreciate the kinds of things these kids are beginning to engage in.

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They're learning a lot about bureaucracy, and they're learning a lot about these big and personal institutions that we have,

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and they're learning it real well.

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I said, you're a Jew, and so am I. How dare you put dogs here. The last time I had them was in Nazi Germany.

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Some of us saw Doberman pictures. We saw private security. We saw Stokey police.

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And we saw all kinds of evidences that whoever was running the show for the school did not trust us in a way that was unfathomable to us.

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One week into the strike, at an open meeting, the board fired the striking teachers, calling out each of their names and crossing them off the list one by one.

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It seemed inconceivable to us that they could wipe out all our years of experience and contributions to their schools with a slash of the pen.

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And I felt the board were so wrong in doing what they did. I have a son who was there until 3 in the morning, and when they called out,

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every teacher's name, to me, I think that's the lowest thing that any board could do.

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And when this happened, there was no consideration for any past performance, and as that process occurred, all of their administrative staff stood silently by.

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If there were a series of 101 speakers who came, who presented their viewpoints to the board, who pleaded, who cried, who begged, of those 101,

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a very conservative estimate would be that 93 of them were in favor of the teachers.

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Regardless of how long they have worked for the township, or how many years they've put in, or what kind of a job they've done, it made no difference.

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They were released by a board of education one by one simply because they did this one act.

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Those who went in went in because it was a job, and those who stayed out stayed out because it was a profession.

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And I think it would be a disaster to see all those teachers fired. I think that that's what's become the main issue to the student body.

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Our education is suffering, and we need you there.

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We were fired on Monday night. We were not cleanly fired. We were dangled one more time.

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For some of us, it was easier. We walked out the first day, we knew that we were walking out of the school.

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For other people, it was daily torture.

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Many students, concerned for their disrupted education, organized rallies, attempted to reach administrators and board members,

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and with an increasing interest in the teacher's position, joined them on the picket line to talk or participate in informal classes.

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I speak for a great number of people I've talked to over the past two weeks,

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and I too feel a very severe disappointment in our administrative staff, any administrative staff, who could sit back and watch in silence

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for fear of losing their jobs, the fate of 267 dedicated teachers go down the drain.

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I understand that fear is a strong motivator. We as a union of people have faced those fears, and we have conquered them.

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When I heard Peter LaForge, a man whom I respected since I'd been at Niles, of dignity and courage and strength, fired summarily,

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I heard my own name called, I stood up, I looked around, saw my friends and fellow teachers, and I even managed to smile,

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because I thought that nothing from them, from the board, could make me cry. I had the support of my fellow teachers, and that's what I needed.

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Gentlemen, there's a difference between management and leadership.

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Mike Lonsburg, this is Judy, you creep. Get your gutsy's on and get to the north, we've settled.

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There's a meeting at north, we don't work, we party.

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You know we won.

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I tell you, we've all bought the rest of our lives. There's not anybody here that's ever going to be afraid of anything.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.

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We're all going to die.