When seventh grader Luke Macannuco penned a letter to the editor of his local newspaper, he probably didn't expect to make national news.
Luke was responding to a letter to the editor in the Winchester Star written by a man named John Natale in which Natale critiqued the "Hate Has No Home Here" campaign after seeing signs with the slogan popping up on lawns in the neighborhood. Luke felt Natale's letter missed the point of the campaign and took it upon himself to set Natale straight with a letter of his own.
When ACLU Massachusetts legal director Matthew Segal shared a photo of Luke's letter on Twitter, it went absolutely viral.
Photos by Matthew Segal/Twitter and Shawn Macannuco, used with permission.
This is what the sign in question looked like:
Image via Hate Has No Home Here.
As Luke explained in his letter:
"I read, with great interest, Mr. John Natale’s colossal misunderstanding of the 'Hate Has No Home Here' signs. Natale’s first mistake was claiming the signs read, 'Hate has no place in this home.' Mr. Natale is incorrectly assuming that the owners of the sign are finding it necessary to state that there is no hate in their home. But, as the American flag depicted on the sign signifies, the posters are referencing the entire U.S.A., a country that does not tolerate hate in spite of its current leadership. Those people who have chosen to place a 'Hate Has No Home Here' sign on their lawn are standing behind their belief that the country should be free of hate."
Luke answered four of Natale's questions with pure 🔥.
"1. Question: 'Who are the haters that you, the sign owner, are referring to?' Answer: Bigots who are trying to take away protections for transgender students, deport refugees and build a very expensive wall to keep illegal immigrants out (which is completely pointless and not helping your cause, but I digress).
2. Question: 'What, or whom, do the haters hate?' Answer: Perfectly innocent human beings who happen to be different from the haters.
3. Question: 'What is the evidence that there is significant hate in our community?' Answer: Me getting called homosexual slurs by students and adults alike.
4. Question: 'Obviously, you are so morally superior that you may declare everyone who disagrees with you a hater (side note: this first part is a statement, not a question). Where, when, and how did you become the Lord High Decider of Morality?' Answer: Never. We just put a lawn sign down. Calm down, dude."
Photo from Matthew Segal/Twitter.
Opposing hate shouldn't be a partisan issue, and the world doesn't need to be divided into red teams and blue teams for us to understand that we are more than our politics.
Luke closes his letter slamming attacks of "snowflake sensitivity" (and gets a pretty sick burn in there, too).
"As I stated previously, the signs are not talking exclusively about Winchester. The signs are about the whole United States. They also aren’t implying you are a hater if you disagree; where did you get that idea? Also, Mr. Natale, if you’re going to ask us to do you a favor and take the signs down, do humanity a favor and take your Trump signs down. Finally, if you are going to say signs exhibit 'snowflake sensitivity,' take a moment to think about how you are writing an angry letter to a newspaper about a lawn sign."
You can read the full text of Luke's letter here, the message he was responding to here, and more about what HHNHH is and stands for here.
If you're looking for a reason to feel hopeful about the future, Luke's your guy.
While Luke's letter clearly doesn't cast Donald Trump's positions in a positive light, the rational and reasoned argument being made is worth hearing regardless of your own political views.
It's curious and a bit sad that there are people who would take offense to something as innocuous as a lawn sign discouraging hate. Maybe a seventh-grade boy can help us take a step back from viewing all things through a partisan lens and no longer seeing the values we almost surely — hopefully — share. For that, Luke deserves a well-earned round of applause.



A Generation Jones teenager poses in her room.Image via Wikmedia Commons
An office kitchen.via
An angry man eating spaghetti.via 
Gif of baby being baptized
Woman gives toddler a bath Canva


An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
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Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.