What more to say. US system at work, right wing domestic terrorist. They did this same thing to shut down abortion centers and it worked for them, so they will try it again against legal events that the right has targeted. Where is the police protection for citizens going to a legal event? Dogs that love gravy, this is the 1960s race attacks, it is the 1970s / 1980s attacks on gay bars and night clubs. This is Nazi thug enforcers for the hateful right wing party, supported by red state governors. Where is the outrage from the left? Why are the rights of normal people being trampled on with impunity? Notice that some of the ones trying to force their regressive views on everyone else were members of a church. I am so tired of the right / republicans / fundies churches targeting the LGBTQ+ because of their book written 2,500 years ago. This is 2022 so get over it, live the way you want but let others do the same. Again notice that the protestors equated drag which is simply dressing up in costume with trans people. The performers normally are cis. Hugs I agree with this comment I posted below.
A drag-queen story hour starring an 11-year-old performer at an Oregon pub was targeted by Proud Boys and neo-Nazis, some of whom hurled heavy rocks and smoke bombs during fiery clashes outside the event.
Police in riot gear ultimately had to intervene to stop the mayhem at Old Nick’s Pub Drag Queen Story Time Brunch on Sunday.
The Eugene Police Department said in a statement that it was well aware ahead of time that the event had “drawn polarized attention” across the state.
Witnesses stated that at one point the detractors had attempted to enter the pub through a side door but were pushed back by supporters. These anti drag queen detractors were made aware of this event by Andy Ngo, a right wing journalist who considers himself an expert on Antifa and the “militant left”.
Ngo tweeted about the event on Oct. 17, calling attention to Vanellope personally by posting pictures of her. The supporters of Old Nick’s were local community members who brought snacks and water for the allies and protected families as they entered the pub.
Some of the protestors were identified as Proud Boys and members of Rose City Nationalists were present. David Loveall, Springfield’s new county commissioner was there protesting the drag show along with members of the Crossfire Christian Church.
All of these “Drag Queen Story Hours” were started very innocently by public librarians as a way to encourage children to read more. At its heart, it is a very wholesome endeavor.
And drag queens, who wanted to give back, as a public service. To inspire closeted children among them? Yeah, sure. But that was never the PRIMARY point.
Well, female drag at least. You know what we call male drag? It’s women at the grocery store in a t-shirt and jeans. Because no one bats an eye today if a woman wears mens clothing.
These are legal events being shut down through domestic terrorism by right wing thugs. There is nothing sexual about dressing up to read to kids. Look at the pictures from the events. That doesn’t matter to the right maga crowd as they think anytime a guy is dressed in what they call “women’s” clothing the person is trans which they want erased from society. These are self avowed Nazis. They see that racist genocidal group as somehow be preferred and more moral than LGBTQ+. Where was the local law enforcement to protect a legal event from attack and violence by gang thugs? Not there, because the police agree with the gang thugs and many are members of groups like the Proud Boys. The law means nothing compared to having their demands met to live in lock step with the right wing regressive views. This is scary how much the right maga cult wants fascism and an end to democracy. And right wing media like Fox incites this and inspires even worse attacks. Plus what about the rights of parents to approve of their children going to these events which are fun and inclusive. They don’t get a say because only right wing maga cult parents count it appears. BTW in my news feed this morning were three youth ministers / pastors charged with sex abuse of both boys and girls while no drag queen has yet to be charged with molesting a kid while doing a public reading. Hugs
Threats from neo-Nazi groups prompted the cancellation of a drag queen story hour in Orlando. The LGBT+ Center Orlando announced it would nix the event, scheduled for Oct. 29, out of caution. “Due to several threats from hate groups aimed at The Center and to those participating in Drag Queen Story Hour, we have decided to cancel the event for this Saturday’s Halloween Edition scheduled for 2PM,” reads a Facebook post from the Center.
The event, which had been supported with a grant from the City of Orlando, was to feature Bridgette Galore. Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, an Orlando Democrat and one of three openly gay lawmakers in the Florida Legislature, said it’s a shame hate can shut down a community event. “I’m sad and angry that threats like these continue to happen against the LGBTQ community,” he said. “Neo-Nazis organizing in Florida against Drag Queen Story Time? This is really dangerous and scary.”
Seventy-five children and their parents bought tickets to the “Drag Queen Story Hour” event with Bridgette Galore Oct. 29 at the Center off Mills Avenue, said George Wallace, the center’s executive director. “It was sold out,” Wallace said. “But again, safety is first in mind. We don’t want to put anyone in harm’s way, especially kids. They don’t need to be subjected to yelling and seeing that type of behavior.”
Wallace said local public officials and the Anti-Defamation League alerted him to online posts where extremist groups planned for 40 to 50 protesters at the event. “We have a church group that protests the center and the local Proud Boys came and were yelling ‘pedophile’ and terrible things at the parents that were bringing their kids in,” he said. “They were at arm’s length, but this Twitter thread that we saw — they’re violent.”
Orlando drag queen story hour canceled by @lgbtcenterorl amid hate group threats
Important read from @monivettec today: “Drag Queen Story Hour is not about sexualization … it is reading to children stories about love and acceptance … I think that these people who actually threatened violence could learn a lot from attending.”https://t.co/2IkEvS0saY
It’s not that they don’t want to take their own children to this event. They want to control (stop) the ability for anyone else to do so. They love cancel culture and big government when it stifles people they disapprove of.
You are correct. DeSantis should be making it safe for this event to take place, instead he sits back and smiles with a sheepish grin that he’s getting to them. And he loves it. Sick, sick, sick. That’s not a governor, that’s a tyrant.
So Florida (DeSantos, etc.) keep harping on parental rights. What about the rights of the parents who bought tickets and want their children to attend drag queen stories? It seems that only some people actually get “rights.”
Would like the “liberal” media to ask Dictator DeSantis to comment on the conservative terrorist threats and whether he thinks his anti-LGBTQ agenda and rhetoric emboldened them … but the cowards won’t.
So we just give in to terrorists? Expect to see a lot more of this kind of shit since it works so well and there are no consequences for the terrorists.
Let’s see, one group would scream hateful, violent rhetoric at a room full of children, the other would rather cancel for the sake of the children to protect them from a negative, at worst traumatic, experience.
I don’t mean to scare people, but this kind of shit was the missing link between hate propaganda and seemingly isolated or low-level terrorism against minorities during the Weimar Republic and early Third Reich and full-scale organized, government-sanctioned persecution and genocide later on.
Number of drag queens arrested for molestation: 0 Number of transgender women arrested for molestation in bathrooms: 0 Number of Republican Congressmen arrested for public restroom misbehavior: 3 Number of priests, youth pastors & clergy arrested for molestation: TENS OF THOUSANDS
The police and National Guard protected kids during integration in the South, decades ago. They should be doing the same TODAY!!! We are dealing with the SAME RACISTS!!!
I agree with you, and at some point standing up to the bullies will happen. It’s happened all our lives It’s happened in other situations. A healthy helping of their own medicine is called for.
Pro-war commentator Anton Krasovsky was speaking with sci-fi author Sergei Lukyanenko about the writer’s first trip to Ukraine in 1980, when local kids told him their lives would be better if Moscow wasn’t occupying their homeland.
“They should have been drowned in the Tysyna [river],” Krasovsky said. “Just drown those children, drown them.” He added that the children could have been forced into huts and burned.
During the same interview, Krasovsky also laughed about reports of elderly Ukrainian women being raped by Russian troops. “Those grannies would spend their burial savings to get raped by Russian soldiers,” he said.
Governments which still have not banned RT must watch this excerpt. This is what you side with if you allow RT to operate in your countries. Aggressive genocide incitement (we will put this person on trial for it), which has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Ban RT worldwide! https://t.co/xJC371rqyg
Republicans are certainly advocating policies that threaten the lives of LGBTQ kids and they have committed to introducing national “Don’t Say Gay” legislation. A lot of them want us dead.
They are closeted monsters for now. What do you think people like Ralph Reed and Stephen Miller daydream about if they ever gained total control over this country
But that’s perhaps about one-third of American society that has outsized power because of our political system. In Russia it’s much more pervasive and is the result of a deep well of chauvinism and a history of imperialism, colonialism and white supremacy that the country has never confronted. What’s happening in Ukraine is consistent with how Russia has behaved for centuries (a good example is the Circassian genocide).
I’ve said before and I’ll say again: Cold-blooded murder of innocent people and rape of women is a long-standing pervasive problem of Russian military culture, and apathy toward it – if not outright support – among much of the public is a problem of Russian society. RT may have fired him, but it’s purely for optics.
Russian soldiers raped women with abandon as they “liberated” Poland and invaded Germany (including my then teenaged grandmother) and mutilated resistance fighters in Latvia – just as they’re doing in Ukraine now.
US cable and satellite providers will carry RT as long as there’s a dollar to be made. Time for some anti trust action breaking TV and ISP providers into separate businesses.
Armed vigilantes say they are “monitoring” ballot drop boxes in Arizona. Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur discuss on The Young Turks. Watch TYT LIVE on weekdays 6-8 pm ET. http://youtube.com/theyoungturks/live Read more HERE: https://www.axios.com/2022/10/23/mesa… “At least two people in tactical gear and masks and allegedly armed with weapons were watching over a drop box for mail-in ballots in Mesa, Arizona, on Friday, the Maricopa County Elections Department said Saturday. Why it matters: At least two voters have filed complaints of voter intimidation to Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) in the past few days, including one claiming “camo-clad people” of taking pictures while an early ballot was dropped off outside the Maricopa County election headquarters, according to KNXV-TV, an ABC-affiliated station in Phoenix.”
In my last post I wrote about watching this video, yet I was so upset I forgot to include the link. Here is the link and story. Damn he looks so young to me, how can he understand what life in prison means? His world view and education seem so limited, and his answers while looking down seem to me he is drugged. Well in his position I would need to be highly drugged to even stand there.
My heart is breaking. My thoughts on his future, the pain in his life now. I am not talking just emotional pain because I know the families that lost their children are going through that also. I am talking the physical / emotional pain of being raped and being scared every day of your life of being attacked. The parents of the murdered kids won’t face that and damn it that is not what a justice system in an advanced first world country should be about. There is a reason the US has a large recidivism rate and countries like Norway don’t. They treat their criminals like people, they treat their prisoners with respect as they do the entire population of their country. They make sure to understand the reason why the prisoner did what they did and tailor the sentence to fix that. The US has become a very vengeful sadistic place. Even our congressional republican office holders want to hurt the others, they brag about humiliating and harming them. My Dogs That Love Gravy, how does that make us a better country? It drives us to the level of Afghanistan and Iran with the Taliban / moral police. I stopped throwing up and Ron went to take a nap. But I am still so upset and my mind won’t stop or settle, I keep reliving the abuse I took for 17 years on a loop, while thinking I got paroled / released after 17 years but Ethan has his entire life to suffer it, no matter how long he lives. I cannot deal with that; I cannot imagine my life if my abuse and fears had continued until today or I died. I would beg for death. Death would be a mercy. Go to go my stomach starting to roil writing this and if I start throwing up again Ron will unplug the computers. Hugs
Many people have bought into the right wing talking point that trans people are a new fad. But the truth is just like sexual orientation people have been born with a different gender than their birth identified sex for as long as there have been people. Another right wing talking point shown to be incorrect and wrong. Hugs
Republicans seeking to restrict children’s lives claim trans youth are a ‘new phenomenon’. Jules Gill-Peterson explains how medical archives prove them wrong
Jules Gill-Peterson: ‘Children and youth have been finding access to trans medicine and transition as long as there has been medical transition.’ Photograph: Courtesy Jules Gill-Peterson
Republican lawmakers pushing to restrict transgender children’s lives have repeatedly argued that trans kids are a “new phenomenon” and that gender-affirming treatments and policiesare “experimental”.
But Jules Gill-Peterson, a professor of gender, sexuality and women’s studies at the University of Pittsburgh, has found extensive evidence of trans youth in the US living as themselves and fighting to transition in decades-old archival documents. The records from American hospitals and clinics date back to the early 20th century, with examples across the US well before the existence of contemporary language on trans identity.
Trans kids on the Republican bills targeting them: ‘I’m not a problem to society’
Read more
Why was it important to you to research the history of trans kids?
In the past 10 years, we’ve seen this sudden visibility of trans kids. There’s a lot more representation. But the common refrain is, “Trans people are so new” and “Trans kids, my gosh! They didn’t even exist until recently.” And I started to think about what happens when you’re part of a group that gets framed as brand new. There’s this cloak of caution and fear around trans kids, this idea that “We don’t know what it means for a child to transition”. That “this is all an experiment”. I had a sense as a historian that these ideas were probably not true and wanted to do historical research that would challenge this, by showing that trans kids have been around for a long time.
How far back were you able to find documentation?
What I uncovered in the research is that children and youth have been finding access to trans medicine and transition as long as there has been medical transition – as far back as the 1930s and 40s. But even prior to that, children certainly lived trans lives where they would socially transition in childhood. I found evidence in the US that families and communities would accept children as a different gender than the one they were assigned at birth, let them go to school, use the correct bathroom, all of the things that are being fought over now. We can see that 70 or 80 years ago, we were actually in a more progressive place in some areas.
What pieces of evidence were particularly telling?
I found handwritten letters from trans kids to a famous endocrinologist, Harry Benjamin, who was known for providing trans healthcare. In the 60s and 70s, they would say, “I’m X years old. I’m a transsexual. I read about that in the news” or “I looked up your work at a library, and it describes who I am”. They were from all over the country and they would ask if Dr Benjamin could see them, send them hormones, give them a permit to wear the clothes they wanted, talk to their family or teacher. It was young kids knowing really clearly that they were trans and going toe-to-toe with medical professionals. Suddenly, I had not only proof that kids were trans, but that they contacted doctors and tried to transition the best they could. It speaks to the remarkable ingenuity and resilience that trans young people have had for a really long time. And it’s pretty unimpeachable evidence that this is not a new social phenomenon. It’s not some trendy thing that kids are picking up now.
Are there specific stories that stuck with you?
One of the other incredible archival finds was this woman Val, a trans woman who in the 1950s was trying to get surgery in Wisconsin. In the hospital, she did an interview with a psychologist and talked about her childhood, growing up in the early 1930s in a small town in rural Wisconsin. She says from as far back as she could remember, she knew she was a girl. There was no trans language in that household, but her parents accepted her. There was an understanding of what that meant, socially, without any need for a medical diagnosis. So her family raised her as a girl and arranged for her to go to school as a girl. Now, there are dozens of bills that claim we have to restrict trans kids because “we’ve never seen kids like this before”, but in reality we can look almost 90 years ago and see a trans kid who was accepted by her family.
What did you learn about who has actually had access to care throughout the history of trans medicine?
One of the biggest lines of difference was racial. White trans people were seen as having a problem in their gender development that could be corrected, and in fact must be corrected because of this inherently racist idea that white civilization must have its gender norms. So right from the start, we see that white trans kids get way more access to medical care.
‘It helps me be myself’: trans kids on the healthcare Republicans want to deny them
Read more
Black trans children in particular are almost completely shut out. Instead of receiving medical care, they are much more likely to be arrested or institutionalized, put in the foster care system or juvenile detention. And they are much more likely to be diagnosed as delusional, schizophrenic or something else that blatantly ignores what they know about themselves.
How does that legacy of exclusion tie into the current efforts to outlaw gender-affirming treatments?
Most trans people do not have access to gender-affirming care. They never have, it’s never been the reality. We’re not even close. It’s primarily upper-middle-class and white well-educated families that actually have the time and the money to access care. So we’re now facing the proposition of banning forms of healthcare that almost no trans kids even have access to. The possibility of making things better and righting historical wrongs will stop with these bills.
And it’s a direct continuation of this history that is also a racial history. There is a lot of disposable income and time required to get care. If you have a trans kid, you need to advocate constantly and show up and testify against the bills. So working-class families, families of color, people with less resources are way less able to do what it takes right now to access pediatric gender-affirming care.
Why do you think trans kids in particular have become such a culture war target?
Mainstream LGBT organizations for a long time weren’t trans-inclusive, and trans activists long warned that focusing on gay marriagewould leave behind other LGBT people who are vulnerable and wouldn’t be protected by marriage – like trans people and youth. And that seems to really have come true. Trans rights have been turned into a wedge issue. And children are really easy targets, because we don’t grant them the privilege to speak for themselves and defend their own interests. So they are used as pawns.
How trans children became ‘a political football’ for the Republican party
Read more
Rightwing conservatives have been recycling the same language that we saw 15 to 20 years ago around gays and lesbians – the language of “child endangerment”, “grooming”, “pedophilia”, the need to “protect children” and “protect schools” through really restrictive laws. The focus on children is part of a coordinated effort and it’s not just in the US. We see it in the UK where there is no real access to gender-affirming treatments if you’re under 18. There’s a media campaign to shift the discourse to focusing on children’s transitions with all sorts of moral panics. It’s a really disturbing coalition, because you’ve got rightwing white supremacist evangelicals, but you also have politicians in the mainstream and people on the left who are trans-exclusionary and claim to be feminists. It’s a perfect storm.
How do you think people should be responding to Arkansas passing the first trans healthcare ban in the US this week?
This should be a wake-up call for a lot of folks. It’s no longer hypothetical. This is the time for people to reach out to the governor of Arkansas, but also to get involved in their own states and ask what they can do now before we see another passage of one of these bills. We should also be thinking more broadly, so we’re not just reacting over and over again to these bills. In some ways trans healthcare is analogous to reproductive rights and abortion. If you make it illegal, the need for care doesn’t go away. So we should be thinking about how we make this kind of care available to young people and how to show up for these children and their families, and not just make these laws the be-all-end-all.
This is far more invasive and serious than the way it started, which was an attack on trans kids. Now the drive is to only allow materials, books, and teaching a hard right ideology from the 1950s. What next for parents’ rights in school, the right of racist white parents to have their white children not be in classrooms with black students? Is that also going to be the next step in regressing the country? The right of Christian kids to not be in classrooms with kids who are not Christian? Where does a single bigoted parents demands stop? Notice one of the proud book ban women brags about taking away other parents rights to let their kids read the books with the forbidden knowledge in them, it is not about controlling their children it is all about controlling yours. They already teach their child racist bigoted regressive stuff, they feel they must prevent other parents from teach their children tolerance, acceptance of LGBTQ+, and diversity as a good thing. These people cannot have any kids getting that message. It has long passed the time this is scary; this is US Taliban and moral police territory. The article is a bit long but not bad, and it is a highly informative important read. The last paragraph sums it up nicely. Hugs
“The goal is to have the most conservative counties determine what the rest of the state has access to. It’s to allow a conservative ideology to hold rank over the rest of us,” said the project’s co-founder, Stephana Ferrell. “That’s what all of this is about. The attack on teachers, the banning of books—they need parents to not trust public education, so that they’re fed up and take taxpayer dollars into the for-profit education sector.”
‘A PLEASURE TO BURN’
Florida’s Education Department has quietly selected right-wingers for a book-banning council that’ll re-train public school librarians.
Brooke Leigh Howard
Reporter
Jose Pagliery
Political Investigations Reporter
EXCLUSIVE
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
In the name of “curriculum transparency,” Florida’s Republican-controlled state government has appointed several anti-gay and anti-mask conspiracy theorists to take charge of a new effort at public schools: banning books.
This hastily assembled censorship council—tasked with retraining public school librarians to abide by new restrictions—is the latest ploy in Gov. Ron DeSantis’ crusade to upend the state’s education system.
But the council was also staffed under suspicious circumstances, with the state Education Department ignoring its own call for official candidates from local school districts and instead filling most of the slots with right-wing activists who have a history of proposing book bans. One was even nominated by a religious activist with close ties to the DeSantis administration a week before the department publicly called for candidates, according to government emails, hinting at secret coordination between them.
“It calls into question the process that the Florida State Board of Education is trying to implement. It raises significant transparency questions,” said Megan Uzzell at Democracy Forward, which obtained those government emails.
While the “parent workgroup” is only getting started, the Education Department’s recent meeting in Orlando last week revealed how the state is positioning itself to spread those controls from school libraries to teachers’ classrooms.
As the meeting ended, Clinton McCkracken, the head of the Orange County teachers union, made a comment to another parent: “I don’t know what to tell my teachers.”
The recent episode began with an Aug. 12 memo from Education Department senior chancellor Jacob Oliva. The memo called for local school districts to nominate “parents of students in K-12 schools for representation on a workgroup”—one charged with creating mandatory “training” that would guide librarians statewide on how to follow new library censorship rules signed into law by Gov. DeSantis earlier this year. School districts had a week to submit the names of qualified nominees.
The Education Department passed on nearly 100 potentially qualified applicants with relevant experience, records show. In Brevard County alone, it ignored the five submissions made by the bipartisan local school board, including the nomination of a former elementary school assistant principal, the director of Eastern Florida State College’s tutoring centers, and the administrator of a local scholarship fund.
Instead, the department went with a woman who nominated herself: Michelle Beavers.
While other candidates have teaching experience, Beavers’ bona fides consist of right-wing activism. She leads the local chapter of Moms for Liberty, a MAGA contingent that has antagonized her school board for years over mask mandates—and allied with DeSantis for his recent attempt to outlaw critical race theory in schools.
Since then, Beavers has been actively seeking to ban books. In March, she emailed a Brevard County assistant superintendent about what was then the 19th title on her growing list of targets: the coming-of-age comic book This One Summer, which mentionslesbians and shows teenagers engaging in typical crude humor.
Beavers thanked the assistant superintendent for her “efforts to get this material vetted and hopefully out of our minors hands.” In other emails, Beavers identifies herself as the “head of the Library Book Committee,” explaining that she built a “comprehensive report” that reviews all of the “offensive items” in certain books. She warned about “books that are porn” and opposed a parent opt-out program in a specious and sweeping statement full of grammatical errors.
“These books violate the law, it’s a felony. So why would you try and still defend there [sic] existence by letting parents opt out?” she wrote.
Beavers and the other three appointed parents are now in a working group that is finalizing the presentation that will be used to train school librarians statewide.
The Sanctity of DeSantis
The marching orders come from the top. In March, Gov. DeSantis said parental rights should be at the helm of a child’s education.
“We are not going to let politicians deny parents the right to know what is being taught in our schools. I’m proud to sign this legislation that ensures curriculum transparency,” the governor said in a statement at the time.
“While teachers, school administrators, and school board members have a tremendous amount of authority over what and how our kids are taught in school, at the end of the day, parents—not schools—are responsible for raising children,” added Florida state Republican Senate Leader Wilton Simpson.
“The state has created a situation that is harming students.”
— Clinton McCkracken, head of the Orange County teachers union
Last week’s Education Department meeting was the latest example of the encroaching restrictions, when it unanimously voted to implement rules guaranteeing so-called “parental rights.” The department determined that parents must be notified if their child uses a school restroom or locker room that does not correlate with the child’s sex assigned at birth.
Meanwhile, censorship measures that initially targeted school libraries were extended to individual teachers’ classroom collections, which must now “be reviewed by a district employee holding a valid educational media specialist certificate,” according to Florida’s state website. The board also decided that educators could lose their teaching certifications if they do not comply with the state’s Parental Rights in Education law.
Bad Apples
At Wednesday’s meeting, state education board member Grazie Pozo Christie, a senior fellow for The Catholic Association, cited the need “to hold teachers accountable” for those she called “some bad apples.”
Teachers already suffer through poor working conditions, low pay, and staff shortages—being subject to state review of classroom books adds even more to their plates, McCracken, the Orange County teachers union head, said in an interview with The Daily Beast.
“The board voted… to require that all of those books have to be cataloged now. Which, of course, is an arduous task for teachers who may have hundreds of those books. So, in effect, for a lot of those teachers, that means that those classroom libraries won’t be available to students any longer until we can figure out how to manage that,” he said. “Laws like this are created to demonize public education.”
McCracken criticized how the meeting was scheduled in a way that would conflict with teachers’ work schedules and low salaries: 9 a.m. on a school day at a hotel with a hefty price tag for paid parking.
Despite emotional testimonies from concerned teachers, the board didn’t budge.
Teachers who have taken years to build their classroom book collections—available to students who can’t always take solo trips to the library—will now be burdened with the task of indexing their own shelves for so-called content restrictions, McCracken said.
“The classroom library has been an amazing tool for teachers to be able to inspire kids to read,” McCkracken said.
“So what are those kids going to do if the libraries aren’t there?” he asked. “They’ll have less access to important material that would inspire them to read and to learn. The state has created a situation that is harming students.”
Book Burning Training
The little-known and quickly assembled “work group” developing this book ban training is a pivotal part of this effort—which makes it all the stranger that the Education Department engaged in what critics are calling a bad faith effort to staff it.
Two parents who applied for Florida’s Department of Education media workgroup told The Daily Beast they raised their hands because they were interested in the books being challenged in schools.
“I’m very familiar with the research of psychological research for children, where it can be disruptive to introduce some of the pornographic material early or over-sexualized material early,” said Hillary Earle, who applied for the media group after seeing an announcement on the neighborhood app NextDoor.
Despite her years of academic and mediation accolades, as well as an endorsement from a school board member, Earle didn’t know she wasn’t selected for the media workgroup until her interview with The Daily Beast.
“This is the first I’m hearing of it,” she said. “I haven’t received anything: a phone call, an interview, anything.”
By contrast, Scott Rooke received a Brevard County school board member endorsement after expressing previous interest in children’s reading material. But he only discovered he wasn’t selected by way of a blog, Account Baloney. He immediately recognized the names of two Moms for Liberty members who did make it: Michelle Beavers and Jennifer Pippin.
The parent-membership seems slanted from the start when I just saw those two names,” he said.
The woman that took his place, Pippin, was not officially recommended by a school district. Instead, emails show, her name was submitted by Keith Flaugh, a childless conservative activist whose “Florida Citizens Alliance” has closely advised DeSantis for years on reforming public schools to combat “cultural Marxism” and “LGBTQ values” in favor of “Judeo-Christian family values.”
When discussing proposed training for librarians and media center employees at a recent working group meeting, Pippin, who drove and sat in her car for the duration of the meeting, chimed in to remind everyone, “I’m not a media center specialist,” noting she didn’t even understand some of the abbreviations being used in the mandated materials she intends to craft.
A third MAGA mom now on the book banning work group is Jamie Merchant, a member of “Mamas for DeSantis” whose summer reading included the book Crimes of the Educators, a call to demolish American public schools written by two known conspiracy theorists—one of whom runs a website that warns about “cancer deaths from the COVID jabs.”
Contentious Consensus
By all accounts, the panel tasked with developing the oncoming mandatory librarian training for the Education Board is a slow-moving train wreck. When the group reviewed the PowerPoint slides at their recent meeting last week, the department’s director of instructional materials, Amber Baumbach, punted on presenting what would obviously be the most controversial and contentious material.
Faced with questions about disagreements, the group director revealed that the Education Department might soon get two versions of the presentation—in what critics like Stephana Ferrell with Florida Freedom to Read Project expect to be a sane version and one that caters to the crazies. The DeSantis administration—which has already spent considerable energy attacking “woke” culture—would decide which option to take.
“If we can’t reach a consensus…it is possible for us to route two different versions of the training,” one of the options that we have is to provide two different points of view,” Baumbach said.
The working group is scheduled to meet again publicly this coming Tuesday, when it will present the slides that address what these conservatives deem offensive material—and is expected to spark more protests from worried parent groups already battling these book bans, like Florida Freedom to Read Project.
“The goal is to have the most conservative counties determine what the rest of the state has access to. It’s to allow a conservative ideology to hold rank over the rest of us,” said the project’s co-founder, Stephana Ferrell. “That’s what all of this is about. The attack on teachers, the banning of books—they need parents to not trust public education, so that they’re fed up and take taxpayer dollars into the for-profit education sector.”
Nancy Pelosi told a weekend morning show that Trump was too much of a coward and ‘not man enough’ to show up for the deposition the January 6 Committee subpoenaed him for.
Scottie's Playtime 