No safe space, no quiet room to decompress for every kid who needs one, because a minority thinks some kids are evil and they might feel safe and welcome there. WTF! Seriously! Adults need quiet places to decompress, and yet these old grandparent fucks think kids have it so easy they now all they need is Christ and the 10 commandments in school to be happy. This wouldn’t have cost the district. It was free money. But again religious people have the self entitled idea that somehow they get the right to force their religious convictions on other people’s children. I hate it, kids crying for safety, begging adults to help them. But all they got from some was hate, anger, judgement, and disdain.
I included a few more comments than I normally do because I want everyone to note how many people said hate, distrust, non-accptance and intolerance kept them in the closet, kept them denying who they were and stopping them from living openly as gay people. It kept them from dating and having fullfilling relationship. That is what the religous right wants to return to, the right to opress the LGBTQIA and keep them out of society. That is the world they love, where only people like them are seen in public, and on social media.
Last thing. At the very end someone who was able to see the entire meeting (* I was not able to read the article as it required me to regester and log in. *) reported that the board did agree to the need for a safe space. What they couldn’t accept was the money from “those people” again because the goal is to keep anyone different from being able to show it. To make sure the only accepted way to be is cis straight with strict gender roles from the 1950s. So they do see the need, they just refused free money because queer people were donating it. Again it makes it quite clear the goal they have. And I say together we have to stop them. Hugs. Scottie
The Lynchburg City School Board has voted not to accept a $10,000 grant from an LGBTQ-focused nonprofit, a possible temperature gauge for the board’s upcoming consideration of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s model policies on the treatment of transgender students. At its meeting Tuesday, the board voted 7-2 against accepting the grant from the nonprofit It Gets Better Project, with board members Anthony Andrews and Sharon Carter the only votes in favor.
Students with the E.C. Glass High School Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA) club applied for and were recently awarded a grant from the nonprofit to develop a safe-space or “quiet room” at the school, intended for all students’ use. One grandparent of a student spoke in opposition: “Let me be very clear, the LBGTQ agenda in schools is about indoctrination and grooming our children into an evil and wicked lifestyle, all while circumventing the rights and responsibilities of parents.”
Read the full article. In the screenshot seen above and in the cued-up video below, tearful students begged the school board in vain for the safe space.
School Board votes against accepting grant from LGBTQ-centered nonprofit | Tap on the picture to learn more 🔽 https://t.co/3uWrSdxjE1
A quiet room where students can read or do homework or just sit without being bullied. Imagine being against that. Now you understand the religious right. They want to be free to abuse anyone they want and when they are not allowed to do that they think they are being persecuted.
It reminds me of when I was in college, and an LGBT group was created, only to face a backlash from a counter group preaching “Society needs a home!” Rumor had it that this counter group sent plants into the LGBT group to potentially publicly out those attending…basically what Laura Ingraham did in college.
That threat kept me in the closet for a few more years, until I was out on my own and 1000 miles from my family. It should never have to be like that!
I started hitting the clubs at around 16 (back then in 1980’s NOLA I was just one face in a sea of gays and got away with it!) but didn’t come out until 1989 when I got out of the Army. It really was just too much trouble to be a double agent all the time. The idea of a “safe space” was unthinkable! Besides, I knew I was an ugly, twisted, perverted abomination that couldn’t be trusted around children. It took decades to partially heal from all that garbage. The kids deserve better than that, but that’s the message they get when they are denied these spaces. Oh, and I fucking HATE people like that Grandparent. I do not wish them well.
I ‘m sorry you had a moment when you viewed yourself as a “twisted abomination.” I understand it. I was raised a good Catholic boy. My parents even strong-armed me into going to their Catholic college, instead of the state college I wanted to attend, but I never saw myself as an abomination as I wanted so much more than just sex. I wanted love and a relationship…so how could that be wrong?
Of course it also helped that at the same time, Oprah, Geraldo, and other talk shows started featuring LGBT guests, who looked like “regular people,” acted like regular people, some were even ex-military & cops and this all flew in the face of what I was told what queer people were.
AIDS was devastating. I lost so many dear friends. The worst when when I would talk to my dad, and he deemed AIDS as “gawd’s judgement.” He eventually came around, when my parents met my gay friends and really liked them A LOT more than my sisters’ straight, boring, unfunny, uncultured friends. At one point, it was a bit unsettling when I had a bf my dad wanted to hang out with all the time, as they had way too many interests in common.
I’m a cis gendered white guy, and I’m ashamed that I had similar attitudes growing up. To be fair, I learned sex ed through ’60’s TV. I’m so glad I got past it. Even though I used to get hit on by gay guys all the time. 😉
My dad told me that all gay men acted & like to dress like women. “I couldn’t be gay. I’m not drawn to crossdressing nor attracted to effeminate men.”
Nothing’s worse than that time when I was closeted & neurotic 17-22 year old…desperately wanting some gay man to come onto me, only to be offended and terrified of being detected as gay.
When I was in an internship in college, there was this very cute, 30-ish mailman who delivered to the office all the time. One time he walked by my desk and flirted with me. I reacted rudely at the thought of being discovered. I thought about it later, and thought I should apologize the next time I saw him, and see where things go from there (never having been with another man yet.) Sadly, I never saw him again, as he had gotten sick shortly thereafter & died of AIDS.
My own self-loathing kept me away from friendly gay spaces and in my fraternity. Never mind that we would sometimes go to the big gay bar on $5 all you can drink Tuesdays. When I was finally outed and literally chased out of the house my biggest fear was that one of my ‘brothers’ would tell my parents. It’s not like the contact information wasn’t on file. But they didn’t.
I was booted from my frat when the fraternity president decided to come clean and tell his girlfriend that the two of us were having sex. After she ratted us out I was blackballed and the president stayed claiming I had “influenced” him. I guess the others I was having regular sex with as well felt it best to vote me out as to not appear to also having been “influenced”.
I never slept with any of my brothers but I did fuck my way through about a quarter of the PiKappaAlpha house. One bit of unfortunately blowback from my own outing was the guilt by association. Because I was treasurer and the assumptive president for the coming fall term, the whole thing created a bit of a scandal. I became toxic overnight and some of that stuck to others that I cared deeply for. In some cases I was the first person that they had spoken the words out loud to.
Oh man, I am so sorry to hear that happened to you.
My college’s GSU (1975) was the first place I felt comfortable coming out, and the first time I met people who felt the same way I did. It’s also where I met my first bf.
We all had/have our journeys. I survived and thrived, despite the delay & one-two punch in my journey of self-discovery & coming out.
1. Just before attending college and anticipating the exploration of my adulthood, I was reading about the sudden explosion of this ARC disease afflicting the gay community.
2. Was my college’s threat to this new gay safe space organization.
Moving 1000 miles away, 5 years later I found love (for 4-5 years), my happy gay self and tons of gay & lesbian friends.
Joining the Army saved my life. I was so afraid of getting kicked out for being gay (this was PRE-“Don’t ask, don’t tell) that I basically went celibate for 4 years, which coincided with the height of the plague. I remember going home on leave my first year. When I say that literally EVERY single person I’d slept with (and there were a lot) was dead, I’m not kidding. All those beautiful young men. It’s no wonder I’m filled with rage at the right.
I don’t get it. The school got the grant. It wouldn’t take any money and very little effort on the school’s part to make this happen. I don’t know of any school that would refuse free money. I guess I do now. 😦
True, the board voted 7-2 against accepting the $10,000 grant from the nonprofit It Gets Better Project. The negative majority objected to the It Gets Better Project “branding,” and what they percieved are implications of “indoctrination.”
However, in discussion beginning at hour 2:05 through 2:58 the board recognized the need for such a safe space, without objection. Eventually, the board voted 6-3 to direct the school system to find the funding for the safe space.
School Board Chair Dr. Gupta, a “No” voter on the It Gets Better Project grant, then offered to personally fund the project with $10,000. Accordingly, the Board then voted 9-0 to reconsider the 6-3 vote at their next meeting, pending investigation of any legal matters that might arise around Dr. Gupta’s donation.
I’m as disgusted as anyone here that in early discussion some board members wanted to accept the grant but were not willing recognize the grantor with a sign on the safe room’s door. But by the end of the meeting the glass was half-full — a safe room will be established, and a prominent local individual has offered to fund it.
Retiring after 17 years in my own city’s government, a place not unlike Lynchburg VA, I swore I’d never again watch another local government meeting. But watching the Lynchburg meeting I was encouraged. Especially that the needs of LGBT children were discussed (in Lynchburg, home of Liberty University!)
The meeting was calm and deliberate, without any Moms-for-Liberty stunts. I was especially struck by the diversity of the school board members, politically and ethnically. (Again in Lynchburg!) Another long, boring meeting, but I was surprised to find this one fascinating.
So, if I am reading this right, the school board recognized the need for a safe space for LGBTQ students, and approved the creation of such a space – they just couldn’t bear to take those queer dollars to fund it.
Proudly displaying work from her new sign-making business.
It wasn’t me
I saw Markywayne standing on a wooden box trying to pretend he’s almost the height of a real patriotic American. That’s WOKE as shit right there!
…so is this one, of Cpt Bravery:
Wasn’t this Mullin on January 6th?
It’s the Howdy Doody show.
MTG’s school ride.
I can’t help myself.
Texas Bill Gives State Power to Arrest and Deport Migrants. Legal experts question whether state’s latest challenge to federal border jurisdiction is constitutional. https://t.co/Aftewq03ZF
He won’t get this one shouted kitara as she fled the Capitol.
“And stop calling me George or Kitara !!”
Today's edition of Politicians in Committees with Signs features @RepClayHiggins, who continues to push a conspiracy theory that the @fbi was somehow involved in the Jan 6th riot. These are allegedly "Ghost Buses" filled with "fbi informants dressed as Trump supporters" pic.twitter.com/otiQjhfmvO
“And he said to me, in a kind of excited tone, ‘Well, we don’t care, and we’re not going to leave. And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he said ‘Well, the boss’, meaning President Trump — and everyone understood ‘the boss,’ that’s what we all called him — he said, ‘The boss is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power.’ And I said to him, ‘Well, it doesn’t quite work that way, you realize?’ and he said, ‘We don’t care.’” – Convicted former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis, speaking about Trump social media director Dan Scavino during her proffer session with Georgia prosecutors.
EXCLUSIVE: ABC News has obtained video from Georgia prosecutors' interview with ex-Trump attorney Jenna Ellis, in which Ellis tells them she was personally informed by a top Trump adviser that Trump was "not going to leave" the White House — despite losing the 2020 election.… pic.twitter.com/J9c4bm9cbZ
Even protecting kids from killing themselves and bullying is the target of hate from the “Christian” right. Seriously, you would think the Pro-life crowd would rush to protect children from death, instead they pretend that someone dressed in a costume reading a story is the real danger to kids. Sickening and the world needs to wake up to the cesspool that X, Twitter, and right wing media has become. Hugs. Scottie
The Trevor Project, which has nearly 350,000 followers on the platform, said LGBTQ young people are “regularly victimized” on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The Trevor Project at the Los Angeles Pride Parade on June 11.Rodin Eckenroth / Getty Images file
The Trevor Project, a national suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ youth, announced it is leaving X, formerly known as Twitter, because of “increasing hate & vitriol on the platform targeting the LGBTQ community.” The decision comes just over a year after billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk finalized his $44 billion purchase of the company.
“LGBTQ young people are regularly victimized at the expense of their mental health, and X’s removal of certain moderation functions makes it more difficult for us to create a welcoming space for them on this platform,” the organization wrote in a tweet Thursday.
The Trevor Project, which has nearly 350,000 followers on X, said the decision to leave was made with “input from dozens of internal and external perspectives.” In particular, the group wrote, “we questioned whether leaving the platform would allow harmful narratives and rhetoric to prevail with one less voice to challenge them.” But in the end, the group decided that leaving was “the right thing to do.”
The Trevor Project has made the decision to close its account on X.
At the end of its message, the organization directed LGBTQ young people to TrevorSpace.org, its own social networking space for queer teens and young adults. The Trevor Project also noted that it will continue to maintain its presence on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn and Facebook.
X’s press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on The Trevor Project’s departure or its characterization of “hate & vitriol” on the platform.
As NBC News reported last month on the one-year anniversary of Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, many LGBTQ people say the once-hospitable home for community building has turned toxic.
This, they say, is due in part to a number of policy changes and business decisions at the company, including the layoff of employees who worked on reducing misinformation and harassment on the platform, and the removal of the site’s previous ban on intentionally using the incorrect pronouns or names for transgender people, practices known as misgendering and deadnaming.
GLAAD, an LGBTQ media advocacy group, releases an annual Social Media Safety Index and Platform Scorecard that evaluates social media platforms’ policies for ensuring the safety of LGBTQ users. In its most recent scorecard, published in June, X ranked in last place among the major social media platforms.
Since Musk took over the platform, LGBTQ people running some of the most-followed X accounts have abandoned it. Elton John, who has over a million followers, announced he was leaving in December, and Ellen DeGeneres, who has 75 million followers, hasn’t tweeted since April.
And The Trevor Project is not the only LGBTQ nonprofit to leave. The San Francisco LGBT Center, LGBTQ Youth Scotland and the U.K.-based Mermaids, a transgender charity, have also left the platform, just to name a few.
This story is bat shit. Random nobody staffer copy and pasted a Presidential directive to pull out of Afghanistan without consulting any national security leaders. He’s the guy running Project 2025. These fuckers are a menace. https://t.co/KYKyG4LOx1
Trump's aide John McEntee was fired today because he is currently under investigation by DHS for serious financial crimes. Minutes after McEntee was escorted from the WH, he was named a senior adviser to Trump's reelection campaign. Only the best people! https://t.co/vYhq57nVxl
Good old Johnny McEntee – the fuckboi frat bastard that ran trump’s Presidential Personnel Office – where if you came across a bottle of Smirnoff Ice, you were obligated to chug it. (That’s not a joke) https://t.co/xL81DTePeG
Read the full article. According to the piece, the flag was re-popularized in 2013 by Christian nationalist Dutch Sheets and is now often seen at far-right and QAnon events. Rioters brandished the flag during the attack on the US Capitol. As I reported this morning, Johnson is presently attending a far-right conference in Paris.
"An Appeal to Heaven" flag outside #NAR Mike's speaker's office.
"But for the past decade it has become a symbol of the NAR movement and their goal of establishing a “Seven Mountain Mandate" over the government."
Read the full article. The piece notes that $1.7 million is more than Ohio dioceses spent running local Catholic Charities programs last year. Cincinnati Archbishop Dennis Schnurr last appeared here in 2014 when he launched a “prayer in defense of marriage” campaign as the Sixth Circuit Court considered the same-sex marriage case that ultimately would be folded into the Obergefell case before the Supreme Court.
Read the full article. The original clip has nearly 10 million views at this writing. As you can see below, Salzman appears to be a supporter of Moms For Liberty. Salzman has one of the wildest Wikipedia entries that you’ve likely seen.
What happened in Wichita and JoCo is happening nationwide, the AP reports. Voters rebuked conservative candidates who want to ban books and restrict classroom conversations on race and gender. #ksedhttps://t.co/OF1RKOg15G
Yesterday CNN reported that “a plumber, a maid, a chauffeur and a woodworker are among Mar-a-Lago staffers and contract workers who federal prosecutors may call to testify against former President Donald Trump.”
The republicans are on a non-stop attack on her, but she is correct. They just don’t like that her message is the truth, and it is correct. Hugs. Scottie
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) chokes up while condemning the resolution to censure her that the House is considering:
“Speaking up to save lives, Mr. Chair, no matter faith, no matter ethnicity, should not be controversial in this chamber.” pic.twitter.com/4ob7W6NZIB
I am seriously getting tired, scared, and very worried that these terrorist groups can operate openly spewing hate with impunity. This is incitement to committed violence and terrorism. And the right wing fascist fundamentalist Christians groups love these actions, as they are looking forward to a time of legal moral police and the Christian Taliban church doctrine enforcers. This is domestic terrorism.
noun
The use of violence or the threat of violence, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political goals.
Resort to terrorizing methods as a means of coercion, or the state of fear and submission produced by the prevalence of such methods.
The act of terrorizing, or state of being terrorized; a mode of government by terror or intimidation.
Brookings, South Dakota. A university LGBTQ+ group is hit with a flood of hate mail, culminating in a bomb threat that terrifies students.
San Lorenzo, California. A drag queen story hour is one of several Pride events across the country stormed by suspected members of the extremist street gang the Proud Boys. The men shout homophobic slurs and threats, and a performer hides in a back room, waiting for police to arrive.
Philadelphia. Boston. Pittsburgh. Washington, D.C. Akron, Ohio. Threats hit hospitals and medical clinics, and some temporarily evacuate their patients while law enforcement assesses the danger.
Then comes summer and fall 2023, at least two dozen public schools and libraries start receiving bomb threats. In California, Colorado, Oklahoma and Wisconsin, they cancel classes and evacuate students.
These cases, and many more, share a common link: The victim of each threat had also been targeted, in the days before, by the enormously popular conservative social media channel Libs of TikTok.
In almost every case, the perpetrator of the threat is unknown, and Chaya Raichik, the far-right influencer who runs Libs of TikTok, says she opposes violence, and that because there have been almost no arrests, there’s no proof the threats come from her followers.
Numerous news reports have covered individual threats, noting the target had also been mentioned by Libs of TikTok. But the new analysis of years of tweets, including archives of many Raichik has since deleted, shows the pattern is more extensive and pervasive than has been previously known – and that threats, specifically against schools, have ratcheted up significantly in the past two months.
Media Matters used searches of published news reports to help identify more than 30 possible threat incidents. USA TODAY verified bomb, death and other threats in more than two dozen cases.
The research most likely undercounts the total number of cases. Other threats may never be reported to police or the media, and some targets are reluctant to publicize their plight for fear of drawing even more harassment.
As Libs of TikTok’s reach has expanded – the account now has more than 2.6 million followers on X, formerly known as Twitter – so, too, has the frequency and ferocity of the threats that follow Raichik’s posts.
Hospitals have been evacuated; schools and libraries have cleared classrooms and canceled lessons while police officers search for bombs. Bookstores, Pride parades, cafes, even a dog rescue center, have had to lock down for fear of reprisals – and violence.
“We can only insulate ourselves from what’s happening on social media for so long,” said Ari Drennen, LGBTQ+ program director for Media Matters. “In a country where so many people have the ability to take things into their own hands, that’s a very real worry.”
Libs of TikTok: A far-right force driving the conversation and fueling outrage
The @LibsofTikTok Twitter handle was created in April 2021 by Raichik, a former Brooklyn real estate agent who grew up in Los Angeles.
Raichik created the account to “raise awareness about the situation in America,” she told USA TODAY. “There’s a clear pattern of the sexualization of children going on in public schools, and I think that’s a problem,” she said. “I think it’s super harmful, and I want to call it out, and raise awareness to it.”
The account has become a creator of, and a force multiplier for, right-wing outrage, particularly on LGBTQ+ issues. On X it has been amplified by the platform’s owner Elon Musk, and a hive of conservative politicians, media personalities and far-right online influencers, including former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson and podcaster Joe Rogan.
For 2½ years, the account has posted a drumbeat of videos, photographs and links, often featuring TikTok or Instagram videos recorded by progressive leftists, accompanied by a derisive comment from Raichik.
Like most social media influencers, Raichik doesn’t produce all the content she tweets about. Libs of TikTok regularly shares videos and posts created by other far-right accounts, often with inaccuracies, misinformation and thinly veiled hatred mixed in.
But while those other accounts may have a smaller reach, once Libs of TikTok chooses a target, the viral response can quickly spin out of control.
Once Raichik posts something, “it just gets amplified to an order of magnitude larger audience,” said Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic who has been openly critical of Libs of TikTok. “Any tweet she puts out gets – instantly – millions of views and potentially tens of thousands of retweets and likes. So it gets wide dissemination.”
Shortly after – media reports and interviews show – is when the threats often begin.
Hospitals receive threats after Libs of TikTok posts
In Spring 2022, Raichik began directing her audience toward doctors, hospitals and medical facilities that provide care to LGBTQ+ patients, especially children.
On March 16, 2022, Libs of TikTok targeted Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Oregon, part of the Oregon Health and Science University’s health system, for providing gender-affirming care to youth. Almost immediately, the hospital and its staff started receiving harassment and threats.
“The harassing calls, emails and other messages that OHSU received in March 2022 objected to gender-affirming health care. Most of these messages cited social media posts that contained inaccurate or misleading information about life-saving and medically necessary care for gender-diverse patients,” reads a hospital statement provided to USA TODAY. “OHSU and its staff continue to be subjected to anti-transgender harassment today.”
By the summer, Raichik focused on Boston Children’s Hospital.
From Aug. 11 to 15, 2022, Libs of TikTok tweeted about the hospital at least seven times, Media Matters found. In one post, Raichik shared a debunked – but wildly popular – video claiming the hospital was performing hysterectomies on children.
Almost immediately, far-right message-boards and Twitter caught fire, with one poster threatening to “start executing these ‘doctors.’” On Aug. 16, the official Twitter feed for Boston Children’s Hospital posted a statement saying it had “been the target of a large volume of hostile internet activity, phone calls and harassing emails, including threats of violence towards our clinicians and staff.”
The statement specifically cited the false video about hysterectomies as the driver of the campaign.
The next day, Aug. 17, the local U.S. attorney announced an investigation into the threats and a month later, federal agents arrested 37-year-old Catherine Leavy, charging her with making a false bomb threat against the hospital. Leavy pleaded guilty in September and faces up to 10 years in prison.
But the Libs of TikTok tweets against healthcare workers continued unabated.
On Sept. 18, 2022, the account posted about gender-affirming care at Akron Children’s Hospital in Ohio. The online abuse got so bad, the hospital had to take down a section of its website.
A few days later, on Sept. 21 it was the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s turn, when Libs of TikTok posted about the hospital’s efforts to help parents of transgender children. The hospital soon reported increasing its security because of threats to staff.
And it’s not just big institutions; Libs of TikTok has also targeted individual doctors.
Last October, Raichik posted a video of Dr. Katherine Gast, co-director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s UW Health gender services program, describing gender-affirming operations. The backlash was swift, with thousands of Twitter accounts sharing the post, including Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
The subsequent harassment campaign against Gast was “scary and overwhelming,” she told NBC News.
“The followers of Libs of TikTok and Ted Cruz lied about my practice to stir up outrage, doxxed me and my family, and my clinic is receiving harassing phone calls,” she told the network.
‘They want to become famous’
Asked for her reaction to the established pattern of harassment that follows her tweets, Raichik has a simple – and standard – response: She’s merely reposting what institutions and individuals have already, themselves, chosen to put out to the world on social media, she says.
“If an individual posts publicly on TikTok, the goal of TikTok is to get views,” Raichik said. “That’s why people post on TikTok – they want to become famous, they want clicks, views.”
But Raichik doesn’t just repost other people’s content.
First, her posts almost always include some kind of commentary. One in October, for example, featured an Instagram video of a New York music teacher, joyfully waving a Progress Pride flag while the message “Happy National Coming Out Day – Black, Gay and Thriving” appears at the bottom of the screen. “An actual elementary school teacher in NY,” reads Raichik’s comment on the video.
That teacher told USA TODAY that while he had not been aware Libs of TikTok posted his video, he had seen an immediate surge of hate mail. “I’m so mortified by this!” Eric Williamson said via email. “I have seen an increase of nasty messages on my post this week and wondered why.”
Other posts either directly or indirectly encourage Libs of TikTok’s followers to contact the original poster directly. In a post last April for example, Raichik sarcastically told her followers “definitely do not keep up the pressure” on a school district in Oregon that supported transgender students using their chosen pronouns. Asked about that post, she acknowledged it was a call to action, but only to “tag” or mention the account on social media. “I’ve done that a couple times, where I told people to tag accounts on Twitter,” she said. “That is nowhere near telling people to call in bomb threats.”
Libs of TikTok also doesn’t post solely public material.
Posts regularly include clandestine photos and videos that have been sent to Raichik or her network, presumably without the permission of a hospital, school clinic or library.
And some of the material she posts is doctored or fake – something Raichik acknowledged in her interview with USA TODAY. In April 2022, she reposted photographs and claims purporting to show an elementary school teaching children about a lifestyle some people believed depicts a fetish for animal costumes. The original post was an easily debunked hoax, and Raichik later deleted her tweet.
“I deleted it, and actually it taught me a lot, because now I’m much more careful in vetting everything,” Raichik told USA TODAY. “But yes, that is one example, I’ll admit, of a story that wasn’t true.”
Early this year, Raichik said, she deleted all of her prior tweets from 2022 and 2021 – an act she called a “one-time editorial decision.” She wouldn’t elaborate on her reasoning.
In recent months, Raichik, who calls herself a journalist, has begun labeling certain posts as “Scoops” – indicating they contain original reporting that nobody else has published, including the targets of her posts.
She told USA TODAY she is increasingly filing requests under public records law, with the hope of revealing previously unknown information. That’s a shift away from her original brand – the idea that she just posts videos the “libs,” themselves, already made.
Whatever her intention, Raichik has clearly spent recent months focused on one target: public schools.
Libs of TikTok turns its attention to schools
In at least 12 cases in the past two years, Libs of TikTok posts about schools, school districts and teachers have been followed by bomb threats, Media Matters found – often multiple bomb threats against the same location.
Most of these happened in the past two months.
Since Aug. 21, Media Matters tallied, and USA TODAY confirmed, there have been at least 25 bomb threats against schools, libraries, school administration buildings and universities after Libs of TikTok posts.
On Aug. 21, Libs of TikTok posted about a public library in Davis, California, where staff refused to allow a group to continue a public presentation. During a speech about transgender athletes, the speakers broke library rules by repeatedly referring to them as “biological males.” Libs of TikTok then tweeted a video of the confrontation, which has been viewed more than 1.4 million times and liked by 20,000 accounts.
The library almost immediately received bomb threats, and had to close temporarily, according to local media reports and the local police. And though the event was at a public library, the Davis Joint Unified School District also then received at least five bomb threats, and district staff stated publicly that their personal information was posted online. The FBI are assisting local authorities in investigating.
“The County of Yolo unequivocally condemns hate crimes and incidents that have cast their shadows over our vibrant community,” Dwight Coddington, a spokesman for Yolo County, which includes Davis, told USA TODAY. “Hate crimes and incidents have no place in Yolo County.”
In recent weeks, similar bomb threats have been made following Libs of TikTok tweets about schools in Oklahoma, Iowa, Massachusetts, Illinois, Wisconsin, Colorado, Washington and Oregon.
Despite the steady, and increasing, drumbeat of bomb threats against the very public schools and libraries her posts have targeted, Raichik said she was not convinced Libs of TikTok is connected to these harassment campaigns.
Schools, hospitals and other public institutions get bomb threats all the time, she told USA TODAY.
“It’s possible that some of these bomb threats were not even real bomb threats, you know,” she said. “Why are these bomb threats – the ones that are allegedly coming after my tweets – why are those making it to the news, while others aren’t?”
Two school security experts told USA TODAY that many schools do, indeed, receive more bomb threats than the public might realize. But victims and experts say the pattern of threats following Raichik’s posts shows more than just coincidental timing.
At the Cherry Creek School District in Arapahoe County, Colorado, for example, a local media station received a threat in September claiming multiple bombs had been placed at three schools and two administration buildings. The buildings, including a day care center, were evacuated.
The day before, Cherry Creek had been the subject of a Libs of TikTok blog post claiming the district kept “pornographic” books in elementary school libraries. The Libs of TikTok post ended with a call to readers to contact the district.
Almost immediately, the district was inundated with thousands of harassing phone calls, emails and social media posts. Then came the bomb threat.
In a letter to parents, the district superintendent, Chris Smith directly connected the threat to “bullying” and homophobic views expressed about the LGBTQ+ books on social media.
“The attacks from last week were driven by hate and have no place in our schools,” he wrote.
Ken Trump, a former Federal Protective Service officer and author who runs a school safety consultancy, said he’d be very surprised if the recent string of threats immediately following Libs of TikTok posts had happened by chance.
“I’ve seen some coincidences in my years doing this work, but that would be a really big one,” Trump said.
Libs of TikTok targets Pride events
Alyssa Gonzales was standing in her parents’ kitchen when she got the phone call late last November: A bomb threat had been made against the South Dakota State University Gender and Sexualities Alliance, where Gonzales volunteered and now serves as president.
Gonzales’ parents knew something was up.
Her father quizzed her about the call, and Gonzales’ reaction to it. The 19-year old took a deep breath. She had never told her parents she was gay. Now, she couldn’t wait any longer.
She came out to her family, explaining she had become heavily involved with LGBTQ+ causes at SDSU, and that she and her colleagues were now the target of a bomb threat.
The chain of events had begun a few days earlier, when Libs of TikTok reposted a video of a drag queen dressed in an outfit designed to make the wearer appear naked. The tweet claimed the video was from a “family friendly” drag show hosted by SDSU’s Gender and Sexualities Alliance.
It wasn’t.
The clip was actually from the previous year’s drag event, at which no children were present. But that didn’t stop the outrage. Replies to the tweet flooded in. The university began fielding hundreds of hateful and threatening emails, and eventually the bomb threat that led to Gonzales’ untimely coming out to her parents and grandparents.
The threats didn’t stop Gonzales and her colleagues at the college. Instead, in an act of defiance, they like to read out some of the more bizarre messages in ridiculous voices at their meetings.
“It feels like, ‘Oh, we’ve made it, we’re making news, and people are going to notice us.’” Gonzales said. “And if they notice us, then we can talk more, too – we can still say that, despite all this, we’re here, we’re queer, we’re out, and we’re proud.”
Other activists and performers across the country have also taken the threats in their stride.
Panda Dulce, a drag queen from the San Francisco Bay Area, hosted the event at the San Lorenzo library in summer of last year. It had been targeted by Libs of TikTok tweet, then was disrupted by a group of men wearing black and gold – the colors of the extremist group the Proud Boys. The men shouted homophobic slurs at Dulce as she tried to read to children, she said.
“They called me a ‘pedophile,’” Dulce wrote in an email to USA TODAY.
Dulce said the men made direct threats at her safety. “It was clear I was the target and focus of their attack,” she wrote.
But more than a year later, Dulce said she can’t let hate win.
“I still lead Story Hours,” she wrote. “I will not stop simply because some hobbyless extremists decided to cosplay Call Of Duty and throw a tantrum in a shameless grab for attention.”
For Gonzales, despite the bomb threat incident forcing her to come out to her family, the process went really well, she said. Her parents were loving and accepting, open and embracing – and all the more so given the hostility they knew their daughter was facing.
“They were very understanding,” she said. “They don’t get everything, but they’re still accepting.”
Will Carless
Scottie's Playtime 