The right lives on hate, racism, and bigotry. They can not allow other religions, minorities, people different from them to have the same rights and opportunities. For some reason they feel that others having the same rights they have makes them less than, makes them lessor as people. They take no joy in the happiness and success of others. They hate the inclusion of anyone slightly different from them, and they react with temper tantrums. Look at the meanness towards and smug superiority they think they have over others. Instead of admiring the skill of the flight crew, the pilots and the plane stewards that saved lives, these people mock and slur others. Hugs. Scottie
They’re blaming airline safety issues on disabled people, Black people, women, and drag queens to gin up anti-diversity sentiment.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg/Rep. Lauren BoebertPhoto: Shutterstock
Conservatives are angry that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been, for at least a decade, trying to expand the diversity of its workforce, and they’re blaming gay Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
A terrifying video of a door blowing off Alaska Airlines flight 1282 went viral earlier this month. No one died, but the Boeing 737 Max 9 was forced to return to the airport and make an emergency landing. Some loose bolts around doors were found when other planes of the same type were later inspected.
She didn’t hesitate to launch homophobic attacks on the out Transportation Secretary and his husband, but now that she wants some of that cash for her district, she’s trying to play nice.
“The FAA is the latest victim of the radical [diversity, equity, and inclusion] agenda,” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) wrote on social media this week. “Instead of prioritizing the most qualified candidates, the FAA will now look for individuals with ‘severe intellectual disabilities.’ How can anyone feel safe flying when the people responsible for their safety are being hired based on DEI rather than qualifications for the position?”
DEI stands for “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” workplace policies that seek to hire and support candidates from diverse backgrounds. Right-wingers have increasingly targeted these policies as a “woke” form of “identity politics” while ignoring the workplace disparities that they seek to address.
The FAA is the latest victim of the radical DEI agenda.
Instead of prioritizing the most qualified candidates, the FAA will now look for individuals with 'severe intellectual disabilities.'
How can anyone feel safe flying when the people responsible for their safety are being…
Boebert was likely referring to a story that spread like wildfire on conservative media. The conservative New York Post ran a story about the FAA policy – which the Post stressed is “overseen by Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s Department of Transportation” – with the headline, “FAA’s diversity push includes focus on hiring people with ‘severe intellectual’ and ‘psychiatric’ disabilities.”
The story noted that the FAA has a diversity statement on its site that says it recruits people with disabilities, including “hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability, and dwarfism.”
X CEO Elon Musk shared the Post’s story and wrote: “Just had a conversation with some smart people could not believe this is happening.” He also shared a post that claimed that Black airline employees lower the “average IQ of US Air Force pilots.”
The problem with their explanation? The policy has been on the FAA since at least 2013, during the Obama administration, and the Trump administration didn’t do anything to remove it. The Post’s story didn’t mention the fact that the policy is from 2013 and instead just noted that the FAA’s website was updated in 2022, which isn’t a relevant fact to the story but may have been intended to imply that the policy was put in place during Buttigieg’s tenure.
“The FAA employs tens of thousands of people for a wide range of positions, from administrative roles to oversight and execution of critical safety functions,” the FAA said in a statement. The FAA has 45,000 employees. “Like many large employers, the agency proactively seeks qualified candidates from as many sources as possible, all of whom must meet rigorous qualifications that, of course, will vary by position.”
Snopes noted that the rightwing “media coverage provided no evidence linking any DEI initiative with the Alaska Airlines incident” and that the investigation into the Alaska Airlines flight is still ongoing.
But disabled and Black people aren’t the only group that conservatives are blaming for the incident. Hate influencer and former realtor Chaya Raichik – whose Libs of TikTok account has been massively influential in spreading anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment and has led to hospitals getting bomb threats and queer and trans teachers getting death threats – decided it was women’s fault.
That’s because Southwest Airlines made an innocuous post about an all-women flight crew shortly after the Alaska Airlines incident.
“All female flight crew? Go off, queens!” the Southwest Airlines’s X post read. The post included a picture of six smiling women in a plane.
“They’re openly mocking us,” Raichik wrote, sharing the post. “They know what they’re doing.” The implication was that supporting women in the workplace was somehow inappropriate following the incident in the Alaska Airlines flight.
Her post was viewed around 300,000 times and widely shared on the platform. Southwest later deleted their post celebrating the women.
Later in the week, Raichik raged at United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby doing drag at a Halloween party in 2011. Kirby is married to a woman and has seven children with her, but being a stereotypically masculine, straight, cisgender white man wasn’t enough to protect him from the right’s grievances about diversity in the workforce.
“This is Scott Kirby, the CEO of United. He’s a drag queen and has been incorporating drag into United,” Raichik wrote. “This video should tell you everything you need to know.”
This is Scott Kirby, the CEO of @united. He’s a drag queen and has been incorporating drag into @united.
Anti-trans activist and fifth-place swimmer Riley Gaines responded to the video, writing, “It’s time to bring back shame.” She also wrote that people “fly United at your own risk,” not explaining exactly how she connected the video to flight safety.
Cisgender, heterosexual white men on the right have donned drag in the past without controversy, including Rudy Giuliani and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) boyfriend, rightwing media personality Brian Glenn. Greene, who has protested drag queen shows in the past, laughed off claims that there was anything inappropriate about her boyfriend doing drag because it happened “years ago.” The same grace, though, apparently doesn’t apply to CEOs of airlines that support diversity in the workplace.
Buttigieg, for his part, assured travelers that he has confidence in the FAA’s ability to keep flights safe, noting that they grounded 171 Boeing 737 Max 9 jets for further inspection following the Alaska Airlines incident. He explained that FAA staff is putting in extra hours to get to the root of the problem.
“I have confidence in any aircraft cleared by the FAA,” he told reporters last week. “The FAA’s doing a great job and [FAA Administrator] Mike Whitaker’s doing a great job.”
He added that, as a father, the images of the plane with the door blown out affected him.
“Anybody looking at those pictures has to be thinking about what you’d do in that situation,” he said, explaining that he was just on a flight with one of his children. “That is what’s on our mind.”
He is trying hard not to say the quiet part out loud. He really just wants a white Christian straight cis male run society. He is struggling with the changes in society that the majority of the people accept and wants to force his minority view on everyone by making it the law. He wants his small minority to rule the majority. He wants to roll back rights and equality. It is flat out bigotry, the same bigotry that led to slavery, Jim Crow laws, anti-miscegenation laws, and laws forcing a religion on other people’s children in hopes it will install in them the same hates against the LGBTQIA that they have. These laws are about stopping children learning tolerance and acceptance of people who are different, of people who are LGBTQIA. It is a way to let bullying go unchallenged and leaving the targeted LGBTQIA with no support or defenders. As it has been mentioned repeatedly, no color flag or book or movie ever turned anyone gay or trans. It is a shame that these people have managed to get into positions of power and think they have the rights to rule others lives, that they have the right to dictate how others must think or live. I wonder if the Christian flag will be one of the exemptions? Hugs. Scottie
Republican State Rep. Gino Bulso (R-Brentwood) has filed a bill to ban all flags in schools that aren’t the official Tennessee or United States flag. Bulso said he drafted the bill after hearing concerns from constituents about pride flags being displayed in schools.
Bulso said the country used to have a “very strong consensus” on what the nation’s values are, and these are the values he believes most parents taught in schools.
“Certainly, you know, 50 years ago we had a consensus on what marriage is; we don’t have that anymore. One-hundred years ago, we had a consensus on sexual morality; I don’t think we have that anymore. So the values that I think most parents want their children exposed to are the ones that were in existence at the time that our country was founded,” he said.
The epitome of homophobia, transphobia is legislators working on tax payer dollars to pass a law to eliminate rainbow flags 🌈 in public schools when it isn’t a problem to begin with!!!! We are citizens too!
What does your argument have to do with flying a rainbow flag??? I know you are all about discrimination…but this is a different era from when you grew up grandpa. You were the bully in school who used to beat up gay students, all the time you were secretly closeted. We know you.
Certainly, you know, 50 years ago we had a consensus on what marriage is; we don’t have that anymore. One-hundred years ago, we had a consensus on sexual morality; I don’t think we have that anymore.
I’m sure he laments that 175 years ago we could keep n*****s as slaves.
“So the values that I think most parents want their children exposed to are the ones that were in existence at the time that our country was founded.” Including slavery, women as their husbands’ property, and Native American genocide.
The values when the country was founded? No divorce for anyone without a great deal of trouble, Black people were slaves but counted as 3/5 of a person, and women couldn’t vote.
But I guess he’s not referring to the value of strict separation of church and state.
Please notice the three factors that drive republicans, racism, money, religion. In that order. Hugs. Scottie
Republicans will then begin lobbying to “reduce spending” by cutting the amount allocated for the vouchers, locking the emerging two-tier status of publicly funded education into place…
In 1776, British economist Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, a book that laid out the principles that modern economies have operated under for centuries (with the exception of the Reagan Revolution years of 1981-2021). In addition to arguing for a strong domestic manufacturing base and high taxes on the wealthy, Smith pointed out that one of the things that most directly constitutes the wealth of a nation is its educated workforce and well-informed populace (as a result of that education).
From Thomas Jefferson creating the first tuition-free American college (the University of Virginia), to Horace Mann’s advocacy of public schools in the late 19th century, right up until 1954, this was an uncontroversial position. It’s why every developed country on Earth has a vibrant public school system and — with the exception of the US since Reagan ended free college in California — most developed countries offer free or near-free college to their citizens.
But in 1954, the US Supreme Court upset the education apple cart by declaring in their Brown v Board case that “separate but equal” schools, segregated by race, were anything but “equal.” That decision fueled two movements that live on to this day.
The first was the rightwing anti-communist movement spearheaded by the John Birch Society, which was heavily funded back then by Fred Koch, the father of Charles and David Koch. They put up billboards across the country demanding that Americans rise up and “Impeach Earl Warren,” who was then the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, for requiring “communist” racial integration of our schools.
The second was the private, all-white “academy” movement that has morphed over the years into charter schools and the “school choice” movement of today. It received a major boost when the white supremacist co-founder of neoliberalism, Milton Friedman, published a widely-read and influential article in 1955 explicitly calling for what he called “education vouchers” to fund all-white private schools to “solve the national crisis” the Court had created.
In 1958 when the Virginia Supreme Court went along with the US Supreme Court’s Brown v Board decision and ordered that state’s schools desegregated, the governor shut down every public school in the state. Prince Edward County’s schools were still closed in 1964, when they were finally ordered to open by the courts.
Hundreds of “segregation academies” opened across the South; in Mississippi, for example, 41,000 white students left public schools to attend these academies in just the one year of 1969. Parents had to pay the tuition themselves, but they were willing to do so to avoid their children having to interact with Black, Hispanic, or Asian kids.
The turning point for the Republican Party was 1964, when President Johnson and a Democratic Congress passed and signed into law the Civil Rights Act. Shortly thereafter, one Southern Democratic politician after another changed party affiliation to the GOP so they could continue to argue against “forced integration” of public schools.
The Republican war on public schools burst into the open with the Reagan Revolution, when Education Secretary Bill Bennett oversaw a 30 percent cut in federal aid to public schools following Reagan’s promise to abolish the Department altogether. Every Republican running for president since has made a similar promise or claimed the need to end the Education Department.
Bill Bennett wasn’t shy about explaining why it was necessary to gut public schools, after the Supreme Court had ordered they must be racially integrated. Bennett wanted to privatize public education — as did Trump’s former Education Secretary, billionaire Betsy DeVos — and is probably most famous for his statement that gives us a clue as to why this idea of ending public education is so persistent in the GOP:
“If you wanted to reduce crime,” Bennett said on the radio, “you could, if that were your sole purpose; you could abort every Black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.”
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Could it be that it’s all about keeping white children away from Bennett’s Black babies? Is simple racism what’s animating the GOP’s antipathy toward public education?
One clue is that the idea of ending public education in America goes back even farther than Bennett or Reagan to a single moment and a single court decision.
When I was born, in 1951, Republicans loved public schools. Republican President Dwight Eisenhower led the charge to build gleaming new public schools all across the United States: I attended one, as did perhaps a majority of my generation.
But then came the Supreme Court, with their Brown v Board decision.
In 1957, President Eisenhower ordered the Little Rock, Arkansas, public schools desegregated. The “Little Rock Nine” — nine Black children trying to desegregate Little Rock Central High School — became nationally famous when Governor Orval Faubus prevented them from entering the school that fall, provoking Eisenhower to call up federal troops to escort the children to class.
Faubus called a referendum — an election — and the good citizens of Little Rock voted 19,470 to 7,561 to shut down their entire school system rather than comply with Eisenhower’s order. That, in turn, led back to the Supreme Court, which, in the fall of 1958, ruled unanimously in Cooper v Aaronthat the Brown v Board desegregation order was, in fact, now the law of the land for public education.
In response, whites-only private schools and “academies” began springing up across the nation, many run by all-white churches. (Jerry Falwell tried, in 1966, to open an all-white school; in 1980 he became Reagan’s main advisor on merging the white supremacist faction of evangelical Christians — also triggered by Brown v Board — into the GOP.)
Thus, in 1958 the governor of Virginia closed all the public schools in racially mixed Warren County, Norfolk, and Charlottesville; Prince Edward County’s public schools remained closed for a full five years.
While that’s the foundational history of what has become the GOP’s war on public education, for most of the past 40 years Republicans have merely claimed vague libertarian principles when they try to explain what they ironically call “school choice.”
It wasn’t until Donald Trump gave them permission — and showed them how politically potent it could be — to unleash their inner racists that the GOP went public with overt white supremacy as a core value for the party.
While Critical Race Theory (CRT) was a little-known 1993 analysis of structural racism pioneered by Kimberlé Crenshaw and Derrick Bell taught only in law school, rightwing influencer Christopher Rufo popularized the term with an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox “News” show.
From there, it echoed around the GOP for a few months before catching fire across rightwing hate radio, podcasts, and Fox. Pretty soon white supremacist militia members were showing up at school board meetings threatening members that “we know where you live.”
Republicans anxious to stoke the fears of their white racist base began inveighing against teaching CRT in public schools — even though such a thing had never happened — and passing laws so loosely worded as to bar any meaningful teaching or classroom discussion of America’s racial history.
All-white private schools funded with taxpayer dollars have become the darlings of Republicans. In most cases these schools don’t need to flout the law by declaring their segregated status: Black, Asian, and Hispanic parents most often simply aren’t interested in enrolling their children in schools that proudly proclaim they will not allow a drop of “CRT,” true American history, or real science education in their classrooms.
The issue of privatizing public schools came up in Arizona in 2018 with a statewide ballot initiative that would extend free school vouchers to every student in the state: it was defeated by voters by a 2:1 ratio. Writing for The Arizona Republic, columnist Laurie Roberts was unambiguous in her description of the state’s voters’ horror at the ballot initiative:
“Actually, they didn’t just reject it. They stoned the thing, then they tossed it into the street and ran over it. Then they backed up and ran over it again.”
Republicans in the heavily gerrymandered state, though, didn’t much care about the will of the voters. Appealing exclusively to their white racist “Christian” base, they pushed what was essentially that same proposal through the GOP-controlled state legislature and it was signed into law last year by Republican then-Governor Doug Doocey.
In giving every student in the state the ability to opt out of public education with a taxpayer-funded voucher, Doocey established a new benchmark in the war against racially integrated public schools that was matched this year by Florida, Arkansas, Iowa, and Utah.
Legislation to gut public schools and replace them with vouchers for private schools have failed in six states so far (Georgia, Texas, Idaho, Virginia, Kentucky, and South Dakota), but Republicans are not letting go. This year voucher bills were introduced in at least 24 states.
The fact that most of the nation’s public school teachers are union members has given Republicans another good reason, in their minds, to do everything possible to destroy public schools. As Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed last year, in the minds of Republicans the American Federation of Teachers’ President Randi Weingarten is “the most dangerous person in the world.”
Republicans also love the fact that voucher programs mostly subsidize upper-income families, while educationally ghettoizing the children of low-income parents. Vouchers almost never cover all the costs of attending a private school, so they primarily serve as a government handout to the mostly upper-middle-class white families who already wanted to send their kids to today’s version of the segregation academies.
Once the public schools are largely dead, Republicans will begin lobbying to “reduce spending” by cutting the amount allocated for the vouchers, locking the emerging two-tier status of publicly funded education into place.
For the moment, though, private schools are a booming industry as a result of the GOP’s embrace of Friedman’s vouchers. In Florida, for example, they have virtually no rules or standards for the over-one-billion-dollars the state shovels into its private schools: while public schools must disclose their graduation rates, how they spend their money, and let anybody examine their curriculum, private academies have no such rules in many Republican-controlled states, even though they’re receiving public monies.
Many private schools across the country operate with untrained and uncertified “teachers,” have no clear standards for graduation, and refuse to teach “controversial” subjects like evolution, climate science, and the racial history of America.
Which brings us to organized religion, the other recipient of big bucks because of the school voucher movement. Schools affiliated with churches are now raking in billions every month across the US, and Republicans — who continue to push for unconstitutional things like mandatory public school prayer — pander daily to fundamentalists who don’t want their kids exposed to science or history.
Six corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized this practice of shoveling taxpayer funds to churches and religious schools in their notorious Carson v Makin decision last year. As Justice Sonya Sotomayor wrote in her dissent:
[In just five short years this Court has] “shift[ed] from a rule that permits States to decline to fund religious organizations to one that requires States in many circumstances to subsidize religious indoctrination with taxpayer dollars.” This decison “continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the framers fought to build.”
Which is exactly what the GOP wants. As SenDem recently wrote for Daily Kos:
“Laura Ingraham claimed that ‘a lot of people are saying it’s time to defund government education or at least defund it by giving vouchers to parents.’ Fox’s Greg Gutfeld similarly declared that private school vouchers are needed because public schools are ‘a destructive system’ and described teachers as ‘KKK with summers off.’
“Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida has called public schools ‘a cesspool of Marxist indoctrination.’ Donald Trump declared, ‘public schools have been taken over by the radical left maniacs.’ And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia called them taxpayer-funded indoctrination centers that need to end, which is a bit ironic since she is the poster child for the necessity of funding public education.”
Sweden has been flirting with libertarianism for a few decades and was the first developed country to offer American-style school vouchers to all kids so they could attend private, for-profit public schools. Just a month ago, their government proclaimed the experiment a disaster and is trying to figure out how to shut down the private schools and re-establish a public education system.
Public schools were the great social and economic leveler for the last century of American history; Republicans want to end that and instead advantage wealthy children over their lower-income peers, particularly those whose skin is darker than Trump’s spray tan.
Public schools (and free college) made it possible for America to produce an explosion of invention and innovation throughout the mid-20th century; now other countries are surpassing us, as the dumbing-down of our kids has become institutionalized in Red state after Red state.
And public schools gave many students their first experience of interacting with people who look different from them and grew up under different circumstances, awakening many young people to the discrimination and unfairness inherent in how America has historically treated minorities.
All of which explains why Republicans so badly want to put an end to public education in America.
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This is great. The video has such good information and facts. If hearing is not your thing, the CC is also spot on. He talks of how immigrants don’t commit as many crimes / violent crime as native citizens. He points out how a study in 18 countries showed how trickle down did not work, while the wealthy doubled their wealth during it. He points out while republicans keep you scared about harm to your kids, no kid has been killed at a drag queen brunch / story hour while due to the gun loving republican congress kids have been mowed down trying to learn how to read and kids need bulletproof backpacks. He tells how Biden democrats have brought such large economic benefits and expanded healthcare to so many and then tells how republicans voted against all of it then tried to take credit for it all. He also mentions how much the tRump kids took while working in the White House, while hunter did not work in the WH. Hugs. Scottie
The fundamentalist Christians and the maga right can not tolerate positive affirming media about LGBTQIA, independent women, or black people because it ruins their narrative. They want to push the idea that women need men to function and be whole, that blacks are lazy and less intelligent, and that the LGBTQIA are evil incarnate that will destroy everything good in the country / world and god hates them, so god will take it out on everyone if they are treated decently. They are desperate to push the 1950s social narrative that white men are good, the Christian god is the right and only god in public, and that cis straight is normal so every thing else is an abhorrent abomination. They are wrong and stuck in a regressive oppressive past, unable to let others enjoy the modern world. They are modern Amish, only they demand that everyone live like them. Without positive reinforcement the lives of LGBTQIA and minority kids are much harder, much more anxiety ridden, much more unpleasant. Kids learn to hate themselves. They learn that others hate them and are free to attack them. So they either keep hidden, missing out on great times straight cis kids are having along with a much higher risk of suicide. Hugs
Clearly racism and bigotry. They even rescinded anti-discrimination policies. Why not discriminating is good, discrimination is bad. But we can thank tRump for making it safe for these … people to come out from under the rocks and openly push for white supremacy. Their goal is to push the LGBTQIA out of public view and remove any equality for black / brown people. Read the quote below and see if you can find the real truth he is saying.
Cook, in July, defended rescinding the anti-racism resolution, saying the board “doesn’t need to be in the business of dividing the community.”
Why would anti-racism divide the community unless a lot of the white community wants to be racist against the black community, and the whites feel targeted / put on by the resolution. Hugs. Scottie
O’FALLON, Mo. (AP) — A conservative-led Missouri school board has voted to drop elective courses on Black history and literature, five months after the same boardrescinded an anti-discrimination policyadopted in the aftermath of the killing ofGeorge Floyd.
The Francis Howell School Board voted 5-2 Thursday night to stop offering Black History and Black Literature, courses that had been offered at the district’s three high schools since 2021. A little over 100 students took the courses this semester in the predominantly white suburban area of St. Louis.
In July, the board revoked an anti-racism resolution and ordered copies removed from school buildings. The resolution was adopted in August 2020 amid the national turmoil after a police officer killed Floyd in Minneapolis.
The resolution pledged that the Francis Howell community would “speak firmly against any racism, discrimination, and senseless violence against people regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, immigration status, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or ability.”
The resolution and course offerings were targeted by five new members who have taken control of the board since being elected last year and in April, all with the backing of the conservative political action committee Francis Howell Families. All seven board members are white.
The PAC’s website expresses strong opposition to the courses, saying they involve principals of critical race theory, though many experts say the scholarly theory centered on the idea that racism is systemic in the nation’s institutions is not taught in K-12 schools.
The decision to drop the courses was met with protests outside the board meeting. Several parents and students chanted, “Let them learn!” Inside, speakers questioned the decision.
“You’ve certainly taught me to not underestimate how low you will go to show your disdain toward the Black and brown communities’ experiences and existence,” Harry Harris, a Black father, told the board.
Another speaker, Tom Ferri, urged the board to focus on bigger issues such as high turnover among teachers.
“Tapping into a diverse talent pipeline would be a great way to slow attrition, but what diverse staff wants to work in a district waging culture wars?” he asked.
Board Vice President Randy Cook Jr., who was elected in 2022, said the Francis Howell courses to which he and others objected used “Social Justice Standards” developed by the Southern Poverty Law Center with a bent toward activism.
“I do not object to teaching black history and black literature; but I do object to teaching black history and black literature through a social justice framework,” Cook said in an email on Friday. “I do not believe it is the public school’s responsibility to teach social justice and activism.”
District spokesperson Jennifer Jolls said in an email that new Black history and literature courses “could be redeveloped and brought to the Board for approval in the future.”
This semester, 60 students at the three schools combined enrolled in the Black History course, and 42 took Black Literature, the district said.
Francis Howell is among Missouri’s largest school districts, with 16,647 students, 7.7% of whom are Black. The district is on the far western edge of the St. Louis area, in St. Charles County.
The county’s dramatic growth has coincided with the equally dramatic population decline in St. Louis city. In 1960, St. Louis had 750,000 residents and St. Charles County had 53,000. St. Louis’ population is now 293,000, nearly evenly split between Black and white residents. St. Charles County has grown to about 415,000 residents, 6% of whom are Black.
Racial issues remain especially sensitive in the St. Louis region, more than nine years after a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri,fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brownduring a street confrontation. Officer Darren Wilson was not charged and the shooting led to months of often violent protests, becoming a catalyst for the national Black Lives Matter movement.
Cook, in July, defended rescinding the anti-racism resolution, saying the board “doesn’t need to be in the business of dividing the community.”
“We just need to stick to the business of educating students here and stay out of the national politics,” he said.
The district’s description of the Black Literature course says it focuses “on contemporary and multi-genre literary works of Black authors and will celebrate the dignity and identity of Black voices.”
For the Black History course, the description reads, “Students understand the present more thoroughly when they understand the roots of today’s world in light of their knowledge of the past. This Black History course tells the history of Blacks from the beginning Ancient Civilizations of Africa through the present day accomplishments and achievements of Black individuals today.”
School board elections across the U.S. have become intense political battlegrounds since 2020, when some groups began pushing back against policies aimed at stemming the spread of COVID-19.
PACs in many local districts have successfully elected candidates who promised to take action against teachings on race and sexuality, remove books deemed offensive and stop transgender-inclusive sports teams.
Never ceases to amaze me that a word generally understood to mean “not asleep,” “awake” is the worst epithet that Trump and his thugs can throw at progressives.
It just shows how entrenched they are in their dogma they are, that equality is so undesirable. They are incapable of considering anything that challenges their bigotry
I recall reading about a journalist who asked a bunch of Trump supporters what “woke” means to them. The replies were hysterical.
Half of them really didn’t have any idea what it means. The other half used the usual “commie, socialist, atheist, homo” description they use when describing anyone or anything they don’t like or don’t understand.
It was first used by white liberals to mean “I’m listening to women, black, hispanic, lgbt, etc. voices and hearing what they are saying.” How horrible. To acknowledge other people’s lived experiences and treat them with respect.
Yep, in the city of Saint Louis , in the gated private streets of 1904 Worlds Fair era mansions just north of the large city park where the Fair was held. Private streets are really private, they don’t allow (certain) non-residents to walk or drive there – the streets hire private security. I have lived about 2 blocks from idiot gun-toters’ house for over 30 years, in a neighborhood of pre-WWII high rise apartment buildings. 1904 World’s Fair is the one immortalized in the Judy Garland movie Meet Me in St. Louis. “Have yourself a merry little Christmas…”
Yes, it’s population boomed, growing more than four-fold in the ’50s. O’Fallon, MO, should not to be confused with O’Fallon, IL or the O’Fallon neighborhood in north St. Louis, all within the same metro and named after the same rail baron. The O’Fallon neighborhood was hard-hit by block-busting, white-flight, and subsequent red-lining. It’s to recent to be allowed to publish the individual household records to see how many moved from the O’Fallon neighborhood to what is now the largest, and exceedingly white, suburb of St. Louis.
Is the point we are at now, the anti-LGBTQIA haters can’t get the books they hate out of schools or public libraries, so they call the police and lie that porn is being shown to kids? These groups did a sneak attack and got into positions to act on their racism and their bigotry. But now people understand who they really are and the public is fighting back. The majority doesn’t believe what the haters do, just as the majority of the public doesn’t agree with the maga republicans and what they are claiming and want to do. Just as the maga republicans keep claiming that they speak for the country, they represent what the people want, which is clearly not true, it is the same with the haters. They also claim to represent the people, the public, the parents, everyone! Yet their ideas and what they want are very unpopular, so clearly they don’t speak for the majority, do they? This is like calling in bomb threats to stop drag shows. Just because you don’t like something doesn’t give you the right to deny it to everyone else. Hugs. Scottie
The ACLU is concerned about a police officer’s having searched a classroom at W.E.B. Du Bois Regional Middle School for the coming of age novel, “Gender Queer” after receiving a complaint. The incident has prompted outrage in the school community.
AP FILE PHOTO
GREAT BARRINGTON — The plainclothed police officer who entered an eighth grade classroom to search for a book wore a body camera and recorded the incident, leading to more legal questions and concerns.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other free speech advocates say they are alarmed by the recording, as well as the entire Dec. 8 incident that took place after classes let out at W.E.B. Du Bois Regional Middle School.
They also say they cannot recall any instances of police going to a school to search for a book. Schools and libraries have internal procedures for book challenges.
“That’s partly what is so concerning,” said Ruth A. Bourquin, senior and managing attorney for the ACLU of Massachusetts. “Police going into schools and searching for books is the sort of thing you hear about in communist China and Russia. What are we doing?”
The Berkshire Hills Regional School Committee and Superintendent Peter Dillion have, in a statement sent to the school community Tuesday, apologized for how it handled the situation, stating “clearly and unequivocally” that it does not support book banning, and committed to making all of its students feel safe.
“The recent incident at the middle school has challenged and impacted our community,” according to the statement. “Faced with an unprecedented police investigation of what should be a purely educational issue, we tried our best to serve the interests of students, families, teachers, and staff. In hindsight, we would have approached that moment differently. We are sorry. We can do better to refine and support our existing policies. We are committed to supporting all our students, particularly vulnerable populations.”
The ACLU has requested that body camera footage and other records related to the complaint and the investigation, Bourquin said.
It was an anonymous complaint that led Great Barrington Police to open a probe about whether parts of the book, “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe, could be considered obscene material or pornographic.
Police then notified the Berkshire District Attorney’s Office as per the department’s policy.
They also notified school and district administrators they were coming to the classroom, and the officer was escorted there by the school principal. The teacher, who kept the book in her resource library, was surprised to see the officer. The officer announced he was turning on his body camera and then looked for the book and did not find it.
The DA ordered the investigation closed. The matter of whether the book is appropriate now rests with the schools.
In its letter, the BHRSD School Committee said the incident “has challenged and impacted our community.”
“Faced with an unprecedented police investigation of what should be a purely educational issue, we tried our best to serve the interests of students, families, teachers and staff. In hindsight, we would have approached that moment differently. We are sorry,” the letter said.
The committee said it would work to collect feedback on how it can do better, starting by hosting a community meeting on Jan. 11.
“It is the obligation of the district to use its policies, existing or amended, to select curriculum. In this case, the content was not the issue. The process challenging it was. We want to ensure that students and staff feel safe and supported and that families’ voices are heard.”
“Gender Queer” is a coming-of-age memoir about reckoning with confusion about gender and contains sexually explicit illustrations and language.
It is this that many in LGBTQIA+ community say they believe is the reason for the censorship — not so-called “obscenity” concerns.
In Massachusetts the testfor obscenity is if the material is of interest sexually, depicts or describes sexual conduct “in a way that is patently offensive to an average citizen of this county,” and “has no serious value of a literary, artistic, political or scientific kind,” according to the state.
It was a complaint about so-called obscene materials in the classroom that police say led them there — something they said they had a duty to investigate.
But the ACLU’s Bourquin disagrees.
“We’re very troubled by this notion,” she said. “They say anytime someone could call they have an obligation to go marching into places wearing a body cam, and you know, interrogating people,” Bourquin said.
State laws, she said, are “pretty clear about police not having roles in this situation.”
Both the state and federal constitutions also protect the rights of students to receive information, she added, noting the ACLU and GLAD — Legal Advocates & Defenders for the LGBTQ Community — sent an open letter in January to school superintendents statewide given the rise in attempts to ban school library books.
The letter, also sent to the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, noted that legally such bans “may constitute unlawful discrimination.”
The letter says the courts “have recognized that the fact that some parents do not want their children to read certain books cannot justify depriving other students of their rights of access.”
The ACLU’s letter serves as a legal guide for schools and students’ rights to have access to information that is “free of censorship,” and says the ACLU stands “ready as a resource in this fight.”
The librarian at Du Bois middle school, Jennifer Guerin, made another point about that access. She said that it is “critically important for concerned community members to remember that the current situation is not about forcing a book into students’ hands.”
“It’s about the freedom to read,” Guerin said. “It’s about providing voluntary access to a well-written, highly acclaimed resource in a safe place for a teenager who might want or need it.”
A complaint that led police to search a middle school classroom for the book, “Gender Queer,” sparked a demonstration by Monument Mountain Regional High School students on Friday. The ACLU and other free speech advocates are worried both about the police involvement and about book banning in general.
HEATHER BELLOW — THE BERKSHIRE EAGLE
Using obscenity as an excuse to censor books with literary value is a heavy legal lift, said Bourquin. Obscenity laws have been “carefully crafted to ensure not tromping on constitutional free speech rights.”
If a book has value and isn’t meant to sexually arouse it will be hard for it to fail the legal test for obscenity, she said.
That test is “very specific,” and not something the average person or police officer necessarily would know, said Justin Silverman, executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition.
“It’s not a very easy test,” Silverman said. “And just because you have a community member pointing to something and saying, ‘That’s obscene,’ well, that doesn’t mean that it is obscene under the First Amendment.”
Like Bourquin, Silverman is stunned by the police involvement and thinks it wise to set a precedent for the future given the uptick in school book challenges.
“While it might be rare now, it doesn’t mean that it will be rare in the future,” Silverman said of police involvement in school literature. “I think the school and the police department have to come forth with a policy to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.”
The American Civil Liberties Union says it has “deep concerns” after a police officer in plain clothes entered a classroom, turned on his body camera, and searched for a book someone reported was sexually explicit. https://t.co/Sn0hAqyuer
Someone called the police to report that a Massachusetts classroom was harboring obscene material: Gender Queer.
The book does not meet the legal definition of obscenity: "Many see it as an important story helping build empathy," said the superintendent. https://t.co/IzbIZ1k7RQ
This is not the serious stuff I normally post. But in a way it is. It is a wonderful story of a high school boy not sure of himself, a father that talks only about girlfriends to the boy, and about overcoming fears of not being accepted or fitting in. It is only 17 minutes long, wonderfully subtitled. Just click the watch on YouTube. Hugs. Scottie
Max isn’t sure about his sexual orientation until he meets Leon, his openly gay classmate at his new school. When Max is singing an original song at a school concert something beautiful happens.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg/Rep. Lauren BoebertPhoto: Shutterstock
Scottie's Playtime 