This was the first report I watched on this. This one is longer because he tells the whole story and shows clips he took on his phone at the time. The mob was going to kill him after the IDF set the group up to be murdered at the hands of illegal settlers. The military told them to go to the spot where the settlers were hiding. Please watch to see the very illegal and horrific ways Israeli is treat people to simply drive them off of and steal their lands. Hugs
US Embassy ABANDONS Journo After Israeli Mob Attack
A 55-year-old Palestinian woman, Umm Saleh Abu Alia, was hospitalized after being brutally attacked by a masked Israeli settler in Turmus Ayya, West Bank. Captured on video by US journalist Jasper Nathaniel, the unprovoked assault shows the woman struck unconscious and hit again on the ground. Settlers continue to harass Palestinian farmers during the olive harvest, while the Israel Defense Forces claim to have intervened. This horrifying incident highlights escalating tensions and ongoing violence in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli settlers burn trees, assault Palestinians in occupied West Bank olive harvest attacks
In the occupied West Bank, armed Israeli settlers systematically attack Palestinian olive harvesters and farmers, burning trees and beating farmers. These assaults, often protected by Israeli forces, have caused severe injuries. Palestinians, joined by international activists, continue harvesting to avoid surrendering their land, despite the violence and threats aimed at driving them away. For them, this is a fight for their very livelihood and homeland.
Israel’s Next Move: Create ‘Six Little Gazas’ In West Bank | Jasper Nathaniel | TMR
Even though the school was started as a LGBTQ+ safe space they had to remove anything affirming the LGBTQ+ people. The goal of the republican right is to erase LGBTQ+ people from the public society. They don’t want us seen, they do not want us talked about. They especially don’t want kids to understand they can be themselves if they are not straight or cis. They want kids to feel they must fit the mold of straight and cis only. If you feel differently you must hide it and live miserably to make the snowflake Christian nationalist right feel comfortable. This will backfire on them. Just as the LGBTQ+ overcame the full force of the right’s bigotry once we can do it again. We have moved far too toward equality to let them push us from society again. The young people will not accept it nor tolerate the regression of freedoms to make a few bigots feel comfortable with the world around them. They also know that intolerant maga driven my the cult of tRump won’t last forever. Hugs
“We have had rainbows in our building because we are affirming to all people, and at some point our mission statement included a segment that said ‘We are affirming to LGBTQ people,’ but we have taken that out.”
Before the vote Wednesday, she said the school painted over rainbow colors and designs and replaced maps with ones that had a “Gulf of America” label. They revised the logo and reviewed textbooks and other documents.
Months after its contract was threatened over a rainbow mural and a map labeling the Gulf of Mexico, an Alabama charter school will stay open.
The state charter commission voted Wednesday to renew Magic City Acceptance Academy’s contract, allowing the school to operate for five more years. The school and its leaders came under fire this spring for allegedly violating aspects of Alabama’s new anti-DEI law, which prohibits so-called “divisive concepts” and other diversity and inclusion programming in public schools and colleges.
“I’ll say the thing that we’re all thinking,” said Karen Musgrove, the school’s CEO, after being pressed by one commissioner to address the “monster in the room.”
“We have had rainbows in our building because we are affirming to all people, and at some point our mission statement included a segment that said ‘We are affirming to LGBTQ people,’ but we have taken that out.”
“We’re affirming to all people. We’re affirming to our Black students. We’re affirming to our Hispanic students. We’re affirming to our LGBTQ students, which are in every school in the state.”
Magic City Acceptance Academy opened in 2021 in an effort to provide a supportive learning environment for LGBTQ students and other at-risk populations. Students and staff say they built a welcoming community in the Birmingham-area school, despite a firestorm of political backlash over the years.
In a plea to commissioners, one parent said “everything changed” for her son after enrolling at MCAA. He stopped skipping class, vaping and fighting, and he’s now excelling in college-level courses.
“Renewing Magic City’s charter means continuing to change lives like my son’s,” she said. “It means giving more kids the chance to discover their potential and their purpose.”
After a brief debate, the commission ultimately renewed the charter – on the condition that it agreed to maintain “strict adherence throughout its shorter term to Alabama laws, specifically including, without limitation, Alabama Code 41190,” the state’s “divisive concepts” law. If it fails to comply, Magic City could be subject to sanctions, said Lane Knight, the commission’s lawyer.
“They’ve got the financial support, they’ve got a good program, they’ve got the leadership,” said commission member Charles Knight. “And again, we all agree that we’re trying to create environments where students are educated, and obviously they’re doing a good job of that.”
Recent changes
According to emails obtained by AL.com, school officials contacted the charter commission in early 2025, just days after 1819 News ran an article claiming the school was violating the law by hosting a “radical LGBTQ+ anti-America author” and promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in its handbook.
Musgrove reached out to the commission’s director, Logan Searcy, for advice on January 24. She sent Searcy changes to the school’s mission statement a week later.
Between February and March, 1819 published a handful of articles about the school. Republican lawmakers threatened its funding and called for a state investigation.
In early February, the commission paid the school another visit.
“The goal here is to report our diligence in monitoring the school to hopefully alleviate concerns at renewal time,” the commission’s financial specialist, Douglas Riley, wrote to Principal Patton Furman on Feb. 4. “I suspect you will see much more attention from the Commission this spring with that goal in mind. Please understand the spirit in which these efforts are intended, we want to identify and fix problems before they grow into something serious.”
He wrote to school leaders again after the visit: “Y’all are making some strong moves and I hope we can put the recent press behind us and have a smooth renewal process later this year.”
That same day, the commission sent the school a letter, noting that it had received “various reports” that the school’s curricula and programming violated the new law.
Searcy visited the school, along with commission member Cynthia McCarty, on Feb. 20, according to emails.
On March 6, Musgrove issued a lengthy response to the commission’s letter, claiming that leaders had already taken steps to make changes to decor and programming, and that they had not received any negative feedback after members’ visits to the school.
Before the vote Wednesday, she said the school painted over rainbow colors and designs and replaced maps with ones that had a “Gulf of America” label. They revised the logo and reviewed textbooks and other documents.
“We don’t see ourselves as being divisive,” she said. “Because we did exactly what was asked of us.”
A new outlook
It is rare for an Alabama charter school to close down after its initial contract is granted. If the commission has any concerns about a school’s viability, they may issue a shortened two- or three-year contract.
The commission originally suggested a three-year contract for Magic City, but voted to approve a standard five-year one after some pushback.
With the greenlight from the commission, school officials plan to start work immediately on a new building, which will feature a large theater, band room and expanded mental health resources.
It plans to eventually serve up to 500 students.
“We are going to make you proud,” Musgrove told the commission. “We’re doing amazing things, and we want you to be a part of that relationship.”
The commission also approved a five-year extension for LEAD Academy in Montgomery and a three-year extension for Breakthrough Academy in Perry County.
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Rebecca Griesbach
Rebecca Griesbach is a data reporter at AL.com, covering education and other issues across the state. She joined the newsroom in 2021 as a founding member of the Alabama Education Lab and a Report for America… more
I have been really struggling lately. I keep saving comments to answer later that days go by I don’t get to. I keep saving them so I can reply. I have not announced it here on the Play Time but I finally made an appointment with a therapist.
When I made the appointment they asked a few questions and then tried to get me to come in the next morning. I said no. I just couldn’t deal with it. On top of the car just needing a new engine for 4 grand due to a faulty temperature sensor we had the van checked. It is 17 years old. It has a lot of small stuff wrong but each fix adds up and the total was two grand.
I am hardly sleeping and during the day the intrusive thoughts can get me struggling and crying. So what should only take me a few hours ends up taking me 6 to 8 hours. It is even more frustrating because my attention deficit disorder has increased to the point I can lose track of what I am doing or get switched over to something else almost without noticing so that I get pulled down rabbit holes until I see it.
Also I find sitting at the computer gets painful so I get up and do things like the dishes. Sadly I drive myself to the point I can’t stand or are near collapse. That happened last night. Ron was doing other things so I had the night before promised to take a small amount of mashed potatoes left over and fry it along with making him scrambled eggs. Then I did dishes at noon and right after I made a red sauce. I was exhausted and not able to stand by the time I got it done. Ron put the red sauce aside and made us the planned supper of chicken, pork, and beef chopped up for fajitas. But I could hardly eat.
Then Ron found me falling asleep at my desk I was so tired. Ron asked me as he helped me to get my nighttime meds and go to bed, Ron asked me if I had managed to get to the comments I had told him I saved. I just sighed. I told him I still have them saved and will get up in the morning and reply to them. I did not do that. I used to jump out of bed fully energized which always amazed Ron. Now I struggle to get up, often laying there for several hours hoping to go back to sleep. In the past I would get up in the middle of the night if I couldn’t sleep, but now I just lay there desperately hoping to sleep without a nightmare.
But this is not what this post is about.
I use a name not used by my abusers. The name they used for me was a slave name. You can see it used for one of the prominent characters in Roots. It was used to make me an it. I was often told how I got my name at age three. My first real memories are a bus ride next to a woman I did not know. I am told when she introduced me to the “family” one of my hell spawn female siblings ask “What do you call IT“ My new adoptive mother gave me the name normally given to slaves in the south as I understand. I never used it personally and hated it all my life.
Ron never used it even though they tried to get him to do so. They would use it to him to refer to me and he would pretend to not know who they were talking about. I guess good for me the name was not the one used on my birth certificate so as I got to move beyond their influence I could use my birth name and then when I got away from all their ability to influence or threaten me I modified my birth name to what I felt most comfortable. See the only time they used the real name was to mock me and so when I got the chance to choose my name for myself I did.
I am Scottie !!!
I love who Scottie is and think he is done very well with the life hand he was dealt. But all this is to explain why the series of cartoons by Sophie Labelle are so important to me. So here is the one by her that jogged me to make this post. I had tried to restrict posts about my abuse. But this was so on point I knew I had to do so. Sadly I had no father or other to help me find it, they hated that I demanded they call me by it. It caused me to hang up on them repeatedly when they would call me by my abused name. They finally did adjust when in their old age they needed me to help them. Hugs
rgriesbach@al.com
