ProPublica, in the coming weeks, is covering school board unrest that is playing out across the U.S. and how this hateful agenda is fostering violence in our country. "Something is very wrong," is echoed by a teacher interviewed for this story.
This is the exact point that I address in my My Mother's Day Reflection that, drawing on Nancy MacLean, shows how this is a contrived agenda as opposed to an actual, “cultural war.” Transgender youth, drag queens, immigrants, and people of color, generally, are not at war at all! Rather what we see happening right now is an outright attack on our youth and communities that just want to be free to express themselves and live lives fully not unlike the rest of us.
-Angela Valenzuela
#TransLivesMatter
Reference
MacLean, N. (2018). Democracy in chains: The deep history of the radical right's stealth plan for America. Penguin.
The Student Protestors were Arrested: The Man Who Got Violent Wasn't
When one police officer heard the radio call for backup at a high school campus outside Little Rock, Arkansas, he first thought there’d been a problem at a football game. The indecipherable chanting in the background sounded like roars from the bleachers. But it turned out that the rhythmic rallying call that November night last year was coming from the lobby outside a school board meeting.
The prior two meetings, in September and October, had been held in Conway High School’s huge auditorium, equipped with ample seating and plenty of parking for what had, as of late, been larger crowds. There also had been an unusual amount of conflict. The day after the September meeting, police showed up at the homes of two residents to investigate separate incidents allegedly related to that meeting. At the October meeting, shortly before the board’s vote on policies that would restrict the rights of transgender students, a local grandfather stepped up to the microphone and warned the board about the sins of the LGBTQ+ community. “They invent ways of doing evil,” the man said during the public comment period. “But let me remind you that those that do such things deserve death.”
Alex Barnett, a junior philosophy major at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, learned about tensions at the meetings on Instagram, where a video of the anti-LQBTQ+ comment to the board had gone viral. Barnett was motivated to do something. He pulled together a group, including members of a nascent Young Democratic Socialists club, at another student’s apartment. They brainstormed ideas for voicing opposition to the school board’s decision to pass the policies on transgender students.
Alex Barnett sits in a park across from the Conway High School campus, where a school board meeting took place last fall.
Barnett had learned that the board had moved its November meeting back to the much smaller administration building and had decided to skip the part of the agenda where attendees could share their views. Given that none of the college students would be able to speak directly to board members, Barnett made a suggestion: “Well, why don’t we just go into the school board meeting and shut everything down?”
When the late-arriving backup officers got to the building, they first encountered a cluster of community members protesting on the sidewalk, some of whom had joined high schoolers staging a Conway High walkout earlier that day. Inside, the officers found a group of young people sitting on the lobby floor, their arms linked and their voices loud. “Trans Lives Matter!” they chanted. The officers warned them to clear out of the lobby. But they remained planted on the floor.
“I’ll start with this one here,” one officer said, leaning over Barnett. “You are required to leave. If you do not leave you’re being arrested. Do you understand?”
Barnett did not budge.
“Take him into custody,” the officer said, pointing to two other officers. The trio pulled Barnett off the lobby floor, clamping handcuffs on his wrists.
Another of the student protesters then calmly allowed officers to cuff him, accepting the arrest as the consequence of his resistance. A third protester kept chanting as he, too, was arrested. “These policies are discriminatory!” he yelled as officers ushered him out of the lobby. “Let them use the fucking bathroom!”
After pausing for eight minutes during the loudest of the chanting, the school board meeting resumed without interruption.
ProPublica has identified 59 people arrested or charged over an 18-month period as a result of turmoil at school board meetings across the country. The majority of the individuals railed against the adoption of mask mandates, the teaching of “divisive concepts” concerning racial inequity and the availability of books with LGBTQ+ themes in school libraries. Many of the people arrested were attempting to make a statement, narrating their interactions with police for their social-media followers. In some cases, they resorted to threats and violence.
The arrests in Conway stand out for several reasons. The college students organized in support of the issues that most other people who were arrested around the country opposed. What’s more, no arrests were made following two allegedly violent incidents stemming from the September meeting.
But the Conway arrests also reflect the pervasive challenges school districts and police departments across the country face in trying to figure out how to handle hordes of aggrieved citizens — and what to do when the clashes lead to chaos. In the coming weeks, ProPublica will be publishing stories about how that unrest has played out in various communities and has upended once-staid school board meetings.
A broken window at the home of retired teacher Cindy Nations Credit:Courtesy of Cindy Nations
