Woe to us if the case of a Catholic-run charter school reaches the Supreme Court by Katherine Stewart | MSNBC

Woe to us indeed should this Catholic-run charter school out of Oklahoma make it to the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS). It's sickening to think that a SCOTUS decision in this case could very well institute, in effect, "Catholic Sharia Law" by allowing our public tax dollars to flow into Catholic-run charters and other religious schools where, of course, religious doctrine would get taught. 

As covered by Stewart herein, of great importance is a loss of rights for employees, including teachers and administrators, as well as students in such schools would experience—including First Amendment rights and the right of due process. This is because religious schools "are exempt from laws that protect students and employees alike from broad categories of discrimination." The "ministerial exception" option available to religious institutions is an open door to discrimination, leaving victims defenseless.

This does not at all represent societal progress, but is rather a step backwards should the highest court rule on this. Thanks to Dr. Tony Baez for sharing. We are duly warned. 

-Angela Valenzuela

Woe to us if the case of a Catholic-run charter school reaches the Supreme Court

Though transparently unconstitutional, an Oklahoma school board's decision may still be blessed by the radical conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Pastoral Center Offices for the Archdiocese of Oklahoma in Oklahoma City last year.Google Maps

June 7, 2023, 6:01 PM CDT

By Katherine Stewart, author of "The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism"

Since the 19th century, when the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations asked for a share of tax money to fund their own sectarian religious schools, it has been a matter of settled constitutional law that commingling public education and sectarian religion is impermissible. That is why what happened Monday in Oklahoma is so disturbing and significant. Over the objections of the state’s attorney general, Oklahoma’s Statewide Virtual Charter School Board voted to approve an application from the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma for a publicly funded charter school.

The board put the archdiocese on the path to provide a Christian education paid for by the state. Though transparently unconstitutional, this arrangement may still be blessed by the radical conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, which has issued a series a rulings in recent years that use a specious idea of religious freedom to promote the establishment of religion.

For example, after the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade, Notre Dame Law School hosted a conference in Rome at which Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito framed “religious liberty” as deference to those with certain religious viewpoints. The principle may sound equitable, but in practice it is a lightly disguised means of privileging conservative Christians.

Consider, too, that in December, former Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor said recent decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court had cleared the way for public funding for schools that promote religious doctrines and are under sectarian control.  

It’s not just the U.S. Constitution that should have stopped the board from approving the application to create St. Isidore of Seville Virtual Charter School. Oklahoma law specifically prohibits charter schools from being sectarian. “The approval of any publicly funded religious school is contrary to Oklahoma law and not in the best interest of taxpayers,” Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said after the board voted. “It’s extremely disappointing that board members violated their oath in order to fund religious schools with our tax dollars. In doing so, these members have exposed themselves and the state to potential legal action that could be costly.”

Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said in a statement: “It’s hard to think of a clearer violation of the religious freedom of Oklahoma taxpayers and public-school families than the state establishing the nation’s first religious public charter school. This is a sea change for American democracy.”

In testimony to the state's virtual charter school board in February, Ken Upton, an attorney for Americans United, cited “teaching religion, sponsoring prayer, discriminating based on religion, or otherwise promoting religion or coercing students to take part in religious activities” in saying, “St. Isidore makes clear in its application that it intends to do all these things.”

The archdiocese has on its side some powerful allies from the same conservative legal movement that helped secure a majority on the Supreme Court, including the Notre Dame Religious Liberty Clinic at Notre Dame Law School. Formed in 2020, the clinic has deep ties to the Federalist Society and the ultraconservative members of the Supreme Court. The clinic’s director, Stephanie Barclay, clerked for Justice Neil Gorsuch and litigated cases for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. An associate dean, Nicole Stelle Garnett, clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas and has written approvingly of the Supreme Court’s decision last year in Carson v. Makin, which expanded taxpayer funding for religious schools in Maine, and for which the clinic submitted an amicus brief.

Given the record of the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority in cases involving so-called religious freedom, supporters of St. Isidore have good reason to believe that majority will say St. Isidore can use public money to support its sectarian program — clearing the way for a future in which large amounts of money flow from local, state and federal treasuries into religious networks with clear political agendas and significant influence over public education.

As bad as such a Supreme Court ruling would be, perhaps even worse would be a decision that says such schools could discriminate against anybody or any group that offends their religious sensibilities. But this is precisely what the groups behind the Oklahoma religious charter school are teeing up in Colorado. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is representing Faith Bible Chapel International in a case arguing for a “ministerial exception” to anti-discrimination laws at religious schools. 

In that case, Greg Tucker, a white man who served for 14 years as a teacher and the director of student life at the private religious school, adopted a Black daughter, after which some students started to refer to his family using racial slurs. After he tried to establish a symposium for students to address racism, he was fired. Tucker maintains that the firing was blatantly retaliatory and discriminatory.

The school is claiming a “ministerial exception” to anti-discrimination law. Such exceptions are intended to allow religious employers to avoid liability when they fire “ministers” and clergy. Although Tucker was not a “minister,” but rather a teacher, with no responsibility for theological instruction or significant religious functions as part of his job, the school is trying to use “ministerial exception” as a trump card against his claim that it practiced racial discrimination. A divided 2-1 panel at the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the church, which has appealed to the Supreme Court. 

Given the tolerance for discrimination in the name of religion that the Supreme Court has demonstrated in cases such as Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., which let certain companies deny birth control coverage to their employees, and in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, which says fired clergy cannot sue for discrimination, and given the court's eagerness to support the public funding of religious schools it has demonstrated in Carson v. Makin, it is reasonable to fear two things: that this court will decide not only that tax dollars can be used to fund religious schools but also that religious schools are exempt from laws that protect students and employees alike from broad categories of discrimination.

If the Faith Bible Chapel International and St. Isidore cases are heard before this Supreme Court, it seems likely that public education in the U.S. is about to change for the worse in the same way the Dobbs ruling changed women’s health care for the worse.

Make no mistake: America’s Christian right is taking direct aim at secular public education, but let’s not forget that it is also after the money. The U.S. spends over $700 billion on public K-12 schools every year. If conservative Christian leaders can lay claim to part of that sum, it could help sustain conservative churches, whose attendance rates are reportedly falling.

Religious right leaders have long claimed that they are the true victims of religious persecution in the U.S. They have not disguised their aim of using public resources, including government facilities and taxpayer money, to impose their values on other people, including other people’s children. Now that they have the Supreme Court they want, their goal may be within reach.

Katherine Stewart

Katherine Stewart is the author of "The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism" (Bloomsbury). Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Republic.

Sinking to the Bottom: As summer temperatures rise, so do the GOP’s dehumanizing policies and rhetoric, by Melissa Del Bosque

Oh, dear God. This piece made me shudder. So macabre.

I can't get the margins of this piece to work. However, it's just too important not to share. We should all be horrified by what Gov. Abbott and his team are devising to supposedly "deter" migrants from getting into the U.S. It's not like we haven't already had an array of deterrence policies and mechanisms. Melissa Del Bosque is right in saying that the floating buoy barriers are only going to mean more deaths of migrants this summer. South Texas is already a massive graveyard. Del Bosque's gripping quote should cause us some consternation:

"As Todd recently wrote in his poignant piece about this deadly strategy, 'On the cusp of summer, we can predict like clockwork that hundreds of otherwise healthy people will be dead by summer’s end. It has an aura of premeditated murder.'"

The outcome is predictable. And I agree with Del Bosque that these floating buoy barriers are totally fascist and grossly inhumane. Glad that she calls out the harmful effects of the right-wing misinformation campaign that makes people feel that we are being invaded when we're not. 

In the meantime, mainstream media parrots the "crisis narrative," when the reality is that we've always taken in migrants from many countries that seek nothing more than to work and make a better life. Yes, many of them are desperate, but they're human beings, no less, doing what any of us would do were we equally desperate. And now, many will senselessly lose their lives by Summer's end. 

Will the media then cover this foreseeable socially engineered human tragedy? I fear not. That would shift the narrative away from the crisis narrative that is intended to stoke fear. 

Human rights organizations must absolutely get involved.

-Angela Valenzuela

Sinking to the Bottom

As summer temperatures rise, so do the GOP’s dehumanizing policies and rhetoric

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE  | Border Chronicles June 13, 2023 Photo Credit: Governor's Office Both parties have doubled down on inhumane border policies, but it’s the GOP that is taking it to new depths in its race to the bottom over who can be more deliberately cruel.

The Awful 88th Legislative Session: Losers included taxpayers, teachers, trans youths, and anyone who uses electricity—Texas Observer

I concur with this report by the staff of the Texas Observer. I know that it's difficult to summarize an entire legislative session in one article, but the attack on higher education via anti-DEI bills—as covered in this blog—was notable, albeit absent in this report. It appropriately makes note over the lost fight over Gov. Abbott's dream for school vouchers. Never think for a moment, however, that this agenda for public school privatization is dead. It seems to always come back, session after session, in some form. Without a doubt academic freedom, DEI initiatives, and public education, as a whole, remain at risk in our state under our current leadership.

It is also a bit curious that the Texas Observer staff didn't mention the vicious attack on Harris County elections in this report where it would have fit perfectly in any description of just how awful the last session was. I am aware that they were struggling for financial solvency this session, too.

To wit, the legislature itself engaged in outright election subversion. This should be illegal!

Remember that Houston's Harris County went for Biden over Trump by a wide margin (read: In Texas, Biden’s urban wins couldn’t offset Trump’s millions of votes in rural, red counties). Harris County is thusly a Democratic stronghold. We'll see if that holds in the next general election considering the changes Republicans made this session.

Specifically, Republican leaders in the form of both Senate Bill 1750—that eliminated the non-partisan position of elections administrator and Senate Bill 1933—that gives the Secretary of State, a partisan appointee, the authority to take over elections administration, are beyond worrisome.

When we consider that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton joined six states in suing the U.S. government over alleged election fraud in four states, namely, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, the Texas Republican party's credibility is strained. Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the case, albeit for procedural reasons (read: U.S. Supreme Court throws out Texas lawsuit contesting 2020 election results in four battleground states).

These dangerous affronts to democracy are tantamount to political repression in our state where voter disenfranchisement, in the forms of Senate Bill 1750 and Senate Bill 1933, bear the imprimatur of legislative legitimacy—when they're anything but legitimate.

Clearly, we need to expand, rather than limit, voting rights. And state government itself should not be used as a tool to protect the incumbencies of those in power. That's why we have elections.

Rather than winning the hearts and minds of the electorate, a morally degenerate party has opted to cut into the heart of a democratic stronghold like Harris County. Harris County was thus also a major loser this legislative session.

My best guess is this will continue to occur unless people of good conscience unite to vote these election thieves out of office. Aside from this, we must all come to democracy's vigorous defense, lest we lose, in effect, the franchise without which democratic governance is impossible.

-Angela Valenzuela

View online here.

by TEXAS OBSERVER STAFF  JUNE 6, 2023, 2:12 PM, CDT

As the 88th session of the Texas Legislature opened in January, Texas Observer writers scanning the political horizon noted a faint glimmer of hope that, perhaps this time, lawmakers would locate their statesman-like qualities and, at long last, spend the spring giving relief to taxpayers, the environment, electricity-users, public schools, teachers, and other long-neglected government workers.

Well, it was only ever a faint hope. Instead, the Lege lived down to its reputation, and, for the most part, spent this session in, as Observer Senior Writer Justin Miller imagined it then, a race to the bottom that took us to depths “previously unknown and unimaginable.” Think of it as the Awful 88th.

Republicans, riding a wave of authoritarian successes, wasted most of the session on an assortment of cruel social policy proposals aimed at making points with their far-right supporters and, as feared, failed to address truly important things like the electric grid, gun control, and school funding. They didn’t even accomplish their own top priority, which was property tax cuts. It wasn’t all bad, but parts were very, very bad, especially for LGBTQIA+ Texans. And now there’s a special session for added thrills. Here are a handful of highlights and a lot of lows.

Look at How Money Drives Politics in Texas & U.S.—from Transparency USA

Without question, money drives politics in the U.S. and beyond. Here is how it plays out in our country, compliments of Transparency USA. If you look at the 2022 election races, I was interested to find that Gov. Greg Abbott received $4 Million from the "Republican Governors Association Right Direction PAC." 

The Texas Ethics Commission is also a helpful source for related information.

Check out the RGA website. You'll see Abbott on the landing page. This level and kind of funding for conservative causes and conservative governor's races are very much behind what we know as the "right turn" in U.S. politics today that finds expression in neoliberal, anti-democratic electoral victories and extremists policies that we are seeing playing out in our legislatures across the country. Perhaps not every Republican-led legislature, but certainly in Texas, Florida and various other states.

Very eye-opening, to say the least. 

-Angela Valenzuela

 

Oaxaca's Third Gender—"Las Muxes: El Tercer Género de Oaxaca" [YouTube Video]

As we think in our own country of trans and LGBTQ rights, "Las Muxes" [pronounced 'MOO-ches'] from the southern state of Oaxaca, Mexico—and specifically from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec—remind us that gender is not only fluid but an unquestioned, accepted part of life in different parts of the world. Moreover, this is hardly a phenomenon that derives from our ostensibly "woke" moment, but is Indigenous and centuries old, predating Columbus' invasion of the Americas. 

I am readily reminded of Two-Spirit peoples and ways of knowing and being in Native North America about which there is a growing scholarly literature (e.g., Robinson, 2020). In short, what is today considered by some to be divergent is actually native to this continent. How cool is that?

If you listen below to the YouTube video (in Spanish), you learn that las Muxes are born into male bodies, but do not identify as men. Nor do they identify as women. Nor are they transexuals, transvestites, or homosexuals. Instead, they are considered a "tercer género," or "third gender." Their dream is to marry heterosexual men which is not easily achieved.

They live dignified lives in the context of their own community and society. As expressed by one of them, their primary problem occurs with respect to Mexican government policies that disallow them to attend secondary schools and to otherwise get formally educated. 

This becomes salient at the secondary level because it is by the age of 12 or 13 when they come into an awareness of their gender and schools don't allow them to dress like girls or women. Consequently, they are forced to take up roles associated with the care of the home and assisting with community festivities. They get relegated to gendered occupational roles like seamstresses, weavers, cooks, hair stylists, and so on. Moreover, the state's reinforcement of rigid gender identities constructs a specific kind of gender identity that alienates and excludes them from educational opportunities and that further lead to discrimination. sexual violence, and exploitation.

A text I've not read about the Muxe but quickly found is this one, researched by a former professor of mine, Dr. Alfredo Mirandé, titled, Behind the Mask: Gender Hybridity in a Zapotec Community (2019). There is also this wonderful movie on Netflix that embraces the complexities of Muxe identity titled. The Secret of the River (El Secreto del Rio) that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Scholars like Maria Lugones urge us in the modern era to consider gender from the perspective of how people that have been colonized, struggled historically not solely with the rigidity of gender categories introduced by Western European colonizers, but also how the introduction of race in the 1500s erased not solely the complex, situated understandings of gender throughout the Americas, but women themselves. 

With echoes of Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?," Indigenous notions of gender were subjected to a system of racial classification that justified slavery, conquest, and all manner or racial and sexual violence. We live today the vestiges of that horrible history to which patriarchy is obsessively invested.

Before we construe this as a battle between the sexes, let's understand that patriarchal violence is as harmful to men as it is to women, if not more so. Personally, I find this liberating and fully compatible with our most powerful religious and spiritual traditions that center notions of love and acceptance, particularly, of those deemed "other," in a shared quest for a world where all diversity is embraced simultaneously with the notion that all human beings—by virtue of being human—are intrinsically worthy of dignity and respect.

Do view the video. Thanks to Dr. Martha Lengeling for sharing.

Happy pride month!

-Angela Valenzuela

References

Lugones, M. (2007). Heterosexualism and the colonial/modern gender system. Hypatia, 22(1), 186-219.

Lugones, M. (2010). Toward a decolonial feminism. Hypatia, 25(4), 742-759.

Mirandé, A. (2017). Behind the mask: Gender hybridity in a Zapotec community. University of Arizona Press.

Robinson, M. (2020) Two-Spirit Identity in a Time of Gender Fluidity, Journal of Homosexuality, 67:12, 1675-1690.

Truth, S. (1851). Speech at women’s rights convention in Akron, Ohio. Available Means: An Anthology of Women’s Rhetoric (s), 144-146. [pdf]

History Is a Human Right, by Jesse Hagopian

Great piece by Jesse Hagopian. This quote connects well to the earlier piece on fascism that I just posted:

"We now live in an era defined by the rise of anti-truth and anti-history laws. The outlawing of an honest education represents a sharp turn toward authoritarianism in the United States — what historian Barbara Ransby has called proto-fascism — where now almost half of students are subjected to some form of banning of the truth about systemic racism and oppression.

The goal of these laws is to deny young people access to the lessons of history that could aid in building struggles against inequity."

Let's not reproduce the nonsensical statement that we live in a
"post-truth" world when it's really fascism that's at play.

History absolutely is a human right—and it's essential to the fight against book bans and for trans rights, Ethnic Studies, women and genders studies, and so on. and youth and community empowerment. Go to this link by the Zinn Education Project if you want to connect to the June 10th national Teach The Truth mobilization happening on Saturday.

Great job, Jesse!

-Angela Valenzuela

#TeachTheTruth

History Is a Human Right

From Stone Mountain to the Stonewall Inn, the #TeachTruth National Day of Action fights back against anti-history legislation. 

Jesse Hagopian  May 24, 2023 Word in Black

Pasadena MD at Banned Books Photo Booth, June 2022, Photograph courtesy of Lynda Davis, Zinn Education Project

With almost half of all students in the United States attending a school whose educators have been given educational gag orders to prohibit them from teaching honestly about the history of systemic racism, a grassroots network of educators, parents, and students across the country are organizing a #TeachTruth National Day of Action on June 10, 2023, to fight back.

Research from the CRT Forward Tracking Project out of the UCLA Law School reveals that measures attacking truthful teaching about race have been passed at either the federal, state, or local level in every state except Vermont — laws that impact “over 22 million public school children, almost half of the country’s 50.8 million public school students.”

The impact of these anti-history laws is difficult to overstate. In Iowa, high school teacher Greg Wickenkamp asked his superintendent, “Knowing that I should stick to the facts, and knowing that to say ‘slavery was wrong,’ that’s not a fact, that’s a stance, is it acceptable for me to teach students that slavery was wrong?” Instead of giving the only morally acceptable answer—”Yes! Slavery was wrong” — Noll replied: “We had people that were slaves within our state. We’re not supposed to say to [students], ‘How does that make you feel?’ We can’t — or, ‘Does that make you feel bad?’ We’re not to do that part of it.”

Wickenkamp described another attack on an Iowa educator that highlights that the worst attacks have been perpetrated against women of color: “I had a colleague who was a Latina teacher. She was pushed out because of hostile treatment. The strain and hostility she faced was much worse than anything I faced. I don’t know if she’ll return to teaching or not, but she was the first generation in her family to go to college — her case is markedly more challenging because of systemic factors.”

Experiences such as those in Iowa have been all too common around the country as attacks on truthful teaching about race, gender, and sexuality are being used as a campaign strategy for the Republican Party. Chris Guerrieri, a 22-year veteran teacher from Duval County, Florida, explained to local media, “An admin of the district recently told the media specialist that if you’re teaching slavery, make sure you’re teaching the positive sides of it as well.”

An admin of the district recently told the media specialist that if you’re teaching slavery, make sure you’re teaching the positive sides of it as well.

Chris Guerrieri, 22-year veteran teacher in Florida

Another educator — in Florida, where a bill was recently passed to make it a third-degree felony (carrying up to five years in jail and a $5,000 fine) to be caught with verboten books on race, gender, or sexuality — responded to a survey by the Zinn Education Project (ZEP), saying, “I’m terrified to say anything about enslavement because it might make students ‘uncomfortable.’ I also can’t recommend ANY books because a parent might not like it and then I could be charged with a felony.”

Another spoke to the way these laws are discouraging many educators from engaging in antiracist lessons: “It is creating a chilling effect on education. We continue to teach the truth, but with much less certainty what the consequences will be for doing so.” As of June 2022, The Washington Post had identified at least 160 educators who lost their job or resigned because they taught about race or LGBTQ+ issues — and there are undoubtedly scores more charged with violating anti-truth laws who have been pushed out of the classroom that have gone unreported.

Faced with this assault on the truth, educators around the country are turning the world into their classroom on June 10 and defying the billionaires funding the attack on antiracist education with public pedagogy at an array of creative events. In Lansing, Michigan, organizers are gathering at the corner where Earl Little — father of Malcolm X — was almost certainly lynched by being thrown in front of a streetcar. They’re walking to the hospital where he died to deliver banned children’s books to the kids in their care. Along the way, they plan to chalk the sidewalks with historical information about the Black Freedom Struggle.


In Boston, the Ethnic Studies Organizing Committee is meeting at the former headquarters of the city’s Black Panther Party chapter to help educate people about history that often gets left out of corporate textbooks.

In New York City, there are multiple gatherings, including one at the Stonewall Inn, where legendary Black transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson helped lead a rebellion against a police raid that became the inspiration for the annual Pride demonstrations around the country.

“At Stonewall, we will discuss what took place within those historic walls in 1969, and what action we can take to support LGBTQIA+ rights today,” organizers wrote. “We will share stories about LGBTQIA+ history that often go overlooked.”

In Stone Mountain, Georgia, the Stone Mountain Action Coalition, and other groups are organizing a rally at Stone Mountain Park, site of the largest Confederate monument in the world. The engraving on the side of Stone Mountain depicts Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson.

Organizers will read aloud the picture book, “That Flag” (by Tameka Fryer Brown, illustrated by Nikkolas Smith), a story about two young girls — one Black, one white — whose friendship is tested when the white girl’s family displays the Confederate flag and they learn the truth about its racist history.

It is creating a chilling effect on education. We continue to teach the truth, but with much less certainty what the consequences will be for doing so.

In Harmony, Mississippi, organizers are planning an event to highlight the rich contributions to the Black Freedom Struggle that people from their town have made. During the summer of 1964, members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee organized a Freedom School site in the Harmony community.

The Teach Truth Day of Action events respond to right-wing attacks that have deep roots. During the late 1940s and 50s, the second Red Scare (characterized by the attacks led by Sen. Joseph McCarthy and others on anyone they wanted to discredit by labeling them communists) was accompanied by the Lavender Scare — the repression of LGBTQ+ people and their mass firing from government service. The combination of the Red Scare and the Lavender Scare led to the firing of thousands of teachers around the country.

Just as the Red Scare and Lavender Scare were used to purge teachers and prohibit discussion of social and racial justice in school, the attacks on what history deniers have labeled “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” are used today to fire educators and exclude discussions about structural racism, sexism, transphobia, and homophobia.

We now live in an era defined by the rise of anti-truth and anti-history laws. The outlawing of an honest education represents a sharp turn toward authoritarianism in the United States — what historian Barbara Ransby has called proto-fascism — where now almost half of students are subjected to some form of banning of the truth about systemic racism and oppression.

The goal of these laws is to deny young people access to the lessons of history that could aid in building struggles against inequity.

The goal of these laws is to deny young people access to the lessons of history that could aid in building struggles against inequity.

History is a human right. The struggle for social justice is many things. However, especially in this era, it must include the recognition of the right to learn honest history — particularly about social movements that have challenged injustice. Without truthful accounts of history and the truthful transmission of that history to the next generations, young people are robbed of the first condition of a democratic society — access to the knowledge needed to shape the future.

You, too, can join the #TeachTruth National Day of Action on June 10. Find an event near you. Or, organize your own. An increasing number of communities refuse to repeat the scapegoating and paranoia of the McCarthy era; we won’t let them use race, gender, and sexuality to divide and conquer us.

Tyler Walker, a high school language arts teacher from Austin, Texas, drove this point home when he signed the Zinn Education Project’s “Pledge to Teach the Truth” and wrote “Students need to know the wonderful stories of the brave folks that fought against systems of oppression and sparked hope and solidarity for the creation of a freer, kinder world.”

Get Word In Black directly in your inbox. Subscribe here today

Jesse Hagopian is a high school teacher in Seattle, an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine, an organizer with Black Lives Matter at School, and serves on the leadership team of the Zinn Education Project. Jesse is the author of the forthcoming book from Haymarket Books, Teach Truth: The Attack on Critical Race Theory and the Struggle for Antiracist Education, and the co-editor of the books, Teaching for Black Lives, Black Lives Matter at School, and Teachers Unions and Social Justice. You can connect with Jesse on Twitter, @jessedhagopian, or IG, @jessehagopian.

What is Fascism? It's "Government by the Few and For the Few" and this is Deeply Concerning

A day doesn't seem go by that I don't think of creeping fascism in the U.S. Glad to see renowned scholar Dr. Heather Cox Richardson giving this some ink—in historical perspective.

I'm disgusted, for example, at the Texas Legislature's multiple power grabs, most notably, the one aimed at Harris County. The lege is basically giving control over elections to a single Republican state official that involves completely eliminating the Elections Administrator office. Read Texas Republicans single out one blue county as they push election bills that captures this struggle over voting in the last regular legislative session, illuminating well why reigning in Harris County is important to Texas Republicans.

Relatedly, I just got a message from Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo who is raising funds to fight this anti-democratic attack that she refers to as a "murder-suicide plot against us ALL." Chip in, if you can, at linahidalgo.co/20230608?t=TNFJq to help in the struggle.

There is a glimmer of hope from today's SCOTUS ruling that suggests the Voting Rights Act still lives (read: Supreme Court: Alabama’s voting maps unfair to Black residents). It was a 5-4 decision where Chief Justices John Roberts Jr. and Brett Kavanaugh joined with the court's 3 liberals, namely, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor. 

In light of today's court ruling, I'm hoping that they're noticing that not supporting minorities' voting rights is either fascist, or paves the way for it. Regardless, this is indeed a much-welcomed surprise.

-Angela Valenzuela

Letters from an American

May 29, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON MAY 30

Beginning in 1943, the War Department published a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II. Titled Army Talks, the series was designed “to help [the personnel] become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.”

On March 24, 1945, the topic for the week was “FASCISM!” 

“You are away from home, separated from your families, no longer at a civilian job or at school and many of you are risking your very lives,” the pamphlet explained, “because of a thing called fascism.” But, the publication asked, what is fascism? “Fascism is not the easiest thing to identify and analyze,” it said, “nor, once in power, is it easy to destroy. It is important for our future and that of the world that as many of us as possible understand the causes and practices of fascism, in order to combat it.”

Fascism, the U.S. government document explained, “is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state.” “The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.” 

“The basic principles of democracy stand in the way of their desires; hence—democracy must go! Anyone who is not a member of their inner gang has to do what he’s told. They permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law.” “Fascism treats women as mere breeders. ‘Children, kitchen, and the church,’ was the Nazi slogan for women,” the pamphlet said. 

Fascists “make their own rules and change them when they choose…. They maintain themselves in power by use of force combined with propaganda based on primitive ideas of ‘blood’ and ‘race,’ by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security. The propaganda glorifies war and insists it is smart and ‘realistic’ to be pitiless and violent.” 

Fascists understood that “the fundamental principle of democracy—faith in the common sense of the common people—was the direct opposite of the fascist principle of rule by the elite few,” it explained, “[s]o they fought democracy…. They played political, religious, social, and economic groups against each other and seized power while these groups struggled.” 

Americans should not be fooled into thinking that fascism could not come to America, the pamphlet warned; after all, “[w]e once laughed Hitler off as a harmless little clown with a funny mustache.” And indeed, the U.S. had experienced “sorry instances of mob sadism, lynchings, vigilantism, terror, and suppression of civil liberties. We have had our hooded gangs, Black Legions, Silver Shirts, and racial and religious bigots. All of them, in the name of Americanism, have used undemocratic methods and doctrines which…can be properly identified as ‘fascist.’”

The War Department thought it was important for Americans to understand the tactics fascists would use to take power in the United States. They would try to gain power “under the guise of ‘super-patriotism’ and ‘super-Americanism.’” And they would use three techniques: 

First, they would pit religious, racial, and economic groups against one another to break down national unity. Part of that effort to divide and conquer would be a “well-planned ‘hate campaign’ against minority races, religions, and other groups.”

Second, they would deny any need for international cooperation, because that would fly in the face of their insistence that their supporters were better than everyone else. “In place of international cooperation, the fascists seek to substitute a perverted sort of ultra-nationalism which tells their people that they are the only people in the world who count. With this goes hatred and suspicion toward the people of all other nations.” 

Third, fascists would insist that “the world has but two choices—either fascism or communism, and they label as ‘communists’ everyone who refuses to support them.”

It is “vitally important” to learn to spot native fascists, the government said, “even though they adopt names and slogans with popular appeal, drape themselves with the American flag, and attempt to carry out their program in the name of the democracy they are trying to destroy.” 

The only way to stop the rise of fascism in the United States, the document said, “is by making our democracy work and by actively cooperating to preserve world peace and security.” In the midst of the insecurity of the modern world, the hatred at the root of fascism “fulfills a triple mission.” By dividing people, it weakens democracy. “By getting men to hate rather than to think,” it prevents them “from seeking the real cause and a democratic solution to the problem.” By falsely promising prosperity, it lures people to embrace its security.

“Fascism thrives on indifference and ignorance,” it warned. Freedom requires “being alert and on guard against the infringement not only of our own freedom but the freedom of every American. If we permit discrimination, prejudice, or hate to rob anyone of his democratic rights, our own freedom and all democracy is threatened.” And if “we want to make certain that fascism does not come to America, we must make certain that it does not thrive anywhere in the world.” 

Seventy-eight years after the publication of “FASCISM!” with its program for recognizing that political system and stopping it from taking over the United States, President Joe Biden today at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, honored those who gave their lives fighting to preserve democracy. “On this day, we come together again to reflect, to remember, but above all, to recommit to the future our fallen heroes fought for, …a future grounded in freedom, democracy, equality, tolerance, opportunity, and…justice.”

“[T]he truest memorial to their lives,” the president said, is to act “every day to ensure that our democracy endures, our Constitution endures, and the soul of our nation and our decency endures.”

—

Notes:

https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=armytalks

War Department, “Army Talk 64: FASCISM!” March 24, 1945, at https://archive.org/details/ArmyTalkOrientationFactSheet64-Fascism/mode/2up

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/05/29/remarks-by-president-biden-at-the-155th-national-memorial-day-observance/

https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1663379851716198400

"The Rise of Latino White Supremacy," At a time of increased racial violence, Latinos are potential perpetrators and potential victims," by Geraldo Cadava

Here goes again. Another piece on Latino White Supremacy that maps on well to my earlier post titled,The allure of fascism: why do minorities join the far right? by Edwin Rios, May 22, 2023, but authored this time by Geraldo Cadava with the New Yorker. One thing for sure, our community is highly armed. I wonder how many of these violent perpetrators themselves have a background in the military? How many of them have a vexed relationship to schools and education? To what extent are they getting targeted by right-wing organizations? There are more questions to ask.

The analysis points to assimilation into a white supremacist vision of the world. Nature hates a vacuum. If these individuals aren't learning about their own heritage and how their ancestors sought the path of family, hard work, sacrifice, and education, the outcome would be different. Sadly, these people have taken the path of hate and are woefully lost and dangerous. 

As Arnold Schwarzenegger eloquently says, these folks are "losers" for taking the path of hate, Do listen to Schwarzenegger's "Powerful Message for Those Who Have Gone Down a Path of Hate [Youtube Video]."

Every concerned white and Latina/o parent or guardian should share this with their boys and young men. Young women, too.

-Angela Valenzuela

The Rise of Latino White Supremacy

At a time of increased racial violence, Latinos are potential perpetrators and potential victims.

By Geraldo Cadava | The New Yorker | May 30, 2023

Two people stand at a makeshift memorial for the eight people who were fatally shot at a mall in Allen, Texas, in early May.Photograph by Joe Raedle / Getty 

May 6th, a thirty-three-year-old Mexican American man named Mauricio Garcia shot and killed eight people at an outlet mall in Allen, Texas. Then he was shot and killed by an off-duty police officer. Because of the white-supremacist views the shooter expressed in a diary and online, many were shocked that he was Latino. In fact, Latino white supremacy isn’t an oxymoron, and carrying out a premeditated mass shooting in the United States is one of the more American things a Latino could do. We’re only five months into 2023, and in that time seventeen thousand people have been killed by guns in this country. Meanwhile, there are more than sixty million Latinos in the United States, and, motivated by extremism or a sense of fear, they’ve bought a lot of guns in the past few years.

In his 2004 book, “Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity,” the late political scientist Samuel P. Huntington fretted over how Mexican immigration was changing the “Anglo-Protestant mainstream culture” of the United States. He worried that Mexican immigrants weren’t assimilating as earlier European immigrants had done. “The criteria that can be used to gauge assimilation of an individual, a group, or a generation include language, education, occupation and income, citizenship, intermarriage and identity,” he wrote. Huntington believed that the descendants of Mexican immigrants weren’t hitting these markers, but he was wrong. They assimilated like others did. They learned English, intermarried, became loyal Americans, and adopted American politics, including its most extreme and violent forms.

We don’t know a lot about Garcia, but the diary he kept in the years leading up to the shooting made clear his growing persuasion by white-power ideology. He wrote about the superiority of non-Latino white people and claimed they would lose their edge if they continued to let nonwhite immigrants into the country. Reports on Garcia’s self-presentation have focussed on his misogyny, Nazi tattoos, racist statements against pretty much every group, and the patch on his vest that read “RWDS.” The patch, which stands for Right-Wing Death Squad and refers to anti-Communist and anti-Indigenous paramilitary groups in Central and South America during the nineteen-seventies and eighties, has become popular among right-wing groups in the United States today, particularly the ultranationalist Proud Boys.

But Garcia continued to see himself as Latino, which he never equated with whiteness, and at moments he manifested pride in his nonwhite Latino identity. It is a confusing set of ideas that nevertheless has a long history among Latinos, in part because the category “Latino” itself has been fiercely contested—with some arguing, for example, that it should be classified as a race rather than an ethnicity. A New York Times Op-Ed by the historian Cecilia Márquez focussed on the lineage of Latino white supremacists before Mauricio Garcia, including Pete Garcia, a Mexican American segregationist in Dallas in the nineteen-fifties; George Zimmerman, who killed Trayvon Martin, in Florida, in 2012; Alex Michael Ramos, who beat a Black protester at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville; Enrique Tarrio, the Proud Boys leader recently convicted of seditious conspiracy; and Nick Fuentes, a white-nationalist live streamer. Most of these Latinos said they were nonwhite, even though the protests they joined, the groups they belonged to, and the violence they committed defended whiteness and white-power ideology.

Scholars and journalists have described these Latino white supremacists in different ways. Some Latinos, they’ve argued, are also afflicted by “aspirational whiteness,” or the desire to be white in order to fit into the racial and capitalist order of the United States, to avoid the discrimination that Black Americans experience, or to justify the pursuit of individual wealth and belonging. They ascribe to “multiracial whiteness,” which the political scientist Cristina Beltrán defines as an identity that people from all racial backgrounds can participate in. It is rooted, she writes, “in a discriminatory world view in which feelings of freedom and belonging are produced through the persecution and dehumanization of others.” Such concepts help to explain how, in a country with rising racial violence, Latinos can be both potential perpetrators and potential victims.

Many Latinos, like other Americans, have responded to their sense of victimhood by buying weapons. Latinos armed themselves after the August, 2019, massacre by a white-power shooter at a Walmart in El Paso, which left twenty-three people dead, almost all of them Latino. As the coronavirus pandemic spread across the country, Latinos reported fears of violent crimes; this was again followed by a spike in gun purchases by Latinos. A survey conducted by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the trade association for the firearms industry, found that Latinos purchased guns at a forty-nine-per-cent higher rate in 2020 than in 2019. It also found that forty per cent of gun retailers reported an increase in sales to Latinos in 2021. Last year, another Latino shooter used an AR-15 he bought himself for his eighteenth birthday to kill twenty-one people and injure seventeen others at Robb Elementary School, in Uvalde, Texas.

According to Harel Shapira, a sociologist at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of a forthcoming book on American gun culture which focusses on Texas, the fact that gun ownership in the United States has become increasingly diverse is “something that people love to talk about, especially conservative groups like the N.R.A. and gun organizations. No one throws out the flag of diversity more than them.” Shapira thinks that, when the N.R.A. says it cares about diversity, “they are being at once cynical and genuine. They are being cynical when they express concern only in the context of supporting gun rights, but not, for example, affirmative action or other policies that benefit nonwhite Americans. They are being genuine in so far as they truly believe that the best way for minority populations to obtain equality is by being armed.”

In Texas alone, there have been twenty-one mass shootings so far this year. They’ve left thirty-four people dead and another eighty-two injured. (I had to update these numbers three times while writing this essay.) In at least four of them, the shooters were Latino. We live in a country where everyone from university deans to corporate executives extolls the virtues of assimilation and diversity, but the growing diversity of gun owners who inflict mass death should cause us to rethink inclusion’s underlying assumptions. So, too, should Latino white-supremacist thinking—another marker of Latino assimilation at a time when white-power ideology is spreading rapidly at home and abroad. Expressing surprise or disbelief at the fact that Latino white-supremacist shooters exist marks them as outsiders, as many Latinos before them have been marked. But it should be the shootings that we see as un-American, not the shooters themselves. ?