How Culture Wars Have Derailed School Board Meetings Across the Country

[@NotANameist]

We’ve got to allow parents and community members to comment on/protest against school board policies, whether those comments or protests are “conservative” or not. We cannot have a situation where school boards can shut you out just because they deem your perspective “conservative.”

[@HebaruSan]

"eleven people declared they are the new school board" "he had pushed this woman into a parked car" "people were banging on windows" "a bullet hole through [a retired teacher's] living room window" "a woman who was pushed in the parking lot" (not clear if this is the same as above) "someone who's eventually charged with assault" "librarians being attacked for simply giving books to students that a group doesn't agree with" "demands to censor books" "librarians facing harassment" "librarians who are being targeted with threats and stimatization, demands that they leave the community" "organized political activity targeting categories of books for censorship" "encouraging [a school board president] to sleep with one eye open" "to intimidate, threaten, and coerce school board members"

[@freedomishavingachoice3020]

Thank you. This deserves a listen if you have a kid in public schools in the USA, I learned a lot about my own rights in this video. Thank you ProPublica for making it available to everyone. EDIT I have a question. If the anti choice movement is a registered hate group with the Southern Poverty Law Center, shouldn't schools be protected from content those groups create?

[@ruaraidh74]

No because freedom of speech exists and the Southern Poverty Law Center is a wackjob partisan hate group. They list Ayaan Hirsi Ali, one of the most heroic advocates for the rights of Muslim women as an "anti-muslim extremist". SPLC was caught admitting that they brand people as hate groups because they want to destroy them. Look up Mark Potok admitting on video that this is the entire point of the group.

[@sympathy4thedevil88]

The southern policy law center is not an objective organization, has no checks to what is solely their option and holds no accountability to the public as they are a private entity.

[@chickenfishhybrid44]

Do you think the SPLC has any legal authority?

[@freedomishavingachoice3020]

@@chickenfishhybrid44 I mean, they have the authority to ask anyone in any other kind of hate group to leave. I don't see "white hoods" allowed to hate there. Why is one hate group allowed, but not the other?

[@NotANameist]

@1:07: what if there is youth representation on the school board but it disagrees with the panelists? Not all youth believe exactly the same things.

[@NotANameist]

Kevin Goldberg: I’m gonna be slightly contrarian here Also Kevin:

[@Findecommie]

1:17:30 What about that child's right to autonomy and a comprehensive education? What about their peers they might harm in their enforced ignorance? Part of why there's such a crisis of scientific illiteracy in the US is that we're now two generations into the education deregulation that the far right evangelical movement won in the 80s, we're already seeing why allowing parents to teach demonstrably counterfactual information based on their beliefs instead of having even the most basic standards is a bad idea. Free speech is good, but when you live in a country where a literal Nazi homeschool network isn't breaking the law you've gone too far. You can't elevate free speech so far above any other human right people have and expect a functional society and you can't treat children as possessions and expect a free society