This guy tried to start a new business in San Francisco, but government bureaucracy forced him to abandon his plans after he had already spent $200,000
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ice-cream-owner-tried-failed-110001498.html
The ice cream owner who tried, failed – and now owes $200,000
By Gene Marks
May 30, 2021
He tried, and he failed. But the worst part is he never got a chance to even start. And now he’s got a $200,000 debt to pay off.
That’s the story of Jason Yu, a 30-year-old father of two who had the audacity to attempt to open up an ice cream shop in San Francisco’s Mission District. Unfortunately, the city got in his way.
As reported by San Francisco Chronicle, Yu started his project – a shop that sold green-tea-flavored ice cream – in late 2018, and ultimately found a location in mid-2019 where he got to work. After committing to a lease ($7,300 a month – this is San Francisco, remember?) he hired an architect to draw up plans for the space, which proposed no structural changes or modifications.
Then the city stepped in.
After submitting plans to the department of building and inspection in November 2019, which required him to notify his neighbors, one of said neighbors – a competing ice cream shop no less – contested the idea and Yu was forced to wait until the following June before he could plead his case in front the city’s planning commission (more legal fees), who ultimately gave him the go-ahead.
So we’re ready to open, right? Wrong.
As the Chronicle explains: “Yu won approval, but then got stuck in the city’s never-ending web of securing permits. The Department of Building Inspection’s online permit tracker shows Yu faced 15 hurdles to secure his permits including getting the sign-off from a host of departments. The last to weigh in was the Department of Public Health, which said in December its review was complete, but that Yu owed more money in permit fees before the department could give the OK.”
Yu had spent a boatload – about $200,000 – by this point and still had nothing to show for it. It was then that he decided to cut his losses and abandon the idea. “This [the ice cream shop] became a nightmare project,” Yu said.
The problem facing small business owners like Yu is that, in San Francisco, existing businesses and residents are allowed to contest the establishment of new businesses or construction projects in their neighborhoods. Many – not surprisingly – have pushed these rights to their extreme because there’s little downside to filing even frivolous claims. So, as Mike Chen reports in The Frisc, an existing falafel shop can tie up a would-be competitor for months or neighbors can reject each other’s remodeling plans for the smallest of reasons.
“While community and neighborhood input is often positive, what we have here is overkill,” Chen writes. “The labyrinthine permitting and ‘Discretionary Review’ process (where appeals courts can decide what cases to hear) contribute to commercial storefront vacancies and to our housing crisis.” Chen says he had observed regulatory processes like discretionary reviews and environmental appeals “for years”.
The good news is that San Francisco’s political leaders seem to be waking up to the fact that over-regulation is killing commerce.
Yu’s story, which went viral last month (and spurred an online campaign against the competing ice cream shop owner) has drawn national attention to San Francisco’s burdensome process for starting up a small business. In late 2020, the city passed legislation – called Prop H – to help streamline the process for starting a new business but there have been few takers so far. According to Knight, as of the end of last month only 50 people have expressed interest and only two new businesses have been approved.
Thanks to Covid – and a good broadband connection – many workers and entrepreneurs are already moving out of big towns and enjoying the quality of life found in more peaceful surroundings where costs are lower and safe streets are a given. For cities like San Francisco to counter this growing trend, rules have to be relaxed and more businesses should be allowed to move quickly and easily open. Forcing a would-be owner of an ice cream shop of all things to spend $200,000 and then abandon the venture because of red tape is not a recipe for future economic growth.
Villanova University sociology professor Glenn Bracey encourages adoption of Critical Race Theory due to its roots in Marxism
Thanks to Gateway Pundit for this article on it.
The video below shows Villanova University sociology professor Glenn Bracey saying the following:
“The Marxist foundation of Critical Race Theory is at base a spiritual concern. If you read Marx you know that he was concerned about alienation. Specifically, alienation of the species being. That element of humanity that provides creativity that is unique to the individual – that really gives us – it is what defines humans from animals in that case. Marx was concerned that our modern systems were flattening that humanity and alienating us from the creative endeavors that we were – Christians would say – we were designed to emulate and to practice. So the core question for Critical Race Theory is one of releasing people – especially people of color, especially Black people – from the oppressive systems that deny us access to our species being, including racism. It’s Marxism, my point being Critical Race Theory’s Marxism is fundamentally a spiritual concern.”
https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1398644441129365504
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PS5tLQcYRbU
https://www.bitchute.com/video/CuMe28VYzy93/
Voting With Their Feet Against Socialism
Voting With Their Feet Against Socialism
By Humberto Fontova
May 29, 2021
“2 Dead, 10 Missing after boat carrying Cuban migrants overturns near key West.” (CBS Miami, 5/27)
“Three Cubans survived for 33 days on deserted island eating coconuts and rats. … US Coast Guard officials said the trio from Cuba told them their boat had capsized in rough waters and they were able to swim to Anguilla Cay, where they spent 33 days before they were spotted and rescued.” (Daily Telegraph 2/21.)
“Cuban baseball star César Prieto defects to U.S.– Cuban baseball player César Prieto, a highly touted 22-year-old infielder, ditched the Cuban national team Wednesday and defected to the United States…The player hopped in a car outside the team hotel almost immediately after their bus arrived. (Yahoo Sports, 5/27.)
Any cursory review of recent news will turn up numerous headlines like the ones above. And yet:
“People enjoy life in Cuba like in few other places. They’re safe, literate and healthy!” (Time magazine in their World’s Greatest Places Issue, March, 2015.)
And back in 2011 Newsweek magazine hailed Cuba among “The Best Countries in the World,” in terms of quality of life. “Cuba outdoes its fellow middle-income countries in quality of life,” explained the 1993 “National Magazine Award for General Excellence” winner.
“Fidel Castro first and foremost is and always has been a committed egalitarian. He wanted a system that provided the basic needs to all Cuba has superb systems of health care and universal education…We greeted each other as old friends.” (Former President of the United States and official “Elder Statesman” of the Democrat Party.)
“A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in… And how many want out,” famously quipped Tony Blair. Well, prior to the Castro brothers’ and Che Guevara’s Stalinist coup in 1959, Cuba took in more immigrants (primarily from Europe) as a percentage of population than did the U.S., including the Ellis Island years. In the 1950s, when Cubans were perfectly free to emigrate with all their property and U.S. visas were issued to them for the asking, fewer Cubans lived in the U.S. than Americans lived in Cuba.
You’d never guess this from the Fake News media, Hollywood, or your professors, but in 1953 more Cubans vacationed in the U.S. (and voluntarily returned to Cuba) than Americans in Cuba. Yes, for pre-Castro Cubans the U.S. was a “tourist playground.”
“What?” you say. But you’ve always heard that it was the other way around? That Cuba was a tourist playground for Americans? Indeed it was—but the tourist traffic went both ways, as befit a nation described by a 1957 UNESCO report thusly: “One feature of the Cuban social structure is a large middle class. So check it out here–and please click links for thorough documentation.
Point is, during the 1950s and based in Florida, Sheriff Joe Arpaio would have been lonelier than the Maytag repairman.
Given their record, a few such statements are probably out there, but I never heard a liberal crowing about the superb quality of life in East Germany, with “its free healthcare, education…blah, blah.” And yet over ten times as many people (and counting) have died attempting to flee Communist Cuba (which liberals routinely praise) than died trying to flee Communist East Germany.
In fact, when liberals hail the Castros and Che Guevara’s communism as somehow “different” from typical Iron Curtain communism they have a point:
It’s WORSE!
Between two and three hundred people died trying to breach the Berlin Wall. Between twenty five and forty thousand people (men, women, and children, entire families at a time) have died trying to escape Castro and Che Guevara’s Cuba, a nation that prior to Castroism was inundated with more immigrants (mostly from Europe) per-capita than was the U.S., including the Ellis Island years.
In 1992 former East German dictator Erich Honecker was tried (to no avail) for the deaths of 192 Germans killed while attempting to cross the Berlin wall. Some human rights groups estimate that actually three hundred people (out of an average East German population over the decades of 18 million) died trying to breach the Berlin Wall or otherwise escape East Germany.
After the thousands of many machine-gun blasts from their Frontier “Guards,” (the Berlin Wall itself was officially titled the “Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart”) kept disturbing Castro and Che’s coastal subjects, the Castro brothers hit upon the scheme of having the Soviet helicopters flown by their “Guards” hover over the escaping freedom-seekers, often consisting of entire families—but to hold-off on shooting.
Instead of machine-gunning the families to death as years of tradition called for, they switched to dropping sandbags onto the rickety rafts and tiny boats to demolish and sink them. Then the Tiger Sharks and Hammerheads could do the Castroites’ deputy-work. Screams, groans and gurgles, after all, don’t carry nearly as far as machine-gun blasts.
“The best revolutionary German man I’ve ever known was Erich Honecker,” tweeted Fidel Castro on June 1th 2012 commemorating the 18th anniversary of the East German Stalinist’s death. “I maintain feelings of profound solidarity with Honecker.”
“What a chump!” Castro was probably thinking. “A measly 192?”
“In one week during 1962 we counted over 400 firing squad blasts from the execution yard below our cells,” recalled former Cuban political prisoner and freedom-fighter Roberto Martin Perez to this writer.
“This is the most savage kind of behavior I’ve ever heard of,” said Robert Gelbard, deputy assistant secretary of state for Latin America during the Clinton administration. “This is even worse than what happened at the Berlin Wall!” Gelbard had watched desperate Cubans trying to swim to our Guantanamo Base when machine-guns opened up and the water around them frothed in white, then red.
The corpses were retrieved by gallant Cuban Frontier “Guards” in a boat using the same type of gaffing hooks the lucky contestants in the Castro-regime-sponsored “Hemingway Fishing Festival” were using in nearby waters to yank thrashing Tuna and Marlin aboard their Cuba-registered yachts.
In September 2011 Spanish medical examiners found that an airline stowaway from Cuba named Adonis G.B. had his throat crushed. He probably died upon takeoff, meaning he probably died more quickly and painlessly than the tens of thousands of others who perished escaping Cuba’s free and fabulous healthcare.
It was a different story for the tens of thousands of dead Cuban rafters. Most of these desperate rafters probably died like captives of the Apaches, staked in the sun and dying slowly of sunburn and thirst. Others perished gasping and choking after their arms and legs finally gave out and they gulped that last lungful of seawater, much like the crew in The Perfect Storm. Still others were eaten alive — drawn and quartered by the serrated teeth of Hammerheads and Tiger sharks much like Captain Quint in Jaws. Perhaps these last perished the most mercifully. As we’ve all seen on the Discovery Channel, sharks don’t dally at a meal.
“In space no one can hear you scream,” says the ad for the original Alien. Same for the middle of the Florida straits — except, of course, for your raft-mates. While clinging to the disintegrating raft, while watching the fins rushing in and water frothing in white — then red — they hear the screams all too clearly.
All during the decades coinciding with Castro’s rule, the Coast Guard has documented hundreds of such stories. Were the cause of these horrors more politically-correct we’d have no end of books, movies, documentaries, TV interviews, Survival-Story specials, etc.. We’d never hear the end of it. Alas, the agents of this Caribbean holocaust consist of the Left’s premier pin-up boys.
In April 2020, the Washington Post said the COVID-19 virus may have been released from a lab in Wuhan, China
The Chinese “wet market” didn’t sell bats.
But a nearby lab was doing research on bats and coronavirus.
But anyone from the Chinese lab who talks about it ends up “disappearing.”
Before the outbreak, the U.S. had said the lab wasn’t following proper safety procedures.
And I got all of that info from this Washington Post article.
It’s behind a paywall, but you can read it for free at this link to a google cache. I’m only posting what I think are the most important parts. You can read the entire thing for free at this link:
State Department cables warned of safety issues at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses
April 14, 2020
Two years before the novel coronavirus pandemic upended the world, U.S. Embassy officials visited a Chinese research facility in the city of Wuhan several times and sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats. The cables have fueled discussions inside the U.S. government about whether this or another Wuhan lab was the source of the virus — even though conclusive proof has yet to emerge.
In January 2018, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing took the unusual step of repeatedly sending U.S. science diplomats to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)…
What the U.S. officials learned during their visits concerned them so much that they dispatched two diplomatic cables categorized as Sensitive But Unclassified back to Washington. The cables warned about safety and management weaknesses at the WIV lab and proposed more attention and help. The first cable, which I obtained, also warns that the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.
“During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory,” states the Jan. 19, 2018, cable…
… its research on bat coronaviruses was important but also dangerous…
… there is no evidence that the virus now plaguing the world was engineered; scientists largely agree it came from animals. But that is not the same as saying it didn’t come from the lab, which spent years testing bat coronaviruses in animals…
… the market didn’t sell bats…
Several of the doctors and journalists who reported on the spread early on have disappeared…
We don’t know whether the novel coronavirus originated in the Wuhan lab, but the cable pointed to the danger there and increases the impetus to find out, he said.
“I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory. I think it’s a legitimate question that needs to be investigated and answered,” he said. “To understand exactly how this originated is critical knowledge for preventing this from happening in the future.”
Video: Dr. Rand Paul accuses Dr. Anthony Fauci of perjury
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRXRFZ640MM
YouTuber Shawn Woods: Humane Mouse Trap In Action – Full Review With Real Mice & Motion Cameras
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrlxhPvAHBk
Michelle Fleming Morris and Valerie Lindsey chose to stand in the street in front of oncoming traffic. It’s their own fault they got hit by a car.
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
May 25, 2021
This new video is from Elizabeth City, North Carolina. It shows some idiots standing in the street in front of oncoming traffic. A car comes by and stops. Then the car starts going – very, very slowly. Two of the protestors deliberately allow themselves to get hit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDISoPWVOsk
NBC News wrote of this:
A white driver was arrested after she was accused of striking two Black women with her car during a peaceful protest over the death of Andrew Brown Jr., North Carolina authorities said Tuesday.
Lisa Michelle O’Quinn, 41, was charged with two counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill by use of a motor vehicle, one count of careless and reckless conduct and one count of unsafe movement, Elizabeth City Police said in a news release. Investigators said they were still determining if the incident was a hate crime.
The incident occurred about 6:45 p.m. ET Monday at the intersection of Ehringhaus Street and Griffin Street in the city, police said. In a video posted on Twitter, a white car could be seen hitting two protesters, causing one to fall to the ground.
The two victims were identified as Michelle Fleming Morris and Valerie Lindsey, both 42-year-old Black women. They were treated for injuries that were not life-threatening and later released from a hospital.
The protestors are not “victims.”
On the contrary – they are perpetrators.
Michelle Fleming Morris and Valerie Lindsey chose to stand in the street in front of oncoming traffic. It’s their own fault they got hit by a car.
The driver stopped. When the driver started up again, she was going very, very slowly.
There’s no way that the driver was “intending to kill” the protestors. If that had been her intent, she would not have stopped. And she would not have driven very, very slowly when she did start up again. On the contrary, if the driver had intended to kill the protestors, she would have sped up and driven as quickly as possible.
And there’s no way that this is a “hate crime.” The driver did not choose the protestors. On the contrary, it was the other way around – the protestors chose to stand in the street in front of the driver.
Maybe the reason the driver did what she did is because she didn’t want to end up like this driver from Portland, Oregon. Instead of driving through the protestors, this guy stopped his car. Then the protestors assaulted him, which gave him a partially collapsed left lung, two fractured lower vertebrates, five broken ribs, a broken collarbone, and head trauma. If he hadn’t stopped his car, the protestors wouldn’t have done that to him:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zmb_LeFg4SM
Judge orders audit of paper ballots in Fulton County, Georgia. Video proves election officials lied when they told the mainstream media they “stopped” counting votes for the night because of a “water leak.”
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
May 21, 2021
On election night, when the mainstream media reported that Fulton County, Georgia, had “stopped” counting votes for the night because of a “water leak,” I immediately suspected that they were cheating.
A few days later, video was released, which showed the Republican poll watchers, news reporters, and other people leaving. However, a few election workers stayed behind, and continued counting paper ballots. And there is no visible water leak in the video. Ever since I first saw that video, this has always been what I consider to be the #1 biggest example of proof of cheating in the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.
To this very day, other than cheating, no one has explained why election workers lied to the mainstream media about “stopping” the counting for the night because of a “water leak.”
CBS News, November 3, 2020: “Pipe burst in Georgia delays vote counting”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C25DAAHZdEw
https://www.bitchute.com/video/MkqNtENpjyii/
ABC News, November 3, 2020: “The election department sent the ballot counters at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta home at 10:30 p.m., Regina Waller, the Fulton County public affairs manager for elections, tells ABC News.”
https://twitter.com/abcpolitics/status/1323846118208376834
This video shows Republican poll watchers, news reporters, and other people leaving. However, a few election workers stay behind and continue counting votes. And there is no visible water leak in the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keANzinHWUA
https://www.bitchute.com/video/rPqQKvuFk473/
CNN, May 21, 2021: “Another ballot audit set to move ahead in Fulton County, Georgia, as judge rules absentee ballots can be unsealed”
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/21/politics/georgia-ballot-audit-fulton-county/index.html
The ABC News affiliate from Scranton, PA, says that in Luzerne County, PA, a “coding error” by Dominion affects Republican ballots, but not Democratic ones
Voting machine typo causing concern for some Luzerne County voters
Several precincts are reporting issues with Republican ballots.
By Chelsea Strub
May 18, 2021
LUZERNE COUNTY, Pa. — Primary Election Day is off to a rocky start in Luzerne County. What election officials are calling a “typo” is making Republican voters uneasy.
Some voting locations are reporting that when Republicans go up to the machine to vote, an introduction screen says “Official Democratic Ballot.”
The judge of elections at a polling place in Kingston Township said he paused voting Tuesday morning until this was addressed. He said election officials in Wilkes-Barre told him this is a typo and when voters go to the next screen, the republican ballot loads. They also cross-checked it with an emergency Republican paper ballot to be sure.
When registered Republicans went to vote, after poll workers pulled up their ballots, the welcome screen said, “Official Democratic Ballot.” This made Republican voters uneasy, but elections officials tell us it had nothing to do with the legitimacy of the votes. They call it a coding error.
Republican voters all over the county saw this screen before voting.
“There was considerable confusion. They refer to it as miscoding. It’s hard to imagine how something like that slips by people. It was explained well the person that came to the polling place,” said Dudley Snyder from Kingston.
Luzerne County election officials say it was a coding error with the vendor Dominion Voting Systems that led to the misprint on the introductory voting screen, but they say that is where the error ended.
“We want to assure everybody that what happens is when you are a registered Republican, we have a specific code for that ballot. And once we punch that code in, even though the header says something like, ‘Democratic ballot.’ it’s actually for the races that are in the Republican party,” said Luzerne County Director of Election Bob Morgan.
Morgan says Republican votes on the machines will be counted correctly as the ballots print out with proper Republican voter information. Voters confirmed this to Newswatch 16.
“Came out of the machine, on the paper was marked ‘Republican.’ All of the candidates that I voted for the word were Republican. If that doesn’t get counted correctly, it’s beyond the scope of any of us to do anything about it,” Dudley said.
Voters who do not want to vote at the machines are given the option to vote by provisional ballot at the polls, but it still leaves some voters in Luzerne County feeling uneasy.
“If a coding error can get the name wrong name at the top, how do you know there aren’t coding errors that can screw up the cast, the counting of the ballots themselves?” Dudley asked. “It’s going to take a long time; I think before anybody gets any degree of comfort with it anymore.”
The error concerned Republican party leaders in the county.
“I went in to vote myself, and it happened to me also, so we have a great concern as a Republican Party to instill that the integrity of the election process,” said Justin Behrens, chair of the Luzerne County Republican Party.
Behrens said he called legal counsel and came to the courthouse to file a lawsuit to impound all voting machines and switch to paper ballots immediately. Instead, county officials and Republican and Democrat party leaders reached a compromise: All voting machines will be locked up and secured after the election and available for an audit.
“We’re going to make sure that all the equipment that’s used is going to be secured and locked safe for us to do an investigation or do or to do whatever we want to do to check it out as a party,” Behrens said.
Republican voters have an option at the polls for the rest of the day.
“Any Republican voter who wants to vote in this primary election today who has not voted it yet can go to their polling place, and they will be given an option of voting on the machine, by voting with an emergency ballot, or by voting with a provisional ballot without the requirement of an affirmation,” explained attorney Michael Butera.
Ilhan Omar’s daughter, Isra Hirsi, added a communist hammer and sickle to her own Twitter bio
Credit to Fox News for pointing this out:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ilhan-omar-daughter-isra-hirsi-hammer-sickle
Isra Hirsi tweeted:
“reminder: just because you are a leftist/communist/socialist doesn’t mean you are automatically a good person.“
https://twitter.com/israhirsi/status/1219378837429063682
https://web.archive.org/web/20210406004229/https://twitter.com/israhirsi/status/1219378837429063682
Isra Hirsi also tweeted:
“let’s make it happen. who’s ready for revolution? #RIPCapitalism”
https://twitter.com/israhirsi/status/1260691640857120769
https://web.archive.org/web/20200711034902/https://twitter.com/israhirsi/status/1260691640857120769
Video shows a second steering wheel in the vehicle that Joe Biden was “driving”
Below is a still image from the video.
Click on this link to see a bigger version of the image:
https://danfromsquirrelhill.files.wordpress.com/2021/05/c-span.pn
And here’s the video:
California Leftists Try to Cancel Math Class
California Leftists Try to Cancel Math Class
The proposed curriculum framework aims low, abandons the gifted, and preaches ‘social justice.’
By Williamson M. Evers
May 18, 2021
Oakland, Calif.
If California education officials have their way, generations of students may not know how to calculate an apartment’s square footage or the area of a farm field, but the “mathematics” of political agitation and organizing will be second nature to them. Encouraging those gifted in math to shine will be a distant memory.
This will be the result if a proposed mathematics curriculum framework, which would guide K-12 instruction in the Golden State’s public schools, is approved by California’s Instructional Quality Commission in meetings this week and in August and ratified by the state board of education later this year.
The framework recommends eight times that teachers use a troubling document, “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction: Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction.” This manual claims that teachers addressing students’ mistakes forthrightly is a form of white supremacy. It sets forth indicators of “white supremacy culture in the mathematics classroom,” including a focus on “getting the right answer,” teaching math in a “linear fashion,” requiring students to “show their work” and grading them on demonstrated knowledge of the subject matter. “The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false,” the manual explains. “Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuates ‘objectivity.’ ” Apparently, that’s also racist.
The framework itself rejects preparing students to take Algebra I in eighth grade, a goal reformers have sought since the 1990s. Students in Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan master introductory algebra in eighth grade or even earlier.
At one time, California took the goal seriously and made immense progress. California Department of Education data show that while only 16% of students took algebra by eighth grade in 1999, by 2013, 67%—four times as many—were doing so. Success rates, meaning the percentage of students scoring “proficient” or above, kept rising even as enrollment increased dramatically.
The biggest beneficiaries were ethnic minority and low-income students. While student success tripled overall, African-American students’ success rate jumped by a factor of five, and Latinos’ and low-income students’ by a factor of six.
Many highly selective colleges expect students to take calculus in high school. To get to calculus by senior year, students have to proceed on a pathway of advanced courses. The framework condemns this as a “rush to calculus” and indicates that California schools won’t provide such a pathway. California high-school grads may be put at a disadvantage in applying to top colleges.
The framework explicitly rejects “ideas of natural gifts and talents.” That some are gifted in math implies some others aren’t, and this is “inequitable.” The framework’s authors also fear that those designated “gifted” may have their fragile egos hurt if they later lose that designation. So it writes an obituary for gifted-and-talented programs, which would hobble the rise of many talented children in California.
The framework rejects ability grouping, also called tracking, even though studies show that students do better when grouped with others who are progressing in their studies at the same pace. We have known for years, including from a 2009 Fordham Institute study of Massachusetts middle schools, that schools with more tracks have significantly more math students at advanced levels and fewer failing students.
The proposal’s agenda becomes clear when it says math should be taught so it can be used for “social justice.” It extols a fictional teacher who uses class to develop her students’ “sociopolitical consciousness.” Math, it says, is a tool to “change the world.” Teachers are supposed to adopt a “culturally relevant pedagogy,” which includes “the ability to identify, analyze and solve real-world problems, especially those that result in societal inequalities.”
Under this pedagogy, “students must develop a critical consciousness through which they challenge the status quo of the current social order.” Don’t think that kindergarten is too early for such indoctrination: “Teachers can take a justice-oriented perspective at any grade level, K-12,” the curriculum revisionists write. Students could be taught fractions in the distracting process of learning the math of organizing a protest march.
This program is quite a comedown for math, from an objective academic discipline to a tool for political activism. Society will be harmed: With fewer people who know math well, how are we going to build bridges, launch rockets or advance technologically? Students will pay the heaviest price—and not only in California. As we’ve seen before, what starts in California doesn’t stop here.
My advice to California’s Instructional Quality Commission, when it meets on Wednesday and Thursday to evaluate public comments on the curriculum framework, is to scrap the document and return to the 1997 math content standards and associated framework. Written largely by professors in Stanford’s math department, it resulted in the aforementioned stupendous statewide gains in algebra attainment. Teach math, not propaganda.
SCOTUS rules unanimously against warrantless seizure of guns from someone’s home
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/17/politics/supreme-court-fourth-amendment-case-firearms/index.html
Supreme Court sides with man who said police illegally seized firearms from his home without a warrant
By Ariane de Vogue and Devan Cole
May 17, 2021
Washington (CNN) The Supreme Court on Monday wiped away a lower court decision that held that law enforcement could enter a Rhode Island man’s home and seize his firearms without a warrant after his wife expressed fear that he might harm himself.
A lower court had allowed the search, holding that the decision to take the firearms without a warrant fell within the Fourth Amendment’s “community caretaking exception.”
But Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for a unanimous Supreme Court, held that the lower court’s broad interpretation of the exception “goes beyond anything this Court has recognized.”
While the court has recognized that police officers can perform “many civic tasks in modern society,” there is “not an open-ended license to perform them anywhere,” Thomas wrote.
“The very core of the Fourth Amendment,” Thomas wrote, is the “right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable search and seizure.”
The case involved Edward Caniglia, who in a dispute with his wife in 2015 brought out his gun and put it on the dining room table, asking his wife to shoot him now “to get it over with.”
She declined, and left to spend the night in a hotel. The next morning she could not reach her husband by phone and called the police to ask them to check in on her husband’s welfare. Upon meeting Caniglia, law enforcement believed he posed a risk to himself, and they called a hospital so he could be admitted for psychiatric evaluation. After the ambulance left, they seized his weapons.
Caniglia later sued and said that when police entered his home to seize his weapon they violated the Fourth Amendment because they had no warrant.
The Data Drives Deleted by the Maricopa County Included Adjudicated Files (Where Votes Were Changed)
The Data Drives Deleted by the Maricopa County Included Adjudicated Files (Where Votes Were Changed)
By Joe Hoft
May 13, 2021
There are many material items noted in the letter from Arizona Senator Karen Fann to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman, Jack Sellers. But one item not provided by the County and apparently deleted is a very important piece of data that the County did not want the auditors to see.
Late last night we reported on the letter sent to Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman from Karen Fann at the Arizona Senate. The Senate has hired auditors to audit the 2020 Election in the County. Many significant and material issues were noted in the letter related to the audit last night. Many items were not supplied to the auditors. One item that bears mention is related to some of the files that were deleted before data was provided to the auditors.
The Senate stated in their shocking letter the following items were missing:
We have recently discovered that the entire “Database” directory from the D drive of the machine “EMSPrimary” has been deleted. This removes election related details that appear to have been covered by the subpoena. In addition, the main database for the Election Management System (EMS) Software, “Results Tally and Reporting,” is not located anywhere on the EMSPrimary machine, even though all of the EMS Clients reference that machine as the location of the database. This suggests that the main database for all election-related data for the November 2020 General Election has been removed. Can you please advise as to why these folders were deleted, and whether there are any backups that may contain the deleted folders?
The image below shows the location of the files known to be deleted. In addition, the main database for “Results Tally and Reporting” is not present.
Here is a tweet with the files deleted noted:
https://twitter.com/ArizonaAudit/status/1392656033496006656
The tweet from Maricopa Arizona Audit says:
Breaking Update: Maricopa County deleted a directory full of election databases from the 2020 election cycle days before the election equipment was delivered to the audit. This is spoliation of evidence!
The tweet includes this image:
If you look closely at the files that were deleted, you will see that they include adjudicated ballot files. These would include ballots that were reviewed by someone (the system won’t tell you who) and manipulated by that person (the system won’t tell you when) and likely changed to Biden votes.
We have known this for some time. The adjudication process is currently designed to allow voter fraud through changing votes from one candidate to another.
We know there is massive fraud in Maricopa because Biden somehow miraculously outperformed Hillary in the county at 150% and became the first Democrat since Truman to win the county.
As we noted above, spoilation of evidence is a serious offence, much like tampering with evidence is. Penalties include prison sentences. Do you think the Maricopa Board of Supervisors would risk going to prison over evidence they destroyed that didn’t show massive voter fraud?
Maricopa Auditors Find ‘Significant Discrepancies’ Between Number of Ballots and Batch Reports in Each Box
Maricopa Auditors Find ‘Significant Discrepancies’ Between Number of Ballots and Batch Reports in Each Box
By Cassandra Fairbanks
May 13, 2021
Ballot auditors in Maricopa County are reporting that they have found “significant discrepancies” between the number of ballots therein and the batch reports included in the boxes.
Arizona Senate Republicans are in their third week of recounting 2.1 million Maricopa County ballots by hand.
The state senate is now asking Maricopa County officials to appear at a meeting next week to answer questions about “serious issues” that they have uncovered.
Maricopa Arizona Audit tweeted:
Breaking Update: As we open boxes of ballots delivered by Maricopa County, we are discovering significant discrepancies between the number of ballots therein and the batch reports included in the boxes.
Source:
https://twitter.com/ArizonaAudit/status/1392888273631068164
The auditors have been reporting 5-15 percent discrepancies across many boxes, with the number consistently growing. Joe Biden supposedly won the county by only 2.2 percent, according to the official results.
Political strategist Boris Epshteyn said on an appearance on Steve Bannon’s War Room show that the discrepancies may actually be as high as 17.5 percent — making it likely that “Biden did not win Arizona.”
The National File reports that the “Arizona Senate President recently sent a letter to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, outlining the major issues discovered already in the audit, and offering to settle them without additional subpoenas or compulsory action. In the letter, says Epshteyn on Steve Bannon’s podcast, it reveals, ‘Pallet five, batch 2976, 200 pink slip total, actual total 165. They are missing 35 ballots out of that batch.’ He added, ’35 out of 100 is 17.5%. 10 out of 200 is 5%.’”
Video: Maricopa County Ballot Batches Off by 17.5%, ‘Likely Joe Biden Did Not Win Arizona’
“Do you know how shocking that is? 17.5% discrepancy in a batch is beyond belief.” He added, “In one they’ve got 18 more than there’s supposed to be, which is a 9% discrepancy. Again, if we are to have any confidence in elections in this country, how can we possibly be okay with discrepancies of double digit percentages? It’s absolutely mind boggling, anything above a tiny fraction of a percentage is unacceptable, by the way, unacceptable according to the Federal Elections Commission.”
Maricopa Arizona Audit Account Says They Are Finding “Significant Discrepancies” Between Ballots And Batch Reports
Maricopa Arizona Audit Account Says They Are Finding “Significant Discrepancies” Between Ballots And Batch Reports
By Jacob Palmieri
May 13, 2021
Huge news.
According to the Maricopa Arizona Audit account, they are finding “significant discrepancies between the number of ballots therein and the batch reports included in the boxes”.
https://twitter.com/ArizonaAudit/status/1392888273631068164
Rasmussen also touted it:
https://twitter.com/Rasmussen_Poll/status/1392889564193251331
More:
https://twitter.com/Garrett_Archer/status/1392885849159716868
No wonder Dems are worried over this audit.
Maricopa County Deleted Entire Database 10 Days Prior To Turning Over Equipment To Audit
Maricopa County Deleted Entire Database 10 Days Prior To Turning Over Equipment To Audit
May 12, 2021
Maricopa County deleted entire databases prior to turning over election equipment to the AZ Senate for the forensic audit now occurring. The Senate President Karen Fann today sent a letter to the County Election’s Board for an explanation. The letter can be seen on the tab below.
5-12-21_Letter_to_Maricopa_County_Board-1
Former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne asked the following questions on his Telegram channel:
Maricopa County purposefully deleted a directory full of election databases related to the past 2020 election cycle ~10 days before the election equipment was delivered to the @arizonaaudit. This is destruction of evidence and at least, contempt.
Why did security seals arrive cut and why were they placed at the bottom of the boxes? Why were security ballot bags not used by the County?
Is this the Counties customary practice for storing ballots?
AZ Attorney General Mark Brnovich needs to get involved immediately. What is Maricopa County hiding? We need answers! @arizonaaudit
The AZ Senate letter demanded…
We have recently discovered that the entire “Database” directory from the D drive of the machine “EMSPrimary” has been deleted. This removes election related details that appear to have been covered by the subpoena. In addition, the main database for the Election Management System (EMS) Software, “Results Tally and Reporting,” is not located anywhere on the EMSPrimary machine, even though all of the EMS Clients reference that machine as the location of the database. This suggests that the main database for all election-related data for the November 2020 General Election has been removed. Can you please advise as to why these folders were deleted, and whether there are any backups that may contain the deleted folders?
This sure makes the Maricopa County, AZ Board of Elections look guilty doesn’t it?
Here are many examples of voter fraud in the 2020 U.S. Presidential election that, as far as I’m aware, have not been debunked. Updated for May 11, 2021.
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
May 11, 2021
The mainstream media continues to insist that there is “no evidence” of voter fraud in the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.
They are lying.
Here are many examples of voter fraud in the 2020 U.S. Presidential election that, as far as I’m aware, have not been debunked:
Russell James Ramsland, Jr. audited 22 Dominion voting machines that were used in Antrim County, Michigan.
This is his conclusion from his report on his audit:
“We conclude that the Dominion Voting System is intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results. The system intentionally generates an enormously high number of ballot errors. The electronic ballots are then transferred for adjudication. The intentional errors lead to bulk adjudication of ballots with no oversight, no transparency, and no audit trail. This leads to voter or election fraud. Based on our study, we conclude that The Dominion Voting System should not be used in Michigan. We further conclude that the results of Antrim County should not have been certified.”
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, and Michigan Judge Kevin Elsenheimer all tried to prevent the public from seeing Ramsland’s report on his audit.
Why did they try to prevent the public from seeing the audit?
What were they afraid of?
Also, after the audit was ordered, but before the audit actually took place, Benson ordered the memory in the voting machines to be erased.
Why did Benson order the memory in the machines to be erased before the audit?
What was she afraid of?
Sources:
https://g1nbc.com/howell-mi/files/2020/12/Recount-Release-of-Security-Memo-Nov-2020-General.pdf
https://www.bitchute.com/video/RMJ7vx1tyFls/
Mainstream media reported that Fulton County, Georgia, “stopped” counting ballots for the night because “a water pipe has broken,” and “sent the ballot counters home.”
Video shows Republican poll watchers and media reporters leaving the building.
The same video shows a few people remain, and continue counting votes without Republican poll watchers or media reporters.
Video shows an election worker scanning the same ballots three times.
There is no visible water in these videos.
Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C25DAAHZdEw
https://www.bitchute.com/video/MkqNtENpjyii/
https://twitter.com/abcpolitics/status/1323846118208376834
https://www.bitchute.com/video/rPqQKvuFk473/
https://www.bitchute.com/video/v3qUNQRKJyH5/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keANzinHWUA
https://www.bitchute.com/video/fv1BUbsk1mSW/
https://www.bitchute.com/video/6Bvf8xq1CsoJ/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiREC3Zy20E
Michigan attorney alleges 1,061 ‘phantom ballots’ found in Antrim County 2020 election case
Michigan attorney alleges 1,061 ‘phantom ballots’ found in Antrim County 2020 election case
May 10, 2021
More than a thousand “phantom ballots” were discovered in Antrim County, Michigan, according to a local attorney in a 2020 election lawsuit alleging fraud in the contest six months after it took place.
Matthew DePerno, who is representing Antrim County resident William Bailey, said a recount in December tallied 15,962 ballots, but only 14,901 votes were shown in the Michigan secretary of state’s database, meaning 1,061 don’t exist on voter rolls.
This alleged discovery of “phantom ballots,” DePerno wrote in a recent filing, supports the need for an audit of the county results. Other irregularities that warrant a closer look, according to DePerno, are data showing a near 100% turnout among voters aged 65 to 80 and 1 in 5 ballots being sent to P.O. boxes.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the Michigan secretary of state’s office for comment on where the data for the “phantom ballots” can be found but did not receive a response.
Former President Donald Trump appears to be keeping up with the latest in the case. He issued a statement about it Monday evening.
“The major Michigan Election Fraud case has just filed a bombshell pleading claiming votes were intentionally switched from President Trump to Joe Biden,” he said in a statement shared by his Save America PAC. “The number of votes is MASSIVE and determinative. This will prove true in numerous other States. All Republicans must UNIFY and not let this happen. If a thief robs a jewelry store of all of its diamonds (the 2020 Presidential Election), the diamonds must be returned. The Fake News media refuses to cover the greatest Election Fraud in the history of our Country. They have lost all credibility, but ultimately, they will have no choice!”
Attorneys made arguments before Antrim County Circuit Judge Kevin Elsenheimer in a virtual hearing on Monday over the scope of the ever-expanding lawsuit and whether to dismiss the case, in which both sides have issued dueling analyses. Defendants, which includes Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, say the plaintiff lacks standing and has already received everything he initially sought from the court. The judge said he will likely make a decision next week.
The results in Antrim County, a Republican-leaning county in northern Michigan, initially showed President Joe Biden winning the race, but tabulation errors were quickly discovered, and once rectified, Trump was shown to be the victor. State and county officials have blamed human error, a failure to properly update software across the county, for the mishap, but Bailey and DePerno contend Dominion Voting Systems machines could have been used to manipulate the election. Dominion has denied claims of being involved in election maleficence and has filed multiple defamation lawsuits since the November election.
A hand recount in Antrim County found a deviation of just a dozen votes from the first tabulation, with 9,759 votes won by Trump and 5,959 going to Biden, who won the state of Michigan and its 16 Electoral College votes by roughly 150,000 ballots. DePerno also raised concerns about two volunteers for the recount that he says were told by a Michigan secretary of state official to count roughly 138 ballots they found with “the very same signature in Central Lake Township.”
Attorney Matthew DePerno Demolishes Defense in Call for Antrim County Election Audit
The Lendberg Report can be read at https://www.depernolaw.com/uploads/2/7/0/2/27029178/ex_1_-_lenberg_report.pdf
Matthew DePerno’s supplemental brief can be read at https://www.depernolaw.com/uploads/2/7/0/2/27029178/supplemental_brief_051021_1_.pdf
Attorney Matthew DePerno Demolishes Defense in Call for Antrim County Election Audit
If The Swamp doesn’t block the Antrim County election audit, it appears to be a potential bombshell domino to topple the steal.
By JD Rucker
May 10, 2021
While hopes are still high in Maricopa County that the current audit will reveal bombshells beyond the obvious lack of transparency and total obstruction by Democrats in performing the audit itself, others are working towards getting their own audits going that can expose the voter fraud that stole the 2020 president election. One such effort is underway in Antrim County, Michigan, where attorney Matthew DePerno dropped some bombshells today before and during court.
https://twitter.com/mdeperno/status/1391741822804930560
The gist of this filling is that they have proof Dominion Voting Systems and their Antrim County Dominion Democracy Suite Election Management System was used to switch votes from Jo Jorgenson to Donald Trump, then from Trump to Joe Biden, then pushed into a the “Undervote” category. As part of their evidence, they were able to easily reproduce the circumstances that correlated with the apparent vote shift.
According to a report compiled by analyst Jeffrey Lendberg, the filing states [emphasis added]:
“The Antrim County Dominion Democracy Suite, Elections Management System (EMS), Results Tallying and Reporting RTR) application has been found to be subverted. Numerous error conditions that are identified by the tabulator are ignored by the EMS/RTR. The error conditions are easily reproduced and displayed on the tabulator, yet the EMS/RTR has been subverted in a fashion to purposefully ignore vote manipulation. This technical behavior is consistent with a subversion being deployed in the Antrim County EMS/RTR and is designed to mute such error reporting. This subversion technique is common among malicious actors seeking to proactively handle error conditions that would jeopardize their ability to modify software’s performance.”
In layman’s terms, they switched off the alarms that would have alerted observers and future auditors of funny business. It’s like the vote-count version of the movie trope where they freeze a CCTV camera so someone can sneak by without the guard eating a donate and watching soccer in the control room doesn’t notice what’s going on. Here’s the complete Lendberg report filed today:
DePerno also filed a supplemental brief that detailed the implications of the voter fraud and why the court must allow the election audit to move forward as quickly as possible. In the brief, DePerno noted:
“It is important to note that this subversion affected every single race on the entire ballot, from Presidential election, through Michigan Supreme Court election, and continuing to the bottom of the ticket and the local school board races and Proposals 20-1 and 20-2. Every race was subverted.”
DePerno hammered the defense today as they tried to subvert discovery of subversion. The video of the hearing has been going viral as in it we hear DePerno detail what was filed with the court and lays waste to arguments that the audit would be too expensive or there’s no reason to have it at all. The judge was a hard read, though. We’ve seen throughout the entire ordeal that judges seem unsympathetic to the cause of stopping voter fraud. It has gotten to the point that some conspiracy theorists (and that’s not a phrase I use as a pejorative) believe these judges have been bribed, bullied, or blackmailed.
Here’s the video of DePerno in action:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/2vrYHsOasSVK/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rXGJeH84eU
Earlier, DePerno was interviewed twice (and we have reached out through Twitter to see if we can interview him as well. Here’ we hear him on Dark to Light with Frank & Beanz:
Today, Steve Bannon had DePerno on War Room:
According to The Gateway Pundit:
DePerno explains that in the December hand recount of Antrim county, there was a total of 15,952 ballots counted; however, Secretary of State Benson’s official database only had 14,901 ballots which means there exists 1,061 extra ballots not on the voter rolls, i.e., “phantom” ballots.
Phantom ballots could explain what happened at the hand recount in December when volunteers were told to count approximately 138 ballots with the very same signature. Despite their repeated objections and attempts to challenge the problem ballots, the Secretary of State official said, “That’s not your role at this very moment” and pushed the volunteers to count the ballots and finish the audit.
Kyle Becker at Becker News gave detailed analysis of what’s happening in Antrim County:
A joint motion requesting Judge Kevin Elsenheimer dismiss the lawsuit has been filed by Assistant Michigan Attorney General Erik Grill , who represents intervener Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, and attorney Haider Kazim, who is representing defendant Antrim County.
The joint motion seeks to have the lawsuit dismissed for lack of standing. The judge has already allowed the complainant, Bailey and his attorney, Matthew DePerno, to have a third party conduct a forensic examination of the county’s Dominion Voting Systems equipment. That audit was conducted earlier by Allied Security Operations Group, a Dallas-based firm that concluded the voting machine equipment was fraught with errors.
“The Dominion Voting System is intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results,” the audit report stated. “The system intentionally generates an enormously high number of ballot errors. The electronic ballots are then transferred for adjudication. The intentional errors lead to bulk adjudication of ballots with no oversight, no transparency, and no audit trail. This leads to voter or election fraud. Based on our study, we conclude that The Dominion Voting System should not be used in Michigan. We further conclude that the results of Antrim County should not have been certified…”
Antrim County had been the site of a detected error that flipped votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. The error was detected and corrected before the 2020 election results could be certified.
“Bailey continues to argue the county violated his constitutional rights after an error by County Clerk Sheryl Guy caused about 2,000 votes cast for then-President Donald Trump, to be initially — and mistakenly — tallied for then-challenger Joe Biden,” the Traverse Eagle reported.
“Guy, a Republican, corrected her office’s vote tally errors prior to the state’s certification of the county’s November election results, and records show Trump won Antrim County by a large margin, receiving 9,748 votes to Biden’s 5,960 votes,” the report continued.
Matthew DePerno has also requested election data from other counties, which the judge rejected as a “fishing expedition.” DePerno filed another motion on May 4 seeking to add Antrim County Clerk Sheryl Guy, state Bureau of Elections Director Jonathan Brater, and Election Source, a Dominion subcontractor, to the lawsuit as defendants, the report continued.
Meanwhile, a forensic audit of Antrim County has now been proposed and will be under discussion at a meeting in June.
“In the more than seven hour meeting, commissioners also discussed whether they have the authority to conduct their own audit, forensic accounting or hand recount of the county’s 2020 election results,” the Traverse Eagle noted. “They don’t — state law says only the Secretary of State can conduct and audit elections in Michigan.”
There are only two real possibilities based on the evidence that has been seen so far in Antrim County. Either the judge suppresses everything on behalf of The Swamp or the audit goes forward and the truth finally comes out.
Michigan Election Fraud Is Clear: Filed Court Documents Expose Changed Votes
Michigan Election Fraud Is Clear: Filed Court Documents Expose Changed Votes
By Bly Tubman
May 10, 2021
This court case devoted to exposing the fraud in the 2020 election in Michigan is getting WILD and we are so here for it.
Attorney Matthew DePerno and his team deserve some kind of medal– or screw it, just give them the Nobel Peace Prize already.
MassRoundup brought you an article not too long ago highlighting the groundbreaking analysis done by Attorney DePerno’s expert, Douglas Frank, who explained exactly how the electronic voting in Michigan was rigged to fit a perfect algorithm in all of the voting districts he evaluated at that point in time. He has surmised that if permitted to analyze the entire state, his findings would be accurate in every single county. Bold statement, Doug. But, that’s how friggin’ sure they are that something is clearly wrong here.
And, they brought the goods to back it up.
Today, Attorney DePerno filed court documents and argued the findings in court while the Government is working to suppress the information and get the case thrown out. Six lawyers versus one– a David and Goliath moment, if you will– and David aka DePerno is CRUSHING IT.
In the filings from today, Attorney DePerno called out Dominion in a BIG way, by exposing how votes were changed from Jo Jorgensen to Donald Trump to Joe Biden. How could this happen and no one notice? Great question. Attorney DePerno and his team found the answer. Dominion deactivated the part of the system that would send out alerts for such activity that would have required someone to look into the rigging that was going on.
Nothing to see here. Just like in Arizona where the Dominion guys were actually running the voting show, holding onto the software passwords, and bringing laptops in and out of ‘secure’ rooms where votes were being monitored. While there’s a huge push to keep this stuff quiet from the Left, far too much is happening and some people are really catching on. FINALLY!
Nothing to see here is quickly becoming everything to see here. The claims about the “Big Lie” being a Trump fantasy lose luster every single day. And, THANK GOD for that. Let’s go!
2 Oklahoma Boys Pulled From Class for ‘Black Lives Matter’ T-Shirts
I totally support the boys’ right to wear these shirts in school. The school is being completely ridiculous to suspend them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/09/us/black-lives-matter-shirt-oklahoma-school.html
2 Oklahoma Boys Pulled From Class for ‘Black Lives Matter’ T-Shirts
In addition to the disciplinary action they have faced, the boys’ mother said that at least one of her three sons has been bullied because of the shirts.
May 9, 2021
Two brothers, 8 and 5, were removed from their Oklahoma elementary school classrooms this past week and made to wait out the school day in a front office for wearing T-shirts that read “Black Lives Matter,” according to the boys’ mother.
The superintendent of the Ardmore, Okla., school district where the brothers, Bentlee and Rodney Herbert, attend different schools had previously told their mother, Jordan Herbert, that politics would “not be allowed at school,” Ms. Herbert recalled on Friday.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma has called the incident a violation of the students’ First Amendment rights.
On April 30, Bentlee, who is in the third grade, went to class at Charles Evans Elementary in a Black Lives Matter shirt, which Ms. Herbert said he had picked out himself to wear.
That evening, Ms. Herbert learned that the school’s principal, Denise Brunk, had told Bentlee that he was not allowed to wear the T-shirt. At Ms. Brunk’s direction, he turned the shirt inside out and finished out the school day.
On Monday, Ms. Herbert went to the school to ask the principal what dress-code policy her son had violated, Ms. Herbert said. Ms. Brunk referred her to the Ardmore City Schools superintendent, Kim Holland.
“He told me when the George Floyd case blew up that politics will not be allowed at school,” Ms. Herbert said on Friday, referring to Mr. Holland. “I told him, once again, a ‘Black Lives Matter’ T-shirt is not politics.”
Neither Ms. Brunk nor Mr. Holland responded to emails or phone calls seeking comment on Friday.
On Tuesday, Ms. Herbert’s three sons — Bentlee; Rodney, who is in kindergarten; and Jaelon, a sixth grader, all of whom are Black — went to their schools in matching T-shirts with the words “Black Lives Matter” and an image of a clenched fist on the front.
Later that morning, Ms. Herbert received a call from Rodney’s school, Will Rogers Elementary, telling her that she needed to either bring Rodney a different shirt or let the school provide one for him, or Rodney would be forced to sit in the front office for the rest of the school day. Rodney did not change shirts, and he sat in the office until school was over.
Ms. Herbert learned later that day that Bentlee had also been made to sit in his school’s front office, where he missed recess, and did not eat lunch in the cafeteria with his classmates.
Jaelon, 12, encountered no issues at Ardmore Middle School because of his T-shirt, his mother said.
In an interview with The Daily Ardmoreite, Mr. Holland suggested that the T-shirts were disruptive.
“It’s our interpretation of not creating a disturbance in school,” Mr. Holland told the newspaper. “I don’t want my kids wearing MAGA hats or Trump shirts to school either because it just creates, in this emotionally charged environment, anxiety and issues that I don’t want our kids to deal with.”
Mr. Holland said there had been similar cases in the district this year.
“Most of it has not been an issue until this lady here has been angry about it,” Mr. Holland told The Ardmoreite. “I wish she weren’t so upset.”
Ms. Herbert said she met with Mr. Holland on Monday and asked him what would happen if she sent her children to school in “Black Lives Matter” T-shirts again.
“He told me nothing could be done because it wasn’t against policy,” Ms. Herbert recalled.
Indeed, the dress code outlined in the district’s Elementary Student Handbook makes no mention of politics. It says that “sayings or logos” on shirts or tops “should be in good taste and school appropriate.”
“Any clothing or apparel that disrupts the learning process is prohibited,” the handbook adds, stipulating that principals have the final say on “the appropriateness of dress.”
To Ms. Herbert, the idea that her 8-year-old son would not “be able to express that his life matters” was ludicrous.
On Friday, the A.C.L.U. of Oklahoma sent a letter to Mr. Holland, Ms. Brunk and James Foreman Jr., president of the Ardmore City School Board of Education.
In the letter, the A.C.L.U. said it would be a violation of the students’ First Amendment rights to be prohibited from wearing clothing that says “Black Lives Matter.”
If the school district does not reverse its policy and allow students to wear “Black Lives Matter” clothing, it must be prepared to prove in federal court how wearing the T-shirts creates “a substantial disruption of or material interference with school activities,” the A.C.L.U. said. “Anything less than that would be found to be a violation of the students’ First Amendment rights.”
It cited a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court case, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, which addressed the issue of a group of students who wore black armbands to object to the Vietnam War. A principal told the students that they would be suspended if they wore the armbands at school.
The court ruled 7-2 that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
“This has been the unmistakable holding of this Court for almost 50 years,” the A.C.L.U. said.
Mr. Foreman and the other members of the school board did not respond to requests for comment on Saturday.
In addition to issues with disciplinary action, Ms. Herbert said Bentlee has now been bullied at school over his T-shirt. When Bentlee returned from school on Thursday, he told his mother that two white boys had picked on him.
“One boy told him that his life does not matter, and the other one told him to just get suspended,” Ms. Herbert said.
The principal told Ms. Herbert the situation would be handled, she said.
“With everything going on in the world today, I keep my boys informed,” Ms. Herbert said, adding that the family watched the news together. “They know what’s going on.”
Out of principle, Ms. Herbert said she would continue to support her sons in wearing the T-shirts to school.
Despite the turmoil, the shirts were never intended to be an “attention-seeking ordeal,” Ms. Herbert said. “I don’t see Black Lives Matter disrupting anything.”
Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 