Waukegan Latinx activists protest renaming Thomas Jefferson Middle School after Barack and Michelle Obama
By John Garcia and Cate Cauguiran
March 30, 2021
WAUKEGAN, Ill. (WLS) — Waukegan’s Board of Education met Tuesday night as it considers changing the names of two of its schools, Thomas Jefferson Middle School and Daniel Webster Middle School.
Jefferson, who was the nation’s third president, owned slaves. Webster was a former senator who supported slavery. Renaming committees were formed for each school, and included people in the community, students and staff.
The school board heard concerns from the public Tuesday night over one of the finalists in the running to be the new name for Thomas Jefferson Middle School.
The country’s first Black President and First Lady, Barack and Michelle Obama, is one of the top three choices for the school’s new name, but is drawing opposition in the area with a large Latinx population.
“I will not be part of renaming a school after someone who did not and does not represent the undocumented community,” said District 60 school board member Edgar Castellanos. Castellanos said he came to the United States undocumented as a child.
Waukegan activist Julie Contreras works with a group that runs shelters for undocumented children at the U.S./Mexico border.
She said former President Obama failed to deliver on promises to help the immigrant population.
Contreras, who leads United Giving Hope, is organizing protests against naming the school for the Obamas.
“From the time Barack Obama became President until 2017 when he left, he today is still the highest ranking president with deportations in our nation,” Contreras said. “We feel that Barack Obama did disservice to us. He denied us, and he didn’t stop the deportations, the way he promised.”
“I personally don’t object to the name, but I have to be aware of the concerns,” said school board president Brandon Ewing.
Members of the area’s Latinx community held a protest outside the meeting’s doors Tuesday night.
“If you’re removing the name of Thomas Jefferson – one oppressor – the name of Obama is another oppressor and our families do not want to see that name,” Contreras said.
Mauricio Sanchez’s father was deported in 2015 under the Obama administration.
“It was something very sad,” Sanchez said. “We couldn’t even say goodbye to our dad. We just hoped for him to be able to get out.”
His dad is still in deportation hearings to this day. The Sanchez family said the Obama name is a reminder of their current struggles.
Others who spoke about the name change endorsed another popular choice to rename the school after: Civil Rights icon John Lewis.
In March 2012, Obama’s Justice Department blocked Texas’s voter ID requirement, claiming that it was “racist.”
However, Obama’s Justice Department required photo ID for everyone who enters.
So let’s say that in 2012, someone was denied their right to vote because they didn’thave voter ID, and they wanted to file a lawsuit at the Justice Department. But because they didn’t have photo ID, they couldn’t have gotten get into the Justice Department in the first place!
This video is from 2012. Beginning at 2:39, we see that Obama’s Justice Department required photo ID for everyone who entered:
The same video also shows that you need photo ID in order to enter other liberal organizations which claim that requiring voter ID is “racist,” including the Advancement Project (at 1:38), the Center for American Progress (2:08), and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (2:23).
At a July 2012 NAACP event, NAACP President Ben Jealous claimed that requiring voter ID was “racist.” However, at that very same event, the NAACP required photo ID in order to get into the event in the first place!
Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Britain, India, and South Africa all require photo ID in order to vote, but U.S. liberals don’t consider those countries’ requirements to be “racist.”
In January 2012, Illinois passed a law that required buyers of drain cleaner to show photo ID, but liberals didn’t accuse this requirement of being “racist.”
In June 2012, Michelle Obama required photo ID in order to attend her book signings, but liberals didn’t accuse her of being “racist.”
In June 2012, Barack Obama required photo ID in order to attend his campaign events, but liberals didn’t accuse him of being “racist.”
In December 2017, for every performance of the play “Hamilton” at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre, 40 tickets were sold for a special low price of $10 each. To get these tickets, you had to apply online. A lottery randomly chose 40 winners for each performance. Winners were required to show photo ID when they showed up to see the play. But liberals didn’t accuse this theater of being “racist.”
This article from Politico includes the following photograph of a labor union that requires photo ID in order for its members to vote, but liberals didn’t accuse this union of being “racist”:
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I can’t wait for all the social justice warriors who want the government to force bakers to bake cakes for gay weddings, to use the exact same logic to try to get the government to force Sherald to paint portraits of white customers.
Just kidding. We all know those hypocrites are never going to do that.
I recently came across this Michelle Obama quote from Parade magazine:
I took my last job [before my husband entered the White House] because of my boss’s reaction to my family situation. I didn’t have a babysitter, so I took Sasha right in there with me in her crib and her rocker. I was still nursing, so I was wearing my nursing shirt. I told my boss, “This is what I have: two small kids. My husband is running for the U.S. Senate. I will not work part time. I need flexibility. I need a good salary. I need to be able to afford babysitting. And if you can do all that, and you’re willing to be flexible with me because I will get the job done, I can work hard on a flexible schedule.” I was very clear. And he said yes to everything.
Did Michelle Obama set back feminism when she told a job interviewer that her husband was running for U.S. Senate?
Instead of practicing what she preaches in her “Let’s Move” program, Michelle Obama has decided to avoid picking her own vegetables from her own garden, and instead, to allow them to rot.
In the famous White House kitchen garden, tomatoes are rotting on the vine. Herbs have gone to seed. And the sweet potatoes – a favorite of President Barack Obama – have become worm food.
It’s another impact of the government shutdown, one that only the fox and the many squirrels that live on the White House grounds could love.
For the past five years, the media has told us about Michelle Obama’s garden. But now we see that it’s a fraud. It was never her garden. It is and always has been the government’s garden. And now that there’s a government shutdown, there are no government employees to pick the vegetables.
I guess Michelle Obama is too lazy to take her own advice from her “Let’s Move” program to “get moving” and pick her own vegetables.
This isn’t the first example of the government shutdown exposing how spoiled and lazy she is. After the government shutdown caused her 16 “assistants” (who are paid salaries as high as $172,200) to be laid off, her Twitter account said:
“Due to Congress’s failure to pass legislation to fund the government, updates to this account will be limited.”
Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 