Parents or guardians who love their children and do not want them to be indoctrinated with a Marxist Critical Race Theory (CRT), or suffocate during school hours while being forced to wear a mask in school, and who have the temerity to make their positions known, might be domestic terrorists, according to the National School Boards Association (NSBA)
Last week, the National School Boards Association (NSBA), which represents more than 90,000 school board members and “educates” some 51 million students in the United States, wrote a letter (pdf) to President Joe Biden urging him to “deal with the growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation” carried out by “angry mobs” of parents.
The organization opens the letter with the dramatic claim that America’s “educational leaders are under an immediate threat,” as it pleads for “federal law enforcement and other assistance” to deal with that threat. Where does the threat come from?
The letter further explains that angry individuals — the word “parents” is never used in the letter – are engaged in numerous “violent” actions.
According to the NSBA, the activists disrupt school board meetings and pen threatening letters to the school board members, blasting them for such policies as masking and teaching CRT. (Never mind that CRT divides and antagonizes races!) The federal government must not wait to become involved, it is argued.
NSBA states that school board meetings are an important tool and “the forefront of good school board governance and promotion of free speech,” and that the local school board members “want to hear from their communities on important issues.” However, good governance and free speech, the way the union sees them, require “safeguards” in order “to protect public schools and dedicated education leaders.” Because, apparently, those parents and guardians who dare to speak against school-board policies pose a threat that should be eliminated, so that school boards can “do their jobs.”
The letter continues in an urgent manner, claiming that “safeguards” against the parents are needed “immediately.” It is stated that some of the school-board members are already receiving threats, mostly over such policies as masking in schools. While the mounting evidence suggests the masks hurt children’s health — both physical and mental — and is likely to dramatically facilitate COVID transmission, NSBA keeps on insisting that masks “protect the health and safety of students and school employees.”
The letter illustrates one of the threats: In Ohio, an individual sent a letter to a school board member saying,
“You are forcing them [children] to wear mask — for no reason in this world other than control. And for that you will pay dearly.” Among other incendiaries, this same threat also calls the school board member a “filthy traitor,” implies loss of pension funds, and labels the school board as Marxist.
In recent months, school districts across the nation have seen angry demonstrations of parents demanding that school boards drop arguably harmful policies. There have been numerous confrontations between parents and education officials at school board meetings, and the letter mentions some of them explicitly:
School board meetings have been disrupted in California, Florida, Georgia, and other states because of local directives for mask coverings to protect students and educators from COVID-19.
As one illustration of a “threatening” behavior, the letter mentions that a Michigan parent gave a Nazi salute during a debate about masking. The organization probably considers it unacceptable to view a school board as “Nazi” for enacting draconian measures that have little to do with children’s health other than undermining their health, while simultaneously reinforcing children’s dehumanization.
In addition to that, it is observed in the letter that
In New Jersey, Ohio, and other states, anti-mask proponents are inciting chaos during board meetings. In Virginia, an individual was arrested, another man was ticketed for trespassing, and a third person was hurt during a school board meeting discussion distinguishing current curricula from critical race theory and regarding equity issues. In other states including Washington, Texas, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and Tennessee, school boards have been confronted by angry mobs and forced to end meetings abruptly.
Stating that “these acts of malice, violence, and threats” can actually constitute “a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes,” NSBA made its request for
“[A] joint expedited review by the U.S. Departments of Justice, Education, and Homeland Security, along with the appropriate training, coordination, investigations, and enforcement mechanisms from the FBI, including any technical assistance necessary from, and state and local coordination with, its National Security Branch and Counterterrorism Division, as well as any other federal agency with relevant jurisdictional authority and oversight.”
The organization urges the president to issue an executive order that would serve to protect school officials and school board members from parents by reviewing “appropriate enforceable actions against these crimes and acts of violence under the Gun-Free School Zones Act, the PATRIOT Act in regards to domestic terrorism, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the Violent Interference with Federally Protected Rights statute, the Conspiracy Against Rights statute.”
One may assume that by penning such a letter, the NSBA is actively seeking to avoid responsibility for its handling of the educational system that has infuriated parents across America by asking the federal government to “proactively” treat such parents as “hateful extremists” and “terrorists.”
The White House has immediately taken a side of the school boards and signaled that it’s open to the idea of applying the full power of the federal government against anti-mask and anti-CRT parents.
“We take the security of public servants and elected officials across the country very seriously,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters when commenting on the NSBA letter. “And obviously, these threats to school board members is horrible. They’re doing their jobs.”
Psaki added, “We’re continuing to explore what more can be done from across the administration.”
