Communist Party USA
For years the right wing of the U.S. political ecosystem has been getting pushback from several quarters: Occupy, Black Lives Matter, the women’s marches, and climate marchers are a few examples. To reassert their power, the Republican Party decided to focus on taking over state legislatures and governors’ offices, and through extreme gerrymandering, stay in power. They have been wildly successful, and now the GOP controls the legislative and executive branches of 23 states. However, with the loss of the presidency and the country’s demographics moving away from predominantly white, desperation seems to be setting in. In response, they are ramping up the fight for ideological ground and taking the battle to another arena: the local school board. And now our nation’s school board and PTA meetings resemble political rallies more than educational debates. Just outside Washington, D.C., Loudoun County, Virginia, is one of the most affluent counties in the country, but it has lost its historically white majority due to an influx of Central American immigrants over the past few decades. Because of the extreme affluence of the defense contractors, bureaucrats, CEOs, and neo-Confederates in this area, Loudoun has become a nationally broadcast battleground in the fight to maintain the myths of American exceptionalism, rugged individualism, and white Christian supremacy. At the June 22 meeting of the Loudoun County Board of Education, these right-wing elements mobilized and mobbed the meeting in a confrontation that made national news and came close to being a violent confrontation. Then at August 10 school board meeting, conservative speakers compared the school board to historical villains ranging from King George III to Adolf Hitler; one woman went so far as to exorcise the board in the name of Jesus. A conservative arrested for violence at the previous school board meeting spoke remotely from home, suggesting that major legal challenges to the board’s authority were underway. So far, recall campaigns for several board members have begun but without much success or actual momentum. Besides mask wearing, the latest school board meetings have focused on two primary issues. The first is trans rights, a very real issue of liberation which has been aided by the successful implementation of Draft Policy 8040, which will ensure that all students will be referred to by their chosen name and pronouns, with access to the facilities, sports, and programs that correlate to their gender identity. The second issue is the teaching of critical race theory (CRT), a fake issue driven by right-wing propaganda with the immediate goal of preventing students from engaging in educational discussions about racism in America. Long-term, the GOP is using this issue as a dog-whistle to galvanize their voters and win elections in 2022. When our Virginia district of CPUSA sent two representatives to give official statements remotely, we coordinated to cover more topics and ensure that we didn’t present the same exact statistics. Transphobic speakers rallying against 8040, however, all used the same misleading statistic about detransitioning that has been widely demonstrated to be false. This fits with the tradition of conservatives being able to elevate empty rhetoric and outright lies by using big money and nationalist imagery. Our first speaker and chair of the Virginia Young Communists League, Wren Wilson, gave this statement on 8040: I am a nonbinary college student. I am also the chair of the Virginia Young Communists League (YCL), here representing the Communist Party of Virginia. As a nonbinary student myself with many trans, nonbinary, and gender fluid peers, I can imagine the impact that it would have if my school were to disrespect or ignore my identity. That…
Read full article on Communist Party USA:
The extreme right aims for school boards