Weaponizing higher education is DeSantis' newest trick


Danielle DeLaney
Sun, January 29, 2023 

The war on public education continues, and Ron DeSantis is making certain that everyone knows Florida is ground zero for overhauling the way our students learn. First, he installed former Senator Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska) as president at the University of Florida. Starting Feb. 6, Sasse will be paid $1 million in base salary for five years, plus a raise of up to 4 percent. A bonus after five years could add another $1 million to the former senator's paycheck.

DeSantis then announced his targeted, surgical attack on the 62-year-old New College of Florida in Sarasota, a small public college that continuously ranks in the top ten in Public National Liberal Arts Colleges (currently #5) by U.S. News & World Report. It is a "Best Value College" by the Princeton Review and a "Best Buy College" by Fiske Guide. It is considered one of America's best colleges for student voting by Washington Monthly. Fortune Magazine ranks New College of Florida a Best Master's in Data Science. Yet the governor wants to bring in a wrecking ball to New College and make it a "Hillsdale of the South" to give conservative families an option for higher education in Florida.

Hillsdale is a private, religious school in Michigan. Hillsdale's president, Larry Arnn, was recorded (with Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee saying "Teachers are trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country. The heart of modern education is enslavement." Arnn is chairperson of the 1776 Commission, the advisory board that seeks to overhaul the nation's schools with a whitewashed "patriotic education."

 It's important to note that the 1776 Commission's vague language insists that George Washington freed his slaves at the end of his life. Not true: Of the 317 enslaved people at Mount Vernon at the time of Washington's death in 1799, 123 were owned by Washington and eligible to be freed after the death of his wife, Martha (this was per the terms of his will). The Washingtons had no legal authority to emancipate the slaves owned by the Custis estate portion of Mount Vernon, and those enslaved people were inherited by Martha Washington's grandchildren after her death. 

The 1776 Commission also claims that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. opposed affirmative action. Again, not true: as chair of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Dr. King initiated Operation Breadbasket, the first successful national affirmative action campaign. Apparently, lying to our children is the GOP's plan for public education, only now, it extends from K-12 to the collegiate level.

Conservative families have always had plenty of options. The governor himself is a conservative who chose to attend an Ivy League school that appeals to conservative, liberal, and progressive students. His own education did not sway him to become liberal nor progressive. If his Ivy League education didn't "indoctrinate" him in liberal or progressive ideology, why is he scared that higher education in Florida will "indoctrinate" conservative students to become progressive or liberal?

 I am reminded of former President Trump's quote: "I love the poorly educated." DeSantis has twisted the mission of New College, claiming it needs to be "fixed" because it doesn't provide a quality education — an attack on the diversity, equity, and inclusion mission that all Florida public colleges and universities held until this past week when DeSantis continued his assault on higher education for daring to include people from all walks of life — not just heterosexual white Christians. 

The person DeSantis has tapped to lead the change at New College of Florida is Christopher Rufo. Rufo was plucked from virtual obscurity when he started the culture war on critical race theory (CRT), while also admitting that he did not know nor did he care to learn what it is. How's that for education? 

Ironically, Rufo could likely learn from the daughter of our state senator, Kathleen Passidomo. Dr. Catarina Passidomo's master's thesis in Environmental Anthropology at the University of Georgia (Athens) investigated social capital within a network of local food producers. Her dissertation from UGA in Human Geography was the "Right to (feed) the city: Race, Food sovereignty and food justice activism in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans." Among the classes that Dr. Catarina Passidomo teaches at Ole Miss: Southern Studies, which examines race/racism. Dr. Passidomo teaches this in Mississippi. 

This is the exact type of class that Rufo and DeSantis would eliminate from public education across the state, and yet the president of the state Senate has a daughter who teaches this exact topic, knowing it poses no threat to the existence of white students. Surely Kathleen Passidomo sees the irony in this and the value of what her own daughter teaches Ole Miss students. Passidomo must recognize that if the governor's plan moves forward, then it will be the first domino that will fall in a long line on top of her own child?

 In May, my son graduated Gulf Coast High School in Naples with a GPA well north of 4.0. By the end of ninth grade, he had amassed 80 hours of volunteer service work to go toward his Bright Futures Scholarship (students need 100 hours by the time they graduate high school). In addition to being in the engineering academy, he also took coding classes all four years of high school. He has a neck full of awards from winning various Science Olympiad competitions. Additionally, he took so many AP classes and scored high enough on the college board exams that he earned more than a year's worth of college credit. He is intellectually curious and genuinely enjoys learning about a variety of topics. He could never pick a favorite subject during K-12. At New College of Florida, he has found a small, tight-knit community of self-motivated, like-minded thinkers. He wants to use computer coding and artificial intelligence to help improve the lives of those with neurological deficits. New College can help him bring those areas of focus together in a single major so he can continue on with studies at the graduate level (which, if this attack on education continues, will happen outside of Florida). 

While in their first semester of college, my son's friends at UF were taking computer classes repeating tasks they had done as ninth graders. My son was learning new object-based languages and how to apply real-world frameworks and systems to collate and organize data in a commercially usable format. How? Because he was able to demonstrate competency in those basic skills: He didn't need to repeat them and grow bored like his counterparts at UF who were skating through skills they already knew inside out; cookie-cutter computing, if you will. New College of Florida's courses challenge the student who wants to chase knowledge — not a GPA. My son receives no grades at New College. That doesn't mean it's easy. Rather, he receives detailed feedback in the form of written evaluations throughout his courses; undergraduates are treated as if they are already in graduate school. If he doesn't demonstrate proficiency, he doesn't get credit for the class. Professors are invested in their students' success, and students are accountable for their work. If anything, New College's format is more rigorous than other colleges in the state.

 It's clear DeSantis hasn't spent any quality time inside the classrooms at New College of Florida to see for himself what these students are learning: he's picking his fight with New College because it is small; he didn't expect people to be outraged by what's been labeled his "hostile takeover" of a jewel in the state university system.

My son's peers at New College are similar in that they are self-motivated to learn, ask questions, and come up with solutions. My son is friends with people from all over the country as well as international students. Many are gay/trans, heterosexual, and others are still figuring it out. We're talking about young people in their late teens and early twenties.

Those of us without outside interference had the opportunity to figure out who we were and carve out a place for ourselves in life at that age. These young people deserve the opportunity without the governor interfering.

I remember when the GOP was the party of small government. Yet here they are, with DeSantis trying to force feed his deeply personal, bigoted agenda down our throats. After all, DeSantis himself has said that Florida is freer than it has ever been. 

I was born here, and this is the scariest time to be a Floridian. The attack on New College of Florida and the university system in general should be a shrieking wakeup call to everyone: this is not about educational philosophy. It's about making headlines as DeSantis paves his way toward the 2024 presidential run, and those who are in college right now happen to be in front of the paver. 

Let's just pretend for a moment that this is about educational philosophy. DeSantis wants a Hillsdale of the South? Fine. Build one from scratch, from the foundation up, the way Florida Poly was established in 2012 in Lakeland. 

I'm sure there's another community that would welcome the economic benefits that a Hillsdale type public school would bring to it. Don't let the governor destroy New College of Florida. If they are successful in overhauling New College and DeSantis becomes president, then what they do at New will become the blueprint for higher education throughout this country. Your child or your grandchild's education is on the line.

Danielle DeLaney

A native of Miami Beach, Danielle DeLaney graduated from the University of Tennessee with bachelor's degrees in English and journalism. She worked in both government and private sectors as a researcher and technical editor. DeLaney lives in Naples with her husband of 30 years, David. Their son attends New College of Florida.

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Weaponizing higher education is DeSantis' newest trick

Free New College from the shackles of DeSantis’ crass political agenda | Guest Opinion

Sofia Ali-Khan, Lexi Allen, Grant Balfour, Anne-Laure Grignon and Trina Sargalski
Fri, January 27, 2023 


“You could never get away with that at New College.”

This comes to mind as dismayed professors sound the alarm over students using Chat GPT, an artificial-intelligence program, to write papers.

The rigorous educational model at New College stands in stark contrast to concerns over students using technology to coast through their education. The number of one-on-one or small-group interactions with academic all-star professors at New College — in which students analyze and critique academic topics — would quickly reveal the lie in any AI-aided essays.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently appointed six members to New College’s board of trustees, with the stated aim of turning the college into the “Hillsdale College of the South.” Some of the new trustees have manufactured a story about New College as part of this politically motivated campaign.

The gap between New College and Hillsdale is vast, raising concerns that DeSantis will sacrifice a valued institution of public education for a crass political agenda. Hillsdale College is a private, Christian college with an annual tuition more than four times that of New College. It represents an extreme version of private education, declining all federal funding and even prohibiting its students from receiving federal financial aid in order to avoid standard oversight, such as reporting the racial makeup of its student body.

At New College, a public honors college, personalized education, critical thinking and rigorous academics are central pillars of the experience. Primary texts are favored over textbooks. Narrative evaluations or other more in-depth metrics are preferred over multiple-choice tests, for example. Students must complete a senior capstone project or senior thesis based on their coursework. Undergraduates defend their projects to an audience of professors and peers to get their degrees. New College makes an Ivy League-level education accessible to many students in Florida.

We attended New College at various times during the past 40 years. The common thread in our education was the focus on academic rigor and critical thinking. Among us are a marketing communications executive and entrepreneur, an editor, a lawyer, an ESL teacher and a doctor. For several of us, New College’s undergraduate demands matched or exceeded the difficulty of achieving a master’s degree.

Another common thread was being allowed the flexibility to develop our passions and points of view. Trina Sargalski got small business experience as part of a team creating the initial business plan for the Four Winds Coffeehouse.

Lexi Allen valued traveling to Guatemala to produce a documentary on indigenous art during her time at New College. Later, she worked with her academic sponsor to design her own course centered around editing, translating and framing this documentary.

Anne-Laure Grignon defended two theses in her separate tracks of study: biology and French. The double major allowed her to be more balanced and, as a doctor, she focuses on ALS research at the University of Miami.

At a recent meeting at the New College campus for students and faculty, the trustees were well-spoken but provided little information. One, Christopher Rufo, the Manhattan Institute propagandist, recently mentioned improvements he’d like to make, including returning the school to a “classical liberal model.” What is more classically liberal than studying Latin with primary texts? Than having open and analytical discussions across disciplines with no agenda beyond finding the truth?

The trustees’ manufactured political campaign threatens to upend the lives of New College students and faculty, and dismantle a uniquely successful model of higher education. We should all care — this is an attack on public and liberal-arts education.

We want our own kids to have the freedom to learn, to be themselves and to grow up healthy and safe. We want them to have access to quality public education that is accessible to a diverse group of students across Florida. But a handful of politicians are stoking Floridians’ fears, putting their desire for political power over students’ futures.

Floridians must speak up and take action to protect Floridians’ access to public education unfettered by political agendas.

Sofia Ali Khan (1992), Lexi Allen (2011), Grant Balfour (1986), Anne-Laure Grignon (2005) and Trina Sargalski (1995) are alums of New College of Florida. Learn more at @savenewcollege on Instagram and Twitter.

Ali Khan

Allen

Balfour

Grignon

Sargalski

Trustees picked by DeSantis may change progressive college





New College second-year student Sam Sharf rides a skateboard across campus Friday, Jan. 20, 2023, in Sarasota, Fla. Your education. Your way. Be original. Be you. That's how New College of Florida describes its approach to higher education in an admission brochure. The state school of fewer than 1,000 students nestled along Sarasota Bay has long been known for its progressive thought and creative course offerings that don't use traditional grades. The school founded in 1960 is also a haven for marginalized students, especially from the LBGTQ community, said second-year student Sharf in a recent interview. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)


CURT ANDERSON
Sun, January 29, 2023 

SARASOTA, Fla. (AP) — “Your education. Your way. Be original. Be you.”

That's how New College of Florida describes its approach to higher education in an admission brochure. The state school of fewer than 1,000 students nestled along Sarasota Bay has long been known for its progressive thought and creative course offerings that don't use traditional grades.

The school, founded in 1960, is also a haven for marginalized students, especially from the LGBTQ community, said second-year student Sam Sharf in a recent interview on campus.

“There's a lot of students out there that are not allowed to be themselves in their hometowns,” said Sharf, who is transgender and identifies as a woman. “When they get to come here, they get to thrive because they really get to be themselves.”

To Sharf and others, New College's reputation as a haven for originality and individualized coursework is now threatened. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' recently appointed six new trustees who intend to turn the school into a classical liberal arts school modeled after conservative favorite Hillsdale College in Michigan.

One new trustee, Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo, said in a column on his website that the governor wants the group to accomplish what he calls “institutional recapture,” which would move New College away from such things as diversity, equity and inclusion programs and teaching of critical race theory — the idea that racism is enmeshed in U.S. society.

“Ours is a project of recapture and reinvention,” Rufo wrote, listing several ways he believes left-wing ideas have permeated universities across the country. “Conservatives have the opportunity finally to demonstrate an effective countermeasure against the long march through institutions.”

Students such as Sharf and New College faculty have begun to push back, organizing meetings to plan strategy and issuing statements against the conservative takeover.

“We support (students') fearless pursuit of knowledge, including research on race and gender,” the New College chapter of United Faculty of Florida wrote in a public statement last week. “We assert our unflagging commitment to free speech, academic integrity and the respectful exchange of different viewpoints.”

Sharf said many students worry New College will become “a quote-unquote ‘Hillsdale of the South.’ I'm not trying to be in an environment where I'm force-fed dogmatic, nationalistic, Christian education. I want to be in a place where you're free to think and learn what you want.”

The governor's appointment of the New College trustees, including a government professor at Hillsdale College, are only one part of DeSantis' effort to shift Florida's 28 state-funded institutions of higher learning in a more conservative direction. The moves come as DeSantis considers a potential 2024 presidential campaign in which education culture battles could play a prominent part, particularly in a Republican primary.

These efforts include a memo DeSantis sent to all Florida colleges and universities requiring them to list programs and staff involved in diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives. The governor signed legislation last April to change the accreditation method for Florida schools and heighten performance review of tenured professors.

During his second inaugural address earlier this month, DeSantis said his goal is to “ensure that our institutions of higher learning are focused on academic excellence and the pursuit of truth, not the imposition of trendy ideology.”

The presidents of all 28 Florida colleges and universities responded to DeSantis' memo on DEI initiatives with a joint statement seeking to distance their institutions from critical race theory and similar concepts. They set a Feb. 1 goal to remove any objectionable programs.

That statement says, in part, that the schools will not fund programs with the primary idea that “systems of oppression should be the primary lens through which teaching and learning are analyzed and/or improved upon.”

The presidents added that critical race theory can be taught but only “as one of several theories and in an objective manner.”

Back in Sarasota, New College has previously fended off efforts to fold it into another state school, such as Florida State University or the University of South Florida, which has a nearby campus. It was once a private school but, since 2001, has been part of the public university system.

The new trustees, on an interim basis pending Florida Senate confirmation, will join the rest of the 13-member board at a meeting Jan. 31. Students and other opponents of conservative change expect to make their views known, Sharf said.

“The vast majority of people on campus don't want this,” she said. “They would erase a lot of things on campus. I don't want to be in a place that tries to erase my existence.”

Is Florida trying to destroy public schools in the name of parental choice? Sure looks like it | Opinion



the Miami Herald Editorial Board
Sat, January 28, 2023

Florida could soon have two separate and unequal school systems.

One would be regulated by strict state laws on curriculum, testing, student performance, school grades, safety and even on how teachers can discuss race, gender and sexual orientation.

The other gets to slide by under the motto: “The fewer regulations, the better.” Those schools don’t have to be accredited by an outside organization, teachers don’t have to be certified and curriculum requirements are lax. If those schools ignore evolution to teach creationism, it’s not the state’s business, yet taxpayers are still paying for them.

That system already exists, at a small, albeit growing, scale thanks to Florida’s school-voucher programs, which provide scholarships for students to attend private schools. Promoted heavily by former Gov. Jeb Bush, vouchers were once touted as a lifeline for low-income students in failing schools or who were struggling in a traditional education setting and otherwise could not afford a better education.

Eligibility was limited by factors such as income or disability status, but has been expanded in recent years.

Now the Legislature wants to put vouchers on steroids and make them available to every K-12 student in Florida, whether low-income, middle class or affluent — more than 2.8 million who are in public schools. Students would be eligible for an education savings accounts that could be used for private or home schooling, tutoring and textbooks.

The state, essentially, would leave it up to private entities, with little oversight, the responsibility of educating its citizens. Meanwhile, that’s money being siphoned from school districts, which have had to turn to their own communities in places like Miami-Dade County for help funding essential things like teacher raises.

Republicans have discovered that “parental rights” will sell almost anything, from the law critics call “Don’t Say Gay” to Gov. DeSantis’ crackdown on classroom discussions about racism. It’s likely the voucher expansion will be successful, given House Bill 1 is a must-pass for House Speaker Paul Renner.

The fine print

As usual, the devil is in the details. Republicans have given zero information on how much this will cost taxpayers. The Herald reported the legislation is being fast-tracked but, “The bill would have an indeterminate fiscal impact,” according to a legislative staff analysis. That would depend on how many students participate and where lawmakers set per-student spending.

Perhaps the opaque scope of this proposal is not happenstance. But the Herald’s recent reporting put its potential ramifications into perspective:

There are 382,000 students who attend private schools or are home-schooled in Florida. Currently, they do not receive any state money. If only 25% of them took advantage of the program, and those currently in it remained, the cost could reach $600 million and, as the program grows, $4 billion within the first five years, based on calculations provided to the Herald by Norín Dollard, a senior research analyst at Florida Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.

Public schools could lose $2.4 billion to $3.4 billion by the 2026-27 school year, the Institute estimates.

That’s a big chunk of change, so the justification for expanding vouchers should go beyond the argument for more “school choice.” It is undeniable that many parents are happy with the education their kids get on vouchers, as surveys show, but the effectiveness of the program has been hard to measure, as the Orlando Sentinel reported.

Students don’t have to take the same standardized tests as they would in public schools, and private schools don’t have to disclose graduation rates to the public. The data gathered in different studies points to mixed results. One study by the Urban Institute often touted by school-choice advocates showed that voucher students were more likely to go to college, but that the majority of them stayed in the program for less than two years. Another analysis required by the state found in 2020 that voucher students made as much progress as expected, but that schools with a large number of voucher students saw negative progress, the Sentinel reported.

Rules are different

Not all private schools are the same. They can run the gamut, from the well-established ones known for their special programs to others that have popped up with the single purpose of milking voucher program dollars. A system like Florida’s allows this discrepancy to fester.

Empowering parents, as Republicans say they are, does little for families when they realize they have enrolled their child in a private school with little academic rigor or in administrative disarray. Just ask the parents who showed up to drop off their children at Allapattah Wynwood School in January only to find out the school shut down until further notice because of a feud within the family that runs it, CBS4 reported. Or take Miami’s Centner Academy, whose owners, based on misinformation, told staff not to get vaccinated for COVID-19. Or the schools that took school vouchers while rejecting LGBTQ students, as the Orlando Sentinel reported in 2020. The U.S. Supreme Court last year blasted the door open for vouchers to fund religious schools.

That’s not to say that vouchers don’t have a place in our education system. Arguing for their abolition at this point would not only be foolish given Florida’s direction, and also unsympathetic to the parents who credit them with saving their child from a failing public school. But when vouchers were introduced, they were meant to supplement public education for students with particular needs, not replace it. The latter appears to be the intent of HB 1.

Providing good public K-12 education to all is still a hallmark of a democracy. It is the duty of the state and written into the Florida Constitution. We doubt that Florida can achieve that goal when it’s funding two systems with unequal sets of rules and expectations.

You want to ban the books? I’m giving them away.' Activists protest Florida book-ban law

Finch Walker, Florida Today
Sat, January 28, 2023 

MELBOURNE — With large cutouts of state and local government officials' faces mounted on poles, community activists gathered around a fire made of cardboard and tissue paper to hold a fake "book burning" across the street from Melbourne High School on Saturday morning.

“Hey, hey! Ho, ho! The stupid woke have got to go!” shouted Philip Stasik, the former president of Space Coast Progressive Alliance, who wore a shirt that read “Dark Money.”

Other progressive activists, dressed as Gov. Ron DeSantis, state Rep. Randy Fine, Moms For Liberty Founder Tina Descovich, Brevard School Board Chairman Matt Susin and Moms for Liberty member Michelle Beavers, stood behind the phony fire shouting in favor of banning books.- 

Beside them, a group of people yelled in favor of the freedom to keep books on shelves, available to be read by all.

Foundation cuts ties with BPS:Fine arts group cuts ties with Brevard public schools, citing actions by Matt Susin

School discipline:Brevard School Board hopes audit will clarify school discipline debate

All of this was part of one demonstration organized by Foundation 451, a nonprofit providing banned and challenged books to Brevard students, and Awake Brevard Action Alliance, a nonpartisan group that promotes rallies in the county. The mock burning was held at 11 a.m. on the four corners at the intersection of Bulldog Boulevard and Babcock Street in Melbourne, and drew about 50 protesters.

The protest used a technique called guerrilla theater, a performance method that is often performed in public places to draw attention to political or social issues through the use of satire. More than 100 titles were available to students at the rally for free, with parents asked to make a donation if they were picking up books.

The act of protest against the book bans that have taken place across Florida over the past two years, with books being challenged or removed from shelves altogether in school libraries throughout the state, was something Adam Tritt came up with in December, he said.

“I said, ‘We need guerrilla theater, we need something, this is what we do,” said the founder of Foundation 451 and a Brevard County teacher, adding that the idea was to act out burning the books through the use of the cardboard props.

“I want people to realize this is happening,” Tritt said.

Phil Stasik uses a megaphone during a protest Saturday along Babcock Street in Melbourne against the banning of books.

It’s a goal he shared with Fara Megarge, one of the founders of Awake Brevard Action Alliance, and Dan McDow, a city council member for West Melbourne. The three hoped to bring awareness to the book bannings and classroom restrictions throughout the county and state.

Though plans for the rally were made in December, the timing of the rally came less than a week after Manatee County’s school district told all secondary school classrooms to remove or cover their classroom libraries until the books could be reviewed under new state standards. Teachers with unvetted materials or books found to be inappropriate could face a third-degree felony charge.

In Brevard, books have been challenged since March of 2022, with Beavers first raising concerns about reading material that may not be appropriate for children. In December, the school board proposed a rule that nine books slated for formal review would only be available to students age 18 or older, or students with written permission, while the review committee completes its work.

Dozens of people gathered along Babcock Street at Bulldog Boulevard in Melbourne on Saturday to protest against the banning of books. Craig Bailey/FLORIDA TODAY via USA TODAY NETWORK

With DeSantis recently ruling against allowing an Advanced Placement course in African-American history to be taught in high schools, Megarge said she views the banning of books and related actions by politicians as an erasure of history.

“We’re looking at basically DeSantis and everyone trying to strip away history, Black history, not only in elementary, high school and now colleges. And we’re just out here to make a stand about it,” she said.

Lisa Superina lives in Melbourne Beach. Before that, she was a teacher of Italian language in a New York high school for 32 years.

Seeing reading restricted among children is disturbing to her as both a former teacher and as an American, she said.

“Fascism isn’t just going to show up one day and say, ‘I’m here,’ and take all your rights away,” she said. “It’s creeping in, in increments, and this is the start … right now it’s blatant, in our face, and they’re starting with the books.”

Tritt, who has distributed more than 1,200 books since the start of Foundation 451 in March 2022, said he’s determined to continue giving banned books away. He added that he only gives them to students who are 16 years old with an ID, or students accompanied by a parent.

“You want to ban the books? I’m giving them away,” he said. “You want me to be quiet about it? Give me a megaphone. You don’t like this book? Can I get 50 copies of it, please? And we’re going to give them to the kids, with parents’ permission.”

Finch Walker is the education reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Walker at 321-290-4744 or fwalker@floridatoday.com. Twitter: @_finchwalker

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Mock 'book burning' near Melbourne High protests Florida book bans

Ron DeSantis and the GOP fight 'woke' because hating a word is easier that hating people


Rex Huppke, USA TODAY
Sun, January 29, 2023 

Like many Americans in this age of stupid things, I face an existential question: Am I woke?

I assume not, because Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis hasn’t tried to ban me, as he recently did an AP high school course on African-American studies.

But who knows? Maybe I’m stealth-woke. Maybe my very presence in society indoctrinates America’s youth with…well, I guess I don’t really know the specific content of woke indoctrination, since nobody stoking fear about it has ever explained what the heck they’re talking about.
Oh no! Queer people exist? Please don't tell my children

In giving his reasons for blocking the AP course, DeSantis whined that it contained a section on “queer theory.” As he spoke those two words he sounded like someone was holding a cat turd under his nose. Apparently, anything “queer” is woke, because it might suggest to impressionable youth that queer people exist. I guess.

OH THE IRONY

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis addresses the crowd before publicly signing the Stop Woke bill in April 2022.

The bottom line is DeSantis and other Quixotic clodhoppers in the perma-fabulist world of the Republican Party have made “woke” a ubiquitous slur, attacking everyone from leaders of The Walt Disney Co. to teachers to M&Ms. Why? Apparently because the “wokies” are trying to destroy America by engaging in radical behavior like “promoting understanding,” “thinking about others” and “making the world a slightly less awful place for people who historically haven’t had much say in how things work.”

DeSantis shows who he is: DeSantis blocks an AP African American studies course – and reveals his true colors

'Woke' never seems to apply to things that help straight, white people

“Woke” is an umbrella term on the right. Sometimes it refers to students learning about things like gender identity or slavery, sometimes it deals with the kind of shoes a cartoon M&M is wearing, sometimes it involves climate change.

But there’s one consistent element: It always gets applied to things that make certain straight, white people uncomfortable. I’ve never heard someone on Fox News bemoan the wokeness of a young-adult novel featuring the wedding of a white man and a white woman. They don’t holler things like:

 “THAT’S WOKE BECAUSE IT’S INDOCTRINATING MY CHILD WITH HETEROSEXUALITY!”

Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill passed in March 2022 is aimed at restricting speech on sexual orientation and gender identity in public school classrooms.

No, it’s always, “THAT BOOK IS WOKE BECAUSE IT SUGGESTS THAT BEING GAY AND LOVING SOMEONE IS A THING THAT HAPPENS!!” Or more sober reflections like, “We must ban this course because it might make my white child feel bad that slavery happened and, worse yet, that racism still exists in America, harumph.”

Does it stand for something else? Is it W.O.K.E.?

Maybe “WOKE” is an acronym for “White people Obfuscating to remain Keenly Entitled.” Or “Weirdos Opposed to Kids’ Education.”

I dunno. I can’t make sense of the whole thing.

'Woke' or joke?: DeSantis is trying to keep straight, white men like me perpetually angry.

Microsoft recently had the temerity to announce it was updating Xbox game consoles to be more energy efficient and help cut down on carbon emissions, prompting the fury fetishists at Fox News to lose their minds and say the company is “going woke because of climate change.”

Fox News host Jimmy Failla said: “They’re trying to recruit your kids into climate politics at an earlier age.”
How dare a woke Xbox distract us from gender fluid M&Ms!

This was such a serious threat to the country it distracted the warriors-against-woke from their previous battle against what Tucker Carlson called “obese and distinctly frumpy lesbian M&Ms” or some other such nonsense.

 

Fox News host Tucker Carlson, presumably troubled over the wokeness of M&Ms.

Making matters dumber, I heard Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus on Fox Business the other day complaining about the “woke generation” and its focus on climate change, saying: “We've already overspent. And if anything, climate control has caused most of the problems we have today.”

But then I read Home Depot is installing solar panels across the rooftops of 25 of its stores in California, part of the company’s plan to “produce or procure 100% renewable electricity equivalent to the electricity needs for all Home Depot facilities by 2030.”

All right, anti-woke crusaders, make up your darn minds

So concern about climate change is woke and problematic but also part of the environmentally conscious plan the company — whose co-founder hates wokeness — is touting?

PICK A LANE, PEOPLE, YOU’RE NOT MAKING SENSE!

In Congress, lawmakers are wrestling over raising the debt ceiling, which should be a simple step to avoid a global financial crisis. But Republicans have dug their heels in, and one budgetary proposal getting attention comes from the right-wing Center for Renewing America. It’s called “A Commitment to End Woke and Weaponized Government.”

Critical race theory

In 90 pages of text, the word “woke” appears 77 times, but never once with anything approaching a definition of the word itself. It could just as effectively have been called “A Commitment to End Flarpgasms and Weaponized Government.” The word is irrelevant — its only intent is to spark a visceral “the libs are gonna make it so I’m not at the top of the power structure” response in people who, deep down or right on the surface, feel they have a right to remain at the top of the power structure.

What are debt ceiling 'extraordinary measures'?: GOP bake sale and selling Biden's Corvette.

We must rid our school of FLARPGASM!

DeSantis could hold a press conference in Florida and decry the “flarpgasm” of an AP African American studies course, and his supporters would cheer and wink and nod and be proud they live in a state whose motto is, “Where Flarpgasm Goes to Die!”

Woke is, at the risk of rhyming, a joke, albeit an insidious one. It’s hard for a person or politician to stand up and say, “I’m not comfortable with people who are transgender or queer or gay or lesbian, and I don’t want to better understand Black people's historical experience in America.”

Rally against teaching critical race theory at the Loudoun County Government center in Leesburg, Virginia on June 12, 2021.

But it’s easy for them to stand up and say, “I HATE WOKE!” It’s easy to push back against a meaningless word, and it gets the message across to fellow travelers just fine.

What it misses is this: The rest of us are smart enough to see through the charade. It’s too cute by half.

We aren’t sleeping through your woke-centric babbling, folks. Quite the contrary.

We’re woke indeed.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Twitter @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk, or contact him at rhuppke@usatoday.com

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: From CRT to M&M's, DeSantis and GOP's war on 'woke' speaks volumes

School librarians vilified as the 'arm of Satan' in book-banning wars

Jeffrey Fleishman
Fri, January 27, 2023

The Patmos Library in Jamestown, Mich., where at least two librarians have quit amid pressure and harassment from residents demanding the removal of books. 

(Joshua Lott / Washington Post via Getty Images)

In her time as a Texas school librarian, Carolyn Foote watched the image of her profession veer from “shrinking violets behind spectacles” cataloging titles to “pedophiles and groomers” out to pollute the minds of the nation’s youth.

“Librarians came from a climate of being so appreciated to hearing this message that we’re reviled,” said Foote, co-founder of Freadom Fighters, an advocacy group for librarians that has nearly 15,000 Twitter followers. “It was an astonishing turn of events." A lot of librarians are asking themselves whether they want to remain in the profession, she added. "At least five people I know have retired early.”

Once a comforting presence at story circle and book fairs, librarians have been condemned, bullied and drawn into battles over censorship as school and library boards face intensifying pressure from conservatives seeking to ban books exploring racial and LGBTQ themes. Those voices have grown stronger in red states since the pandemic, when parental groups opposed to mask mandates expanded their sights and became more involved in how and what their children were taught.

Recent polls suggest most Americans are not in favor of banning books. But concentrated pressure by politically connected parental groups, said Peter Bromberg, a board member at EveryLibrary, a nonprofit library advisory group, “has librarians facing a great deal of stress. There are signs on people's lawns calling librarians pedophiles." They face pressure from principals and administrators over book displays, and "neighbors talk about them being an arm of Satan.”

The Patmos Library in Jamestown, Mich., which lost public funding after a campaign by conservatives, forcing it to rely on donations. 

(Joshua Lott / Washington Post via Getty Images)

Some librarians are fighting back; others have lost or left their jobs. The culture wars over books come at a time when about 27% of public libraries have reduced staff because of budget cuts and other reasons, according to a 2021 national survey. Lessa Kanani'opua Pelayo-Lozado, president of the American Library Assn., said librarians' problems are compounded by attacks that are part of an effort "seeking to abolish diverse ideas and erode this country of freedom of expression. I see it as the dismantling of education."

A number of school board meetings in recent years have become explosive and emblematic of the country's political animosities. Parents yell, boo, shake fists and hold up sexually graphic images in dramas that play out on social media. Similar scenes have erupted at public libraries, including at the Patmos Library in western Michigan, where at least two librarians have quit amid pressure and harassment from residents demanding the removal of LGBTQ books and young adult graphic novels.

Visitors enter the Patmos Library. (Joshua Lott / Washington Post via Getty Images)

At the library's December board meeting, librarian Jean Reicher denounced critics a week after the building closed early over fears for the staff’s safety. She said that signs around town labeled her a pedophile and that she'd received abusive phone calls and had cameras pointed at her. Her emotional retort came a month after a campaign led by conservatives succeeded in defunding the library, forcing it to rely on donations.

“We have been threatened. We have been cursed,” said Reicher. “How dare you people. You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me. You have said I’ve sexualized your children. I’m grooming your children."

She raised her hands. Her anger welled.

"I have six grandkids out there,” she said, ticking off the offenses aimed at her. "I moved to this town 2½ years ago, and I regret it every day for the last year. This has been horrible," she continued. "I wasn’t raised this way. I believe in God. I’m a Catholic. I’m a Christian. I’m everything you are.”

School and library boards are encountering demands from conservative lawmakers and parental groups, such as Moms for Liberty and Mama Bears Rising, and in a few instances the far-right extremist group the Proud Boys, to scour libraries of what they consider upsetting pornographic and LGBTQ depictions. Many conservatives criticize schools as overrun with progressive ideas that are confusing children about race and gender.

“By exposing our children to adult concepts such as gender identity we are asking them to carry a load that is much too heavy for them,” Kit Hart, a Moms for Liberty member, said in a video posted last year from a school board meeting in Carroll County, Md. “A 10-year-old should not be reduced to his sexuality.”

A video posted on the Moms for Liberty website shows another one of its members outlining her concerns at a public meeting in Mecklenburg, N.C.: “Parents beware of terms like social justice, diversity, equity, inclusion. Those inherently good things are being used to disguise a biased political agenda,” she said. “Our schools are becoming indoctrination camps and a breeding ground for hatred and division.”

Florida and other states have placed tougher restrictions on books that schools can stock. A Missouri law passed last year makes it a crime for a school to provide sexually explicit material to a student. After a discrimination complaint filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights is investigating a Texas school district after a superintendent directed librarians to remove LGBTQ-related books.

“We have been thrown to the forefront of the cultural wars whether we want to be there or not,” said Amanda Jones, a middle school librarian in Livingston Parish, La., who last year broke out in hives and fell into depression after she was threatened for speaking against censorship. “It’s not fun to be vilified in your small town or the country at large. It’s all related to their using political fear and outrage. And they’re using children to do it.”

Jones was skewered by conservative activists, including Citizens for a New Louisiana, after she warned at a library meeting that "hate and fear disguised as moral outrage have no place in Livingston Parish." A picture of her appeared online with a red circle around her head — resembling a target — and she was called a pig and a supporter of teaching anal sex to 11-year-olds. Someone suggested she should be slapped.

Martha Hickson, a high school librarian in Annandale, N.J., endured similar stress and said she lost 12 pounds in one week after she was accused by a parent at a school board meeting of being a groomer by providing graphic novels and memoirs, such as “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe and “Lawn Boy” by Jonathan Evison, that could influence children toward “heinous acts.”

Maia Kobabe holds a copy of her book "Gender Queer: A Memoir" at North Sonoma Regional Park in Santa Rosa, Calif. Her graphic novel about coming out as nonbinary is the most banned book in America. (Josh Edelson / For The Times)

“What really stung was that my name was used in that context,” said Hickson, 63, who in 2020 received the American Assn. of School Librarians’ Intellectual Freedom Award. “It was devastating. I broke down and I couldn’t stop crying." She couldn't catch her breath, she said, and "couldn’t speak in full sentences. I cracked two teeth from grinding and was fitted with a night guard. I go to the pool now and swim three times a week. It washes the stress away.”

Jessica Brassington, head of the Texas-based Mama Bears Rising, which advocates for increased parental oversight in education, said her intent is not to rebuke librarians or teachers but to get stricter state guidelines on selecting school books in what she sees as a broader war against her Christian faith.

“We want to protect our children. We’ve seen the dark side of what can happen beyond the book. Suicide. Alienation,” said Brassington, whose organization has pressed for the removal of books in school districts and warned against children being indoctrinated by an "evil" sexual agenda. “We want to know what books are available to our children. ...

The parents are being bypassed.”

Calls to ban certain books in schools have arisen for generations among liberal and conservative parents, educators and activist groups. Classics such as Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” have been pulled from reading lists. Books deemed to be obscene such as “The Catcher in the Rye” and “Tropic of Cancer” were censored for decades. In the 1980s, well-funded and organized groups like the Christian right Moral Majority condemned books on secular humanism.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has pushed laws to restrict school instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation. 

(Paul Hennessy / SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Those battles echo today and have accelerated as religious conservatives and right-leaning politicians, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, have backed bills to limit school instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation. Of the 1,648 titles banned in schools across the country in the 2021-22 school year, according to a PEN America study, 41% had prominent LGBTQ characters or explicitly explored LGBTQ themes.

“It's hard to compare this to anything other than the Red Scare in the 1950s,” said Foote, a retired high school librarian of 29 years who was named a Champion of Change by President Obama. “There’s nothing else remotely close to this.”

Librarians are being “pushed out of the process of selecting books,” said Tasslyn Magnusson, a Wisconsin writer and teacher who has compiled a national database of books being challenged in school districts. “We’re cutting kids off from all the things they need to function in a diverse society. They’re trying to [keep] kids from learning about the world. How will kids grow into good Americans and global citizens? I just read somewhere James Baldwin got banned.”

School librarians have long been accustomed to hearing from angry parents. Some parents request that their child not be allowed to check out certain books. Demands to remove a book from circulation traditionally go through a committee review process. But librarians have complained recently that thorough reviews are sometimes skipped or influenced by pressure from parental groups.

That pressure in some districts is likely to make for less diverse reading lists as librarians choose not to select certain books. "If librarians are being threatened with lawsuits and fines," said Pelayo-Lozado, whose association is holding a nationwide conference this weekend that will address book banning, "it can lead to self-censoring."

Hickson’s school district in New Jersey faced criticism in 2021 when a group of parents wanted “Gender Queer,” “Lawn Boy” and other books removed from the library. A complaint was filed against Hickson with police, but the country prosecutor did not pursue charges. At later school board meetings, a contingent of parents, students and residents urged the board not to purge those titles. A district committee reviewed the books and last year decided to keep them on the shelves.

“But I was still tarred and feathered,” said Hickson. Amid pressure from her union and support in the community, the school board said accusations of “malicious motives” against Hickson were unfounded. “I look at these kids and my heart breaks," she said. "These groups wanting to ban books have a whole political machinery around them and are using books as proxies to attack people in society." Kids have to deal with "bullying, slurs and shoving.”

Jones in Louisiana said school libraries are often refuges for students to explore what they may be experiencing along racial and LGBTQ themes.

“A lot of parents supported me but they were scared to speak out because of harassment,” said Jones, president of the Louisiana Assn. of School Librarians. “Some students question their identity and they come to me and ask about LGBTQ books. But the parents want to keep it quiet so the child is not harassed. This whole thing has turned my life upside down.”

Jones is on medical leave until next semester. A defamation suit she filed against two men, including one belonging to the conservative group Citizens for a New Louisiana, was dismissed. She said she will appeal. Last month, state Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry, who is running for governor, announced a tip line for people to "protect" children and report library books that contain “extremely graphic sexual content.”

“They’re using librarians again for their politics,” said Jones, who is writing a book about her ordeal and forming a citizens’ alliance against censorship in the state’s 64 parishes.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

‘We know who the radicals are’: What people think of Florida teachers hiding bookshelves



Ryan Ballogg
Wed, January 25, 2023 

Florida’s Manatee County has been in the national spotlight this week after photos of covered classroom bookshelves went viral on social media.

On Tuesday, the School Board addressed the controversy at a meeting. attended by about 50 people. Three mothers spoke in favor of the district’s actions in response to a new Florida law, and a library media specialist spoke against.

“For those teachers who are protesting so much, thank you. Now we know who some of the radicals are,” parent Paula Lohnes said during public comment.

The law, HB 1467, was championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in a push for parental rights in Florida classrooms. It takes aim at books containing “bias or indoctrination,” “pornography” and content “harmful to minors.” It requires all reading material in classrooms and libraries to be approved by each district.

So far, Manatee County appears to be the only district where some schools were immediately removing or preventing access to books until they are vetted and added to a district-wide database called Destiny.

On Tuesday, there also seemed to be confusion on how principals and teachers were interpreting the district’s memo.

“As far as I know, there aren’t any book cops going school to school and classroom to classroom,” Manatee School Board chairman Chad Choate said. “Just don’t go allow your books to go out right now until they’re all vetted.

“I don’t think we need to create more of an issue by throwing sheets over, turning books around,” Choate added. “We’ll get through this. It’s gonna take some time.”

Others defended teachers’ reactions to the new rules.

“The information that was disseminated was not consistent in every single school,” said Patricia Barber, the president of the county’s teachers union. “And like it or not, some principals’ interpretation of ‘do not allow student access to your classroom libraries until they’ve been vetted was cover them, box them or do whatever to keep your students from having access.”

On Tuesday, there was still not a clear consensus among district officials on how teachers should proceed in restricting access to unvetted books.

“Are we telling them leave the blanket on or off?” School Board member Mary Foreman asked.

“I’m not giving any direction of that kind. If it’s approved by the district or in Destiny, it’s immediately available to students,” said Laurie Breslin, the county school district’s executive director of curriculum.

‘It takes forever’

In Manatee County, on Florida’s Gulf coast, the district is relying heavily on volunteer power to vet books and get approved titles back on classroom shelves.

“It takes forever,” said board member Mary Foreman. “I spent the last two days at a Title 1 school going through the process. I got four classrooms done.”

Books in teachers’ classroom libraries must be individually checked against a list of approved books logged in the district’s system, Breslin said.

“One thing that we can’t do is stop teachers focusing on their students,” Breslin said. She explained that the district is instead relying on community volunteers to come into classrooms and start checking books.

Books that are not on the approved list must be added to a spreadsheet for further consideration by the certified media specialist at each school.

Ultimately, the media specialist and principal at each school will be responsible for deeming which books are allowed to stay, Breslin said.

In cases where schools do not agree whether a particular book is appropriate, the decision will be elevated to the the School Board for final say, Superintendent Cynthia Saunders said Tuesday.

That process has yet to be figured out, with further discussion planned for a School Board workshop on Friday.

School Board member Gina Messenger said she supports the law but raised concerns that parents at Title I schools may have less time to volunteer or access to books outside of school.

“I have concerns with this stall that we have now, and how that will affect certain segments of our population,” Messenger said.

It also takes the school district up to 10 days to background check volunteers before they can go into schools, Breslin said, adding another delay in the process.

In the meantime, students still have access to books in school media centers, which already went through the verification process last year.

State education officials issued guidance in December explaining that the law also applies to classroom libraries, which Manatee County schools had not previously included in its book vetting process.

Other School Board members threw their support behind the measure.

“I’m going to con the phrase ‘media morals.’ There has to be morals when we’re talking about our students,” said School Board member Cindy Spray.

“The libraries are the garden that has been weeded, and now we’re going into the classrooms and trying to weed those gardens, so to speak,” said School Board member Richard Tatem.

‘Tremendous’ angst

Critics of the new law say it it is censorship and serves a political purpose.

The law “allows conservatives to weed out books and classroom material that they find offensive,” parent-founded advocacy organization Florida Freedom to Read Project said in a recent post.

Manatee County recently sent a memo to school leaders that said failure to comply with the new rules could result in a third-degree felony charge.

“It has caused a tremendous amount of angst,” Barber said Tuesday night.

Teachers are scared, and schools’ books have become contraband. This is Florida? | Opinion


Screenshot Facebook

the Miami Herald Editorial Board
Thu, January 26, 2023 at 4:17 PM MST·3 min read

The damage being done by the new Florida law that is supposed to stop teachers from using books that contain “bias or indoctrination,” “pornography” or content “harmful to minors” became all too clear this week.

First came the viral photos. Teachers posted photos on social media of classroom bookshelves in Manatee County schools that they’d covered up with construction paper so students couldn’t see the books (let alone read them) until they are officially approved. “Farewell, classroom library,” one posted.

Then came the confusion — and the chilling effect.

At a Manatee School Board meeting Tuesday to address the turmoil, board chairman Chad Choate, said, “As far as I know, there aren’t any book cops going school to school and classroom to classroom.” But then he added: “Just don’t go allow your books to go out right now until they’re all vetted.”

The president of the county’s teachers union, Patricia Barber, meanwhile, noted that, “The information that was disseminated was not consistent in every single school. And like it or not, some principals’ interpretation of ‘do not allow student access to your classroom libraries until they’ve been vetted’ was cover them, box them or do whatever to keep your students from having access.”

That led to School Board member Mary Foreman wondering aloud, “Are we telling them leave the blanket on or off?”

Third-degree felony

Keeping the blanket — or construction paper or whatever — draped over classroom bookshelves is exactly the problem. After Manatee County sent a memo to school leaders saying failure to comply with the new rules could result in a third-degree felony charge, teachers began erring on the side of caution: When in doubt, keep all the books away from the kids until the government gives the nod.

Who can blame them? Fear is creeping into the classroom. And it’s well-founded, under a law that has essentially criminalized providing an unapproved book to a student.

School boards in Broward and Miami-Dade apparently haven’t directed teachers to remove books from their shelves, but media specialists are going through state-mandated training on the law.

The law, HB 1467, was championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, part of his push for parental rights in Florida classrooms. It makes it easier for parents to challenge the use of any book. And the very vagueness of the law — how do we define “indoctrination”? — makes it perfect for those in power. And dangerous. It means whatever they want it to mean.

There are other, more pragmatic issues. Getting all those classroom books through the new approval process is mighty slow in a place like Manatee County, where volunteers are being pressed into service to do the work — after they are background checked, a process that can take 10 days.

Foreman, the School Board member, told the Bradenton Herald that she spent two days helping check books in one school and only got four classrooms done. “It takes forever,” she said.

But beyond those complications, there’s an important thing to consider: What is this doing to our school systems and the trust we place in teachers — who are, after all, trained for their jobs, including the appropriateness of what they share in class?

It’s damaging, probably seriously so. Teachers who dare to question the law and its application run the risk of being targeted, as became abundantly clear from this comment by Manatee County parent Paula Lohnes at Tuesday’s meeting: “For those teachers who are protesting so much, thank you. Now we know who some of the radicals are.”

DeSantis’ racist vision of Florida calls for a new, overdue civil rights movement | Opinion


Alicia Devine/Tallahassee Democrat via AP

Fabiola Santiago
Fri, January 27, 2023 

It was about time Florida’s Black leadership got mad.

Really, really mad.

Enough to descend on the Capitol Rotunda, bring in a big-name lawyer and stake a vigorous claim in the fight for the rights of African Americans, under threat from a hostile state government and its policy enforcers at the local level.

Too much is at stake — the downgrading of educational programs and the suppression of voting and civil rights to accommodate the ideals of a white, ultra-conservative, Christian-only prism — not only for Florida, but for the nation as well.

“We are here to give notice to Gov. DeSantis,’’ said civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who was surrounded by a cheering crowd that should’ve been a lot larger, as urgent times demand.

“If he does not negotiate with the College Board to allow AP African-American Studies to be taught in the classrooms across the state of Florida,” he said, “these three young people will be the lead plaintiffs.’’

Beside Crump stood a Black female, a white female and a Black male, all Leon County high-school students. They became eloquent visuals to emphasize a point that hasn’t been made strongly enough: While DeSantis sold his “parental rights” restrictions as only affecting younger students, that’s far from the truth.

And, as teachers around Florida clear their bookshelves and submit their classroom libraries to “vetting,” DeSantis already is foreshadowing that he’ll sign into law more “anti-woke” legislation to expand what he has started.

READ MORE: Americans want to know what Gov. DeSantis’ definition of ‘woke’ is. He’s not saying | Opinion

Pushback overdue

Vocal pushback — the kind we saw this week, high optics, decisive action from African-American leaders and allies — has been long overdue.

Floridians could’ve used a heap of it during the last legislative session.

Surely, Democratic state representatives and senators worked hard within the system to mitigate DeSantis’ harmful initiatives. But with Republicans overpowering every move with a solid majority, they didn’t have a shot.

They needed a show of support from Floridians backing them beyond denunciations on Twitter and eloquent letters to the editor and op-eds in newspapers — and didn’t get it.

As election results show, DeSantis won his anti-woke culture war.

What’s happening with the revision of African-American studies is the result of the spate of DeSantis measures passed — from crackdowns on absentee voting to educational reforms that whitewash Black history and bad-mouth gayness.

All of the laws intimidate, keeping many parents and educators mum, and voters at home instead of at the polls defeating him. They disproportionately affect minority communities, and that alone should have sent those voters in record numbers to the polls.

But the opposite happened.

People cowered under the weight of the power DeSantis exudes to quash any opposition, from anti-protest laws that ended Black Lives Matter demonstrations in Florida to the arrests of Black ex-felons who thought their rights had been restored and were given voter identification cards.

It’s high time to fight harder and wiser.

If not with 1960s-style marching, then with a new, visual modern version of widespread protest. Litigation is one way. Calling things by their name is another. Why didn’t legislators forcefully denounce — all along the legislative process — DeSantis’ sanitizing of the Black experience for what it was?

Racism.

Then, when the worst of the worst came to pass, they seemed shell-shocked.

Say the word — and regroup.

DeSantis’ racist vision for Florida calls for the rebirth of a civil-rights movement in the state. Enough waiting for him to morph into the moderate Republican he isn’t, the same way the Washington media kept waiting for Donald Trump to pivot into a decent, law-abiding human.

DeSantis will only get worse in his pursuit of the White House.

Twice victorious, DeSantis launched his gubernatorial career camouflaging his anti-Black, anti-gay, anti-immigrant agenda with dog-whistle language.

Now, he has no qualms defending his racist Utopian state.

Queer Black history

Two days before the Crump rally, the governor doubled down on his administration’s rejection of Advanced Placement African-American studies, lashing out at the critical race theory he says the college-prep course embodied.

“This course, when I heard it didn’t meet the standards, I figured, ‘Yeah, they may be doing CRT,’’’ DeSantis said at a Monday event in Jacksonville. “It’s way more than that. This course on Black history, what [is] one of the lessons about? Queer Theory. Now, who would say that’s an important part of Black history, Queer Theory? That is somebody pushing an agenda on our kids.”

The governor, unfortunately, doesn’t watch NBC News or any other serious media that chronicles Black or LGBTQ+ history. Why wouldn’t there be Black gays — and prominent ones, too?

Someone needs to point him to the segment on “the queer Black trailblazers who made history.”

Division works for DeSantis

Every week, evidence mounts that, despite his divisive politics, DeSantis is gaining ground (at least, on Fox News) as a serious GOP presidential contender. For one, there’s talk of the U.S. House of Representatives forming an “Anti-Woke Caucus” to save America from Democrats they insist on calling socialists and communists.

Our fight for an inclusive Florida isn’t a local fight anymore.

Of course, DeSantis may welcome the return fire for the headlines it will generate.

But what’s the alternative?

Letting him demean, diminish and erase communities on his way to the White House?

Nuclear Experts Raise Concerns About Zaporizhzhia Plant

Matthew Mpoke Bigg
Sat, January 28, 2023 

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant along the banks of the Dnipro River, in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on Aug. 13, 2022. (David Guttenfelder/The New York Times)

United Nations inspectors at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in southern Ukraine say explosions from the artillery war being waged nearby rattle the facility almost daily, raising concerns that the danger to the plant has not improved despite the U.N.’s pleas for Kyiv and Moscow to create a cease-fire zone around it.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, said Thursday that blasts had been heard near the facility “almost daily” for weeks. In addition to explosions heard Thursday, it said, eight “strong detonations” that rattled office windows at the plant had been heard the previous morning.

“Powerful explosions have been occurring outside the facility, indicating military activities in the vicinity of the site located on the front line of the ongoing conflict,” the International Atomic Energy Agency’s director general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said in the statement Thursday.

Russian forces occupied the nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, near the start of their full-scale invasion 11 months ago. Since then, the U.N. nuclear watchdog has warned of the potential for a nuclear catastrophe as the security situation deteriorated.

Blasts at the plant over the summer, for which each side blamed the other, effectively turned it into a battle zone, and all of the facility’s six reactors have been shut down as a precaution because of the security situation.

Ukrainian authorities have for months accused Russia of using Zaporizhzhia’s large grounds, which are on the east bank of the wide Dnieper River, as a base from which to lob shells across the river at the city of Nikopol, just 10 miles away, and at other communities.

The agency stationed experts at the plant in September and also at Ukraine’s other nuclear facilities last week to monitor conditions and security and to provide technical assistance.

Grossi held talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine last week to again press for a protection zone around the Zaporizhzhia facility. Grossi has previously spoken to President Vladimir Putin of Russia on the same topic.

The talks have yet to bear fruit. Control of the plant gives Moscow significant leverage over Ukraine’s energy sector, which Russian forces also have been targeting since October with missile and drone strikes.

The agency’s statement gave no military details about the explosions, although they coincide with the latest in a series of frequent reports by Ukrainian officials of attacks in the Zaporizhzhia region, on the eastern bank of the river, and in Dnipropetrovsk, on the river’s western bank.

“Nikopol district had another restless night, the artillery strike alert lasted almost 12 hours,” the head of the military administration in Dnipropetrovsk, Mykola Lukashuk, said Friday, referring to a riverbank area a few miles away from the plant. The community of Myrove, also on the western side of the river, was shelled about 50 times overnight, he said on the Telegram social messaging app.

Russia was making big plans for Ukraine's nuclear power plants before its invasion fell apart


Stavros Atlamazoglou
Sun, January 29, 2023

Russian military vehicles at the gates of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in May 2022.ANDREY BORODULIN/AFP via Getty Images

Russia launched its attack on Ukraine in February 2022 with plans for a quick victory.

Those plans depended in part on seizing Ukraine's nuclear power plants and using them for leverage.

Russia's ambitions for those plants were foiled when Ukraine fended off the initial attack.

When he launched his invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin had ambitious goals for Ukraine.

Within three days to a week of attacking, Putin planned to capture Kyiv, topple Ukraine's government, and demilitarize Ukrainian forces.

According to an analysis of the first five months of the war by the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank, the Russians had big plans to use Ukraine's nuclear power plants to help make it all happen.

3 Russian plans

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in July 2019.

Dmytro Smolyenko/Future Publishing via Getty Images

According to the RUSI report, Russia's war plans viewed Ukraine's nuclear power plants as a means to achieve Moscow's larger aims. Key to that planning was southern Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia plant, which is Europe's largest.

The Kremlin's plan envisioned three uses for the Ukrainian nuclear power facilities once the invasion was underway.

First, Moscow planned for Ukrainian nuclear power facilities to function as bases for Russian troops and their equipment as well as ammunition depots. Russian officers were also to set up command-and-control posts within the premises of those nuclear facilities.

The second function the Kremlin envisioned for the nuclear facilities was to gain control over Ukraine's energy system. Nuclear power generates more than 60% of Ukraine's electricity. Thus, by controlling the nuclear facilities, Moscow would have influence over Ukraine's population and economy.

Finally, Moscow wanted to control the Ukrainian nuclear facilities so as to have "leverage for blackmailing" European countries. By threatening Europe with radiation pollution from potential accidents, the Kremlin hoped to deter direct or indirect foreign intervention.

A Russian serviceman at the Zaporizhzhia plant in May 2022.

ANDREY BORODULIN/AFP via Getty Images

Moreover, to deal with any Ukrainian provinces that refused to cooperate with the proxy government Moscow was planning to install, the Russians planned to weaponize the captured nuclear power plants to cut off electricity to those regions.

Moscow's goal was the "denuclearization" of Ukraine through the capture and control of its nuclear power plants, along with the destruction of Ukraine's national identity and of Ukraine's military forces and defense industry, according to the RUSI report.

Moscow also incorporated Ukraine's nuclear power facilities into its information operations.

In trying to justify the illegal and brutal invasion of its neighbor, Russia went to extremes, calling for "de-nazification" of its neighbor and making allegations about the presence of "American Pentagon biolaboratories."

Moscow also seized on Ukraine's peaceful nuclear power program — a legacy of the Soviet Union — to accuse Kyiv wanting to restore its nuclear weapons program and thereby threaten Russia. Ukraine was left with nuclear weapons after the Soviet Union dissolved, but leaders in Kyiv, who didn't have the ability to use those weapons or funds to maintain them, gave them up in 1994 in exchange for security assurances from the US, the UK, and Russia.

Fighting in a nuclear plant

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on August 29.

Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies.

Although Russia's military failed to achieve any of its primary invasion objectives, it did manage to capture the Zaporizhzhia plant.

In a firefight recorded by cameras at the plant, Russian forces are seen storming and capturing Europe's largest nuclear power plant, partially achieving Moscow's goals.

Over the following weeks and months, the Russian military moved more troops into the area and housed them on the plant's premises.

Fighting in the region around the plant continued, and artillery fire frequently landed in and around the facility. Russian troops also stored equipment and weapons in and around the Zaporizhzhia plant.

A damaged administrative building at the Zaporizhzhia plant in March 2022.

Press service of National Nuclear Energy Generating Company Energoatom

Russian forces still control the Zaporizhzhia plant, but Ukraine has fended off Russian attacks on its other nuclear power facilities.

Russian forces tried to capture the Pivdennoukrainsk plant in southern Ukraine but were repelled, though the facility came under artillery fire in the fall that struck a few hundred yards from its nuclear reactors.

After almost a year of fighting and the deaths of tens of thousands of Russian troops, it's evident that Putin's plans for Ukraine failed miserably, and there are other signs that Ukraine and the world thinks those ambitions are thwarted for good.

The International Atomic Energy Agency recently established a permanent presence at the Pivdennoukrainsk plant, a sign of confidence in Ukraine's ability to hold off future Russian attacks.

Stavros Atlamazoglou is a defense journalist specializing in special operations, a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), and a Johns Hopkins University graduate. He is working toward a master's degree in strategy and cybersecurity at Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies.