THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS
1993 | dir. Henry Selick

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THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS
1993 | dir. Henry Selick

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Moms for Liberty claims that teachers are indoctrinating students with dangerous ideologies. But is the groupâs aim protecting kidsâor scari
Why did a popular, effective, and by nearly all accounts benign English and Language Arts curriculum called Wit & Wisdom, which has been used across the country, spark organized backlash in a thriving school district in suburban Nashville, drawing accusations that it promoted âgender fluidity,â an obsession with skin-color differences, and even cannibalism? In exploring this question, Paige Williams investigates the rising influence of a new activist group called Moms for Liberty, with shadowy origins and the ability to âaccept unlimited dark money,â which describes itself as standing up âfor parental rights at all levels of government.â Much of that fight has been taking place at the school-board level, where the concept of critical race theoryââa complex academic framework that examines the systemic ways in which racism has shaped American society,â as Williams describes it, which is âexplored at the university level or higherââhas become a rallying cry for angry parents, and an umbrella definition for every seeming progressive affront to cultural conservatism both in and out of the classroom. Williamsâs story is deeply reported, nuanced, and essential reading for understanding how weâve reached this fraught and escalating political battle inside American education.
In August, 2020, Williamson County Schools, which serves more than forty thousand students in suburban Nashville, started using an English and Language Arts curriculum called Wit & Wisdom. The program, which is published by Great Minds, a company based in Washington, D.C., wasnât a renegade choice: hundreds of school districts nationwide had adopted it. Both Massachusetts and Louisianaâstates with sharply different political profilesâgave Wit & Wisdom high approval ratings.
The decision had followed a strict process. The Tennessee State Board of Education governs academic standards and updates them every five or six years, providing school districts with an opportunity to switch curricula. Williamson County Schools assembled a selection committeeâtwenty-six parents, twenty-eight elementary-school teachers of English and Language Arts. The committee presented four options to teachers, who voted on them in February, 2020. Wit & Wisdom was the overwhelming favorite. After the selection committee ratified the teachersâ choice, the school board, which has twelve members, unanimously adopted Wit & Wisdom, along with a traditional phonics program, for K-5 students.
Great Mindsâs promotional materials explain that Wit & Wisdom is designed to let students âread books they love while building knowledge of important topicsâ in literature, science, history, and art. By immersing students in âcontent-richâ topics that spark lively discussion, the curriculum prepares them to tackle more complicated texts. The materials are challenging by design: studies have shown that students read better sooner when confronted with complex sentences and advanced vocabulary. Wit & Wisdomâs hundred and eighteen âcoreâ texts, which range from picture books to nonfiction, emphasize diversity, but not in a strident way. They provide âmirrors and windows,â allowing readers both to see themselves in the stories and to learn about other peopleâs lives. The curriculum assigns or recommends portraits of heralded pioneers: Leonardo da Vinci, Sacagawea, Clara Barton, Duke Ellington, Ada Lovelace. The lessons revolve around readings, augmented with paintings, poetry, speeches, interviews, films, and music: in the module âA Heroâs Journey,â students explore an illustrated retelling of the Odyssey alongside the Ramayana, a Sanskrit epic, while also discussing âStar Wars.â A section on âWordplayâ pairs âThe Phantom Tollboothâ with Abbott and Costelloâs âWhoâs on Firstâ routine.
Elsewhere in Tennessee, teachers were saying that Wit & Wisdom improved literacy. The superintendent of Lauderdale County, a rural area where nearly a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line, published an essay reporting that his districtâs teachers had noticed âan enormous difference in studentsâ writingâ after implementing the curriculum. Wit & Wisdom encourages students to discuss readings with their familiesâa father in Sumner County, northeast of Nashville, was pleased that his daughters now talked about civil rights and the American Revolution at dinner.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Wit & Wisdom became the target of intense criticism. At first, the campaign in Williamson County was cryptic: stray e-mails, phone calls, public-information requests. Eric Welch, who was first elected to the school board in 2010, told me that the complainers âwouldnât just e-mail usâthey would copy the county commission, our state legislative delegation, and state representatives in other counties.â He said, âIt was obviously an attempt to intimidate.â
The school board is an American institution whose members, until recently, enjoyed visibility on a par with that of the county tax collector. âThereâs no glory in being a school-board memberâand there shouldnât be,â Anne McGraw, a former Williamson County Schools board member, said on a local podcast last year. Normally, the districtâs public meetings were sedate affairs featuring polite exchanges among civic-minded locals. The systemâs slogan was: âBe nice.â
In May, 2021, as the district finished its first academic year with Wit & Wisdom, women wearing âMoms for Libertyâ T-shirts began appearing at school-board meetings. They brought large placards that contained images and text from thirty-one books that they didnât want students to read. In public comments and in written complaints, the women claimed that Wit & Wisdom was teaching children to hate themselves, one another, their families, and America. âRap a Tap Tap,â an illustrated story about the vaudeville-era tap dancer Bill (Bojangles) Robinson, by the Caldecott medalists Leo and Diane Dillon, harped on âskin color differences.â A picture book about seahorses, which touched on everything from their ability to change color to the independent movement of their eyes, threatened to ânormalize that males can get pregnantâ by explaining that male seahorses give birth; the Moms suspected a covert endorsement of âgender fluidity.â Greco-Roman myths: nudity, cannibalism. (Venus emerges naked from the sea; Tantalus cooks his son.)
The Moms kept attending school-board meetings and issuing complaints. Curiously, though they positioned themselves as traditionalists, they often borrowed âwokeâ rhetoric about the dangers of triggering vulnerable students. Readings about Ruby Bridgesâwho, in 1961, became the first Black child to attend an all-white school in New Orleansâexposed students to âpsychological distressâ because they described an angry white mob. (Bridges, in a memoir designed for young readers, wrote, âThey yelled at me to go away.â) The Moms also declared that, though they admired Martin Luther King, Jr.,âs iconic line about judging others âon the content of their character,â the book âMartin Luther King, Jr. and the March on Washingtonâ was unacceptable, because it contained historical photographsâsegregated drinking fountains, firefighters blasting Black Americans with hosesâthat might make kids feel bad. The Moms considered it divisive for Wit & Wisdom to urge instructors to remind students that racial slurs are âwords people use to show disrespect and hatred towards people of different races.â
At one meeting, Welch watched, stunned, as a Moms member said, âYou are poisoning our children,â and âWit & Wisdom must go!â Welch told me, âThey went from zero to a hundred. Everything from them was aggressive, and threatening in nature.â He said, âIt was not âLetâs have a dialogue.â It was âHere are our demands.â â
When the women in T-shirts first showed up, Welch had never heard of Moms for Liberty, and he didnât recognize its members. The groupâs leader, Robin Steenman, was in her early forties, with shoulder-length blond hair; in coloring and build, she resembled Marjorie Taylor Greene. Board of Education members struggled to understand why sheâd inserted herself into a matter that didnât concern her: Steenman had no children in the public schools.
Moms for Liberty members soon escalated the conflict, publicly asserting that Williamson County Schools had adopted Wit & Wisdom hurriedly, and in violation of state rules. The school board still wasnât sure what Moms for Liberty wasâwho founded it, who funded it. Nevertheless, the district assembled a reassessment team to review the curriculum and the adoption process. At a public âwork sessionâ in June, 2021, the team announced that, after a preliminary review, it hadnât found any violations of protocol. Teachers had spent a full workday familiarizing themselves with Wit & Wisdom before implementing it. As Jenny Lopez, the districtâs curriculum director, explained, âTeachers actually had more time than theyâve ever had to look at materials.â
The superintendent, Jason Golden, urged his colleagues to take parental feedback seriously, including worries that certain Wit & Wisdom content was too mature for young kids. For example, there were gruesome details in books about shark attacks and about war. Golden told the board, âThese are real concerns.â Yet Golden also recalled telling a Moms for Liberty representative how much he trusted the districtâs processes for evaluating curricula.
The review committee ultimately concluded that Wit & Wisdom had been an over-all success; still, administrators decided to survey teachers quarterly about how the curriculum was working. They limited access to the gorier images in one Civil War book and imposed similar âguardrailsâ involving âHatchet,â a popular young-adult novel in which a character attempts suicide. âWalk Two Moons,â a novel by the Newbery Medal winner Sharon Creech, about a daughterâs quest to find her missing mother, was eventually removed from the Williamson version of the program, not because its content was deemed objectionable but, rather, to adjust the pacing of one fourth-grade module. Golden, who is tall and genial, told the board members, âThe overwhelming feedback that we got was: âMan, canât we just read something uplifting in fourth grade?â And we felt the same way!â
At the work session, Golden shared one end of a conference table with Nancy Garrett, the boardâs chair. Garrett, who has rectangular glasses and a blond bob, is from a family that has attended or worked in Williamson County Schools for three generations. She had won the chairmanship, by unanimous vote, the previous August. At one point, she asked an assistant superintendent who had overseen the selection and review of Wit & Wisdom whether âthe concept of critical race theoryâ had come up during the process. No, the assistant superintendent said.
Moms for Liberty members were portraying Wit & Wisdom as âcritical race theoryâ in disguise. Garrett found this baffling. C.R.T., a complex academic framework that examines the systemic ways in which racism has shaped American society, is explored at the university level or higher. As far as the board knew, Williamson County Schools had never introduced the concept. Yet there had been such a deluge of references to it that Garrett had delved into her old e-mails, in an unsuccessful attempt to identify the origins of the outrage. She told her colleagues, âI guess Iâm wondering what happened.â
In September, 2020âfour months after the murder of George Floyd, two months before the Presidential election, and a month into Williamson County Schoolsâ use of Wit & WisdomâChristopher Rufo, a conservative activist, appeared on Tucker Carlsonâs show, on Fox News, and called critical race theory âan existential threat to the United States.â Rufo capitalized on the fact that, given C.R.T.âs academic provenance, few Americans had heard of the concept. He argued that liberal educators, under the bland banner of âdiversity,â were manipulating students into thinking of America not as a vibrant champion of democracy but as a shameful embodiment of white supremacy. (As he framed things, there were no in-between positions.) Rufo later called C.R.T. âthe perfect villainââa term that âconnotes hostile, academic, divisive, race-obsessed, poisonous, elitist, anti-American views.â
Rufo found a receptive ear in President Donald Trump, who was already ranting about âThe 1619 Project,â the collection of Times Magazine essays in which slavery is placed at the heart of the nationâs founding. On Twitter, Trump had warned that the Department of Education would defund any school whose classroom taught material from the project. Trump conferred with Rufo and banned federal agencies from conducting âun-American propaganda training sessionsâ involving âcritical race theoryâ or âwhite privilege.â Trump said that Black Lives Matter protests were proliferating not because of anger over police abuses but because of âdecades of left-wing indoctrination in our schools.â Establishing a â1776 Commission,â he urged âpatriotic moms and dadsâ to demand that schools stop feeding children âhateful lies about this country.â (The American Historical Association condemned the Administrationâs eventual â1776 Report,â highlighting its many inaccuracies and arguing that it attempted to airbrush history and âelevate ignorance about the past to a civic virtue.â)
Nearly nine hundred school districts nationwide were soon targeted by anti-C.R.T. campaigns, many of which adopted language that closely echoed Trumpâs order not to teach material that made others âfeel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex.â In some red states, the vague wording was enshrined as law. Republicans filed what became known as âanti-C.R.T.â bills; they were seemingly cut and pasted from templates, with similarly phrased references to such terms as âdivisive conceptsâ and âindoctrination.â
Williamson County Schools was uneventfully wrapping up its first term with Wit & Wisdom when, in early December, 2020, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which generates model legislation for right-leaning lawmakers, hosted a Webinar about âreclaiming education and the American dream.â A representative of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank, warned that elements of a âBlack Lives Matter curriculumâ were ânow in our schools.â Rufoâcorrectly predicting that Joe Biden, then the President-elect, would abolish Trumpâs executive orderâurged state legislators and governors to take up the fight.
Continuing the agitation wasnât just an act of fealty to Trump; it was cunning politics. The fear that C.R.T. would cause children to become fixated on race has resonated with enough voters to help tip important elections. Last November, Glenn Youngkin, a candidate for the governorship of Virginia, won an upset victory after repeatedly warning that the âcurriculum has gone haywireââand promising to sign an executive order banning C.R.T. from schools. Jatia Wrighten, a political scientist at Virginia Commonwealth University, told the Washington Post that Youngkin had âactivated white women to vote in a very specific way that they feel like is protecting their children.â
Days after the alec Webinar on âreclaiming education,â three women in Florida filed incorporation papers for Moms for Liberty, Inc., later declaring that their âsole purposeâ was to âfight for parental rightsâ to choose what sort of education was best for their kids. One of the organizationâs founders, Tina Descovichâwho had recently lost reĂŤlection to the school board of Brevard County, Florida, after opposing pandemic safety protocolsâsoon appeared on Rush Limbaughâs show. Declaring plans to âstart with school boards and move on from there,â she said of like-minded parents, âIt sounds a little melodramatic, but there is evil working against us on a daily basis.â maga mediaââTucker Carlson Tonight,â Breitbartâshowcased Moms for Liberty. Media Matters, the liberal watchdog, argued that influential right-wing media figures were essentially ârecruiting their eager audienceâ for the Momsâ campaign.
Moms for Liberty, which is sometimes referred to as M4L or MFL, is so new that it is hard to parse, from public documents, what its leaders are getting paid. (The founders say that the chairs of local chapters are volunteers.) The group describes itself as a âgrassrootsâ organization, yet its instant absorption by the conservative mediasphere has led some critics to suspect it of being an Astroturf groupâan operation secretly funded by moneyed interests. Moms for Liberty registered with the I.R.S. as the kind of social-welfare nonprofit that can accept unlimited dark money.
The leaders had deep G.O.P. connections. One, Marie Rogerson, was a successful Republican political strategist. The other, Bridget Ziegler, a school-board member in Sarasota County, is married to the vice-chair of the Florida G.O.P., Christian Ziegler, who told the Washington Post, âI have been trying for a dozen years to get twenty- and thirty-year-old females involved with the Republican Party, and it was a heavy lift to get that demographic. . . . But now Moms for Liberty has done it for me.â Moms for Liberty worked with the office of Floridaâs governor, Ron DeSantis, to help craft the stateâs infamous âDonât Say Gayâ legislation, which DeSantis signed into law this past March; it forbids instruction on âsexual orientation or gender identityâ in âkindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate.â
A national phalanx of interconnected organizationsâincluding the Manhattan Institute, where Rufo is a fellow, and a group called Moms for Americaâsupported the suite of talking points about C.R.T. According to NBC News, in a single week last year Breitbart alone published seven hundred and fifty posts or articles in which the theory was mentioned. Glenn Beck, the right-wing pundit, declared that C.R.T. is a âpoison,â urging his audience, âStand up in your community and fire the teachers. Fire them!â
On March 15, 2021, Rufo, in a tweet thread, overtly described a key element of the far rightâs evolving strategy: âWe have successfully frozen their brandââcritical race theoryââinto the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category.â He added, âThe goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think âcritical race theory.â â
Williamson County has some of Tennesseeâs top-ranked schools. âThatâs why people move here,â Eric Welch, the longtime school-board member, told me. He describes the school system as an economic âasset that pays off.â Williamson County has the stateâs second-lowest unemployment rate and the highest property values: the median home value exceeds eight hundred thousand dollars.
It is not a diverse place. Eighty-eight per cent of residents are white. Ninety-five per cent of the school districtâs teachers are white. Until September, all twelve school-board members and the superintendent were white. A Confederate monument anchors the town square of the county seat, Franklin. The square was publicly marked as a former slave market only three years ago. The Confederate flag still flies prominently in some areas. When the white father of Black children recently complained about this at a school-board meeting, a man in the audience sneered, âWeâre in the South! â
In 2018, several parents joined forces to point out that schools in Williamson County could work harder to be welcoming to children of color. The group, which became known as the Cultural Competency Council, included Black, Asian American, Jewish, and L.G.B.T.Q.+ residents. A school-district official who served as a liaison to the council created videos for teacher training and development, including one about privilege. That videoâs language had clearly been calibrated to preĂŤmpt defensive reactions: a narrator underscored that the concept of privilege was ânot meant to suggest that someone has never struggled or that success is unearned.â Even so, the conservative media pounced: the Tennessee Star said that the video took viewers on a guilt trip about âthe perks white males supposedly have that others do not, Americaâs supposed dysfunctional history, and how unfair it all is.â Such views have played well in a county that Trump carried twice, both times by more than twenty points. (The Cultural Competency Council has been disbanded.)
In 2020, Revida Rahman and another parent co-founded an anti-racism group, One WillCo, after Black parents chaperoning field trips to local plantations were astonished to see slavery depicted as benign. Rahman told me that some presentations suggested that âthe slaves didnât really have it that badâthey lived better than we do, they had their food provided, they had housing.â She added, âI beg to differ.â At a school that one of Rahmanâs sons attended, some white classmates had mockingly linked arms as if to represent Trumpâs border wall.
One WillCo especially wanted the school system to address the fact that it had a record of disproportionately punishing students of colorâa recent revelation. Moreover, some teachers used racially insensitive materials in their classrooms: in an assignment about the antebellum economy, students were instructed to imagine that their family âowns slaves,â and to âcreate a list of expectations for your familyâs slaves.â
On February 15, 2021, the school board hired a mother-and-son team of diversity consultants to gauge the depth of the districtâs problems with racism, bullying, and harassment, and to recommend solutions. A conservative board member, Jay Galbreath, forwarded information about the consultants to influential local Republicans, including Gregg Lawrence, a county commissioner, and Bev Burger, a longtime alderman in Franklin. In an e-mail, Lawrence complained to Galbreath that hiring the consultants was the type of thing that would lead to âthe politicization of teaching in America where every subject is taught through the lens of race.â He wrote, âThese young people who have been protesting, looting and burning down our cities in America are doing so because they donât see anything about America worth preserving. And why is that? Because our public schools and universities taught them that America is a systemically racist nation founded by a bunch of bigoted slave owning colonizers.â
This exchange was eventually made public through an open-records request, which also revealed that Burger had helped edit what has been called the foundational complaint against Wit & Wisdom: a month after the diversity consultants were hired, the parents of a biracial second grader e-mailed school officials to complain that the curriculum had caused their son to be âashamed of his white half.â Burger wrote of her edits, âSee what you think.â She ccâd Lawrence, who forwarded the communications to Galbreath and another school-board member, Dan Cash, a fellow-conservative who had won his seat in 2014, during a Tea Party wave. The county commissioner told the school-board members, âHere is more evidence that we are teaching critical race theory,â and urged them to âget rid ofâ Wit & Wisdom.
A few weeks later, on March 22nd, the school boardâs monthly meeting took place on Zoom, because of the pandemic. Robin Steenman appeared before the board for the first time. Wearing a cream-colored sweater and dangly earrings, she presented herself simply as a concerned resident who wanted school officials to reject any diversity proposal that involved âThe 1619 Project, critical race training, intersectionality.â She worried aloud that a recent proposal in California to mandate a semester of ethnic studies would be âparaded as a blueprint for the rest of the country.â
Steenman, who appeared to be reading from notes, asserted that parents in Virginia were being blacklisted for âspeaking out.â In Pennsylvania, an elementary school had âforced fifth graders to celebrate Black communism and host a Black Power rally.â In North Carolina, a teacher had described parents as âan impediment to social justice.â In Ohio, C.R.T. âhad to be removed from the curriculum, because the students were literally turning on each other.â Steenman cited no sources. She said, âIf you give them an inchââthen changed course. Dropping the âthem,â she declared, âIf you give one inch to this kind of teaching, then youâre gonna subject yourself to the whole spectrum.â
Several weeks later, Steenman started the Williamson County chapter of Moms for Liberty, building on the e-mail sent by the parents of the biracial child and harnessing the furious energy of families who were already accusing the school board of âmedical tyrannyâ for requiring students to wear masks. This vocal minority had been particularly incensed at one school-board member, Brad Fiscus, a former science teacher whose wife, Michelle, a pediatrician, was Tennesseeâs chief vaccine officer. Williamson County is a Republican pipeline to state and national office: the governor, Bill Lee, is from there; Marsha Blackburn, the maga senator, began her political career as a county commissioner there. In July, 2021, the state fired Michelle Fiscus after conservative lawmakers objected to her âmessagingâ in support of covid-19 vaccinations; afterward, Brad Fiscus resigned from the school board and the family moved to the East Coast. For right-wing extremists, the obvious lesson was that rage tactics worked. That August, one school-board meeting nearly ended in violence when two enraged men followed a proponent of masks to his vehicle, screaming, âWe can find you!â
Moms for Liberty emphasizes the importance of being âjoyful warriorsâârelatable women who can rally their communities. A founder once explained, âThis fight has to be fought in their own backyard.â The organization may have seen Steenman as particularly well suited to winning over Williamson County residents: she was a former B-1-bomber pilot now raising three small children. Her husband, Matt, was also ex-Air Forceâfighter jets. They moved to Williamson County five years ago, from Texas.
Another member of their fraternity was John Ragan, a former Air Force fighter pilot whoâd been elected as a Republican to the Tennessee General Assembly in 2010. Ragan, a former business consultant from the city of Oak Ridge, had been listed as an alternate on alecâs education task force. (He says that he does not recall attending any meetings.) Heâd once crafted legislation to ban K-8 teachers from using materials âinconsistent with natural human reproductionâ in the classroom. (It failed.)
Early last year, as Moms for Liberty was receiving its first wave of national media attention, Ragan introduced âanti-C.R.T.â legislation. He wanted to ban teaching about white privilege or any other concepts that might cause students âdiscomfort or other psychological distressâ because of their race or sex. The wording parroted talking points from Moms for Liberty, which parroted Trump, who parroted Rufo. Around the time that Moms for Liberty members began showing up at Williamson County school-board meetings, Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser, said on his video podcast that âthe path to save the nation is very simpleâitâs going to go through the school boards.â Calling mothers âpatriots,â he urged a ârevolt.â
At a committee meeting of Tennessee House members, Ragan promoted his legislation by claiming that heâd heard about a seven-year-old Williamson County girl who had had suicidal thoughts, and was now in therapy, because she was ashamed of being white. (No such family has ever publicly come forward.) Two Black Democrats sharply challenged Ragan. Harold Love, a congressman from Nashville, asked him whether the proposed legislation would make it illegal for teachers to even mention âThe 1619 Project.â When Ragan replied that instructors could talk about it as long as they taught âboth for and against,â Love said, âItâs kind of hard to be âfor or againstâ slavery.â G. A. Hardaway, a congressman from Memphis, argued on the House floor that a law limiting discussion of race, ethnicity, discrimination, and bias contradicted âthe very principles that our country was formed on.â
Ragan pushed ahead, arguing that âsubversive factions,â âseditious charlatans,â and âmisguided soulsâ were creating âartificial divisionsâ in a âshameless pursuit of political power.â His bill passed. Senator Raumesh Akbari, who chairs the Tennessee Senate Democratic Caucus, said, âThis offensive legislation pretends skin color has never mattered in our country,â adding that âour children deserve to learn the full story.â
Once the Governor signed the bill into law, Moms for Liberty would be able to devise complaints arguing that certain elements of public instruction violated a Tennessee statute. Violators could be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars, potentially draining resources. Steenman, appearing on Blackburnâs video podcast, âUnmuted with Marsha,â let slip a tactical detail: the moment Tennesseeâs new law took effect, Moms for Liberty would have a complaint against Wit & Wisdom âready to goâ to the state. Blackburn praised Steenman as âthe point of the spear.â
Steenman also appeared on Glenn Beckâs show. As if speaking directly to Governor Lee, she said, âStop serving the woke-left lobby!â Beck said, âBill Lee, shame on you!â Lee signed the bill into law on the eve of the anniversary of George Floydâs murder.
Steenman raised Moms for Libertyâs visibility by putting on eventsârented plants, live music, charcuterie. One of them, C.R.T. 101, took place in May, 2021, before a large audience at Liberty Hall, a Franklin auditorium in a renovated stove factory filled with shops and restaurants. A clinical psychologist from Utah, Gary Thompson, came onstage and declared that C.R.T. engenders shame, which can trigger depression, which could âbe pushing your kids to suicide.â Thompson, who is Black, showed photographs of his multiracial family: he and his wife, a white pediatric neuropsychologist, have six children. Thompson joked, awkwardly, that the overwhelmingly white audience sure didnât look like members of the K.K.K. He noted that heâd voted for Barack Obama, and said that he approved of Williamson County Schoolsâ hiring of diversity consultants to assess such problems as racial bullying. He opposed C.R.T., though, because it framed people of color as âvictims.â Choking up, Thompson said, âThat is not the legacy that my parents left me.â
Moms for Liberty often advances its cause by enlisting Black conservatives, or by borrowing snippets from their public comments. The organization has posted a video clip of Condoleezza Rice saying that white kids shouldnât have to âfeel badâ in order for Black children to feel empowered. Steenman has collaborated with Carol Swain, a political scientist at Vanderbilt, who vocally opposes same-sex marriage and once described Islam as âdangerous to our society.â This past January, Moms for Liberty sponsored a conference organized by Swain, American Dream, whose branding heavily featured images of Martin Luther King, Jr. Before the event, Kingâs daughter Bernice tweeted an admonition about those who took her fatherâs âwords out of context to promote ideas that oppose his teachings,â adding that Steenmanâs chapter, having âsought to erase him,â was now âusing him to make money.â
At the C.R.T. 101 gathering, the author of the original complaint against Wit & Wisdom revealed herself onstage to be Chara Dixon, a mom in her forties. Nervously holding a copy of her speech, she introduced herself as a naturalized citizen. (She had emigrated, decades earlier, from Thailand.) Dixon, whose husband, Brian, is white, recalled helping their seven-year-old son with a Wit & Wisdom assignment about a âlonely little yellow leaf.â The audience laughed when she declared, âIt was boring.â A book about a chameleon: âAnother boring story!â Her son had also read about Kingâs âI Have a Dreamâ speech, which was âbeautiful and upliftingâ; but the tale of Ruby Bridges and the âangry white mobâ was depressing. Dixon said that in her sonâs childhood world âthereâs no color.â (She soon became Moms for Libertyâs treasurer.)
Dixon seemed to conflate Wit & Wisdom and C.R.T. Steenman, in an official complaint to the Tennessee Department of Education, wrote, âThere does not have to be a textbook labeled âCritical Race Theoryâ for its harmful tenets to be present in a curriculum.â At the C.R.T. 101 event, she took the stage and told the audience that the threat of âMarxistâ indoctrination at school could be vanquished by opposing âactivistâ teachers, curricula, and diversity-driven policy. An m.c. cheerily ended the evening by reminding everyone that âtodayâs kids are tomorrowâs voters.â
The Williamson County chapter of M4L held its next big event, Letâs Talk Wit & Wisdom, at a Harley-Davidson franchise in Franklin. Steenman had been having trouble finding a venue when the dealershipâs owner offered his showroom. Calling the man a âtrue patriot,â Steenman presented him with a folded and framed American flag that, she said, had accompanied her on a bombing mission in Afghanistan.
Moms for Liberty had invited the entire school board to the event, but the only members who showed up were the groupâs three clear allies. One, a former kindergarten teacher who opposed masking, liked to hug people during breaks at school-board meetings. The other two were Cash and Galbreath, both of whom were up for reĂŤlection on August 4, 2022.
Steenman, gesturing toward a large screen behind her, showed the âfindingsâ of a Moms for Liberty âdeep diveâ into Wit & Wisdom. She elicited gasps from the audience by saying that the curriculum contained books that depicted âgraphic murder,â ârape,â âpromiscuity,â âtorture,â âadultery,â âstillbirth,â and âscalping and skinning,â along with content that her organization considered to be âanti-police,â âanti-church,â and âanti-nuclear family.â Rhetoric about âempowering the studentsâ was suddenly âeverywhere,â she complained. Without presenting any evidence, she claimed that elementary-school students now needed counsellors to help them âovercome the emotional traumaâ caused by Wit & Wisdom.
Steenmanâs events often strayed far from the particulars of Williamson County Schools. At one of them, the proceedings were interrupted when someone walked onstage and breathlessly announced news from Virginia: Glenn Youngkin, the candidate for governor whoâd crusaded against C.R.T., had won. The audience cheered as if Youngkin were one of their own.
Steenmanâs claims about Wit & Wisdom were so tendentious that several ardent supporters of the public schools looked her up on social media. Among other things, they discovered a Twitter account, @robin_steenman. On August 9, 2020, Matt Walshâa columnist for the Daily Wire, the conservative media site co-founded by the pundit Ben Shapiroâhad shared a thread by a Philadelphia teacher who expressed concern that meddlesome parents might overhear classroom conversations during online learning and undermine âhonest conversations about gender/sexuality.â (The Daily Wire is headquartered in Nashville, and Shapiro has propagated Moms for Libertyâs messaging.) In a retweet of Walsh, @robin_steenman had posted, âYou little brainwashing assholes will never get hold of my kids!â After Eric Welch and others publicly challenged Steenman about the tweetâand another one declaring that her children would never attend public schoolsâthe account vanished. (Steenman agreed to an interview, but did not keep the appointment. A Moms for Liberty spokesperson, calling my questions âpersonal in nature,â largely declined to provide answers.)
Privately, certain defenders of Wit & Wisdom referred to Moms for Liberty members as the Antis. In a sly move, some adopted the seahorse as a symbol of what one parent described to me as âthe resistance.â This summer in Williamson County, I saw seahorse stickers on cars and laptops. When I met Rahman for lunch, she was wearing seahorse earrings. At a school-board campaign event for a candidate who opposed Moms for Liberty, a volunteer wore a seahorse pendant on a necklace, alongside a gold cross. At least one person connected to Moms for Liberty had become concerned about the groupâs motives and tactics, and was secretly monitoring them from the inside. This person told me, âIâm the one in the trench, and I donât want to get caught.â
Many Moms and like-minded parents wanted both Wit & Wisdom and Superintendent Golden gone. Goldenâs contract was up for annual review before the 2021-22 school year began. (One Moms for Liberty opponent recently tweeted, âThe m.o. nationwide is to fire Suptâs and hire ideologues.â) At a meeting where the board planned to vote on Goldenâs future, one of the superintendentâs many supporters implored the elected officials to âhold the lineâ against the âsteady attack on our public schools.â The Antis were louder. A man wearing an American-flag-themed shirt shouted, âWe, the parents, are awake, weâre organized, and weâre extremely pissed off.â He declared, âWeâre gonna replace every board member in here with people just like me. Nothing would make us happier than to surround you with a roomful of American patriots who believe in the Constitution of the United States and Jesus Christ above!â
The Antis jeered at speakers who expressed support for Golden or the districtâs diversity efforts. They mocked a woman whose daughters had experienced anti-Asian slurs at school. The mom told the board, âIâve heard people say that teaching these parts of our history is âracistâ or âtraumatic.â Whatâs traumatic is Black, Latino, Asian, and L.G.B.T.Q. kids going to schools where they face discrimination and donât feel safe.â A local psychologist, Alanna Truss, said, âIâm yet to see a child in my practice whoâs been traumatized by our countyâs curriculum choices. I have, however, seen many students experiencing trauma due to being discriminated against and bullied within our schools, related to race, religion, gender, and sexuality.â
Six of the school-board members, who serve four-year terms, were coming up for reĂŤlection in August of 2022. (The other six will finish their terms in 2024.) As the Wit & Wisdom furor grew, another component of the right-wing assault on schools locked into place: last fall, state lawmakers passed a bill legalizing partisan school-board elections. Moms for Liberty called the change âa HUGE step forward.â
Educators and policymakers have long believed that public education should operate independently of political ideology. As the magazine Governing put it last year, âThe goal of having nonpartisan elections is not to remove all politicsâ but âto remove a conflict point that keeps the school board from doing its job.â For people who target school boards, conflict has become a tool. In Texas, a PAC linked to a cell-phone company which recently funded the maga takeover of several school boards paid for an inflammatory mail campaign blaming a classroom shooting on administrators who had âstopped disciplining students according to Critical Race Theory principles.â In August, during a panel at cpac, the gathering of conservatives, the former Trump official Mercedes Schlapp warned that, though Republicans were focussed on federal and state elections, âschool board elections are critical.â The panelâs title, âWe Are All Domestic Terrorists,â derisively referred to recent instructions from Attorney General Merrick Garland to the F.B.I. for devising a plan to protect school employees and board members from threats of violence.
Joining Schlapp onstage was Ryan Girdusky, the founder of the 1776 Project pac, which funnels money to G.O.P. candidates in partisan school-board races. Girdusky boasted that, in 2021, his pac âdid fifty-eight elections in seven states and we won forty-two.â Girdusky said that his goal this year is to boost at least five hundred school-board candidates nationwide. He urged the audience to âvote from the bottom upâgo from school board and then go all the way up to governor and senator, and weâll have conservative majorities across the entire electorate.â
Last November, mere weeks after Tennessee lawmakers voted to allow partisan school-board races, Steenman launched a pac, Williamson Families. Its approach was markedly similar to that of Southlake Families, a Texas pac whose orchestrated takeover of a school board in that state has led to attempted book bans. Both pacs have worked with Axiom Strategies, a political-consulting firm that has helped seat high-profile Republicans, including maga figures. Allen West, the chair of the Texas G.O.P., has urged Southlake Families to export its takeover blueprint to suburbs nationwide. Wealthy suburbs are some of Americaâs purplest districts, and winning them may be key to controlling the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. Anne McGraw, the former Williamson County Schools board member, told me that the advent of Moms for Liberty âshows how hyperlocal the national machine is going with their tactics.â She observed, âMoms for Liberty is not in Podunk, America. Theyâre going into hyper-educated, wealthy counties like this, and trying to get those people to doubt the school system that brought us here.â
Steenmanâs pac quickly took in about a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollarsâan unusually large amount for local politics in Tennessee. The pac held an inaugural event featuring John Rich, a country singer who had appeared with Trump on âThe Celebrity Apprentice.â Rich, who has no apparent connection to Williamson County, has contributed at least five thousand dollars to Steenmanâs pac.
Progressives and policy experts have long suspected that right-wing attacks on school boards are less about changing curricula than about undermining the entire public-school system, in the hope of privatizing education. During the alec Webinar about âreclaiming education,â the Heritage Foundation representative declared that âschool choiceâ would become âvery important in the next couple of yearsâ; controversies about curricula, he said, were âopening up opportunity for policymakers at the state levelâ to consider options like charter schools.
This isnât the first time that the culture wars have taken aim at public education. But Rebecca Jacobsen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University, believes that this era is different, because social media has made it easy for national operatives to stage âa coĂśrdinated, concreteâ scare campaign designed to drive parents toward alternatives to public schools: âThe message, at its core, is: âBeware of your public-education system. Make sure your kidâs teachers arenât up to something.â â
The timing of âanti-C.R.T.â legislation is no coincidence. Instead of putting forth a platform, the Republican Party has tried to maintain power by demonizing its opponents and critics as sinister and un-American. In the lead-up to the midterms, the G.O.P.âs alarmism about critical race theory has accompanied fear-mongering about L.G.B.T.Q.+ teachers being âgroomers.â Conservative media aggressively promote both campaigns. From Fox News to the Twitter account Libs of TikTok, the messaging has been consistent: many public-school teachers are dangerous.
Lee, the Tennessee governor, has leveraged this discord while trying to reformulate school funding: in January, he announced plans to create fifty new charter schools in partnership with Hillsdale College, a private Christian school in Michigan, whose president, Larry Arnn, headed Trumpâs 1776 Commission. The plan partially collapsed after a Tennessee television station aired footage of Arnn, during a private appearance in Williamson County, comparing public education to âthe plagueâ and arguing that teachers are educated in âthe dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country.â J. C. Bowman, the executive director and C.E.O. of Professional Educators of Tennessee, called Arnnâs comments âreprehensible and irresponsible.â Even Republican politicians backed away. The speaker of the Tennessee House, Cameron Sexton, acknowledged that Arnn had âinsulted generations of teachers who have made a difference for countless students.â
Moms for Libertyâs role in the broader war on public schools became ever clearer in July, at the groupâs inaugural national summit, in Tampa. DeSantis, who delivered a key address, was presented with a âliberty sword.â Another headliner was Trumpâs former Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, whose family has connections to Hillsdale. To an enthusiastic crowd that included Steenman, DeVos declared that the U.S. Department of Educationâthe agency that she once oversawâshould not exist.
Early this year, Eric Welch, the school-board member, was leaning against seeking reĂŤlection. Both of his sons had graduatedâhe was the one who handed them their high-school diplomas when they crossed the stage. His wife, Andrea, wanted him to take it easy for a while.
School-board service, which is time-consuming and can be tedious, requires diplomacy, a breadth of knowledge, and the ability to make complex, well-informed decisions. At meetings, Welch, who considered ideologues and bullies a threat to public education, often rebutted misinformation about covid-19 and Wit & Wisdom. At one meeting, heâd pointedly read aloud from a title that he found on a Moms for Liberty site: the book, written by a follower of the John Birch Society, referred to Black people as âpickaninnies.â Rahman, the co-founder of One WillCo, the anti-racism organization, told me, âHe came with all the receipts.â Welchâs detractors had declared him arrogant and rude; Rahman called him âa strong advocate for whatâs right.â
For Welchâs seat, Steenmanâs pac backed William (Doc) Holladay, an optometrist who, like Steenman, had no children in Williamson County Schools. Holladay had shown up at school-board meetings to denounce C.R.T. as âracist.â On Facebook, where heâd railed against pandemic protocols, his posts were routinely flagged or removed because they contained misinformation. His top ânewsâ sources included the Epoch Times, which regularly promotes right-wing falsehoods.
Last year, Charlie Wilson, the president of the National School Boards Association, characterized local school-board members as fundamental guardians âof democracy, of liberty, of equality, of civility and community, and of the Constitution and the rule of law.â Holladay, a felon who believes the conspiracy theory that Trump is still the âlegitimate President,â seemed more like an opportunist. In 2008, heâd pleaded guilty to multiple counts of prescription fraud and forgery; the Tennessee Department of Health had put him on probation for âimmoral, unprofessional or dishonorable conduct,â noting that he had also worked âwhile impaired.â The state licensure board later added five more years of probation upon discovering that heâd made âuntruthfulâ claims about âprofessional excellence or abilities.â (Holladay told me that he has turned his life around.)
When Welch heard that Holladay and other figures he considered to be unsuitable were seeking authority over the schools, he tweeted, âIâm running.â He told his wife, âI donât know that I can walk away and let these people be in charge.â The âTennessee School Board Candidate Guideâ notes that, for the office of school board, âthe best, most capable and most farsighted citizens of each community should be drafted.â
During the campaign, Holladay tried to frame Welch, a lifelong Republican, as a âliberalâ for having supported masking and Wit & Wisdom. Welch publicly noted that he had interned for Senator John Warner, of Virginia, and attended the Inauguration of George W. Bush. Holladay, who had no military service, bragged about being a patriot; Welch is an Army veteran.
In a Q. & A. published by One WillCo, candidates were asked to describe their involvement with Williamson County Schools. Welch explained that, in addition to serving on the executive board of the districtâs parent-teacher association, he had ârun wrestling tournaments as a booster fundraiser, spray painted end zones, worked concessions, volunteered for holiday shows setup/breakdown, built theatre sets, cleaned bleachers, mopped floors.â Holladayâs answers: âSpeaking out at school board meetingsâ; âHelping to lead activist groups in order to effect needed changes.â When asked why he was running, he said that âthe school board has largely been operating in a manner that runs counter to the conservative principles that most people who live here hold dear.â This and other answers betrayed profound ignorance of what a school board does.
Moms for Liberty had been broadening its campaign against Wit & Wisdom and was now targeting reading materials available in school libraries, which provided access to the Epic app, a repository of nearly fifty thousand childrenâs books. In a local news segment, Steenman read aloud, âI-is-for-intersex,â from a book called âThe GayBCs,â which was available on Epic, and said, âWhat parent wants to explain âintersexâ to their child that, at this point, doesnât even understand sex?â
Holladay tried a similar maneuver. During a live-streamed candidate forum, he handed his interviewer a passage from âPush,â the acclaimed novel by Sapphire, and asked him to read it aloud. (If this was the same passage that Holladay later showed me on his cell phone, it began, âDaddy sick me, disgust me, but he sex me up.â) The interviewer was Tom Lawrence, a gentlemanly fixture on AM radio who has been called âthe voice of Williamson County.â Lawrence scanned the text and declined to share it with viewers, saying, âIt has words like âorgasmâ in it.â Holladay, noting that the book could be found in one of the local high schools, declared, âWhoever is responsible for putting that book in the library should be arrested.â (In a tweet, Welch expressed astonishment that a school-board candidate would âcall for the arrest of a WCS librarian.â)
As Holladay campaigned, he repeatedly invoked the nationwide partisan divide. In an interview that appeared on YouTube, he declared that conservatives were fleeing blue states for places like Williamson County because the left was trying to âdestroy the last remaining refuges of conservatism and patriotism.â If Williamson County âgoes blue,â he said, the rest of the state would follow, and if Tennessee âdoesnât stay redâ it will be âa huge blow to the country.â
On Election Day, Welch, a wiry ex-wrestler, erected a pole tent outside Hunters Bend Elementary School, a voting precinct. Holladayâs supporters set up nearby. I arrived to find Welch, wearing khaki shorts and a âre-elect eric welchâ T-shirt, squaring off in the parking lot with a Holladay supporter who was saying, angrily, âIâve laid people out for less than that!â
The man, Brian Russell, described Welch as the aggressorââHe shoulder-checked meââbut multiple witnesses characterized the altercation differently. Meghan Guffee, a Republican running for reĂŤlection to the county commission, told me that Russell had demanded to know why Welch had blocked him on social media. Welch, trying to walk away, had responded, âIâm ending this conversation. Youâre an ass.â
In a public Facebook post, Russell had declared Welch to be âas bad as a pedophile.â Guffee said that sheâd heard Russell, in the parking lot, accuse Welch of having âvoted to teach third graders how to masturbate.â (Russell denies this.) Guffee was particularly appalled that her six-year-old daughter, who was with her at the voting site, had witnessed Russellâs hostility. She told me, âThat is not how this community does things.â
Before leaving the school grounds, Russell, a painting contractor in his early fifties, told me that he was angry about Wit & Wisdom: âWhen my daughter comes home and her best friend is Black, and sheâs wondering why âIâm bad because Iâm white. . . . â â This and other comments suggested that his children attended local schools. In fact, Russellâs three children lived in his native state of Ohio.
Throughout America, maga types were targeting education officials. In Maine, a man plastered a school-board memberâs photograph on a sign and surrounded it with rat traps, telling NBC News, âThis is a war with the left,â and âIn war, tactics and strategy can become blurry.â A member of the Proud Boys ran for a school-board seat in California. On September 27th, the American Libraries Association sent an open letter to the F.B.I. director, Chris Wray, asking for help: in the previous two weeks alone, âbombing or shooting threatsâ had forced the temporary closing of libraries in five states. Tennessee was one of them.
In Williamson County, Moms for Liberty members couldnât claim ignorance of the beliefs of some of the candidates they and Steenmanâs pac supported. Williamson Families donated a thousand dollars to the campaign of an ex-marine who was running for county commissioner, and who had publicly warned the school board, âIn the past, you dealt with sheep. Now prepare yourselves to deal with lions! I swore an oath to protect this country from all enemiesâforeign and domestic. You harm my children, you become a domestic enemy.â
That guy lost. So did Holladay. Welch beat him by five hundred and fifty-nine votes. Welch was surprised that anybody had voted for Holladay, later telling me, âIf you had to design a candidate who is unqualified and should not be on a board of education, thatâs what heâd look like.â
Candidates backed by Moms for Liberty members won, however, in two other districts. A Republican who appeared to have no connection to the public schools beat Ken Chilton, who ran as an independent and who, the day after the election, tweeted that Tennessee lawmakersâ decision to allow partisan school-board elections had âcreated a monster.â
Jay Galbreath, the board member who had forwarded the e-mails about diversity consultants to other conservative politicians, had found himself challenged from the right flankâby a M4L-affiliated candidate whose campaign signs said âreject crt.â As if to prove his opposition to Wit & Wisdom, Galbreath had posted publicly, on Facebook, that progressives were âconstantly looking at ways to inject and normalize things like gender identity, the black lives matter movement, and LGBTQ by weaving it into curriculum.â Williamson Strong, a pac composed of local progressives who have long defended the public schools, called for Galbreathâs resignation, noting, âThis is pure hate speech, and it has NO place in a position of influence or power over 40,000+ children and their education. It has no place in Williamson County, period.â The group, whose leaders include Anne McGraw, the former school-board member, observed, âAll filters have apparently been obliterated now that heâs competing for votes against an MFL-endorsed candidate.â Despite the controversy, Galbreath won reĂŤlection.
A month before the vote, a civil action was filed against Wit & Wisdom: the parents of an elementary-school student sued the school board and various administrators in the district on behalf of a conservative nonprofit that they had just launched, Parentsâ Choice Tennessee. The lawsuitâs complaint echoed Moms for Libertyâs assertions that the curriculumâs âharmful, unlawful and age-inappropriate contentâ represented a âclear violation of Tennessee code.â If the lawsuit succeeds, Williamson County Schools may have to find a new curriculum and pay fines. (Citing the litigation, Williamson County Schools officials declined to comment for this article.)
The lawsuit may have been designed, in part, to give the impression that there was more local opposition to Wit & Wisdom than actually existed. There are eighteen thousand students in the districtâs elementary schools, but according to a district report only thirty-seven people had complained about the new curriculum. Fourteen of the complainants had no children in the system.
Rebecca Jacobsen, the Michigan scholar, looks for clues in such data. She said, of the vitriol toward school boards, âIs this a blip, and weâll rebound? Or are we chipping away at our largest public institution and the system that has been at the center of our democracy since the founding of this country?â She noted that some Americans âdonât trust their schools and teachers anymore,â adding, âThatâs radical.â
Moms for Libertyâs campaign, meanwhile, continues to widen. The organization now claims two hundred and forty chapters in forty-two states, and more than a hundred thousand members. It has thrown a fund-raising gala, featuring Megyn Kelly, in which the top ticket cost twenty thousand dollars. In late October, a spokesperson for the Moms told me that the organizationâostensibly a charityâis a âmedia company.â
The slick rollout of Moms for Liberty has made it seem less like a good-faith collective of informed parents and more like a well-funded operation vying to sway American voters in a pivotal election year. Steenmanâs chapter recently announced a slate of upcoming talks: âGender Ideology,â âRestorative Justice,â âComprehensive Sex Ed,â âHistory of Marxism in Education.â I asked Jacobsen whether she thinks that Moms for Liberty members actually believe that a curriculum like Wit & Wisdom damages children. âI donât know what anybody believes anymore,â she replied. âWe seem to have lost a sense of honesty. It may just be about power and money.â âŚ
my favorite American holiday is the one where we have a gopher predict the weatherÂ
the gopher has spoken
The best use of magic in the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit movies is whenever Gandalf uses it to make his voice really loud to win an argument because I would do the same thing.

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its not the 1990s. we donât have to watch friends anymore
I canât believe Bananaphone is an ANTIFA anthem now
ring ring ring ring ring ring ring
ANTIFA PHONE
BOOP, BOOPA DOOPA BOOP
Hello Tumblr
Iâm alive, and apparently a pixel now. Just popping back on tumblr to yell at the internet about how a friend did a really shitty thing to me today and it felt awful and it was mean and now i kind of donât really want to be her friend anymore.Â
Thank you abyss for letting me tell you
*fades back into night*
the mood today

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What would Aragorn have done if that one dark seat at the back of the Prancing Pony was already taken?Â
If you think Aragorn wasnât sitting there for hours hogging that table just to make an entrance, I donât know what to tell you.Â
@wintersoldierfell
me, looking at the current state of the world, crying:I wish none of this had happenedâŚ
Gandalf, materialising in my conscience, smiling kindly: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, besides the will of evil.
This is wonderfully helpful.
One thing a lot of white woman donât do is step back from a situation theyâve have themselves misinterpreted.Â
They may have done or said something wrong and even though they realize it, they donât apologize. They keep on trying to defend themselves because they get offended and refuse to actually see the situation from a full perspective. Especially in situations where it has to do with people of color calling them out on racism.Â
So my thing is, if white women are true allies, and they get called out on something racistâthen instead of having a flip out they need to apologize and or explain themselves. And furthermore take a step back.
Itâs so easy to step back and say âI didnât understand x and I jumped to the gunâ instead of acting out a certain way and making yourself out into a victim.
Like so many white women miss this and I hate how they never learn.
If you screw up itâs so easy to apologize. Iâve done it before, tons of women of color have. I donât see why white women canât do the same.
This person is my new best friend
Farming systems need to fit into their natural and social environment. Sometimes we describe this as a socio-ecological niche.

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Hey everyone, with all this discussion around Twilight happening lately, letâs take advantage of it by signal boosting an important issue.
For those who donât know, the Quileute tribe used in Twilight is a real, actual tribe whose stories and traditions were stolen by Stephenie Meyer and butchered to suit her racist needs. You can read more about that here.
And now, theyâre asking for help. Their tribal school, and several other important locations including housing, is in a massive tsunami risk zone. In 2012, they gained a lot of their traditional land back, and theyâre finally able to move from highly dangerous areas to safer higher ground. But that sort of move is expensive and slow, so theyâre accepting donations to make the transition happen as quickly as possible. The tribe has received federal funding to move the school, but thatâs not the only location inside of the risk zone.
The Quileute people were treated terribly by both Meyer and her fans, and we can help make up for some of that damage by helping them now.
You can also follow the tribeâs Instagram and check out their Facebook.
the bar is so low
im gonna go ahead and say this meme was absolutely made by a straight man
this meme was definitely made by a straight manÂ
Paimon commissioned this


