Category: US Politics

Parents in the La Mesa-Spring Valley, California, school district are calling for the resignation of a school board trustee who referred to plans to return to in-person learning as “white supremacist ideology.”

Reopen California Schools tweeted about trustee and board Vice President Chardá Bell-Fontenot (pictured), who said during Tuesday’s virtual board meeting that plans on how and when to bring children back into the classroom for in-person learning “seems like a very white supremacist ideology.”

With parents also watching the meeting, Bell-Fontenot, who apparently was not on-camera, was heard saying, “That seems like a very white supremacist ideology, to force people to comply and conform, just letting you know.”

“Privilege, check it you guys,” she was also heard saying to fellow school board members, one of whom is Hispanic.

When other school board members continued to push for discussion about reopening schools, Bell-Fontenot rejected their views.

“I don’t want to be a part of forcing anyone to do anything they don’t want to do,” she was heard saying. “That’s what slavery is, I’m not gonna be a part of it.”

“You keep throwing out the racism but I’m Hispanic… I don’t understand that part either, I’m confused, that’s it,” said the Hispanic member of the school board.

A report at local ABC 10News said parents Mai Teague and Spring Vick, who were among hundreds of parents watching the meeting, “were shocked at the words being used.”

Bell-Fontenot had a “very condescending tone, just talking down to everyone and resisting what anyone had to say,” Teague said. “All these terms referring to going back to school I don’t see the relevancy at all in it.”

“Someone who has her own personal agenda is not looking out for the best interest of the community and she should not represent the schools at all,” Teague added.

Vick said Bell-Fontenot “should have been a little more professional.”

Both Teague and Vick want their children to be able to return to school.

When parents called for Bell-Fontenot’s resignation, La Mesa-Spring Valley Superintendent David Feliciano released a statement on behalf of the board that read, in part:

While we were also disappointed and offended by trustee Fontenot’s behavior, we were saddened to learn that she has received hateful, racist, and threatening communications as a result. We strongly condemn behavior that is racist, discriminatory or threatens violence of any kind.

However, ABC 10News said it is “unclear” who sent the “communications” referred to by Feliciano.

“Those ABC 10News spoke with say they simply want Bell-Fontenot to resign, and have started a Change.org petition,” the report stated.

The petition states:

Ms. Bell-Fontenot continued by asking that the board not even vote on such matter and as the other members of the board were ill prepared and had no idea what was going on. Bell-Fontenot sternly stated “We don’t have to give anybody any date…we do not have to make a decision today.” Fellow board members shared district survey results which proved to show 70-80% of district parents were in favor of reopening schools. Ms. Bell-Fontenot seemed clueless as to whether or not these were pertinent by saying “Who are the 70-80 percent and where are they? Which school sites? Which language group?”

“Charda Bell-Fontenot is unprofessional and does not represent our kids or community in the light in which either deserve,” the petition adds. “Our kids deserve better. I urge you to sign this petition for her immediate resignation.”

At the time of publication, the petition had over 2,700 signatures.

The La Mesa-Spring Valley board meeting was made public just one week following the resignation of the entire school board of the Oakley Union Elementary School District, also in California, after its members were heard during a virtual board meeting mocking parents in the district who were calling for a return to in-person learning.

The board members were apparently unaware parents were watching the virtual meeting.

The Oakley video shows trustee Kim Beede describing her reaction to one parent, “Bitch, if you’re going to call me out, I’m going to f**k you up!”

Another board member, Lisa Brizendine, was heard saying parents “don’t know what goes on behind the scenes. It’s really unfortunate they want to pick on us because they want their babysitters back.”

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) warned Americans on Friday of the looming threat Big Tech and Big Government pose though censoring political speech.

“When Big Tech and Big Government team up, America starts to look more like China,” Gaetz said. “And the Chi-merica dream is shamefully a nightmare for our people.”

Gaetz spoke about the growing threat of de-platforming and censoring prominent voices on the right at a speech at CPAC, held in Orlando, Florida.

“If we win the debate but lose the internet, ours will be the last generation of American greatness,” he warned, noting that the increasingly powerful institutions would “squelch even the faintest whispers of dissent.”

He criticized the left and even some Republicans for their wide support of using American blood and treasure to nurture democracy in the Middle East but failing to protect Constitutional rights in the United States.

“The terms of service on Twitter can never be more important than the values that undergird our Constitution,” he said.

He urged conservatives to help create a “culture of free speech” in America to make it more difficult for the powerful in government to use technology to suppress their views.

China, he said, showed the power of the dangers of a “captive capitalism” linked with business and government to enrich the elite.

“There are no checks and balances when they can ctl-alt-delete anyone for any reason,” he said.

He pointed out President Joe Biden’s administration included a revolving door to some of the biggest technology figures to build a “unified system.”

Gaetz warned that even the apps and social media networks popular with Americans are threatening their freedom.

He said Instagram appealed to everyone’s vanity, Twitter to wrath, Uber Eats to gluttony, and Tinder to lust.

“Are these social networks really making us stronger, safer? Or do they further addict us to our vices?” he asked.

Gaetz promoted himself as a proud member of the pro-Trump America first movement that would fight the establishment to save free speech.

“The America First movement will never sell out to foreign interests abroad or special interests here at home, our citizens come first,” he said. “Sorry, not sorry.”

Coyotes will deliver perhaps 13,000 foreign children and job-seeking teenagers to the U.S. border in May, according to a leaked report to Axios.com.

But the leak is intended to be a “self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.

President Joe Biden’s officials, she said, are leaking the warnings even as they strip President Donald Trump’s border protection because they want to create “a perpetual crisis that will normalize the flow of large numbers of people.”

“Having a huge number of people who are showing up at the southern border is one of the justifications that they will put forward for letting them in,” she added.

The policy of “extraction migration” from Central America is harming Americans’ communities and migrant-sending countries while also enriching the trafficking networks that deliver the adult and child migrants into the U.S. consumer economy, she said.

Biden’s progressive deputies “are oblivious to the reality that their pet policies are enriching criminal smuggling organizations, dislocating communities in these countries, and putting children at risk,” she said.

Axios.com reported February 26:

A Customs and Border Protection staffer [from the department of Homeland Security, DHS] told top administration officials Thursday the agency is projecting a peak of 13,000 unaccompanied [sic] children crossing the border in May, sources directly familiar with the discussion told Axios.

“CBP chief of staff Lise Clavel provided the border-crossing projection.” Clavel is a former campaign staffer for Beto O’Rourke and Mike Bloomberg, and a former manager at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The predicted 13,000 young migrants are in addition to the large inflows of single adult migrants and the “family unit” migrants.

The 13,000 young migrants are legally described as “Unaccompanied Alien Children,” even though they are accompanied by paid coyotes from their homes to the border, and even though many are older teenagers seeking U.S. jobs.

Biden’s welcome is encouraging coyotes to bring more of the “UACs” to the border. In the first four months of 2020, 12,000 UACs were delivered by coyotes. The first four months of 2021 showed a 64 percent rise to almost 20,000 deliveries.

During the Thursday meeting, officials talked about reopening Trump-era facilities to help process the migrants legally into the United States, said the Axios report.

Biden’s progressive officials are willing to reopen Trump-era facilities — despite TV-magnified theatrical jeers from migration advocates and from right-of-center news outlets — that Biden is reviving Trump’s “kid in cage” policies. But Biden is using the processing facilities to provide the migrants with residency documents, work permits, and legal paperwork so they can win permanent residency to compete for jobs, homes, and resources needed by Americans.

For example, Reuters reported February 25:

On Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reopened an emergency shelter in Texas and is also considering reopening a controversial facility in Florida, a sign of the scramble to find housing for the children. Shelter capacity was greatly reduced due to coronavirus social distancing, and existing facilities are close to full.

HHS, which oversees shelters for migrant children, is in the process of switching to a new database that could cut hours or days from the time it takes to perform background checks for sponsors, said a department official who requested anonymity to discuss internal operations.

The report by Axios noted “there was no discussion [at the Thursday meeting] of U.S.-based policies or practices that would work to deter migrants, such as reinstating the use of an emergency public health order to quickly deport migrant kids.”

The projected 13,000 migrants in May are usually described as “kids” by pro-migration media outlets, but most are job-seeking teenagers, said Vaughan:

There a couple of different things we know about this population. One is that they often are the children of adults who are already living in the country illegally who pays a smuggler to bring their kids here, especially when they are old enough to also work.

Most of them are teens, aged 17 or 18, Some are older and are pretending to be 17.

In addition, they are kids who have been sent by their families back in Central America to join family or friends who are already here, to get settled in the hope that the parents and the rest of the family team come join them later, or at least, that this teenager — who’s expected to help support the family — will be able to send back earnings.

“Teachers will tell you the same thing,” Vaughan said. “Most of the boys show up in October when the landscaping season is over, and they stay in school until about April, and then they drop out again to go back to work in the landscaping companies.”

The UAC pipeline is safe for the teenagers once the coyotes complete the UAC hand-off to Biden’s border agencies. Before the hand-off, the journey can be very deadly.

On January 30, the Los Angeles Times reported the death of roughly 13 teenagers who entered the Hunger Games obstacle course, including 15-year-old Robelson Isidro. Gunmen reportedly killed the victims, and their bodies left in a burned-out pickup truck:

The [Guatemalan] community has a long history of sending migrants to the United States, and he had uncles who lived there. They had indoor kitchens. They didn’t have to cook outside under a tarp.

“He was ashamed,” his mother said in a phone interview. She said he told her: “I’m going to fight to make my dreams come true. I have to get my siblings ahead in life. I’m going to get them out of poverty.”

His uncles [in the United States had] wired him money to make the journey north.

“The administration is trying to justify its lenient border policies as humanitarianism,” said Vaughan. “But they are facilitating a trade of children who are being trafficked here openly  … nothing could be more immoral.”

“The media are bailing them out,” Vaughan added.  “When [White House spokeswoman] Jen Psaki gets flustered about having to defend these policies, commentators will jump in and say, ‘Oh, but you’re reuniting families.’”

“It’s not going to stop the flow; it’s just going to launder it … Every policy they adopt is actually incentivizing more people to come,” Vaughn said.

For years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates.

The multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, intra-Democratic, and solidarity-themed opposition to labor migration coexists with generally favorable personal feelings toward legal immigrants and toward immigration in theory — despite the media magnification of many skewed polls and articles that still push the 1950’s corporate “Nation of Immigrants” claim.

The deep public opposition is built on the widespread recognition that migration moves money from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from children to their parents, from homebuyers to real estate investors, and from the central states to the coastal states.