Category Archives: Proud Boys

BAY SHORE, NY Members of the Proud Boys a far-right, neo-facist group took to the streets of Patchogue and Bay Shore Saturday night, some with their face covered and carrying flags, leaving some who witnessed the group shaken.

NaTasha McNeil of South Carolina told Patch she had come to Bay Shore last weekend to speak at a diversity event with her non-profit group, Moms Against Racism. She told Patch that as a Black woman, she felt safe as she'd walked downtown on Friday night.

But the next day, she said, her feelings were juxtaposed. When she and a Bay Shore resident went to dine on Main Street Saturday evening, they saw the members of the Proud Boys gathered.

As they waited to be seated outside the restaurant, they observed men in face coverings carrying Proud Boy flags walk by. Some wore MAGA hats. A yellow truck blasted music from its speakers, they said.

"We were so shaken up," said the Bay Shore resident, who is also a member of MAR. "It took a while to calm down because it was just so surreal to experience."

The Proud Boys were founded in 2016 by Vice Media co-founder Gavin McInees. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has classified the Proud Boys as a hate group, they are self-described "Western chauvinists" and are best known for white nationalist, anti-Muslim, and misogynistic rhetoric. Many members have been linked to the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, and the group was named a terrorist entity by Canada this May.

The Bay Shore resident, who wishes to remain anonymous, said she had never seen this specific group take action before.

"I felt like they knew to come to our community because Bay Shore is a diverse community," she said. "A lot of people from this community were shocked. "

McNeil said the men blew kisses to her and the women around them. She said that the members of the group were mostly white, but was shocked to see that one of them was Black.

"It was disturbing to see someone that looked like me a part of the crowd because I know what the group stands for," said McNeil. "I'm like, what in the world is going on? Do you even know what you're standing for?"

At one point in the video, a few Proud Boys went up to McNeil and gave an "okay", or "white power" symbol. McNeil told Patch she instinctively took out her phone and documented the event on Facebook.

"I am by nature used to events like this," she said. "It's sad; it's a traumatic response for a lot of individuals, especially the Black community."

McNeil told Patch that the Proud Boys walked past her for seven minutes. According to other videos taken, the group continued to walk toward downtown Patchogue.

Suffolk County police told Patch that they "monitored demonstrations in Patchogue and Bay Shore" and there were no issues reported. However, the Bay Shore resident and McNeil said they did not see any officers.

"I don't think it did anything but show ignorance," McNeil said about the march. "It was upsetting that they would disturb families and a community."

Town of Islip officials told Patch that from video found on social media, "traffic does not appear to be stopped, there were no road closures, and participants appear to be walking on sidewalks." Under these circumstances, said officials, a permit "would not be required", and therefore none were issued.

On Sunday, McNeil, the Bay Shore resident, and other members of MAR attended a diversity and inclusion event, to promote anti-racism.

They told Patch that Saturday's events reminded them of the importance of their work.

"These hate groups need to know that they're not welcome here," said the Bay Shore resident. "We're not going to stop standing up for what's right."

The Proud Boys could not be reached for comment.

UPDATE: A previous version of this story said that the Proud Boys marched reportedly without a permit. In a statement made to Patch on Wednesday, Town of Islip officials said that no permit was required for the group.

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Proud Boys March Through Long Island Streets | Bay Shore ...

WASHINGTON The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection issued more subpoenas Tuesday, this time to extremist organizations, including the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers as well as their leaders, in an attempt to uncover the plotting and execution of the deadly attack.

The Select Committee is seeking information from individuals and organizations reportedly involved with planning the attack, with the violent mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6th, or with efforts to overturn the results of the election, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chairman of the panel, said in a statement.

The subpoenas are the latest in a wide net the House panel has cast in an effort to investigate the riot, when supporters of former President Donald Trump, fueled by his false claims of a stolen election, assaulted police and smashed their way into the Capitol to interrupt the certification of Democrat Joe Bidens victory.

The committee has already interviewed more than 150 people across government, social media and law enforcement, including some former Trump aides who have been cooperative. The panel has subpoenaed more than 20 witnesses, and most of them, including several who helped plan the Stop the Steal rally the morning of Jan. 6, have signaled they will cooperate.

The latest subpoenas were issued to the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys and 1st Amendment Praetorian organizations as well as their members, requesting documents and testimony.

Henry Enrique Tarrio, chairman of the Proud Boys, was among those subpoenaed. He hasnt been charged in the riot as he wasnt there on Jan. 6. Hed been arrested in an unrelated vandalism case as he arrived in Washington two days earlier and was ordered out of the area by a judge. Law enforcement later said Tarrio was picked up in part to help quell potential violence.

But despite him not being physically present, the committee believes he may have been involved in the Proud Boys preparation for the events at the Capitol.

The committee highlighted a line from another Proud Boys leaders podcast shortly before Jan. 6 in which he said, When police officers or government officials are breaking the law, what are we supposed to do as people? Discourse? What are we supposed to do debate? No, we have to use force.

Jason Lee Van Dyke, a lawyer previously affiliated with the Proud Boys and subpoenaed as part of the congressional investigation, said he would give the committee records that arent protected by attorney-client privilege, but emphasized that his affiliation with the Proud Boys International LLC ended in November 2018.

Van Dyke added that he didnt have any records from November 2020 through the present that the subpoena seeks. I cant give them what I dont have, Van Dyke said.

More than 30 Proud Boys leaders, members or associates are among those who have been charged in connection with the attack. The group of self-described Western chauvinists emerged from far-right fringes during the Trump administration to join mainstream GOP circles, with allies like longtime Trump backer Roger Stone. The group claims it has more than 30,000 members nationwide.

The committee on Tuesday also subpoenaed the Oath Keepers a militia group founded in 2009 that recruits current and former military, police and first responders and its founder and leader Elmer Stewart Rhodes. The panel says Rhodes may have suggested members should engage in violence to ensure their preferred election outcome and that he was in contact with several of the more than a dozen indicted Oath Keepers members before, during and after the Capitol attack, including meeting some of them outside the Capitol.

Rhodes has said there were as many as 40,000 Oath Keepers at its peak, but one extremism expert estimates the groups membership stands around 3,000 nationally. Rhodes didnt immediately respond to a request for comment that was left on the organizations website.

The last organization on the committees list Tuesday was the 1st Amendment Praetorian, founded by a QAnon believer, which claims to provide free security for patriotic and religious events across the country.

Its chairman, Robert Patrick Lewis, is wanted by the committee after being listed as a speaker on the permit for a Jan. 5 rally on Freedom Plaza in downtown Washington. On the day of the attack, Lewis tweeted: Today is the day that true battles begin.

The subpoenas narrowing in on the organizations come one day after the panel issued subpoenas to five more people, including Stone and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Some Trump allies have not cooperated. Steve Bannon, a longtime ally, was indicted on Nov. 12 on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress after he defied a subpoena from the House committee. The committee is giving former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows more time to comply with a subpoena before moving forward with a contempt vote.

--The Associated Press

Originally posted here:

Proud Boys, Oath Keepers subpoenaed by Jan. 6 House panel ...

Even though a judge ordered a Jan. 6 defendant not to associate with the extremist group the Proud Boys, he spoke at the Justice for J6 rally in September where more than a dozen members of the group were in attendance.

Micajah Jackson, a Marine veteran who admitted to the FBI he stormed the Capitol, spoke at the September 26th Justice for J6 rally (which was much smaller than the original Jan. 6 rally) in support of defendants charged with crimes related to the insurrection, CNNs KFile reported Saturday. According to videos and photos obtained by CNN, Jackson can be seen sharing conspiracy theories about Jan. 6 near a group of Proud Boys. The Southern Poverty Law Center has classified the Proud Boys as a hate group.

During his speech at Justice for J6, according to video obtained by CNN, Jackson claimed that the government had weaponized the FBI, the Capitol Police, D.C. police, antifa, BLM, and Democratic activists to set up a coup against patriotic Americans like myself and hundreds and thousands of others that are still being persecuted, which he said was akin to KGB stuff. He also stated, according to CNN, that the Department of Justice should prosecute every Congress member that was part of this set-up coup against us.

Photos on Twitter from the day surfaced by KFile show Jackson posing with Republican Arizona state Rep. Walt Blackman, who is running for a seat in Congress. A man sporting a polo shirt favored by the Proud Boys stands not far behind them, CNN noted. According to a May 18 order, a federal judge stipulated Jackson not associate with any known members of the Proud Boys organization as a condition of his release from incarceration ahead of his trial. But, the outlet did not find evidence of Jackson directly interacting with anyone from the group that day.

His lawyer, public defender Maria Jacob, said in a statement to CNN that Jackson did not know that Proud Boys would be in attendance at Justice for J6, and she denied that he had contact with members of the group while he was there. Mr. Jackson did not have any contact with any members of the Proud Boys at the Justice for J6 rally and had no knowledge that any of its members would attend. The government is aware of the allegations and to date has filed no suggestion of a violation or request for action, she said.

According to the criminal complaint, Jackson attended the rally on Jan. 6 wearing an orange armband that he said was given to him by Proud Boys from Arizona. The complaint states that the Proud Boys from that state chose to wear the color orange so they could easily identify each other that day. A photograph included in the complaint purports to show Jackson and a group of people who identified as Proud Boys marching toward the Capitol, and a video shows Jackson walking with a group toward the Capitol led by Proud Boys organizer Joe Biggs. Capitol CCTV footage later showed Jackson inside the building where he appeared to be live-streaming from his phone.

When FBI agents interviewed Jackson at his home in March, he admitted to entering the Capitol but denied associating with the Proud Boys before Jan. 6. The complaint, however, stated that evidence found on social media accounts connected to Jackson contradicts that claim.

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Jan 6 Rioter Told to Stay Away from Proud Boys Spoke at ...

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The Department of Justice announced on Thursday that it had indicted two Iranian nationals for interfering in the 2020 presidential election. The pair posed as Proud Boys a far-right, all-male American militia group as part of a "cyber-enabled" campaign to intimidate voters ahead of the 2020 election, according to the department.

A DOJ press release named Seyyed Mohammad Hosein Musa Kazemi and Sajjad Kashian, two young men based in Iran, as the defendants in the case.

"As alleged, Kazemi and Kashian were part of a coordinated conspiracy in which Iranian hackers sought to undermine faith and confidence in the US presidential election," said US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams in the press release.

The indictment alleges that the duo obtained confidential voter information from at least one state website, while attempting to access several others. As part of a broader voter intimidation effort, the department says, the pair posed as a "group of Proud Boys volunteers" and created a fabricated video depicting a person hacking state voter websites and using the information obtained to create fake absentee ballots.

The video was then distributed in October 2020 to Republican members of the House and Senate, White House officials, former President Donald Trump's re-election campaign, and members of the media. An accompanying message warned of Democratic efforts to exploit "serious security vulnerabilities," capitalizing on Trump's rhetoric against mail-in balloting during the 2020 campaign.

That same month, hackers also allegedly sent intimidating emails to tens of thousands of registered Democrats, threatening them with violence if they didn't switch parties and vote for Trump.

"This indictment details how two Iran-based actors waged a targeted, coordinated campaign to erode confidence in the integrity of the U.S. electoral system and to sow discord among Americans," Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen said in a press release.

The department also said the two Iranians tried to hack into a media company's computer networks in order to disseminate more disinformation about the election, but were thwarted by the FBI.

"The United States will never tolerate any foreign actors' attempts to undermine our free and democratic elections," said Williams. "As a result of the charges unsealed today, and the concurrent efforts of our U.S. government partners, Kazemi and Kashian will forever look over their shoulders as we strive to bring them to justice."

Given that the Kazemi and Kashian both live in Iran, which lacks any diplomatic relations with the United States, it is unlikely that the pair will ever be brought to justice. The Treasury Department placed the duo, along with the leadership of the Iranian government-linked company they work for, on a US sanctions list.

Additionally, the State Department is offering a $10 million reward for further information about their activities.

According to Bloomberg, DOJ officials told reporters on Thursday that there's no evidence that the campaign was successful in changing any votes. They also stopped short of blaming the Iranian government directly, though they noted that the company the hackers worked for had ties to the government.

That's a departure from October 2020, when then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe first announced that the subversion was taking place. Ratcliffe blamed Iran directly, saying the Islamic Republic had "taken specific actions to influence public opinion relating to our elections" along with Russia.

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DOJ indicts 2 Iranians who posed as Proud Boys to interfere in 2020 election - Business Insider

Several Republican lawmakers dangled congressional internships for Kyle Rittenhouse, joining a coalition of right-wing voices celebrating the Kenosha shooter after his acquittal on Friday.

Kyle, if you want an internship reach out to me, Rep. Madison Cawthorn wrote in the caption of an Instagram story on Friday. He followed fellow GOP representatives Matt Gaetz, who teased an internship for Rittenhouse on Wednesday, and Paul Gosar, who threatened to arm-wrestle Gaetz for the chance to hire the teen as an intern.

Rittenhouse was acquitted on all charges on Friday, including two counts of murder stemming from his August 2020 shootings of three people at a Black Lives Matter protest. Rittenhouse, then 17, had traveled interstate with his friends gun, in what he characterized as a bid to protect businesses from protesters. He shot three people, in what he and attorneys successfully argued was self-defense. Rittenhouses case has been embraced by the far right, including paramilitary groups that heralded his killing of their political foes.

This week, that praise was echoed by lawmakers on the right who took to social media to declare their interest in hiring Rittenhouse.

He is not guilty and deserves a not guilty verdict, Gaetz said Wednesday. You know what, Kyle Rittenhouse would probably make a pretty good congressional intern. We might reach out to him and see if he be interested in helping the country in additional ways.

Gaetz doubled down on Twitter, writing that Rittenhouse would make a great congressional intern.

Gosar, who was censured this week for tweeting an anime video about killing his liberal colleagues, made his own bid for Rittenhouse.

Justice was served for #KyleRittenhouse and he is fully exonerated. As I said last year, obviously self-defense, Gosar wrote shortly after Rittenhouses acquittal. I will arm wrestle @mattgaetz to get dibs for Kyle as an intern.

Cawthorn extended his offer on Instagram, and added a call for his followers to carry weapons. Be armed, be dangerous, and be moral, said the MAGA lawmaker from North Carolina.

Elsewhere on the internet, far-right figures and groups celebrated Rittenhouses acquittal with more explicit calls to violence. The Proud Boys, a group Rittenhouse partied with while out on bond, celebrated with a GIF image mocking the two people Rittenhouse killed. Brien James, a former Proud Boys leader, went further, using his Telegram channel to call for attacks on people outside the courthouse.

Who wants to go clear out the scum clogging up those court house steps? James wrote.

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GOP Lawmakers Fall Over Each Other to Offer Jobs to Kyle Rittenhouse - The Daily Beast

Trump was the latest, and most powerful, vehicle for their politics and ambition, and he was what brought them to Washington on Jan. 6 although you could almost as accurately say they are what brought him there, since they were the ones who helped organize much of the rally. Their story is the story of American politics since the Great Recession, when anger against existing institutions became the great motivator, when the bar to entry for candidates hit the floor, when social media fame became the coin of the realm, and money, gobs and gobs of it, went washing through the political system. Their story, as Ive been able to pull it together here, is based on dozens of hours of interviews in person and on the phone, news reports in which theyve appeared as central or marginal characters, and, where possible, the corroborating accounts of others who were there. They had a knack for being in the room with some of the biggest boldface names of the populist right but also for never quite getting vaulted into the limelight.

If we let them steal the election from President Trump, we will never get it back!

Dustin Stockton last November

The Jan. 6 rally, Stockton told me later that November, was supposed to be big, huge, between four and five million showing up. Congress would be meeting to certify the election; the rally would be the final chance for Trump to lay out the evidence of why the vote was a fraud. We were talking by phone, Stockton sitting in the March for Trump tour bus, parked in front of one of the Trump hotels in Las Vegas, waiting for Lawrence to pick up a prescription from CVS. He seemed his usual low-key self, even as the chaos swirled around him. His life, as he described it, was lived on the fly; theyd scarcely pack up from one rally before figuring out how to make the next stop on the tour happen. He told me Eric Trump had just called to make sure everything was going okay; that hed just gotten off the phone with Kanye West to arrange for the 2020 candidate and hip-hop star to appear at the rally the first week of January; that they also expected Kid Rock, the country music duo Big & Rich, the talk radio host Leo Terrell. (None of them appeared.)

In late December, though, as Trump began searching more and more desperately for some election officials who would do his bidding, Stockton and Lawrences project began to shift and metastasize. Rivals in the MAGA movement, they said, derided what they had been up to as mere tea party-type rallies and said it was now time for something a little sharper, a little more on point. By late December, the pair had lost control of the rally on the 6th, and had instead been left in charge of organizing a smaller rally the day before, featuring mostly B-team players from the MAGA universe, while Trumpworld figures like Kimberly Guilfoyle and Rudy Giuliani took center stage on the 6th.

Their version of Jan. 6 seems an unlikely story going back to their hotel, annoyed at MAGA worlds self-dealing celebrities, instead of joining the out-of-control march they helped set into motion. | Getty Images

I talked to Stockton again on Jan. 5, and he sounded both exuberant and exhausted, never mind that some of the stars had never in fact signed on, and that the crowd was looking to top out at 30,000, max. Trump had been hyping up the rally on Twitter, writing, Be there, will be wild! and retweeting Lawrences announcement of it, a tweet that would later be shown on the Senate floor and entered into as evidence for Trumps second impeachment trial. (Lawrence sued the House impeachment managers for defamation.) They were told that the word from the White House was to be prepared to be around all day and all night if need be. We are going to keep it going until there is some kind of resolution, Stockton told me.

By the next day, though, Stockton and Lawrence, going on one hour of sleep, and after squabbling with conservative influencers who thought they deserved better seating, and sitting in the freezing cold for hours during the various warm-up acts, decided to leave and go back to the hotel just as Trump was speaking, to rest up for the long night ahead. I had Fox News on, I woke up, and it was breaking news, Stockton told me later.

They have taken over the Capitol. And my first thought was, Oh my God, what kind of idiots are these? It was my worst nightmare. Instead of it being Patriots Day, where we prove the election fraud, my thought was: We are about to get roasted.

Instead of it being Patriots Day, where we prove the election fraud, my thought was: We are about to get roasted.

Dustin Stockton after January 6

Their version of Jan. 6 seems an unlikely story going back to their hotel, annoyed at MAGA worlds self-dealing celebrities, instead of joining the out-of-control march they helped set into motion. But so far theres been no proof otherwise: As the Capitol that day became the most scrutinized crime scene in America, no charges were ever filed against them; Stockton says he was interviewed by federal authorities once, in the spring, but never heard anything more about it.

And the sense of frustration, betrayal, disgust theyve developed since Jan. 6 that is incontestably real.

They were already let down by what they saw as a lack of gratitude from the Trump administration: Their hoped-for administration jobs, possibly an overseas posting, never arrived. They had ties to Steve Bannon, and hoped to use his connections to become high-dollar fundraisers, but he never really made those introductions. They wanted Fox News appearances, and social media clout, but had trouble locking down both. Their highest-profile effort, the We Build the Wall fundraising campaign, ended in charges and recrimination. And in the months after the Jan. 6 rally, they came to feel betrayed by a movement they helped build.

If you go work for Trump, Stockton said to me last week, over a year after we had met up in D.C., you eventually become the focus of the attack, and when you do, they just dump you.

They are, they know, now political actors without a country, reviled on the left for being associated with insurrectionists, and on the right for now willing to talk about what actually went down that day in Washington. They can make for difficult, even unsympathetic, subjects, figures who perpetrated a decades worth of hijinks and dirty tricks who at last pulled off a stunt so big and outrageous they lost control of it.

Jan. 6 was supposed to be the culmination of their careers. Instead, it felt like the end.

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The Bonnie and Clyde of MAGA World - POLITICO Magazine

The leader of the Proud Boys far-right group has asked a judge to free him from jail in Washington DC, complaining about poor conditions.

Henry Enrique Tarrio is serving a five-month sentence for stealing and burning a Black Lives Matter banner from a historic Black church in the capital, after Donald Trumps election defeat.

On Monday, Tarrio asked a judge to release him, arguing that he has been exposed to inhumane conditions.

Asking that his sentence be reduced or that he be allowed to complete it under house arrest, he claimed to have been harassed by correctional officers and said his cell regularly floods with dirty water from a toilet in a neighboring cell.

Ive been to jail before and what Ive seen here, Ive never seen anywhere else, Tarrio said in a video testimony.

This place needs to be shut down immediately, he added.

Tarrio described abusive guards, smoke-filled hallways and medical neglect, saying he witnessed a prisoner have a seizure who lay for a half hour before help arrived.

Im deathly afraid that something is going to happen to me, Tarrio said.

According to his attorney, Tarrio has endured serious abuses of his rights on a daily basis, including jail employees repeatedly ignoring his requests for medical treatment, throwing cold, often inedible meals into his cell and denying access to running water.

Mr Tarrio has been intimidated and antagonized by correctional staff to dissuade him from making complaints about the horrendous conditions, Tarrios attorney, Luca Dansie, wrote.

Approximately three dozen Proud Boys members and associates have been charged in connection with the Capitol riot, in which Trump supporters sought to overturn his election defeat. Some have been charged with conspiring to carry out a coordinated attack to stop Congress certifying Joe Bidens victory.

Tarrio was not present at the Capitol on 6 January and has not been charged in connection to the riot. But he was arrested on 4 January, on his way to DC. Police pulled him over on a warrant for vandalizing the Black Lives Matter sign, which was stolen from the Asbury United Methodist church the previous month.

Officers also found Tarrio to be carrying two unloaded magazines emblazoned with the Proud Boys logo, which he said he sells.

Tarrio pleaded guilty in August to destruction of property and attempted possession of a large-capacity ammunition feeding device.

His complaints about jail conditions mirror those of several prisoners charged in the Capitol attack. In October, a federal judge held the DC corrections director and jail warden in contempt of court and asked the Department of Justice to investigate whether inmates civil rights were being abused.

Last week, the District and the US marshals service struck a deal to improve conditions at the citys main jail.

DC superior court judge Jonathan Pittman said on Monday he would rule by the end of the week on whether he will reduce Tarrios sentence to 90 days. Pittman also took the jails damaged reputation as proof that Tarrio was not being singled out.

Its obviously distressing to hear of these conditions, Pittman said. I come back to the same question: how is Mr Tarrios condition any different than any other inmate at the jail?

Associated Press contributed to this report

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Proud Boys leader asks for early release over jail conditions - The Guardian

With the return of in-person learning this fall, American culture wars are igniting in some Illinois schools.

This week, critics of Gender Queer: A Memoir, a book about coming out as non-binary, turned out in force to call for its removal at a high school district board meeting in west suburban Downers Grove. And Equality Illinois, an LGBTQ advocacy group, said groups around the state this fall are seeing an influx of reports of harassment toward LGBTQ students.

This comes as conservative politicians, some parents and others nationally have turned their attention from masking policies in schools to what is taught, with a focus on trying to end policies and ban materials they consider too progressive and harmful for students. The arrival of the effort here comes just two years after Illinois passed a law that requires public schools to include LGBTQ history in the curriculum.

Were really in an anxious time right now so Im not surprised that we have an increase in book bannings, said Emily Knox, an associate professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Knox says this is the latest iteration in the cyclical nature of efforts to ban books, which tends to ebb and flow depending on the community. But she says there seems to be a growing effort to ban LGBTQ and anti-racist books.

This is really the outcome of the pandemic, the insurrection, the killing of George Floyd, all of those things have created kind of a perfect storm for people to really think about their local institutions and what is happening in them, Knox said.

The fight in the school district based in Downers Grove is over a book thats been at the center of controversy in several other states. Fairfax County Schools in Virginia and some schools in Florida are among a few that have moved to ban Gender Queer in its libraries.

You and your friends are trying to convince us that Gender Queer, a child pornographic sketchbook, is acceptable in our schools under the pretense of inclusion and comedy, said Terry Newsome, who spoke during the public comment period at Mondays board meeting in Downers Grove. Additionally, you say its okay because its not assigned reading. Its only in the library. None of this justifies offering our children pornography.

Some meeting attendees held up signs that read No Porn or enlarged graphic images from the book showing sexual content. A social media message circulated before the meeting showing a message that appeared to be from the Northern Illinois Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group. The message urged people to come to the meeting to keep pornography out of Downers Grove schools.

The book wasnt on the agenda, but critics turned up to speak against it. The superintendent said the district has received two formal objections and an independent process will determine if the book will remain. The school district libraries have just two copies of the book, one in each of the districts two high schools.

Supporters of keeping an array of books in libraries say removing them is erasing experiences some students identify with. High school student Lauren Pierret told the board there are other books available to students that depict heterosexual content like The Handmaids Tale and It, but no one has challenged them.

Why are these books not being censored, she asked board members. Lets not present getting rid of Gender Queer as censoring our children from sex. Its homophobia. Its an outward protest of media for queer students. Its telling kids that who they are is wrong.

Knox says LGBTQ books tend to be sexualized even if they dont contain any sexual content. She says it speaks to how critics characterize the queer community as a whole and why some of these books are challenged, including ones about gender identity like Gender Queer.

Thats really about My kids dont need to know about this, Knox said. You can see the anxiety that what if my own child questions their gender identity?

Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Associations Office for Intellectual Freedom, says public school libraries provide information to students who are coming from all backgrounds and experiences. She says they need to be able to find information about their identities and needs. For some students, the school library is their only access to a larger collection of books.

What you wind up doing with this book censorship is not only teaching a deeply anti-democratic lesson that flies in the face of our promise of freedom of speech, freedom to read, but also, youre essentially erasing the experiences of particular groups whove been marginalized, whove been without voices, she said.

The group of LGBTQ advocacy groups around the state that reported the rise in harassment toward LGBTQ students on Tuesday said the climate is difficult for LGBTQ students this fall. They say harassment is coming from staff or fellow students. Its also happening at the local level at school board meetings like in Downers Grove.

Grecia Magdaleno of Illinois Safe Schools Alliance says some students may have become more vocal about their identities since returning to in-person learning, which may result in an increase in discrimination.

But there are many other factors for it as well, Magdaleno said. I think its because of the rise in anti-trans legislation that weve been seeing across the country.

In 2019, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed a law that requires public schools to include LGBTQ history in the curriculum. Magdaleno is helping to build that curriculum. They say the most common push back toward LGBTQ affirming material is that it isnt age appropriate. Magdaleno says the curriculum is designed to reach students at the appropriate time in their development.

We need to really fight to make sure that we advocate for these books that are offering information on different identities by stating that its not a politicized issue, Magdaleno said. It really is just about identity at its core, and that its not meant to be controversial in any way. Its really just about capturing the experiences and information of people whose lives havent been captured in society before.

Susie An covers education for WBEZ. Follow her on Twitter @WBEZeducation and @soosieon.

Read the rest here:

National fight is creeping into Illinois schools over what is read, taught and who belongs - WBEZ

Good morning.

At least one person has been killed and several more are feared dead after a huge storm hit the Pacific north-west, destroying highways and leaving tens of thousands of people in Canada and the US without power.

Canadas largest port was cut off by flood waters, as emergency crews in British Columbia announced on Tuesday that at least 10 vehicles had been swept off a highway during a landslide.

South of the border, tens of thousands of households and businesses remain without power in Washington state. Nearly 50,000 Washington state electrical customers still had no power on Tuesday. Authorities said one person was still missing near Bellingham after being seen in flood waters clinging to a tree.

The Washington governor, Jay Inslee, declared a severe weather state of emergency in 14 counties.

All rail access to Vancouver has been cut by floods and landslides, the port of Vancouver announced.

A womans body was recovered from the site of the landslide during a search the previous night, the Royal Canadian Mounted police confirmed.

The leader of the Proud Boys far-right group has asked a judge to free him from jail in Washington DC, complaining about poor conditions.

Henry Enrique Tarrio is serving a five-month sentence for stealing and burning a Black Lives Matter banner from a historic Black church in the capital after Donald Trumps election defeat.

On Monday, Tarrio asked a judge to release him, arguing that he has been exposed to inhumane conditions.

Asking that his sentence be reduced or that he be allowed to complete it under house arrest, he claimed to have been harassed by correctional officers and said his cell regularly floods with dirty water from a toilet in a neighboring cell.

Tarrio described abusive guards, smoke-filled hallways and medical neglect, saying he witnessed a prisoner have a seizure who lay for a half-hour before help arrived.

Anthony Fauci, the top infectious diseases public official in the US, said on Tuesday that if the US further ramps up vaccination rates and those already immunized take booster shots it is feasible Covid-19 could be reduced from a pandemic emergency to endemic status next year.

More than 70% of adults in the US are fully vaccinated. Fauci said if a lot more Americans take the vaccines and if the US makes boosters available for everyone, the country could get control of the virus by spring of 2022.

But with his forecast Fauci was acknowledging Covid will always be present in the population to some degree, such as the flu or chickenpox.

What did he say? People will still get infected. People might still get hospitalized, but the level would be so low that we dont think about it all the time and it doesnt influence what we do.

What needs to happen to reach that stage? He said many more people need to take the vaccine for the first time and others need to get boosters, which are vital for reaching the point where falling infection rates allow the disease to be downgraded to endemic.

Will booster shots be available to everyone? An influential US panel that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will discuss this on Friday.

The Los Angeles police department pursued a contract with a controversial technology company that could enable police to use fake social media accounts to surveil civilians and claimed its algorithms can identify people who may commit crimes in the future.

A cache of internal LAPD documents obtained through public records requests by the Brennan Center for Justice, a non-profit organization, and shared with the Guardian, reveal that LAPD in 2019 trialed social media surveillance software from the analytics company Voyager Labs.

Like many companies in this industry, Voyager Labs software allows law enforcement to collect and analyze large troves of social media data to investigate crimes or monitor potential threats.

But documents reveal the company takes this surveillance a step further. In its sales pitch to LAPD about a potential long-term contract, Voyager said its software could collect data on a suspects online network and surveil the accounts of thousands of the suspects friends.

There have been tense scenes outside the Kenosha county courthouse in Wisconsin as protesters some for, some against await the verdict of Kyle Rittenhouses trial, which is expected today.

Former world No 1 tennis star Naomi Osaka has joined the growing calls for answers on the whereabouts of the Chinese player Peng Shuai, who has not been heard from publicly since she accused the countrys former vice-premier of sexually assaulting her.

Brazils beef industry hopes to tempt buyers back to the Amazon region with a new deforestation-free pledge. The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, is expected to greenlight the project later this year. But critics are concerned it could effectively legalize deforestation in the region.

Britney Spears has spoken out about the realities of her new freedom after her 13-year conservatorship was lifted last week. The pop star spoke about her gratitude at being able to use a debit card and possess her own car keys. Its the little things, she said.

Ridley Scotts House of Gucci stars Lady Gaga in a tale of fashion and murder, which seemed destined for the big screen from the moment it happened. So why, now that the film is actually here, does the Gucci case feel a strange fit for a movie after all? Put it down to timing. The films development began in entertainment prehistory: 2006. Back then, a lavish movie was still the grand prize for any news story. Now film and true crime have the air of an estranged couple. Had Maurizio Gucci been gunned down on Via Palestro last week, Netflix would already have the rights and the podcast would be on Spotify, argues Danny Leigh.

Over the last five years, Mayukh Sen has been writing about figures on the margins of the American food world. His profiles act as counter-narratives to a food canon long unconcerned with the accomplishment of non-white chefs. His new book, Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America continues this theme by resurfacing the stories of outsider food figures, some of whom were disappeared by a ruthless restaurant economy and an indifferent media.

Just four days after landmark climate talks in Scotland in which Joe Biden vowed the US will lead by example in tackling dangerous global heating, the presidents own administration is providing a jarring contradiction: the largest ever sale of oil and gas drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico. The US federal government is on Wednesday launching an auction of more than 80m acres of the gulf for fossil fuel extraction, a record sell-off that will lock in years, and potentially decades, of planet-heating emissions.

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The Fox News host Laura Ingraham sparked mockery on social media after becoming confused when she believed a guest discussing the Netflix television show You was actually referring to her. I was watching an episode of You when measles came up, said Raymond Arroyo, a conservative commentator in the clip, which has been posted on Twitter. Looking puzzled, Ingraham interrupted. Wait, wait, wait, she said. When did I mention measles? The pair continued a dialogue that seemed to belong more to a sitcom or sketch show than primetime on a major US network.

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The comedian Beth Stelling once described the US legal system as the white mans FUBU: just for us, by us. If you had any illusions that this description was a comedic exaggeration then the past week should have shattered them. Two high-profile murder cases have shone a bright light on the inequities of the justice system and made it very clear who the law is there to serve.

Lets start with the McMichael/Bryan trial in Georgia. To recap: three white men (father and son defendants, Greg and Travis McMichael, and their neighbor William Bryan) chased and brutally killed an unarmed 25-year-old Black man called Ahmaud Arbery last February. Arbery had been out jogging near his home; the defendants claimed they thought he was fleeing an attempted burglary.

The first shocking thing about the McMichael/Bryan case is the resistance there was to a trial even taking place. One of the first prosecutors assigned to the case initially recommended not charging the men involved, saying their pursuit of Arbery was perfectly legal because of slavery-era law that gave private citizens the power to arrest people if they thought a crime was being committed. Had a graphic video, taken by Bryan, of the McMichaels confronting Arbery not gone viral then his death could easily have been swept under the rug.

A trial may have been granted; whether its fair is another question. The jury are nearly all white; there is just one Black juror. This, by the way, is in a county that is nearly 27% Black. Worse still? The judge (who, Im sure I dont need to tell you, is a white guy), noted that there appeared to be intentional discrimination in the selection of the predominately white jury, but allowed the trial to continue anyway. Not only does the defense seem to have an issue with Black jurors, it has also made clear it has an issue with Black pastors. A day after the Rev Al Sharpton sat in the back of the courtroom, defense attorney Kevin Gough told the judge: We dont want any more Black pastors coming in here. Gough was worried they could be intimidating for the predominately white jury.

Unfolding at the same time as the McMichael/Bryan case, with a number of parallels, is 18-year-old Kyle Rittenhouses trial. Again, the simple fact that a trial is taking place is notable. Rittenhouse shot three white men, killing two of them and wounding the other, during police brutality protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last August. Had Rittenhouse been Black, do you really think hed be alive to stand trial right now? Somehow I strongly suspect that he might not have been taken into custody healthy and well. Jacob Blake, whose shooting prompted the Kenosha protests, certainly wasnt. Blake was left paralyzed from the waist down after a white police officer shot him seven times in the back; charges were not filed against the police officer after video showed Blake had been armed with a knife.

Rittenhouse did not find himself at the Kenosha protest by chance; he crossed state lines to attend. He illegally obtained an automatic weapon and brought it with him. He shot three people. While out on bail, he showed up at a bar in T-shirt that said Free as Fuck, and took photos with members of the Proud Boys. Had he been Black, the conservative media would undoubtedly be treating him like a terrorist; instead, hes being treated like a hero.

Meanwhile, in the courtroom, the judge seems to be treating him with kid gloves. Judge Bruce Schroeder has raised a number of questions about his impartiality after making decisions that seem to strongly favour Rittenhouse. Last month, for example, he ruled that the people shot by Rittenhouse cannot be referred to as victims by prosecutors in court; defense attorneys may, however, call them arsonists or looters. Schroeders judgement has also been called into question after he made a very inappropriate joke about Asian food in the courtroom.

Its not clear what the verdict will be in either the Rittenhouse or McMichael/Bryan trial. But the dynamics of each case have made it more than clear who the overwhelmingly white and male US legal system is designed to protect. One nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all? Its a lovely sentiment. But its rubbish.

Republican congressman Paul Gosar (whose own siblings urged people not to vote for him) has been criticized for tweeting a video which depicted him striking the New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a sword. Sadly, this isnt anything out of the ordinary for AOC: she is routinely subjected to threatening behaviour from her Republican colleagues. AOC responded to the video by calling Gosar just a collection of wet toothpicks who couldnt open a pickle jar.

The country prohibited the possession of child abuse material in 2014, but there is strong resistance to cracking down on porn manga depicting minors. Vice outlines the issue.

The study found that men and womens emotional stability and fluctuations are clearly, consistently and unmistakably more similar than they are different.

Why? Because people want their skin to look dewy and wet, apparently. All I can say is that I am very glad I am no longer in my 20s.

Sophie Lewis, writing in the LRB, has an interesting review of a new book by Mallory OMeara called Girly Drinks: a world history of women and alcohol. Lewis notes that women from the Islamic and Arab world dont make it into the book, despite rich topics like Arab womens wine poetry. Perhaps, in planning her world history, OMeara subconsciously adhered to the Western idea that Arab feminism is a contradiction in terms, Lewis writes. Its a shame because, that aside, the book looks fascinating.

Every move you make, every step you take, your cat is keeping track of you. A new study suggests that cats keep tabs on where people are in their homes, even when they cant see them. [It suggests] that cats have the ability to picture the invisible in their minds, one of the researchers noted. Cats [may] have a more profound mind than is thought. Pretty sure zero cat owners will be surprised by this news

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What the McMichael/Bryan and Kyle Rittenhouse trials say about America - The Guardian