Challenging Critical Race Theory, Rhode Island Mom Demands School Curriculum from South Kingstown School District (VIDEO)

This is getting to be a very big thing. Democrats can't be that stupid. The 2022 midterms aren't that far off, and Lord knows the country's turned to hell since Trump left office. 

And this takes courage. The freakin' school district is threatening a lawsuit? No, this isn't right. Public schools are for the public, right? Well then the people shouldn't have to go to hell and back to get the most basic information on what schools are teaching their kids. Applause for this brave woman, wow.

It's Nicole Solas, at Legal Insurrecion, "I’m a Mom Seeking Records of Critical Race and Gender Curriculum, Now the School Committee May Sue to Stop Me (Update)":

I am a mother in the South Kingstown School District in Rhode Island investigating through public records requests how critical race and gender theories are integrated into lessons, school policies, and contracts. Now the School Committee is considering suing me to stop me.

My child is enrolled in kindergarten and I became concerned that Critical Race Theory (CRT) and gender theory were integrated into lessons when an elementary school principal told me that teachers don’t refer to students as “boys” and “girls.” Additionally, I was told a kindergarten teacher asks five-year-olds, “what could have been done differently on the first Thanksgiving” in order to build upon a “line of thinking about history.” I asked why kids could not be called “boys” and “girls” and was told it was “common practice.” I asked for clarification on the “line of thinking” about history but got no answers. The more questions I asked, the less answers I received.

Then I asked for a tour of the elementary school and the Superintendent offered me an in-person or virtual tour, but never responded with a date and time despite my numerous follow-up emails and phone calls. After almost a month of radio silence the Superintendent then told me that now they were not offering tours due to Covid restrictions. Yet the Superintendent offered tours of other schools to campaign for a school bond.

I also asked to see the elementary school curriculum. I asked the principal, the school committee, the superintendent, the director of curriculum, and even the legal department at the Rhode Island Department of Education to allow me to view the curriculum. The school’s Director of Curriculum told me she was unavailable and never responded when I said I could view the curriculum on any day and time. Then a school committee member directed me to file an Access to Public Records Act (APRA) request on the school district website to obtain the curriculum. After thirty days, I received an incomplete curriculum and filed an APRA complaint with the Attorney General.

By contrast, curriculum for two charters schools in South Kingstown (Kingston Hill Academy and The Compass School) is available on their websites. I scheduled a tour of a private school in five minutes. Why was it so hard to get a tour and see the curriculum in my own public school district?

At this point I had reason to believe that the school district was hiding information and deliberately stonewalling me. I started using the APRA request google link on the school district’s website to request public documents that might answer my questions about CRT, gender theory, and other concerns. When I requested the emails of a school committee member the estimate of what they would charge me came back as $9,570. Who can afford that?

Under the APRA, “a reasonable charge may be made for the search or retrieval of documents. Hourly costs for a search and retrieval shall not exceed fifteen dollars ($15.00) per hour and no costs shall be charged for the first hour of a search or retrieval.” Additionally, each copy costs 15 cents.

I amended my request to narrow the scope of requested emails to six months and requested digital copies instead of hard copies. That $9,570 estimate dropped to $79.50. I quickly realized that if I structured many specific and narrow requests, I could afford to purchase the public information which was otherwise inaccessible to me due to the non-responsiveness of my school leadership. I felt like I had cracked the code to this mystery of inaccessible information.

These initial high estimates of public records requests are common barriers to parents obtaining information about their children’s school district. A parent in another Rhode Island school district received an estimate of $17,295.75 to obtain public information related to the cost of an athletic field. Access to public information is not cheap. Or equitable.

I continued to submit small and numerous public record requests to investigate my school district. The school department continued to respond in the statutory time period of ten days. A school committee member even made a snarky reference to my APRA requests in an email. Evidently my APRA requests were not problematic if they were the subject of sarcasm from a school committee member. No one in the school department ever told me it was a problem while I was in constant contact with them to request and purchase information. I purchased over $300 worth of public information and shared it to a private Facebook group to raise awareness about indoctrination in Rhode Island schools. I developed a growing network of likeminded teachers, parents, and community members who gave me information about CRT and gender theory infiltrating Rhode Island school districts.

Then, on Friday, May 28, the school committee set an agenda item for a public meeting to discuss “filing litigation against Nicole Solas to challenge the filing of over 160 APRA requests.”

My school committee now is considering suing me because I submitted a lot of public records requests to get answers to my questions which the School District would not answer. This same school committee which told me to use a statutorily prescribed process to obtain one piece of information (curriculum) is now having a public meeting to discuss suing me for using the same statutorily prescribed process to obtain other information. The message was clear: ask too many questions about your child’s education and we will come after you.

The most puzzling part of this shameful abuse of government power is that numerous attorneys with whom I’ve consulted cannot figure out the basis of a claim against me. There is no limit to submitting public record requests. Further, the APRA statute contemplates multiple requests made in a 30-day period for the purpose of cost. It states: “[M]ultiple requests from any person or entity to the same public body within a thirty (30) day time period shall be considered one request.” Accordingly, I did not submit 160 requests – I submitted ONE.

I suspect the South Kingstown School Department is displeased that a parent has found a way to legally compel responses to difficult questions surrounding CRT and gender theory in public school. I suspect they are also displeased about my criticism of the antiracism policy and appointment and hiring policy, both of which are under review and breathtakingly racist.

The Access to Public Records Act prohibits a government body from compelling a citizen to justify or explain her requests for public information. But, here I am attending my first in-person school committee meeting where my own name is one of two agenda items in open session. Here I am feeling immense pressure to explain and justify my public information requests to this shameful government body on pains of potential litigation against me. A school committee scheduling a public meeting to discuss “filing lawsuit against Nicole Solas to challenge filing of over 160 APRA requests” is nothing short of an attempt to deprive me of my civil rights to obtain public information about my child’s school.

I can think of a dozen better ways my APRA requests could have been addressed. The Superintendent could have hired a temporary assistant for $12 an hour to retrieve documents. If the school department is concerned about this extra cost of fulfilling my public record requests, it should use its 64 million dollar budget more wisely than to hire a consultant to manage School District’s Facebook page for $50 an hour to post important messages like memes that say “Happy Mother’s Day.”

The school committee also could have reached out to me and asked if they could answer my questions directly. But no. Instead, they sought to publicly vilify a mother.

Although I am shocked that a government body would use the threat of litigation to publicly bully, harass, and intimidate a mother who was advocating for her child’s education, I am not afraid. And I will not stop asking questions.

This shameful retaliation against a parent who demand transparency from public schools will not be tolerated. Every parent needs to keep asking questions. Every parent needs to submit more public records requests when they do not receive answers to their questions from school leaders. Hold your elected representatives accountable and do not allow them to prevent you from protecting and advocating for your children.

If the school system starts to bully you because you are asking too many questions, then you’re winning. Don’t give up.

J. P. Daughton, In the Forest of No Joy

At Amazon, J. P. Daughton, In the Forest of No Joy: The Congo-Océan Railroad and the Tragedy of French Colonialism.

Dad and His Beautiful Daughter Go Viral in Video Rebutting 'Critical Race Theory'

So cool. 

What a wonderful little cutie.

At Pajamas, "THIS Is How You Handle the Race-Hustlers," and Fox News, "Dad-daughter duo go viral with video rejecting critical race theory: 'Your skin color does not matter': Kory Yeshua tells 'Fox & Friends' why he pushed back on CRT in daughter's school":

One of the best videos opposing Critical Race Theory that you’ll ever see. 👏🏼🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/cXOfheV0kJ

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) June 1, 2021

Andy Ngo Needs a Bodyguard (VIDEO)

I responded to Mr. Ngo on Twitter earlier: "Maybe time to hang it up for a bit? Write another book? I don’t know? Get out of Portland for a while?"

The man cannot continue to do his coverage of Antifa all alone. He needs at least a bodyguard, if not a full force-protection squad surrounding him when he's out doing his thing. He will be killed. He says himself he's had a couple of dozen of death threats, and it was just a year or two ago the he was beaten to an inch of his life. He's moved back to Portland to care for his parents, but hey, his parents won't have a son too much longer if he keeps it up. Like I suggested, maybe it's time for him to pass the baton? Write books? Let someone else take up the mantle of on-the-ground reporting like this? 

I don't know? Life's too short. 

At Ingraham's last night:

Vegas Vactioners Face 26-Mile Traffic Jam Back to California (VIDEO)

At the Review Journal, "Memorial Day traffic jams I-15 at California-Nevada border."

There were a few drunk drivers, but most of those busted were trying to make time on the emergency lanes. That's why my wife and I get on the freeway before 6:00am, to beat the rush back to Cali.

Alan Taylor, William Cooper's Town

At Amazon, Alan Taylor, William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic.

Elizabeth Hinton, America on Fire

Elizabeth Hinton, America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s.

'So Far Away'

Carole King. (And James Taylor.)

I've been singing this song, and I couldn't remember who sings it. 

She's so lovely, and this is 1971, so long ago.

Republicans Fight Back Against Critical Race Theory

Republicans are fighting critical race theory, but what about conservatives? 

It's not hard to see the C.R.T. is going to be with us for the long haul. The problem is what to do with it. What's I'm seeing in response so far isn't very appealing, much less conservative. It's a lot of cancel culture coming from the right. It's too bad, too, for the solutions aren't too far and away. Folks should look to first principles, especially federalism. That is, push education policy down to the local level as much as possible, and as fast as you can. Get Congress out of the picture. Give states and localities the money, and then let them decide their own curricula. The real conservative bet would be abolishing the Department of Education. Can the Republicans do that? They're the putative conservative party. They should go big and call for a massive downsizing of the federal government, devolving more and more responsibilities to the states. I can't recall really any Republican administration doing that, not even Ronald Reagan's. 

Maybe you'd have to go back to Barry Goldwater's The Conscience of a Conservative for such bold initiatives to reinvent government? 

Downsize, devolve, and delegate education policy down from the federal government to the states. And then get government out of the way and let the people decide what's best for their kids and communities. 

We'll see.

At NYT, "Disputing Racism’s Reach, Republicans Rattle American Schools":

In Loudoun County, Va., a group of parents led by a former Trump appointee are pushing to recall school board members after the school district called for mandatory teacher training in “systemic oppression and implicit bias.”

In Washington, 39 Republican senators called history education that focuses on systemic racism a form of “activist indoctrination.”

And across the country, Republican-led legislatures have passed bills recently to ban or limit schools from teaching that racism is infused in American institutions. After Oklahoma’s G.O.P. governor signed his state’s version in early May, he was ousted from the centennial commission for the 1921 Race Massacre in Tulsa, which President Biden visited on Tuesday to memorialize one of the worst episodes of racial violence in U.S. history.

From school boards to the halls of Congress, Republicans are mounting an energetic campaign aiming to dictate how historical and modern racism in America are taught, meeting pushback from Democrats and educators in a politically thorny clash that has deep ramifications for how children learn about their country.

Republicans have focused their attacks on the influence of “critical race theory,” a graduate school framework that has found its way into K-12 public education. The concept argues that historical patterns of racism are ingrained in law and other modern institutions, and that the legacies of slavery, segregation and Jim Crow still create an uneven playing field for Black people and other people of color.

Many conservatives portray critical race theory and invocations of systemic racism as a gauntlet thrown down to accuse white Americans of being individually racist. Republicans accuse the left of trying to indoctrinate children with the belief that the United States is inherently wicked.

Democrats are conflicted. Some worry that arguing America is racist to the root — a view embraced by elements of the party’s progressive wing — contradicts the opinion of a majority of voters and is handing Republicans an issue to use as a political cudgel. But large parts of the party’s base, including many voters of color, support more discussion in schools about racism’s reach, and believe that such conversations are an educational imperative that should stand apart from partisan politics.

“History is already undertaught — we’ve been undereducated, and these laws are going to get us even less educated,” said Prudence L. Carter, the dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. Attempts to suppress what is still a nascent movement to teach young Americans more explicitly about racist public policy, like redlining or the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, amount to “a gaslighting of history,” she said, adding, “It’s a form of denialism.”

The debate over the real or perceived influence of critical race theory — not just in schools but also in corporate, government and media settings — comes as both parties increasingly make issues of identity central to politics. And it accelerated during the presidency of Donald J. Trump, when discussions over racism in the country were supercharged by his racist comments and by a wave of protests last year over police killings of Black people.

 

The Right Way on Trade?

From Gordon Hanson, at Foreign Affairs, "Can Trade Work for Workers? The Right Way to Redress Harms and Redistribute Gains":

For decades, the promise of globalization has rested on a vision of a world in which goods, services, and capital would flow across borders as never before; whatever its other features and components, contemporary globalization has been primarily about trade and foreign investment. Today’s globalized economy has been shaped to a large extent by a series of major trade agreements that were sold as win-win propositions: corporations, investors, workers, and consumers would all benefit from lowered barriers and harmonized standards. American advocates of this view claimed that deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement would supercharge growth, create jobs, and strengthen the United States’ standing as the world’s largest and most important economy. According to then President George H. W. Bush, “NAFTA means more exports, and more exports means more American jobs.”

A quarter of a century later, such optimism appears profoundly misplaced. NAFTA and other deals did boost growth, and free trade remains a net benefit for the U.S. economy as a whole. But the overall gains have been far less dramatic than promised, and many American workers suffered when well-paid manufacturing jobs dried up as factories moved abroad. Those who managed to stay employed saw their wages stagnate. The federal government, meanwhile, did little to build a safety net to catch those who lost out.

Unsurprisingly, Americans have complicated views on trade. Although a majority of voters see free trade as a good thing, barely one-third believe that it creates jobs or lowers prices. In response, political elites and elected officials across the ideological spectrum have scrambled to distance themselves from free-trade policies and from the major pacts of the past. For its part, the Biden administration has made a noble-sounding but vague pledge to pursue a “worker-centric” trade policy. The specifics are still unclear, but such an approach will likely include more aggressive so-called Buy American provisions, which require government agencies to give preference to U.S. products when making purchases; increased pressure on trading partners to respect workers’ collective-bargaining rights; and a hawkish relationship with China. Despite the rhetoric, these proposals put the administration well within the bounds of existing U.S. trade policy—tweaking margins here and there.

That approach is unlikely to fix the problems caused by free trade—which, despite the appeal of protectionist talking points, isn’t going anywhere. Instead, the Biden administration should establish targeted domestic programs that protect workers from the downsides of globalization. A responsible policy would capture the gains of free trade but make up for domestic losses. In recent years, the United States has done neither...

Still more.

 

Heather Mac Donald's, The War on Cops

At Amazon, Heather Mac Donald, The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe.

'The Five' Slams 'Defunding the Police' (VIDEO)

I almost never watch "The Five." I prefer outnumbered way more, heh, with all those hotties. 

This is a good segment, though, especially Dagen McDowell and Jessica Tarlov.

Watch:

California Boasts the Strictest Gun Control Regulations in the Country

I knew California had some of the toughest gun control laws around, but I didn't know we were the toughest. 

But do they work? Sure. But of course, it's the guns themselves that need regulating, less so the people. The once-Golden State should get more golden on gun ownership, sheesh.

At CSM, "California has the most gun-control laws in US. Do they work?":

As of 2020, California had more gun laws – 107 – on the books than any other state, according to research from the State Firearm Laws Database. And while those laws haven’t made California the state with the least amount of firearm deaths, it does put it around the bottom quintile, says Dr. Eric Fleegler, a pediatric emergency physician at Boston Children’s Hospital who researches gun violence and regulations.

Crucial, Dr. Fleegler says, are California’s laws on universal background checks – a solution to “a huge loophole in the federal background check” – as well as laws on gun storage, laws relating to gun ownership for people with a history of domestic violence, and people with restraining orders. These measures are intended to help with all types of gun violence – from suicides to accidents – not just murders and mass shootings.

“They really cover a broad gambit,” Dr. Fleegler says. But, he adds, where there are guns, there will always be gun deaths, intentionally or otherwise. “While legislation on the one hand can certainly lead to some reductions in the number of guns owned at the state level, they don’t actually prohibit the purchase of guns,” he says. “[Regulations] do a more thoughtful approach to who has them, how do you store them, if someone has domestic violence as part of their history, remove them from actually owning them.”

Mass shootings have an element of surprise or randomness that can make prevention difficult, even with other gun-control measures in place. “Those [shootings] are extremely distinct” from other forms of gun violence, Dr. Fleegler says. So-called red-flag laws, which allow for the confiscation of guns from those who are deemed a risk to themselves or others, can be a good step, he says. But “it’s one thing to pass legislation, it’s a whole other thing to enforce legislation,” he adds – as was highlighted when those laws didn’t prevent a recent shooting in Indianapolis.

Gun sales in California – and the nation – surged last year, spurred by racial and political unrest, economic insecurity, and the uncertainty of the pandemic. According to state data released in March in a court case, about 1.17 million new guns were registered in the state in 2020 – the most since 2016. The buying spree continued into the first part of 2021.

In 2020, there were just two public mass shootings in which four or more people died – down from 10 in 2019, the worst year on record, according to experts on mass shootings. That’s due in part to pandemic lockdowns. However, overall shootings increased – with more than 600 incidents where four or more people were shot, up from 417 in 2019. And violence generally increased by 20% or more in many large and small cities, California’s included, writes Dr. Garen Wintemute, a professor of emergency medicine and violence prevention at the University of California, Davis. Through mid-2020, the size of the increase in violence was proportional to the size of the increase in gun sales, he writes in an email.

“There was ... social disruption on many fronts, on a scale we’ve not seen in many years. We are just beginning to experience the effects of those interacting changes,” he explains. “We are likely to have a rough summer.”

When it comes to red-flag laws, “it was California that really created the model we see today,” where both police and family members can initiate the process, says Mr. Heyne at Brady. Indiana and Connecticut were the first states to have such laws. But following California’s passage, 16 states and the District of Columbia passed laws similar to the Golden State’s – including five with Republican governors.

California is also home to the University of California Firearm Violence Research Center, the first state-funded center for such research. It’s part of a holistic approach to gun violence “that is something that we have seen other states also pick up,” Mr. Heyne says. But after the San Jose shooting, “we still have a lot of work to do.”

Part of that work, advocates like Mr. Heyne believe, will have to come from Congress. California isn’t an island, he notes, and guns can flow across its borders. But the state has leaders at the federal level who’ve long championed gun control.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein was the architect of the 10-year federal assault weapons ban passed in 1994, and has pushed for its reinstatement. Her home state bans assault weapons. Other California Democrats, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris, have also pushed for gun-control measures, though few reforms have passed at the federal level in recent decades.

Nationally, “we do very little to screen individuals or to separate [from firearms] individuals that we know are at risk of dangerous behavior,” Mr. Heyne says. “If we want to really address gun violence in all of its forms, we need a comprehensive approach that is tactical, that is surgical, that is very specific to addressing the types of gun violence that exist in America, because it’s not a monolith. All of these different forms of gun violence require different solutions.”

Memorial Day Holiday Weather with Meteorologist Leah Pezzetti

It's looking pretty overcast. It's the end of May, though, so folks can normally expect the June "gloom" anyway. 

Here's the lovely Ms. Leah, for ABC News 10 San Diego:

After the Massacre: Black Property Owners Leveraged Land to Bring Businesses Back

I don't think I've ever read so much about the Tulsa race massacre. Leftist media folks didn't seem to care so much about Tulsa before the 100th anniversary. Didn't see nothin' about it on the 75th anniversary, or the 80th or 90th. That's not usually how these things work when remember big, important historical events. But it's all race all the time now, so perhaps diabolical race-baiters are making up for lost time.

That said, this is good, at WSJ, "Black Land Ownership Primed Greenwood’s Rebound After Massacre":

For the past 17 months, a group of WSJ's Black journalists, along with other journalists of color worked on a series of 9 stories examining the economic ramifications of the Tulsa Race Massacre.
I'm extremely proud to share our work. (outside the paywall) https://t.co/oujuQb1r5i

— Kimberly S. Johnson (@KimberlyReports) May 29, 2021

TULSA, Okla.—After all the destruction and loss of life, what survived the 1921 attack in the Greenwood district proved the most valuable and enduring in the neighborhood’s midcentury recovery: the ambition of Black entrepreneurs and landowners.

The ability of property owners to raise money by leveraging the land beneath the rubble helped seed a local economy of Black-owned businesses for the next decades, according to interviews, court filings, newspaper articles and an analysis of Tulsa County real-estate records by The Wall Street Journal.

Rebuilding Greenwood after the massacre had seemed a long shot. There was little or no government assistance. Insurers largely denied claims from people who had lost their homes and didn’t compensate business owners for lost inventory. Many residents instead used their property as collateral to secure short-term mortgages from financial institutions, more affluent individuals and community lending pools, records show.

The loans helped the neighborhood flourish in the 1940s and 1950s, residents and historians said. In 1940, the homeownership rate among Black residents in Tulsa was 49%, surpassing the rate of 45% among white residents, U.S. Census data show. In those decades, grocery stores lined the commercial spine of North Greenwood Avenue, and the district featured chili parlors, movie theaters, barbecue restaurants, drugstores, pool halls and doctors’ offices. By 1942, Greenwood was home to more than 240 businesses, according to Hannibal B. Johnson’s “Black Wall Street: From Riot to Renaissance in Tulsa’s Greenwood District.”

“All the odds were against us, and we survived anyway,” said James O. Goodwin, publisher of the Oklahoma Eagle, Greenwood’s century-old Black newspaper. Yet, this second renaissance would, too, meet its own calamity.

The story of Black property ownership in Oklahoma began well before the 1921 massacre. Many of the territory’s early Black residents were descendants of those formerly enslaved by Native Americans who had been pushed west by the U.S. government in the 19th century, according to Larry O’Dell, director of development and special projects at the Oklahoma Historical Society. In later agreements with the U.S., these Native Americans and the more than 23,000 formerly enslaved Black men and women of the tribes—known as freedmen—became eligible for allotments of as much as 160 acres in Oklahoma, Mr. O’Dell said. Many formed all-black towns in Oklahoma, largely in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

The opportunity to own land drew Black migrants from other states to Tulsa. Many found work as skilled laborers and in service jobs in an economy buoyed by agriculture and, later, the oil industry. Some who settled in Greenwood started businesses and bought property.

P.S. Thompson was among the Greenwood residents who mortgaged property to rebuild after the massacre. He filed a claim against the city for failing to protect his house and drugstore from destruction, fires and looting, according to documents with the Tulsa Historical Society & Museum and research compiled by the Oklahoma Historical Society. The following year, Mr. Thompson and his wife, E.B. Thompson, used their property as collateral to obtain a $750 loan from L.S. Cogswell Lumber Co., about $12,000 when adjusted for inflation. The loan was for 15 months at an annual interest rate of 10%, according to records from the Tulsa County Clerk. The average U.S. mortgage rate was around 6% at the time. The couple paid off the loan and obtained several more short-term mortgages in amounts from $500 to $1,500.

Well-to-do Greenwood residents made loans to other members of the community. In the 1920s and 1930s, James Henri Goodwin, a businessman and real-estate investor, extended mortgage loans to local residents, according to county clerk documents, and borrowed himself. Some Greenwood property owners were able to borrow from savings-and-loan associations.

Restrictive real-estate covenants limited the mobility of Black residents and property owners beyond Greenwood’s boundaries. Private-lending practices, common across the U.S., rated the presence of Blacks in a neighborhood as an elevated property risk, historians said, and blocked many Black home buyers from getting mortgages.

By 1958, the proportion of white home buyers had grown dramatically. Black residents made up 10% of Tulsa’s population but only 3% of buyers of new housing in the city, according to a Tulsa Urban League report issued that year.

Even with new homes being built, very few Black buyers could qualify for financing, according to the report, provided by the University of Tulsa’s Department of Special Collections. The passage of civil-rights legislation in the 1960s began to open up opportunities for some residents to move out of Greenwood amid efforts to desegregate communities, a move that cut into business owners’ clientele...

Still more.

 

Adrian's Kickback in Huntington Beach! (VIDEO)

Riots in Huntington Beach are de rigueur, but this one seems extra special, heh. 

Partiers came from out of town, far and wide. Not sure if young folks flew in from out of state, but earlier reports of arrest records said most of those detained were not locals. And it turns out Adrien Lopez, the TikToker who got this party started, was a no show, heh.

At LAT, "A viral TikTok video brought chaos to Huntington Beach. Officials fear it’s just the beginning":

Huntington Beach has dealt with wild parties, drunken melees and political unrest.

But nothing prepared officials for “Adrian’s kickback,” which started as a simple birthday party for an Inland Empire teenager and turned into a viral TikTok event that drew thousands to the beach last week — though not Adrian Lopez, who in the days leading up to the party was increasingly nervous about all the attention.

When it was over, more than 175 people were arrested, city officials and merchants were adding up the damage, and everyone was wondering who should be blamed and who should be billed.

The way Adrian’s birthday invitation went viral has alarmed city leaders, who say they are not sure how to deal with it. City Councilman Dan Kalmick is angry that police resources and taxpayer dollars were spent on what he called a prank. He said they have no easy answers for how to cope with the next viral video unleashed on popular platforms like TikTok that can get millions of views within days.

“It goes to the fact that government isn’t structured to deal with an amorphous entity of folks,” Kalmick said. “This wasn’t like a concert where we could talk to a promoter and issue a permit. When you have folks who don’t have a command or control structure, how does a city or police department manage that? I’m just not sure.”

“Adrian’s kickback” speaks to the power of the TikTok social media algorithm, which sent a post about the teen’s birthday far and wide. But it’s also in many ways a sign of the pent-up energy of young people desperate for fun after more than a year of pandemic lockdown.

“People my age haven’t gone out in a year,” said Edgar Peralta, an 18-year-old Downey resident who went to last Saturday’s party but said he does not condone the debauchery that ensued. “It was to get the ball rolling. This is the start of summer.”

The origin story of what became three days of unrest in downtown Huntington Beach is a familiar one.

For his 17th birthday, Adrian wanted to kick back with friends from school at the fire pits in Huntington Beach. Beach party celebrations are a tradition for many Southern California teens. But what happened last weekend was anything but ordinary.

The high schooler’s invitation was picked up by TikTok’s “For You” algorithm and viewed by people across the country. The announcement was curious: Who was this mystery teen, and would anyone actually go to his party? Some TikTok users, including internet celebrities, began posting about it, and videos with the hashtag #adrianskickback have since drawn more than 326 million views.

On Saturday night, roughly 2,500 teenagers and young adults — some who say they drove for hours or flew in from other states — converged on the Huntington Beach Pier and downtown area in a gathering that devolved into mayhem.

Partygoers blasted fireworks into a mob in the middle of Pacific Coast Highway, jumped on police cars, scaled palm trees and flag poles and leapt from the pier into throngs of people below to crowd-surf. A window at CVS was smashed, businesses were tagged with graffiti, and the roof of Lifeguard Tower 13 collapsed after it was scaled.

“It was a festival atmosphere, but there was nothing to cause the end of it and that was the problem,” said Neil Broom, 53, who watched the revelry unfold as he checked in on restaurant staff at Duke’s Huntington Beach. “Literally they were playing in traffic on PCH.”

Authorities spotted the party announcement when it began circulating last week and immediately began staffing up in preparation for what was being billed as a weekend-long event. In all, more than 150 officers from nearly every police agency in Orange County were called out to the beach Saturday night to help get the crowd under control.

Clashes with police broke out Saturday, and officers fired rubber bullets and pepper projectiles as they tried to disperse the crowd. Eventually, authorities issued an overnight curfew to clear the streets. Partygoers also descended on Surf City on Friday and Sunday, but Saturday brought the largest group. The majority of those taken into custody over the weekend were not from Orange County, police said.

The pier and downtown district have seen more than their share of problems over the years.

In 2013, violence broke out downtown after the US Open of Surfing. People smashed shop windows, pelted police with debris and tipped portable toilets into the roadway. The next year, organizers stopped hosting live music at the contest and limited alcohol sales in an effort to tamp down on potential illegal activity.

But Adrian’s kickback was different.

Interim Police Chief Julian Harvey said he’s planned meetings with representatives from social media platforms, including TikTok, to identify ways for law enforcement to collaborate with the sites in an effort to “minimize the potential for incidents such as this to happen again in the future.”

A representative for TikTok did not provide a comment about “Adrian’s kickback” or any communication with city officials.

Many in Huntington Beach have questioned why so many young people would travel to attend a party for someone they don’t know. One reason is to simply get out of the house post-pandemic, but the human desire to be part of something big plays a role as well, said Karen North, a professor of social media at USC...

Sill more.

Frank Dikötter, The Cultural Revolution

At Amazon, Frank Dikötter, The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962―1976. 

'Danny's Song'

 Loggins and Messina, came on satellite radio as I was out this morning running around.

Dark Clouds Over the 'New America'

 From Caroline Glick, "Dark Clouds: Google, Amazon, Israel and the New America":

America is changing before our eyes. But the Finance Ministry apparently hasn’t paid it any mind.

Last week, the head of procurement at the Finance Ministry’s General Accountant’s Office formally announced that Amazon (AWS) and Google won the government tender to provide cloud services to the government as Israel moves forward with the first phase of the Nimbus Project. Tender bids submitted by Microsoft and Oracle were rejected.

The Nimbus Project is a massive, multiyear project that will replace the data management infrastructure of government ministries and the IDF. To date, government ministries have used decentralized servers and dozens of independently operating websites to house and manage their data. The Nimbus Project will move all government computing data and applications to commercial clouds provided by technology giants.

When the government computer systems migrate to Google and Amazon’s data clouds, these firms will manage all of official Israel’s non-classified data and computerized applications. This will include everything from government and military payrolls to welfare payments, to government pensions. It will include the medical files of all Israelis. It will include their personal and corporate tax returns.

It’s possible that from the technical and financial perspectives, the General Accountant’s tender committee’s decision to award the cloud contracts to Google and Amazon was reasonable. The two corporations are the industry leaders in cloud technologies. But even on the technical and financial levels, there are differing opinions about the committee’s decision.

Oracle’s bid was allegedly lower than those submitted by Google and Amazon. Moreover, the tender requires that the clouds be physically located inside of Israel. Oracle and Microsoft have both built cloud centers in Israel. Oracle’s is set to open in August and Microsoft’s is scheduled to open in January 2022. Google and Amazon for their part have yet to begin building their data centers, so for the next two years, and more likely the next 3-4 years, contrary to the stipulations of the tender, Israel’s government and IDF data will be housed in Europe.

Then there is the issue of redundancy. The trend today among governments and large corporations is to spread their data out among several cloud providers. Israel could have chosen to award the contract to all four companies and kept costs lower by forcing them to compete over pricing every year. Redundancy in cloud servers also lowers the risks of sabotage and technical failures that can lead to loss of data or failure of computing systems.

At any rate, assuming the tender committee followed the best practices from both financial and technical perspectives in granting the cloud contract to Google and Amazon exclusively, the decision is disconcerting all the same. The problem is not financial or technological. The problem with Google and Amazon is cultural. The organizational culture of both corporations raises significant questions about the wisdom of granting them exclusive control over Israel’s government data for the next seven years.

During this month’s Operation Guardian of the Wall, some 250 Google employees who identified as anti-Zionist Jews wrote a letter to Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai. They began by asking that Google reject the determination that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism and that the company fund Palestinian organizations.

The “Jewish Diaspora in Tech” called for “Google leadership to make a company-wide statement recognizing violence in Palestine and Israel, which must include direct recognition of the harm done to Palestinians by Israeli military and gang violence.”

Then they turned to the Nimbus contract.

“We request a review of all…business contracts and corporate donations and the termination of contracts with institutions that support Israeli violations of Palestinian rights, such as the Israeli Defense Forces.”

Shortly after the Google employees published their letter, some five hundred Amazon employees entered the anti-Israel fray. They signed a letter that was almost identical to the Google employees’ letter. They called for Amazon to reject the definition of anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism. They insisted that Israel is a racist colonial project and that the land of Israel belongs to the Palestinians. They called for Amazon to financially support Palestinian organizations. And they asked that the firm, “commit to review and sever business contracts and corporate donations with companies, organizations, and/or governments that are active or complicit in human rights violations, such as the Israeli Defense Forces.”

Another employee group called “Amazon Employees for Climate Justice” tweeted a long chain of posts denouncing the company’s participation in the Nimbus Project. Among other things, they wrote, “We stand in solidarity with Palestinians who went on a historic general strike to protest Israel’s deadly assault on Gaza. Amazon and Google recently signed a $1B deal supporting Israel’s military. Amazon is complicit in state killings and human rights abuses.

“Amazon’s workers didn’t sign up to work on projects that support militaries and policing forces. We didn’t sign up to be complicit in state killings and human rights abuses in the U.S., Israel, and around the world,” they concluded.

The workers’ protests in both companies are deadly serious. In 2018, Google employees discovered that the company was working with the Pentagon to develop an artificial intelligence system to improve the accuracy of U.S. military drones. Some 4,000 Google employees, including dozens of senior engineers signed a petition to Pichai demanding that Google end its involvement in the project. As they put it, “We believe that Google should not be in the business of war.”

Google management caved to the pressure and cancelled the contract with the Defense Department.

In January, Amazon cancelled its cloud service contract with the social media platform Parler, which was identified with Republicans. Amazon justified move by claiming that Parler contained “violent content.” The fact that violent content is also contained on other social media platforms – including Amazon itself – was neither here nor there.

Notable as well is the fact that Amazon’s CEO and founder Jeff Bezos is a close friend of musician Brian Eno. Like Roger Waters, Eno is a prominent proponent of the anti-Semitic BDS campaign that seeks to boycott Israel and demonize and silence its Jewish supporters worldwide.

The senior officials at the Finance Ministry, the national Cyber Authority and the Ministry of Defense who granted Google and Amazon the government and IDF cloud contracts may simply not understand the dire implications for Israel’s national security posed by the antagonistic positions of some Google and Amazon employees.

In a press conference this week, the heads of the Finance Ministry actually presented these statements as testaments to the credibility of the contracts. The fact that the leaders of Google and Amazon signed the deal with Israel despite the hatred their employees express towards the Jewish state is proof of the companies’ commitment to the project, they insisted.

The Finance Ministry added that there is no cause for concern because the contracts require that Google and Amazon set up subsidiary firms in Israel to actually manage the clouds. As Israeli registered companies, the subsidiaries will be bound to the requirements of Israeli law. And as such, they will have no option of sabotaging the work or otherwise breaching the contract no matter how anti-Israel the Google and Amazon employees outside of Israel may be.

The problem with this argument is that the subsidiaries in Israel will be wholly owned by their mother corporations. All of their equipment will be owned by Google and Amazon in the U.S. If the mother corporations decide to pull the plug on the Nimbus contract, the local subsidiaries will be powerless to maintain them.

The same Google management that blew off the artificial intelligence project with the Pentagon three years ago to satisfy their workers should be expected to repeat their actions in the future. If their employees unite to demand that Google abrogate the Nimbus contract, management can be expected to absorb a few hundred million dollars in losses to keep their workers happy.

The polarization of opinion on Israel that we are witnessing in American politics between Republicans who support Israel and Democrats who oppose Israel, is an expression of a much larger division within American society. The heartbreaking but undeniable fact is that today you can’t talk about “America” as a single political entity.

Today there are two Americas, and they cannot abide by one another. One America – traditional America – loves Israel and America. The other America – the New America – hates Israel and doesn’t think much of America, either.

Traditional America believes that the U.S. brought the promise of liberty to the world and that even though it is far from perfect, the United States is the greatest country in human history. In the eyes of the citizens of Traditional America, Israel is a kindred nation and the U.S.’s best friend and most valued ally in the Middle East.

New America, in contrast, believes that America was born in the sin of slavery. New Americans insist America will remain evil and an object of scorn at home and abroad so long it refuses to exchange its values of liberty, capitalism, equal opportunity and patriotism with the values of racialism and equity, socialism, equality of outcomes, and globalization. For New Americans, just as the U.S. was born in the sin of white supremacy so Israel was born in the sin of Zionism. In New America, Israel will have no right to exist so long as it clings to its Jewish national identity, refusing to become a “state of all its citizens.”

New America’s power isn’t limited to its control over the White House and Congress. It also controls much of corporate America. Under the slogan, “Stakeholder Capitalism,” corporate conglomerates whose leaders are New Americans use their economic power to advance the political and cultural agendas of New America. We saw stakeholder capitalism at work in March following the Georgia statehouse’s passage of a law requiring voters to present identification at polling places. Major League Baseball, Coca Cola, Delta and American Airlines among others announced that they would boycott the state, denying jobs to thousands of Georgians in retaliation.

Silicon Valley is the Ground Zero of Stakeholder Capitalism. Its denizens are the loudest and most powerful proponents of using technological and economic power to advance the political and cultural agendas of New America.

Microsoft and Oracle are appealing the Nimbus tender award. They are basing their appeals on what they describe as technical and other flaws in the tender process. Israel should view their appeals as an opportunity to reverse course.

In light of New America’s hostility towards Israel generally, and given the proven power of Google and Amazon employees and their expressed antagonism towards Israel, the Finance Ministry should reconsider the tender award. Technical considerations aside, the decision to grant Google and Amazon exclusive control over the State of Israel’s computer data did not give sufficient weight to all the relevant variables.

 

Eve Dov Ber

You gotta read Eve Barlow. What a writer!

At the Table, "The Social Media Pogrom."

My latest for @tabletmag

The Social Media Pogromhttps://t.co/Qp8Vj1NHu6

— Eve Barlow (@Eve_Barlow) May 26, 2021

I don’t know who crafted the first tweet that simply said “Eve Fartlow,” but whoever it was—bot or human—started a fire. Over the past two weeks, Twitter has been littered with the words “Eve Fartlow.” Every time I tweet, this title is the response I attract, and it is pelted at me irrespective of what I write. Hundreds of trolls, some with blue ticks and some without, just start responding to me “Eve Fartlow” (some people have recently switched it to “Eve Shartlow” but “Eve Fartlow” seems to be the one that sticks). If we donated a JNF tree to Israel for every time someone tweeted “Eve Fartlow,” there’d be no Negev left.

Tensions in the Middle East erupted this past month, so you may be thinking, “Why’s this dumb Zionist liar playing the victim? She should ‘cope’ (still not sure what this means). She’s complaining to me from her Los Angeles apartment about people spelling her name in a dumb way online. She’s not wading through rubble. She’s not running from rocket fire. She’s not surrounded by senseless violence. Let’s ratio her!”

You’re right. I have not been living in a bomb shelter. I have not had my house cave in. So I have asked myself the same thing, because neither have all the people (or bots?) tweeting my name incorrectly, doing everything they can to discredit the messaging I’m trying to relay to my followers to challenge the way this conflict has been narrated by mainstream media and social media influencers. I challenge it because the truth matters. The truth protects lives.

Due to the juvenile nature of this “Eve Fartlow” attack, which sounds like it was invented by a 3-year-old high on Pop-Tarts, I wondered if the bombardment of “Eve Fartlow” tweets was engineered to drive me insane. Perhaps it was a form of digital waterboarding aimed at forcing me to surrender, delete all my accounts, log out of all my devices, and commit digital suicide. “Eve Fartlow” is not my name, regardless of how many thousands of times it’s echoed back at me by trolls online. But unfortunately for the troll army, Eve Barlow isn’t really my name either. Barlow has been my family’s name for three generations, but before that our name was Berelovitch. We changed it when my family fled czarist Russia during the Eastern European pogroms in the late 19th century. And before Barlow was Berelovitch it was Dov Ber. That name is my connection to the Levant. That name is my indigenous link to Israel. You want to talk about ethnic cleansing? Ask your Jewish friends the stories of their surnames.

“Eve Fartlow” is an intimidation tactic; a playground jibe meant to drown out my voice online. My words must be silenced as quickly as possible by the hammer-and-sickle emoji comrades who love humanity so much, they want anyone who threatens their concept of utopia to kill themselves. It’s all peace, love, and openness until someone wants to have a conversation.

Two weeks ago, as Westerners began educating themselves about Sheikh Jarrah and the Iron Dome through stick figures with biased speech bubbles on the Diet Prada and Refinery29 Instagram feeds, something else started happening on social media. I coined it the world’s first social media pogrom. The activity that Jews—Zionist Jews in particular—experienced all over the web was bizarre at best and invalidating, abusive, and dehumanizing at worst. Zionist Jews weren’t just being unfollowed for advocating for themselves and their brothers and sisters in Israel and Palestine, we were also losing access to direct message and comment abilities, having posts removed for violating community guidelines (while blatant antisemitism online almost never receives the same treatment), and having our accounts threatened with temporary suspension or closure.

The cherry on top, of course, was that we were simultaneously fighting off a barrage of thousands upon thousands of troll comments and hateful direct messages, which frequently included homophobic, misogynistic, and extremely violent language. Some people even generously took the time to record voice messages. I received a few of those, including one from a woman with a British accent calling for my family to burn in hell. She sang it. Or she tried to.

The seeds of this pogrom have been sown for a while. Online, there are different degrees of erasure and exclusion. First comes the unfollow, which hurts, especially from those we consider friends, those we love and cherish, whose memories are still fresh. Sometimes an unfollow is the result of pressure from other online users who dox people they disagree with. Sometimes an unfollow is a decision taken with complete autonomy, someone deciding to simply delete a person from their timeline rather than ask for clarification or, God forbid, pursue a fair-minded discussion.

If you’re a Zionist, you are not deemed worthy of dialogue. Most people who think this couldn’t give you a working definition of Zionism. They just know which labels are accepted by the intersectional world, and which labels are not. Anti-Zionism good. Zionism bad. Except Zionism is a globally recognized concept, whereas anti-Zionism doesn’t seem to have an agreed-upon definition. It exists only as a knee-jerk rejection of a belief in the State of Israel and anyone’s justification of its existence, regardless of how reasoned, empathetic, or fair-minded that justification might be.

I’m a music journalist, and I understand that artists can be sensitive, conflict-avoidant, and prone to anxiety triggers. But I noticed that whenever I tweeted about the Jewish right to self-determine in Israel, I’d lose followers, and sometimes it would be because other Jews who hate Zionists and claim that we’re the bane of their existence because we’re preventing them from assimilating and being like everyone else would pile on the blue checks and tell them they can’t possibly follow me. I’m a monster. Clearly I keep vials of Palestinian baby blood in my freezer. So people unfollowed me. People I know. People I’ve worked with. People with whom I got along very well. Editors unfollowed me in droves, as did the publications I worked for, as did PRs, as did college graduates whom I’ve personally mentored because I believe in paying it forward.

I assume this came from a concern for optics. The mainstream media is skewed entirely against Israel and is disgusted by anyone who asks for sober criticism instead of a consequence-free festival of Israel hatred. I understand how their bias persists. The oldest hatred in the world was resurrected by a new ideology and the coolest cast of woke anti-Zionist pilgrims. Poor Gal Gadot is not one such pilgrim, and instead became an example of what reaction you get if you veer from the intersectional script. Gadot had the audacity to be an Israeli and a former IDF soldier who publicly advocated for peace between her homeland and her neighbors. And she was annihilated online for it. How dare she try to talk about her own “lived experience?” How dare she be an Israeli offering an olive branch?

Meanwhile, when you have Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, Dua Lipa, the Hadids, AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Halsey, Snoop Dogg, Manchester United, and the BLM movement, among many other influencers, including Jews like Sarah Silverman and Natalie Portman, throwing their full support behind a reductive, inflammatory, and dangerous case against Israel, it’s very appealing to join in. Considering that Halsey alone has more followers than there are Jews alive, the combined strength of their platforms is an excellent way to drown out the online voice of Zionists with the chutzpah to defend themselves and survive in this conflict, both in Israel and in the diaspora.

The Tower of Babel that is Twitter is a place where disparate conversations cannot coexist, where oppositions cannot find common ground, and where dissenters must be monitored and policed by potentially millions of watchful users. When I tweeted a list of influencers sharing such disinformation, Linda Sarsour—notable Palestinian American activist, former chair of the Women’s March, and prolific antisemite who has quote-tweeted me a few times this year to encourage her followers to attack—did so again, this time adding a thank you note for keeping a list of “humanitarians on the right side of history.”

When I swiftly blocked her for my own protection, she posted a picture of her block by me and tweeted that she was “honored.” Her intentions here are obvious: She was sending a bat signal out to go beat this Jew; permission for an online lynching. And if such joyous pile-ons can happen over keyboards, it’s not hard to imagine it happening offscreen.

Lo and behold, it turns out that vehement online anti-Zionism inspires people to engage in antisemitic violence offline, endangering Jews as a result. In the streets of major cities around the world, Jews have been targeted with fireworks, with fists, and with human spit. Who knew this could happen? Well, we did, and we tried to make noise about it.

Explosives were thrown into a crowd of Jews in New York’s Diamond District. Jews were attacked outside a bagel store in midtown Manhattan. Jews in a New York restaurant had bottles thrown at them. A Jewish man was hospitalized after he was beaten on the street in New York. Jews were brutally assaulted in Toronto. An Orthodox man fled from a car trying to mow him down in an LA parking lot. Down the street, Jews were beaten up outside a sushi restaurant by a mob who asked if they were Jews. In London, cars drove through Jewish neighborhoods as their drivers screamed “Fuck the Jews! Rape their daughters!” Jewish synagogues in Skokie, Tucson, and Salt Lake City were vandalized. Delis have been destroyed. A demonstration in Vienna featuring people shouting “Shove your Holocaust up your ass” was met with resounding applause. In the U.K., there have been 116 reported incidents of antisemitism in 10 days—a 600% increase.

But online, the more I tweeted during the 11 days of violence in the Middle East, the louder the dissent grew, and the crazier the opposition. The counterargument essentially amounted to “This Jew is LYING.” Which makes sense, given how effective the mainstream media is at presenting only one side of a story, and given the patterns of history in which the Jews have always been framed as arbiters of lies! Even upon posting a note about an uplifting conversation I had in an Uber with an Armenian driver who advocated for the truth above all else and respect for fellow humans regardless of opinion, the note was dragged across the web as a lie. Why would I lie about an interaction with a stranger? Meanwhile, while I was being dragged as a fraudster, one tweeter used an app called TweetGen to fabricate a fake tweet by me. Apparently, in 2015, I quoted lyrics of a rap song I’ve never heard before, which included the “N-word.” This tweet didn’t sound like me, wasn’t written by me, and never existed in the first place. It was created as further “proof” that I’m a “racist.”

Still more.