They're Coming for Your Kids

It's more boring than you might guess, but still a very bad idea.

I want to talk about Portland’s children and their teachers. Not all of them, but a large enough group to be concerned about.

I’ll start on an evening 10 months ago when a group of PPS students postured around the idea of attacking me for being visibly Jewish. I’ll include the reddit post here, for easier reading:

It's 6:45pm. Do you know where YOUR antisemitic children are?

I'm so sick of this.

I just walked past a group of teens outside the Nob Hill Trader Joe's and when they saw the Magen David on my hat one of them threw his book bag down and yelled "Aw hell nah! I'm bout to beat this motherfucker's ASS!"

So I walked by, paused, and gave him plenty of time. He walked away, because he's a literal child and I was never in real danger.

But this shit is what PAT and "Oregon Educators for Palestine" have been stirring up. White kids in keffiyehs being openly antisemitic because their teachers and TikTok told them that a war happening on the other side of the world was the most important issue of their young lives. And we all know who the villains are...

The idea that this child felt comfortable bragging to his friends about how he was going to beat up a Jew turns my stomach.

This shit is going to get someone killed.

So, Portland Jews (and philosemites), I extend again my offer - get at me. Shoot me a message. Let's grab dinner, complain, and figure out what to do about the rising antisemitism in this city because I am not moving, and I'm done tolerating it.

Lots of folks reached out, the post did the rounds, and I got angry enough to start wearing a kippah most of the time. When you see me out being extremely, annoyingly Jewish - this incident was the trigger. Every space I enter creates a little bit more safety for Jews, even if it negatively affects my own in a small way.

My mother is not happy about this development. She did not raise me to get attacked by Communists or children pretending to be Communists.

What was going on ten months ago that got these kids so fired up? A group of their teachers were encouraging them to speak out about Palestine. The Portland Association of Teachers later published a “Teaching and Organizing for Palestine” handbook and a “Know Your Rights” training around avoiding disciplinary action for this overstep.

The Rot in Portland Public Schools

Watch this clip of testimony on 3/5/24 from Benson student Zahra Faruqui. I won’t sit here and surgically dismantle every thing she said because she is a child. It’s her place to be wrong about the world. She is entitled to being ignorant. I went through a long period of self righteous activism myself.

Worth noting that the post, on the PPS Students for Palestine account, was liked by local political figures and teachers, but also community-minded parents like “Amy Comrade” aka RedArmySue. Kinda on the nose, but at least we know she’s onboard with her kids’ education.

The students who LARPed at attacking me were wearing keffiyehs and were motivated by the same concerns young Zahra was commenting on. Chiefly, my alleged complicity in “genocide.” Also the complicity of their school, the City of Portland, the American Empire and its leader, Genocide-Joe Biden.

Where are they getting this stuff? TikTok and Hasan Piker, certainly, but also KBOO, their new city councilors, and their teachers.

Their card-carrying Democratic Socialists of America teachers.

@dsa_education_workers

Good Kids, Mad City

Let’s zoom in on PPS Student Activist Jorge Bautista. He’s 18, so I’m taking the gloves off, but I want to make one thing clear: he seems like a good kid. His heart seems in the right place but he needs to wait a few years for his head to catch up.

We all go through it. Especially those of us who get radicalized.

This kid is followed by seemingly everyone in Portland Politics from Councillor Loretta Smith to lesser known players like Andrés Oswill of Se Puede PDX, Basic Rights Oregon, Latino Network, Portland for All, etc.

On the surface, his politics are pretty mainstream progressive. He’s anti gun violence and climate change. He’s pro worker, human rights, and housing the homeless. He is young, energetic, charismatic, and involved in his community. Honestly, most of us would feel lucky to have a child or student like Jorge Bautista.

So what’s my fucking problem? Why would I pick on a kid with a bright future and a larger social media following than me, other than jealousy? Well…

Jorge is also followed by a lot of local Communists, including the accounts of the political parties & orgs. (DSA, PSL, YDSA, etc.) He follows a lot of them back. In fact, on November 9th, young Jorge was at a DSA rally celebrating their victory in the local election. He endorsed all of the DSA members for City Council. Even the wing nuts who lost by wide margins. He’s also involved with the PPS Students for Palestine group mentioned above.

Jorge seems to be mostly an environmental activist. Climate change is his big deal and he’s a member of Portland Youth Climate Strike. But go check out their website and watch the trailer. Note the giant DSA flag on display; the distinctly radical aesthetic.

That’s my problem. Youth Climate Strike, Green New Deal for PPS (an offshoot of Sunrise Movement PDX), and other environmental or “racial justice” groups in Portland are totally entangled with the DSA and Olivia Katbi’s “Pro-Palestinian” BDS movement.

We shall return to Olivia and her crusade at a later date.

Ground Game

We heard throughout the 2024 election that the DSA “ran a good ground game,” and they truly did. They knocked on thousands of doors. They spread the word far and wide. They outpaced us by almost every metric. Their volunteers skewed young and environmentally-inclined (there’s Sunrise Movement again…)

So where did they get an army of idealistic kids to door knock for them? Why do they seem to have so much access to school-aged children and young adults?

Well…

The Portland Association of Teachers is run by DSA Members.

Here’s a pic from the City Council Swearing-In Ceremony.

Angelita isn’t there because this was a DSA group pic. She’s just a friend. Mitch, Tiffany, and Sameer are easy to spot, but I want you to focus on the lady with two-tone hair in the very back.

That’s Alisha Chavez (fka Alisha Chavez-Downing), the Portland Association of Teachers Vice President.

She’s far from the only DSA member in PAT leadership, but she is the most senior. The DSA are your kids’ teachers, and they represent them in the union. They’re involved with student groups as well.

Over at the Franklin Students for a Democratic Society (who sound nice but have a red flag motif that seems familiar), their introductory message this last year was:

“Warm and Militant Greetings!
Join Franklin Students for a Democratic Society on Tuesday 9/24 during lunch in S-243 for the club's first meeting and get ready to set out our goals and intentions for the school year.
Radicalism not required, come as you are”

Radicalism not required, because we’ll get you the rest of the way? I fear the answer is yes. Also, “Militant greetings?!”

I wonder why the DSA and friends are so big on lowering the voting age…

So What?

Public school teachers don’t have free speech, but it’s not like the teachers or affiliated groups are encouraging kids to idolize terrorists…

OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE!

Oh yeah. Almost forgot about Women’s History Month. That’s Oregon Educators for Palestine, the “separate” group credited with cowriting all of PAT’s Palestine trainings.

Listen, I want these kids to come about their ignorant and potentially violent radical politics the honest way! The way the rest of us did. I want them to be recruited in college, with the promise that cool looking people will talk to you if you read some Marx or wear AK-47 earrings.

A lot of us got laid because we read really stupid books and hated our dads for a few years. It’s a Western tradition.

We know this when we send kids off to college. The crackpots will have access to them. Political groups will try to recruit them. They’ll get invited to join a polyamorous non-binary triad. They may even dabble with joining a cult. But that’s college, and they will technically be adults. It’s our job as a community to inoculate them against radicalization as best we can by teaching them critical thinking skills and giving them a moral framework.

You can point to Vietnam Era protestors all you want, but those were hippies, veterans, and college students. I can’t find records of middle school teachers wearing Ho Chi Minh t-shirts in the classroom and if any high schoolers were dumb enough to think Pol Pot was a “freedom fighter,” I doubt they learned it in class.

Public school teachers should not be giving extremist political parties access to our youth. That’s not their job. In fact, it’s the opposite. It’s a violation of PPS policy and the trust parents and community members place in those teachers.

If these teachers want to burn the city to the ground and liberate Turtle Island from the colonial cisheteropatriachy? Great! They shouldn’t involve other people’s children.

While we’re at it, they can stop using young activists like Jorge Bautista to launder their reputations. The DSA is up to a lot more than climate-change activism and it poisons entire movements when they’re allowed to keep grafting their weird anti-Western Marxist propaganda onto everything.

You can, in fact, lower your carbon footprint or even block oil terminals without “globalizing the intifada.” It is theoretically possible to end gun violence in school without the collapse of capitalism.

If you or a loved one is a Portland teacher who wants to chat with me about staging a coup within PAT, you know how to reach me. In the meantime, if one of your kids stabs me, I’m going to need you to apologize to my mother and sue the damn school.

The kids are probably going to be alright, but it will be in spite of the Teachers’ Union, not because of it.