A Sense of Doubt blog post #2544 - FIGHT THE HATE: Teacher Tip Snitch Line: CENSORSHIP WEEK
Hello and welcome to day FIVE of Censorship Week on my blog because large numbers of Americans have forgotten what year it is and are behaving like it's 1722 and not 2022. Witch trials are next. Burning Satanic teachers at the stake will follow.
Basically, it comes down to these deeply insecure and fragile white power disapproving of any "truth" in history education.
And so, I am very happy to report that Saturday Night Live spoofed the tip line, and that spoof appears at about the 2:00 mark of the video below. But watch it all. Weekend Update is always funny.
They’re at it again @genzforchange fighting back against racist Youngkin CRT’s policy.
— People for Bernie (@People4Bernie) January 26, 2022
Check out the link: https://t.co/I6gNugRNJp pic.twitter.com/5jEWo09p7T
Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin made a tip line to report "critical race theory" in schools. it would be a shame if people flooded the site with fake reports using this website... https://t.co/bIfJE9ndow
— gmrstudios (@gmrstudios) February 5, 2022
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin speaks during a news conference about an executive order establishing K through 12 lab schools at the Capitol Thursday Jan. 27, 2022, in Richmond, Va.Steve Helber/AP
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/02/glenn-youngkin-virginia-tip-line-crt-teachers/
Glenn Youngkin Set Up a Tip Line to Snitch on Teachers. It’s Only Gotten Weirder Since.
A Saturday Night Live send-up, TikTok spammers, and rejected records requests.
It’s only been a week since Gov. Glenn Youngkin launched a tip line that allows parents to report any teachers or school administrators teaching “divisive” subjects, like critical race theory, in Virginia schools. Within days, the tip line was spoofed on Saturday Night Live and flooded with fake tips. And now the governor’s office is refusing to make the complaints public.
Its reasoning? All the emails sent to this tip line are “working papers and correspondences” for Youngkin’s “personal or deliberative” use.
On January 26, Margaret Thornton, a post-doctoral scholar at Princeton whose research focuses on segregation in schools, filed a public records request to see the emails. Five business days later, her request was denied. The governor’s office cited Section 2.2-3705.7, which basically means that the records are protected under executive privilege.
As a native Virginian, Thornton wanted to see what parents were saying and it how it could affect Virginia’s teachers and students. “I was a high school teacher in Virginia for many years. I graduated here in Virginia,” Thornton told me. “I care so much about education in our commonwealth. And I’m concerned that this tip line is going to have a chilling affect on teachers and teaching. I’m an educational researcher, so of course I support teacher accountability, but I don’t think an anonymous tip line is the way to go about it.”
And she wasn’t the only one whose request was denied: Several local publications, like the Daily Progress and the Virginian Pilot, received either the same response or no response at all. (I filed a request under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act on February 1 and have not heard anything back.) Under Virginia law, the governor’s office has up to five business days to respond to such requests.
Meanwhile, Virginia Democrats have jumped all over Youngkin for the tip line and the denied records requests. “This is now how FOIA works,” tweeted Democratic state Sen. L. Louise Lucas. “If the Governor wants to set up a tip line to report teachers who mention Black History, he shouldn’t be hiding what he ‘finds’.”
And it doesn’t appear that the controversy will go away anytime soon: On Thursday, seven Virginia organizations representing educators released a statement calling for Youngkin to scrap the tip line entirely.
If parents are genuinely curious about what’s being taught in their child’s classrooms, Princeton’s Thornton recommends they talk to their children’s teachers directly through a phone call or email, not through the hotline. “Reaching out and having that dialogue can do wonders. When I was a classroom teacher, I loved to hear from parents,” she said. “Even if they were disagreeing with something that went on the classroom, just knowing that they are invested in their students’ education was really helpful.”
The Virginia Department Of Education Is Getting Flooded With Memes After Creating A Tip Line To Report Schools Teaching About Racism
“I have reason to believe Chatham Hall in Chatham is teaching race. My kids' homework said ‘the yassification of history’.”
An email tip line set up by the Virginia governor to track which schools are teaching students about systemic racism has instead been inundated with memes quoting everything from Bee Movie to the lyrics of Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B’s “WAP.”
On Monday, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced an email tip line that encouraged parents to report if “divisive practices” such as critical race theory were being taught in schools. Critical race theory, an academic term describing the analysis of how racial power structures have been upheld in institutional forms of society such as the legal system, has become a flashpoint for Republicans in the last year.
The newly elected governor banned teaching it in schools in his first executive order after assuming office on Jan. 15 and asked parents to instead contact the government via the tip line if they “feel their fundamental rights are being violated, that their children are not being respected, where there are inherently divisive practices in our schools.”
That infuriated Qasim Rashid, 39, a human rights lawyer and Virginia parent. “It was very telling that a tip line was set up to report teachers who are teaching children about racism, and not a tip line for children who are suffering from racism — especially when neo-Nazis are marching through the streets,” he told BuzzFeed News.
So he tweeted about it, sarcastically. The thread, which he tells BuzzFeed News now has over 3 million impressions, spawned a huge call to action and received overwhelming support from both parents and educators in raising awareness of the issue.
“I’ve always been of the opinion that we need to fight bad ideas with better ideas,” Rashid said. “My call to action was simply that. Let’s show how ridiculous this tip line is. What this governor does not understand is that our education system was built with bipartisan support.”
When student and hacktivist Sofia Ongele, 21, saw Rashid’s tweet about the tip line, she immediately jumped to action, using her coding skills to create auto-generated email formats so people could flood the inbox.
“As a Black person, I know disinformation breeds hate and violence,” Ongele said. Her TikTok is full of information, news, and tools she has made to encourage mobilization online against inequity.
“This tip line is trying to vilify educators for literally doing their job,” Ongele said. “This isn’t critical race theory being taught in schools, it’s American history. What Youngkin is doing is using this term as a bogeyman to sow fear and divide people, particularly among ignorant and fearful members of the hegemonic class. So I don’t want this tip line to exist.”
“If I'm not mistaken Narrows High School in Narrows is teaching critical race theory. My kids’ homework said ‘Switch my wig, make him feel like he cheating’.”
“If I'm not mistaken Unity Reed High School in Manassas is teaching racism. My kids said ‘Take your medication, Roman’.”
The link to Ongele’s site has been shared across Twitter, and 27,000 unique users visited the site within the first nine hours of going public. The TikTok she made to promote it has reached over 300,000 views.
Ongele has done coding work to dismantle tools similar to the tip line, including a similar auto-generator for contacting officials in support of the Jan. 6 insurrection last year, and a bot to flood local council meetings after a California school shooting. She’s personally overjoyed to see the project has gone viral since it’s an issue that resonates with other young people.
“If I, at 5 years old, am old enough to experience racism, then someone at 10 years old is old enough to learn about it,” Ongele said. “Most of Gen Z agrees with this sentiment, I think, and that’s why it’s gone viral. Instances like this Virginia tip line are not a stand-alone incident.”
Ongele already has her eyes on another state. “There is a senator in Mississippi who has a phone number tip line to report ‘critical race theory’ in schools too, and I’m posting something that I hope will make that phone number unusable,” she said.
Rashid views the young people fighting this tip line with great admiration. “The kids are alright,” he said with a laugh. “That’s all I can say. I mean it’s phenomenal — when you look at some of the nation’s greatest historical icons, they were in their teens when they first got involved, and that’s what these kids are doing. They’re the next Rosa Parks, Dr. King, Malcolm X. And they’re utilizing the tools of today in a really effective manner to demand accountability and push back against hate.”
TikTokers say thousands of them are spamming the tip line set up by Virginia's GOP governor to report teachers over critical race theory
- Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin set up a tip line for parents to report their kids' teachers.
- Gen Z activists are pushing back, urging people on TikTok to spam the tip line.
- One made a website that generated emails with song lyrics. She said thousands had visited the site.
Thousands of people are spamming the tip line set up by Virginia's new Republican governor to report public-school teachers over critical race theory, TikTok activists told Insider.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who assumed office earlier this month, announced an email address that parents could message to report teachers who they believed were "behaving objectionably."
The move has prompted widespread criticism, including from the singer John Legend. James Fedderman, the president of the Virginia Education Association teachers union, said he believed the tip line was "designed to intimidate educators simply trying to do their jobs."
Now, Gen Z is also mobilizing.
Sofia Ongele, a 21-year-old from Santa Clarita, California, said she set up a website that automatically generated emails to send to the tip line.
Each email includes the name of a Virginia public school and the lyrics of a pop song. You can see three examples — which use the lyrics from "Hey Ya" by Outkast, "Material Girl" by Saucy Santana, and "Bonfire" by Childish Gambino — here:
Ongele said her website, which launched on Wednesday, had so far attracted about 1,500 people every 30 minutes, which meant some 24,000 people had visited it as of Thursday morning. It's unclear how many emails each person sends.
"I'm indescribably angry with right-wing pundits trying to stoke nonexistent division while the US is actively being labeled a backsliding democracy," she said.
"Seeing that Glenn Youngkin was trying to vilify educators, I thought I would do everyone a favor and take that tip line down," Ongele added.
Youngkin's office did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
'Gen Z is not for the weak of heart'
Olivia Julianna, a 19-year-old from Houston, has also been urging people to flood the Virginia tip line. She's posted several TikToks over the past week, one of which has been viewed more than 37,000 times.
She told Insider, "Gen Z digital organizers consistently outperform these older politicians in using social media as a tool, and I would highly recommend they stop trying to beat us at our own game because it has consistently become a source of embarrassment for them."
Julianna is no stranger to TikTok activism: Last September, she published similar posts calling on people to flood a tip line set up by Texas Right to Life to report abortions after the state passed a law banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. That website was taken down shortly after and hasn't gone back up.
Both Julianna and Ongele are part of Gen-Z for Change, a group of more than 500 TikTokers that works to educate young people on social and political issues.
"Gen Z is not for the weak of heart," Julianna said. "Glenn Youngkin is a newly elected governor, and if he wants to start his time in office by challenging young activists in our spaces, like the internet, and playing by our rules, then game on."
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2202.04 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2408 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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