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Friend, Our schools are suffering an explosion of hate and violence. Over the past five years, hate crimes in schools and colleges have nearly doubled, far outpacing the overall increase in hate crimes. One in ten reported hate crimes now take place in a school, the most common location outside of residences and public streets. Two-thirds of them occur in primary and secondary schools, with the rest on college campuses. Black Americans have been the most frequent targets, followed by members of the LGBTQ+ community and Jewish Americans. What is the far right’s answer to this epidemic of hate-fueled violence in our schools? Vicious attacks on teachers who talk honestly about America’s troubled racial history. Cruel state laws that marginalize gay and trans kids. Hysterical “anti-woke” efforts to demonize diversity, equity and inclusion. It all sends a clear message to impressionable young minds: if someone’s different from you — the Black kid in a mostly white school maybe, or the lone Jewish student in a 10th-grade classroom, or the seventh-grader beginning to wonder about her sexuality — it’s OK to mock and harass them, to intimidate and bully them. And to attack them. The SPLC is fighting to protect educators and students from these horrific attacks. In Georgia, we’re representing a beloved elementary school teacher, Katie Rinderle, who is the first teacher to be fired under county policies adopted in the wake of Georgia’s trio of classroom censorship laws passed in 2022. All because Rinderle read My Shadow is Purple, a children’s book about acceptance as told through the eyes of a child whose gender expression and identity challenges gender norms, to her fifth grade students at their request. We can’t let this stand. School should be a safe place for all students, no matter what their skin color is, where they’re from, what language they speak, which God they pray to, what their gender is or who they love. Please make a special gift in observance of Hate Crimes Awareness Month to help us continue fighting for honest, inclusive education and racial justice for all.
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