Rhode
Island School District Is Training Teachers in Critical Race
Theory
As the Justice Department and FBI targets innocent parents concerned
about critical race theory, Judicial Watch just received a 53-page
training document from a whistleblower which details how public schools are
using teachers to push critical race theory in classrooms.
The training course for the Westerly School District in Rhode Island was
assembled by the left-leaning Highlander
Institute and cites quotes from Bettina
Love, from whom the Biden administration distanced itself publicly
after her statements equating “whiteness” to oppression.
The document reveals the following:
- The training course for teachers, entitled “Culturally Responsive &
Sustaining Pedagogy” is taught by Vera De Jesus and Michaela Comella,
partners at the Highlander Institute, which has an about
section on their website that describes itself as:
Highlander Institute partners with
communities to imagine and create more equitable, relevant, and effective
schools.
Highlander Institute is named after the Highlander Folk School, a social
justice leadership training school and cultural center located in New
Market, Tennessee known for its role during the Civil Rights
Movement.
- The training course claims that there are “unfortunate
truths” about the history of Rhode Island and the United
States.
- The training course notes that there is “systemic
inequity” that must be overcome in the school system.
- The training course asks teachers “How does systemic
racism manifest itself in the education experience for
students?”
- The training course links to
a video called “Systemic
Racism Explained” from Act.TV, a far-left YouTube channel.
- The course instructs teachers to ask themselves, “How do I
challenge systemic
inequity as an educator?”
- The course goals are to “foster and sustain cultural
pluralism, ultimately for the purpose of social transformation.”
Further, its stated goal is to, “disrupt the impact of educational
inequity and empower students to transform their own lives, their
communities, and society.”
- The course highlights “A
Framework for Culturally Responsive & Sustaining Pegagogy” which
includes:
- “Awareness” that “we all operate within an inequitable
system
- “Cognitive Development” where teachers “leverage students’
identities and interests …” and “scaffold and develop students’
thinking skills”
- “Critical Consciousness” where the goal is that students are
motivated to “critical action so they can transform their lives,
communities, and society.”
- The course teaches that teachers should focus on collectivism over
individualism.
- In order to promote collectivism, it states that teachers may have to
“gather
information about students’ identities …” in order to have
them reflect. These activities link to a journaling
activity where students are prompted to write about the
demographics of their neighborhood.
What this document shows is that yet another school district, under
the rubric of critical race theory, wants to use teachers to abuse their
positions to turn children into Marxist agitators. Rather than threatening
parents, the Justice Department should be investigating this rampant racism
being pushed by lefitst extremists in schools across America.
Judicial Watch Sues for Details on Biden Administration Shut Down
of China-COVID Investigation
The Biden State Department shut down a national security investigation into
China’s role in the COVID pandemic, and the American people deserve to
know why.
So we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S.
Department of State for records related to an investigation into the
origins of COVID by the Bureau of Arms Control and Verification ( Judicial
Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No.
1:21-cv-02147)).
We sued after the State Department failed to respond to a simple May 28,
2021, FOIA request for:
- All records regarding the investigation into the origins of the
SARS-CoV-2 virus and/or COVID-19 by the Bureau of Arms Control and
Verification. This request includes, but is not limited to, the
following:
- All reports created pursuant to the investigation.
- All related to the actual or proposed termination of the
investigation.
- All related records of communication between any official, employee,
or representative of the Department of State. This includes communications
with any official, employee, or representative of the World Health
Organization, the government of China, and any branch, agency, department,
or office of the Federal government.
We took action after reports surfaced that the Biden administration shut
down an investigation by the State Department’s Bureau of Arms
Control and Verification ordered by the Trump administration in Fall 2020
to “investigate the origins of COVID-19 and whether the virus stemmed
from a leak out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.” On January
15, then-Secretary of State Michael Pompeo issued a statement saying:
The COVID-19 pandemic was avoidable. Any responsible country would have
invited world health investigators to Wuhan within days of an outbreak.
China instead refused offers of help – including from the United States
– and punished brave Chinese doctors, scientists, and journalists who
tried to alert the world to the dangers of the virus. Beijing continues
today to withhold vital information that scientists need to protect the
world from this deadly virus, and the next one.
We’ve been very busy investigating burgeoning cover-up by Fauci and his
allies:
In July 2021, we uncovered emails
and other records from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases (NIAID) officials in connection with the Wuhan Institute of
Virology in Wuhan, China, revealing significant collaborations and funding
that began in 2014. The records reveal that NIAID gave nine China-related
grants to EcoHealth
Alliance to research coronavirus emergence in bats and was the
National Institute of Health’s (NIH) top issuer of grants to the Wuhan
lab itself. The records also include an email from the Vice Director of the
Wuhan Lab asking an NIH official for help finding disinfectants for
decontamination of airtight suits and indoor surfaces.
Also in July 2021, we uncovered CDC
records showing that Facebook coordinated closely with the CDC to control
the COVID narrative and “misinformation” and that over $3.5 million in
free advertising given to the CDC by social media companies.
In June 2021, we revealed that
the NIAID under Fauci gave the Wuhan lab $826,000 for bat coronavirus
research from 2014 to 2019. Also in June, Judicial Watch announced it
filed Freedom of FOIA lawsuits against the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence (ODNI) and the State Department for information on
the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
In March 2021, we uncovered emails
and other records of Fauci and Dr. H. Clifford Lane from HHS showing that
NIH officials tailored confidentiality forms to China’s terms and that
the World Health Organization (WHO) conducted an unreleased, “strictly
confidential” COVID-19 epidemiological analysis in January 2020.
Additionally, the emails reveal an independent journalist in China pointing
out the inconsistent COVID numbers in China to NIAID’s Deputy Director
for Clinical Research and Special Projects Cliff
Lane.
In October 2020, we received from the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services 300
pages of Fauci’s emails, including his approval of a press
release supportive of China’s response to the 2019 novel coronavirus.
You can see how essential Judicial Watch’s watchdog work is in uncovering
the full truth about the origins of COVID-19. And our work isn’t over by
a long shot.
Judicial Watch Sues Pentagon for Videos/Photos of Afghans Clinging
to or Falling from Aircraft in Kabul
Of course, the Biden administration is running from its Afghanistan
disaster, but we intend to hold them to account for the catastrophic
surrender.
We filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Pentagon
for videos and photos of Afghans clinging to or falling off U.S. military
aircraft at the Kabul airport. ( Judicial
Watch v. U.S. Department of Defense (No. 1:21-cv-02543)).
We sued after the Defense Department failed to respond to a basic FOIA
request for:
Images, including video, showing Afghans clinging to the sides of a U.S.
military aircraft at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan;
Images, including video, of persons falling from a U.S. Air Force C-17
military transport aircraft after taking off from the airport in Kabul,
Afghanistan.
Human remains were found in the wheel well of a C-17 aircraft that had
taken off from Kabul. According to
the Air Force, “Before the aircrew could offload the cargo, the aircraft
was surrounded by hundreds of Afghan civilians who had breached the airport
perimeter. Faced with a rapidly deteriorating security situation around the
aircraft, the C-17 crew decided to depart the airfield as quickly as
possible. In addition to videos seen online and in press reports, human
remains were discovered in the wheel well of the C-17 after it landed at Al
Udeid Air Base, Qatar. The aircraft is currently impounded to provide time
to collect the remains and inspect the aircraft before it is returned to
flying status.”
Biden’s Afghanistan surrender was an unmitigated disaster that directly
killed and placed in harm’s way our troops and U.S. citizens. And no one
will ever forget the images of Afghanis falling from and clinging to our
military aircraft. Adding to the Afghan scandal, photos and video of this
disaster are now being hidden, contrary to the law, from the American
people.
And I trust you know that this lawsuit will likely be the first of many as
we seek accountability on what I consider to be the most humiliating defeat
in American history.
Jail for Bangladeshi Smuggler Caught Amid Rise in Migrants from
Terrorist Nations
Biden’s border crisis has been good business for transnational criminals
and the human trafficking operations they run. One such criminal has been
apprehended and sent to jail, as our Corruption Chronicles blog reports.
A Bangladeshi man based in Mexico has been sentenced to 46
months in prison for operating an “international human smuggling
conspiracy” during a period in which the U.S. saw a spike in migrants
from terrorist nations entering the country through the famously porous
southern border. The smuggler, 41-year-old Mohamad Milon Hossain, lived in
Tapachula in the southeast Mexican state of Chiapas bordering Guatemala.
For years Hossain assisted human smugglers operating out of Bangladesh,
South and Central America as well as Mexico to “bring numerous
undocumented individuals to the U.S. border in exchange for payment,”
according to federal documents.
The Bangladeshi smuggler maintained a hotel in Tapachula where illegal
immigrants would stay on their way to the U.S., federal authorities say. He
then provided the migrants with plane tickets and other tools so they could
travel from Tapachula to Monterrey in the northeastern Mexican state of
Nuevo León where a fellow smuggler took over and assisted their illegal
crossing into the U.S. “Hossain was a key facilitator and smuggler of
Bangladeshi nationals and his actions put our national security at risk,”
said Shane Folden, the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) special agent
in charge in San Antonio, Texas, where the case was cracked. Folden added
that “HSI is committed to working with its domestic and international
partners to combat this type of crime throughout the globe.”
When Hossain got arrested in late 2019 migrants from terrorist nations were
trying to enter the United States through Mexico at record rates. At the
time an alarming congressional
investigation exposed an astounding 300% increase in Bangladeshi
nationals attempting to sneak into the country through Texas alone. The
feds apprehended Hossain after arriving on a flight at George Bush
Intercontinental Airport in Houston. He was charged with smuggling 15
illegal aliens from Bangladesh through the Texas-Mexico border in exchange
for payment from March 2017 to August 2018. An accomplice, stationed in
Monterrey, where the aliens would stay before the last leg of their trek to
the United States, has pleaded guilty for his role in the illicit scheme.
The feds say he paid drivers to transport the aliens to the U.S. border and
gave them instructions how to cross the Rio Grande River.
In the last few years Bangladesh has had a greater presence in the Mexican
border region though Syria and Yemen are also well represented. Bangladesh
is a South-Asian Islamic country well known as a recruiting ground for
terrorist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and
Al-Qaeda Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). The smuggling operation run by Hossain
is part of a broader crisis involving a growing demographic of illegal
aliens from terrorist nations entering the U.S. through the Mexican border.
The government classifies them as Special Interest Aliens (SIA) and they
are flowing north via Latin America in huge numbers, thanks to established
Transitional Criminal Organizations (TCO) that facilitate travel along drug
and migrant smuggling routes. Tens of thousands of SIAs—from the Middle
East, Asia, and Africa—entered Panama and Colombia in recent years.
Nearly all the SIA migrants were headed to the United States and most came
from Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Bangladesh, and India.
Encounters with the special interest individuals resulted in the seizure of
tens of thousands of fraudulent documents—including passports and
visas—that facilitated travel from their countries of origin through the
Americas, the previously cited congressional
probe found.
Years ago Judicial Watch, as part of an ongoing investigation into the
national security threats created by the porous southern border, uncovered that
Mexico is a hotbed of Islamic terrorism. Islamic jihadists are training in
southern border towns near American cities and have joined forces with
Mexican drug cartels to infiltrate the United States. A few years ago, a
high-ranking Homeland Security official confirmed to
Judicial Watch that Mexican drug traffickers help Islamic terrorists
stationed in Mexico cross into the U.S. to explore targets for future
attacks. Among the jihadists that traveled back and forth through the
southern border was a Kuwaiti named Shaykh Mahmood Omar Khabir, an ISIS
operative who lives in the Mexican state of Chihuahua not far from El Paso.
Another was a Saudi Al Qaeda operative, Adnan G. El Shurkrjumah, wanted by
the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during his undetected
cross-border jaunts.
Until next week …
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