CRT Abuse in DC Schools!



[INSIDE JW]

DC Schools Pushed Racial Segregation in Employee ‘Affinity Spaces’

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The school district in your nation’s capital is spending tax
dollars to promote segregation based upon race and sexual identity.

We received 194 pages
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of records from District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) which show
that DC officials pushed segregated “Affinity Spaces” on the basis
of race and sexual identity.

We obtained the records in response to a June 24, 2021, FOIA request
for:

Records identifying the number of affinity spaces hosted by District
of Columbia Public Schools from August 31, 2020 to June 24, 2021.

Records identifying the topics discussed during any affinity spaces
hosted by District of Columbia Public Schools from August 31, 2020 to
June 24, 2021.

Records inviting students, faculty, and staff to affinity spaces
hosted by District of Columbia Public Schools from August 31, 2020 to
June 24, 2021.

Records, including policies and procedures, regarding the creation and
use of “affinity spaces.”

Any analyses of whether affinity spaces excluding students, faculty,
and staff who identify as a specific race or gender is consistent with
district and federal law, including but not limited to 42 U.S.C. 2000d
and the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S.
Constitution.
The records include a DCPS September 2021 PowerPoint presentation
titled “DCPS Affinity Group Interest Form
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stating:

DCPS staff: The Equity Strategy and Programming Team initially
launched affinity spaces as safe spaces for you to reflect and process
following the murder of George Floyd, and we are going to continue
them throughout the 21-22 school year as a place for folks to reflect
and continue to learn and grow.

One way to process in a safe space is through affinity. Affinity
spaces are gathering opportunities for people who share a common
identity. This space will be organized based on the racial identities
represented in Central Office as we aim to lean into the Courageous
Conversation condition of isolating race.

For more information about the benefit of racial affinity groups,
please leverage this Learning for Justice resource:
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DCPS Central Office staff from the Equity, Community Action and SEL
[Social and Emotional Learning] Teams will co-facilitate these
affinity groups in collaboration with volunteers at least once a month
but more frequently as requested by the group.
A form in the presentation asks respondents to submit their pronouns,
which include she/her, she/they, he/him, he/they, they/them, ze/hir,
she/he/they, or “other.”

DCPS staff is asked to select “Which racial affinity group(s) do you
plan to join via Teams? (Select all that apply to you and your racial
identities. A separate calendar/Teams invite will come from the DCPS
Equity calendar.):”

Asian American Pacific Islander

Black/African American, Hispanic/Latinx

Indigenous/Native American, Multi-Racial, White

I am not represented by any of these options and want to recommend
another group.
The form adds: “As we define race, it can be easy to conflate
race with ethnicity or nationality because the definition and
boundaries are always changing. Use the US Census
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as a guide
but do not let it limit you based on how you personally identify
racially.

The form also asks if respondents are interested in new LGBTQIA+
“Affinity Spaces.” Those spaces are divided into “BIPOC
(Black/Indigenous/People of Color) LGBTQIA+” and “White
LGBTQIA+.”

A DCPS memo
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details events to be held in June 2021 and is titled “Proposed
Engagement in Response to Recent Racial Incidents” begins: “These
are troubling times. I imagine that we all are struggling to make
sense of the murder of George Floyd and the continued racial violence
and racism that people of color, but black people specifically, endure
at the hands of the police, other systems and individuals.”

A table of proposed events in the memo includes an “Affinity Group
Brown Bag” that is described as a “Moderated space for CO [Central
Office] staff to reflect, connect, feel, share, strategize in smaller,
affinity (Black, White, Latinx, Asian) space: Focus on self-awareness,
identity and cultural awareness.”

An undated email from the DCPS Equity Team to AAPI Affinity (DCPS);
Black Affinity (DCPS); Hispanic/Latinx Affinity (DCPS); Multi-Racial
Affinity (DCPS); White Affinity (DCPS); and many individual DCPS
members with the subject line “Cross-Racial Affinity Space (led by
the Multi-Racial Affinity Group)” informs recipients that: “The
Multi-Racial Affinity group is tentative to lead a cross-racial
affinity space during the week of August 9th – August 13th
[2020]”:

Cross-Racial Affinity Space Schedule

The current schedule for cross-racial dialogue is as follows (open to
all affinity group members) to be led by respective affinity groups).
Dates may change if conflicts arise for a majority of attendees:

* October: To be led by the Hispanic/Latino/Latinx affinity group
* December: To be led by the White affinity group
* February: To be led by the Black affinity group
* May: To be led by the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI)
affinity group
*August: To be led by the Multi-Racial affinity group

***

A few guiding norms and goals for all affinity spaces:

* Go beyond celebration: Central Office (CO) affinity spaces will
ensure that the conversation translates identity-related issues into
action that helps mitigate those issues in our teams, offices and CO.
* Isolate Race: CO affinity spaces will leverage the Courageous
Conversation protocol
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[no longer available on the IEL website] – especially the norm of
isolating race – in dialogue and collaboration.
* A lens for equity: As CO affinity spaces transition from
conversation into action, spaces will ensure those actions are rooted
in an equity lens that focuses on policy, identity and mindsets,
practices and culture. The DCPS Equity Framework
<[link removed]
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is a foundational resource for exploring goals and objectives through
an equity lens.
* Create Cross-Racial Learning Opportunities: CO affinity spaces
will come together in one space for interracial dialogue and learning
led by a respective affinity group every other month.

A January 26, 2021, email
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from former DCPS Equity Strategy and Programming Team member Elizabeth
Rene
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who now works at
Google, introduces to her then-colleagues what is called the
“Anti-Racist Educator University,” which is touted as the first
such endeavor “led by any school district.” The email states:

Many of you have engaged in conversations about race and equity with
your students, families and colleagues. However, many more of you have
asked how to translate those conversations into action.

Anti-Racist Educator University is an opportunity to proactively apply
what we’ve learned about race and equity to our daily practice in
the classroom as well as shifting policies, mindsets and culture.

Anti-Racist Educator University is a strategic lever that provides
DCPS educators with shared learning rooted in a collective commitment
to active anti-racism…
A June 16, 2021, email
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from Samuel Cuadro
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of DCPS to
Principal Katie Lundgren
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and several colleagues states: “[T]he goal of these affinity groups
is to create a safe space among colleagues to process the impacts of
racism and white supremacy within our school community and identify
collective actions to take as individuals and as groups.”

These shocking documents show, in evident violation of the
Constitution and civil rights laws, that the public school system of
our nation’s capital pushed blatant racial segregation among its
staff based on radical, divisive CRT principles.

Washington, DC is hardly alone.

We recently released records revealing critical race theory (CRT)
instruction at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point
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One
training slide contains a graphic titled “MODERN-DAY SLAVERY IN THE
USA.”

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau records
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we obtained in February 2022 included a PowerPoint presentation titled
“Race and gender based microaggressions” that was used for
training at the organization.

In June 2022, we appealed
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a federal court decision dismissing a civil rights lawsuit on behalf
of David Flynn, a Massachusetts father who was fired from his position
as high school football coach after he raised concerns over Black
Lives Matter/critical race theory being taught in his daughter’s
seventh-grade ancient history class.

In January, we announced
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a FOIA lawsuit for
all FBI records related to the October 4, 2021, memorandum issued by
Attorney General Garland targeting parents who raised objections to
Critical Race Theory in schools.

In November 2021, we announced
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that we
received two sets
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of new records related to the teaching of critical race theory in
Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS), Maryland’s largest school
system. The new records include a training course with information
about a book titled “Antiracist Baby” that introduces the youngest
readers to “the concept and power of antiracism,” and says it’s
the “perfect gift” for “ages baby to age 3.”

Records received from Loudoun County, VA
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that we made
public in October 2021, revealed a coordinated effort to advance
critical race theory initiatives in Loudoun County public schools
despite widespread public opposition.

Also in October 2021, we received
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a training
document from a whistleblower in the Westerly School District of Rhode
Island, which details how Westerly Public Schools are using teachers
to push critical race theory in classrooms.

Records from Wellesley Public Schools in Massachusetts, that we
released in June 2021, confirmed the use of “affinity spaces
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that divide
students and staff based on race as a priority and objective of the
school district’s “diversity, equity and inclusion” plan. The
school district also admitted
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that between September 1, 2020 and May 17, 2021, it created “five
distinct” segregated spaces.

JUDICIAL WATCH SUES AFTER NEW YORK CITY FAILS TO CLEAN VOTER ROLLS

We sued New York after it failed to clean voter rolls. Federal law
requires local officials to make a reasonable effort to remove people
who have moved or died from voting rolls.

New York City failed to follow this law for years, so we filed a
federal lawsuit against New York State and New York City election
officials for failing to remove potentially hundreds of thousands of
ineligible voters from New York City voter registration.

Our lawsuit, filed under the National Voter Registration Act
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(NVRA), details how New York City removed only 22 names under the
federal law over six years (_Judicial Watch v Valentine et al._
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(No.1:22-cv-03952)).

The NVRA requires states to “conduct a general program that makes a
reasonable effort to remove” from the official voter rolls “the
names of ineligible voters” who have died or changed residence.
Among other things, the law requires registrations to be cancelled
when voters fail to respond to address confirmation notices and then
fail to vote in the next two general federal elections. In 2018, the
Supreme Court confirmed that such removals are mandatory (_Husted v.
A. Philip Randolph Inst.
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(138 S.
Ct. 1833, 1841-42 (2018)).

Our lawsuit details that New York City’s “own recent data concedes
that there were only 22 total” removals under this provision
“during a six-year period, in a city of over 5.5 million voters.
These are ludicrously small numbers of removals given the sizable
populations of these counties.” The lawsuit elaborates:

For context, the estimated number of voting-age citizens changing
residence, per year, during the five-year period from 2016 through
2020, in the five counties of New York City was:

about 194,000 in Kings County,
about 127,000 in Queens County,
about 190,000 in New York County,
about 82,000 in Bronx County, and
about 21,000 in Richmond County.
In all, “more than 600,000 voting-age citizens, _per year_, are
estimated to have changed residence in New York City during the
five-year period from 2016 through 2020.”

We note that “Yates County, one of the smallest counties in New
York, with a current total registration of about 14,500 voters” made
1,251 removals under this NVRA provision during the same six-year
period. “This is, literally, an exponentially greater number than
the 22 NVRA Removals made during the same period in all of New York
City.”

The lawsuit concludes that the “almost complete failure of Kings,
Queens, New York, Bronx, and Richmond Counties, over a period of at
least six years, to remove voters” under a key provision of federal
law “means that there are untold numbers of New York City
registrations for voters who are ineligible to vote at their listed
address because they have changed residence or are otherwise
ineligible to vote.”

Dirty voting rolls can mean dirty elections, and New York City’s
rolls are some of the dirtiest in the country. Elections officials in
New York City have simply refused to clean the voter lists for years.
We want cleaner elections, as the law requires, and we expect this
lawsuit will cause New York to take the simple steps necessary to
clean from its rolls the names of hundreds of thousands of voters who
have moved away or died.

We are a national leader in voting integrity and voting rights. As
part of this effort, we assembled a team of highly experienced voting
rights attorneys who stopped discriminatory elections in Hawaii, and
cleaned up voter rolls in California, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky,
among other achievements
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California settled
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an NVRA lawsuit with us and began the process of removing up to 1.6
million inactive names from Los Angeles County’s voter rolls.
Kentucky
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also began a cleanup of hundreds of thousands of old registrations
last year after it entered into a consent decree to end another
Judicial Watch lawsuit.

In February 2022, we settled
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a
voter roll clean-up lawsuit against North Carolina and two of its
counties after the North Carolina removed over 430,000 ineligible
names from the voter rolls.

In March 2022, a Maryland court ruled in favor
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of our challenge to Maryland’s Democratic legislature “extreme”
congressional redistricting gerrymander.

In May 2022, we sued
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Illinois on behalf of Congressman Mike Bost and two other registered
Illinois voters to prevent state election officials from extending
Election Day for 14 days beyond the date established by federal law.

$195 MILLION TO ‘REDRESS THE LEGACY OF HARM’ IN RACIST
TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE

You may be interested to know that highways can be racist, and the
Biden administration will hand out millions to grant applicants
seeking “equity and environmental justice” to fix or even
dismantle them! Our _Corruption Chronicles_ blog details
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this
ideological crusade against transportation infrastructure.

In the Biden administration’s latest racial equity project, American
taxpayers will spend $195 million to help connect minority communities
that are cut off from economic opportunities by racist transportation
infrastructure. The costly plan is known as Reconnecting Communities
Pilot (RCP) and it is part of the Department of Transportation’s
(DOT) “Equity Strategy Goal to reduce inequities” across the
nation’s transportation systems and the communities they effect. In
its announcement
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the DOT writes that “preference will be given to applications from
economically disadvantaged communities, especially those with projects
that are focused on equity and environmental justice, have strong
community engagement and stewardship, and a commitment to shared
prosperity and equitable development.” The language sounds like
material found in a communist manifesto.

DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg justifies the investment by explaining
that “transportation can connect us to jobs, services, and loved
ones, but we ‘ve also seen countless cases around the country where
a piece of infrastructure cuts off a neighborhood or a community
because of how it was built.” RCP is the first-ever initiative
funded by the federal government that is completely dedicated to
unifying neighborhoods living with the impacts of infrastructure that
divides them, Buttigieg adds. It will help reconnect communities that
are cut off from economic opportunities by what the administration
seems to claim is a racist transportation infrastructure. In fact, the
lengthy grant announcement
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states that the multi-million-dollar community reconnection program
“seeks to redress the legacy of harm caused by transportation
infrastructure.” The “harm” includes barriers to opportunity,
displacement, damage to the environment and public health, limited
access and “other hardships,” according to the document.

In pursuit of redressing the legacy of harm, RCP “will support and
engage economically disadvantaged communities to increase affordable,
accessible, and multimodal access to daily destinations like jobs,
healthcare, grocery stores, schools, places of worship, recreation,
and park space,” the administration writes in the grant
announcement. Thus, the new program will be implemented in line with a
multitude of other federal initiatives launched by a 2021 Biden
executive order
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to advance racial equity and support for underserved communities
through the federal government. Besides the DOT’s Equity Action
Plan, the agency grant document identifies them as federal actions to
address environmental justice in minority and low-income populations,
affordable housing in the nation’s most desirable neighborhoods and
a program to strengthen the economy through the creation of
good-paying jobs with the free and fair choice to join a union, strong
labor standards, and workforce programs. There are many more that were
left out of the RCP document.

In the last year, key federal agencies have implemented racial equity
plans as per Biden’s order. The Department of Justice (DOJ) created
a special initiative to advance equity for marginalized and
underserved communities. The Department of Labor (DOL) dedicated $260
million to promote “equitable access” to government unemployment
benefits by addressing disparities in the administration and delivery
of money by race ethnicity and language proficiency. The Treasury
Department named its first ever racial equity chief, a veteran La Raza
official who spent a decade at the nation’s most influential open
borders group. The Department of Defense (DOD) is using outrageous
anti-bias materials that indoctrinate troops with anti-American and
racially inflammatory training on diversity topics. The U. S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA) created an equity commission to
address longstanding inequities in agriculture. The nation’s medical
research agency has a special minority health and health disparities
division that recently issued a study declaring COVID-19 exacerbated
preexisting resentment against racial/ethnic minorities and
marginalized communities. The Transportation Security Administration
(TSA) recently hired a Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer
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even though
most of its employees come from “underrepresented racial and ethnic
groups.” Just a few days ago Judicial Watch reported
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that the
administration is spending $6 million to advance racial equity in the
government’s food-stamp program that already serves a large minority
population.
Until next week…





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