At a recent school board meeting in Placentia, a small town in suburban Orange County, California, the Revolution Club showed up as a disciplined force entering into a sea of a hundred or more anti-mask, white-supremacist Christian fascists who have been threatening board members and disrupting their meetings.
The public meeting was held outside because meetings have been overrun with fascists who refuse to wear masks. Physical barriers were set up to protect school board members from their rabid audience and police stood nearby. In an eerie scene out of The Handmaid’s Tale, dozens of fascists gathered in a prayer circle before the open meeting and began to ask God to punish those school board members they see as an obstacle to their reactionary agenda. Many of these well-organized fascist parents wore red T-shirts saying “I’ll pull them,” meaning unless their demented demands are met, they’ll pull their kids out of the schools of the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District, which would be a loss of funding to the district at $10,000 a year per student.
The fascists are demanding the end of mask and vaccine mandates—the dismantling of life-saving health protections during a pandemic which has killed 5 million people worldwide and 900,000 in this country so far. Many are also demanding to ban “Critical Race Theory,” by which they mean any teaching of the truth about the oppression of Black people and other oppressed peoples, as well as any efforts for school curriculum to recognize the humanity of LGBT people. This is part of an organized national movement to enforce a fascist America—on the federal and local levels—through terrorizing and taking over school boards, election boards and more.
The vast majority of the audience of the public meeting were fascists, with a handful of brave parents and school staff there in masks to speak up for masks, vaccines, and multicultural education with protections for LGBT people. The public comment period had 47 people signed up to speak, out of which probably 40 were fascists.
When the public comment period opened, it opened with calls to end mask and vaccine mandates and ban Critical Race Theory. The third speaker was Michelle Xai from the Revolution Club and she set whole different terms. She said these genocidal racists don’t have the right to spread disease and death, she brought up how the school board members have literally been threatened for doing the right thing.
Michelle let everyone there know that the revcoms, revolutionary communists, were there to have their backs and we are working to make revolution to overthrow the whole system that gave rise to this. This announcement set an electric shock through the air. The rabid fascists were outraged and laughed and heckled her as she was speaking, but mainly abided by the board president insisting speakers be allowed to be heard.
A couple of speakers later, another member of the Revolution Club, who grew up going to school in that district, spoke powerfully to why white kids need to learn the truth about the ugly history of this country. He drew from a recent article by the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian, “Racism—White Kids Need To Learn About It.” The Revolution Club member said this country was in fact built on slavery and genocide, and that learning about what this country has done to Black people and other oppressed people, as a young white person at the time, yes made him uncomfortable, but that was a GOOD THING. It made him angry and made him want to fight to uproot this oppression. And he put forward the need for real revolution to actually do that. People at the back of the meeting who were opposed to the fascists clapped enthusiastically. Among the decent people, there was an air of “FINALLY, someone is saying this.”
The Revolution Club speakers infuriated the fascists and emboldened people who were there to stand up against all that. Fascists commented on the seated row of Revolution—Nothing Less T-shirts. Sprinkled throughout the rest of the comments of the night, fascists made sure to denounce communism and that communists were there. And at least one other parent opposed to the fascists took Michelle’s lead and said he too has the backs of the school board members who are standing up for what’s right.
Other speakers who broke through the overwhelmingly fascist wall of nonsense included a healthcare worker who advocated that “the best way to end the mask mandates is by fighting for vaccine mandates in the schools” (she was met with scowls and boos from the fascists), and an educator who spoke the truth that racism is an endemic issue NOW, in this school district and in society, and that Black and Brown students are not being heard when they report racist incidents.
The item actually on the school board agenda about vaccines was a resolution requesting the governor “reconsider or rescind” the vaccine mandate for K-12 schools. This will be terrible, and unsafe for the school and community. The school board has at least one more rabid fascist, and two others who were either with her or trying to find common ground. There were two board members—who are science-based—who the fascists passionately hate and have threatened. These two were called out repeatedly by the fascists at the meeting, who promised to vote them off the board, threatened that “their time was numbered,” and even accused the board of abusing children by enforcing the mask mandate. Unfortunately, the fascists held the day and this resolution did pass—largely through this kind of fear and intimidation. This situation—happening in cities and small towns across the country—needs to change.
In his recent work, “Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating: Profound Crisis, Deepening Divisions, The Looming Possibility Of Civil War—And The Revolution That Is Urgently Needed. A Necessary Foundation, A Basic Roadmap For This Revolution,” Bob Avakian says:
Instead of fighting and killing each other, what people need to be doing now is uniting to defend each other—opposing all unjust violence, not launching attacks on anyone but at the same time not allowing the police or “civilian” fascist thugs to wantonly brutalize and murder people. And people need to do this as part of building up the forces for revolution.
In line with that, the Revolution Club is making clear our intent to defend people who come under attack from a fascist movement for standing for what’s right. Now is the time for those with boldness and heart to get with us in doing all this, as part of bringing forward a revolutionary people.
