AWAKEN REDLANDS wants to force the outing of QUEER KIDS & DEFUND PUBLIC SCHOOLS
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Awaken Redlands is the Nonprofit Front for Old Fashioned Bigotry
Let's take a look at Awaken Redlands Mission Statement:
Awaken Redlands claims to be "a non-partisan group of parents and community members focused on preserving traditional values in our city and schools"
"TRADITIONAL VALUES"
Sounds innocuous enough, right? It's not. This dog whistle promotes patriarchal familial structures, anti-LGBTQ hate, and discriminatory laws around reproduction. While this term is used broadly by many groups, it has historically been taken up by the antidemocratic movement to argue against equality. Today, with the resurgence of Christian nationalism in mainstream spaces, “traditional values” are used to justify repeals on civil rights and progressive politics.
The language of contemporary right-wing politics is the language of restoration and nostalgia. “Make America Great Again” was fundamentally an appeal to those values. Other writers, especially Black journalists, have noted that the “again” language requires an appeal to a historical period. Still, it’s frequently unclear what historical period they’re referring to.
WHO is behinD Awaken Redlands?
Candy Olson
Candy Olson
Olson is a rubber stamp Alt-Right Christian Nationalist acting on behalf of private money interests through a series of misinformation campaigns to deteriorate trust in public education. When she's not marching alongside violent Proud Boys, she is a nurse at Loma Linda University Hospital.
Weird photo edits by Candy herself
Candy Olson and Erin Stepien in LA doing photo ops with the Proud Boys
October 2020-2023: Candy Olson came to light in 2020 as another copy-paste social media account pushing COVID misinformation to the public as hundreds of people were dying daily from the virus in California alone (source Google Data). Olson continues to perpetuate COVID/Vaccine misinformation to this day while actively working as a nurse at Loma Linda Medical Center.
Olson was selected to be campaign manager of the failed Redlands USD school board candidate Erin Stepien, where alliances were made between hate groups Gays Against Groomers (GAG), Proud Boys, and LEXIT. As national attention lessened over COVID, Olson attached herself to the national propaganda campaign to attack public education. She became a parrot, claiming books were showing pornographic material, claims which were directly refuted by the Redlands School Board along with legal council and Librarian staff. Paired with this attack was the claim that critical race theory, also known as CRT, should be banned from K-12 schools (despite it being a college-level subject) which would be partially enforced through book-banning. Olson eventually aligned herself with the far-right group Leave Our Kids Alone (LOKA) a violent group that travels around Southern California to harass school board meeting attendees under the misnomer "Parents Rights." Olson continues the next manufactured culture war marching order of attempting to ban Pride flags from being displayed in the city and in schools.
Parental Notification, also known as
forced outing
forced outing
Forced outing is a policy that initiates a system for schools to notify parents when they “become aware” that a student is “experiencing gender dysphoria and/or gender incongruence,” which the policy defines as a child “requesting to be identified or treated” as a gender, pronoun, or name other than the one on their birth certificate or official documents.
The policy also instructs schools to notify parents if students try to access “sex-segregated” facilities like bathrooms or sports teams.
In July, Chino Unified School District was the first to impliment such policy, which was pushed by the Chino school board president, Sonja Shaw. Chino's forced outing policy has drawn the legal ire of the state of California. The state’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, is currently suing the southern California district because, he warns that these rules adopted in July have placed “transgender and gender-nonconforming students in danger of imminent, irreparable harm.”
Who is Sonja Shaw?
Awaken Redlands recruitment flyer to draw in potential candidates to run agianst progressives in the 2024 election cycle. Shaw and others spoke at the event, that was an apparent failure. Olson has since announced that she herself would run for school board in 2024
Shaw is a right-wing extremist who has launched a crusade against her district’s LGBTQ+ students.
"In July Shaw and her school board ruled in a 4-1 vote that Chino Valley Unified School District mandate teachers to force transgender and non-binary students out of the closet to potentially bigoted family members— a move that experts say will increase the likelihood for abuse, bullying, and self harm amongst impacted students. This comes after the same school board already banned LGBTQ+ Pride flags from district schools." -Vishal P. Singh
Forced outing could put children at risk of physical or emotional harm
"Statistics show us that LGBTQ+ youth are more likely to face being kicked out of their homes and to not have families or environments that are mostly accepting,” says Stephanie Camacho-Van Dyke, director of advocacy and education for the LGBTQ Center OC. “It's really putting them at risk and their safety and their well-being at risk.”
“It also makes you wonder: Why doesn't the kid feel comfortable coming out to their parents in the first place?” Camacho-Van Dyke adds.
“It also makes you wonder: Why doesn't the kid feel comfortable coming out to their parents in the first place?”
Here in redlands,
Candy Olson, who sees Shaw and her bigoted policies as aspirational, is pushing this harmful policy to be adopted by RUSD.
It's essential to consIder the way Olson thinks. she has fallen pretty deep into the extremism conspiracy theory rabbit hole
Candy Olson, who sees Shaw and her bigoted policies as aspirational, is pushing this harmful policy to be adopted by RUSD.
It's essential to consIder the way Olson thinks. she has fallen pretty deep into the extremism conspiracy theory rabbit hole
Awaken Redlands has some nasty friends
WHAT DO THESE PEOPLE ULTIMATELY WANT?
The end-goal is to privatize all K-12 education under Christian-ruled information practices and make them for-profit systems that prioritize the dollar over children's education. The lgbtq+ community, especially the kids are being cruelly targeted so that a small group of interconnected individuals and orgs can use “parental rights” as a Trojan horse for school vouchers. This is a well-funded goal to redirect public tax funds to private religious schools, homeschools, and for profit charters.
Our kids safety at school is being compromised purposely in order to destabilize public education
Redlands is pushing Back
While it's discouraging to learn that there are those in our community who are attempting to push kids back into the closet, it's important to know that there are those who are having none of it.
This site was made by the local, grassroots group, Safe Redlands Schools.
WANt to DIG IN MORE?
Redlands is just one of many districts fighting extremism. Parents all over California and the country are connecting and doing incredible work to keep people with fascistic aspirations off our school boards.
Check out this incredible map to see who's connected to who
TAKE ACTION:
HOW YOU CAN RESPOND TO EXTREMISM
Reject the Mainstreaming of Extremist Narratives: We must name hate when we see it and refuse to let its purveyors whitewash extremism and monopolize public discourse. Dog whistles such as “parental rights,” “traditional values,” or “men’s rights,” help mainstream misogyny and supremacy. Whether you see it online, in your community, or among elected officials, call this rhetoric out for what it is: deliberate fearmongering and disinformation.
Get Involved: A vibrant democracy represents all of its citizens and requires your participation. At the local level that means getting involved with the Redlands school board, city council, and attending the meetings, as well as other elements of government such as local elections. Express solidarity with communities that are under attack and join events that uplift their voices. We all have a role to play to ensure all members of our community have equal rights.
Support Inclusive Policies and Reject Discriminatory Policies: Advocate for policies that support marginlized communites. Making your voice heard at a hyperlocal level in support of inclusive policies, and in opposition to bigoted policies such as those undermining trans rights.
Connect with Organizers Doing the work!
