The Abington School District mascot “The Galloping Ghost” represents a white supremacist symbol. The original illustrations of the mascot depict a member of the KKK, a racist hate group that has been targeting black americans since the 1800s. For a school district that practices No Place for Hate ideals, this is unacceptable. Some of you may think that just because the school changed the depiction it is perfectly fine, but the history of the KKK still lies in years of yearbooks.

This is important because the City Council took a sacred site away from the historic aboriginal Tribe of El Dorado County and gave it to the Sutter County Tribe just as the El Dorado County Board of Supervisors did in 2004. The Upper Broadway site belongs to the Wopumnes Tribe with over 150 years of history in El Dorado County. This is their sacred site that they have been protecting for over 100 years. On April 16, 2020 the City of Placerville bull-dozed the site without CEQA review and without warning. The City claims they gave notice in their 2018 MND but the site was obscured from the construction activities so there was no need for the Tribe to reveal the site. On June 23, 2020, item 12.1 on the City Agenda, the Placerville City Council, in an unprecedented act of insensitivity and amidst much support of the historic tribe, decided to ignore the Wopumnes request to allow them access to their sacred site to monitor study and construction activities. Instead the City Council decided to give the Wopumnes sacred site to the Sacramento-Verona Band (who arrived in El Dorado County in 1980, owns Redhawk Casino and calls themselves (SSBMI)). The City did exactly what the El Dorado County Board of Supervisors did in 2004... they gave the Wopumnes' sacred site away to the Sacramento-Verona Band, an out of town group from Sutter County. The Citizens of El Dorado County say "Not in my town. Placerville City Council, give the Wopumnes back their sacred site so they monitor construction and study activities, and bring in UC Davis to do the dig, Collect, Study and Care for the Wopumnes Tribe's artifacts.

Tom Tiffany is not a team player! He is concerned about Tom and what Tom wants ONLY. It is time to get rid of Toxic Tom and protect Wisconsinites. It is time to show FULL Support for the Governor Wisconsinites elected. It is time other politicians respect and work with the man WE the Citizens of Wisconsin elected. Mr. Tiffany is only one example of those who refuse to work with officials that Wisconsinites elected. This is unsafe for Wisconsin. We need a government that works together for it's citizens.

All of us – teachers, parents, administration, other school employees and community, working together are needed to assure that our children and staff have a safe learning environment for the entire 2020-21 school year. The challenges are unprecedented. Our public schools need all stakeholders involved and working together like never before.

The pressure of worrying about the impact of safety measures on potential test scores should not be a factor in making decisions about how and when to protect our kids from COVID-19 (or any transmissible disease). Our only concern should be the health of the students and of the community. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted classes for the majority of the Spring semester of the 2019-20 school year. Though our teachers, parents, and students worked very hard to implement effective online courses, we anticipate there will be extra work needed to catch students up. That alone will bring added stress to our classrooms in 2020-21, but it may also induce administrators and school board members to take unnecessary risks just to maintain acceptable test scores. That is unacceptable. However, we still consider it important to know how our students are learning and how much progress they have made. In Spring 2020, when STAAR testing was waived, the state of Texas still offered schools an optional End of Year (EOY) assessment, and will also offer a Beginning of Year (BOY) assessment in the fall. These exams were simply intended to help establish growth and gaps in our students' learning, and carry no penalties. We ask that the same optional EOY and BOY assessments be offered for the 2020-21 school year so all of us can gauge student progress. However, the STAAR test has no place in Texas schools for the next 12 months, and should be waived immediately.

America faces an emergency on three primary fronts: a public health pandemic, economic insecurities, and long-standing structural and institutional racism. Working families need job security, economic stability, and freedom from systematic oppression. That is, we must address the racial barriers from COVID-19 and the racial oppression that African Americans and people of color are facing. Furthermore, we must stress the importance of the HEROES Cares Act. So, please sign on and join us for this tel-town hall Wednesday, June 24th, at 6:30 pm, for the tel-town hall call-in number (866) 976-6355. Speakers for this event will be NC Senator Erica Smith-Ingram Dr. Michelle Laws- Department of Health and Human Services Fayetteville Mayor Mitch Colvin Action NC member Tarsha Gunn

The Washington Redskins exposed their hypocrisy recently while tweeting out on #BlackoutTuesday in support of #BlackLivesMatter while continuing to profit off of a racist and derogatory name—Redskins—and a caricature logo of Native Americans. Borne out of a genocidal past, the term “Redskin,” is a word dripping with contempt, racism, and a quite literal reference to blood; advertisements were placed in newspapers on behalf of governments and institutions perpetuating the genocide of indigenous peoples using this term—for example, from the The Winona Daily Republican in Minnesota: “The State reward for dead Indians has been increased to $200 for every red-skin sent to Purgatory. This sum is more than the dead bodies of all the Indians east of the Red River are worth.” While the team may claim that the term is used to honor the purported Native American ancestry of its one-time coach William “Lone Star” Dietz, the team knows full well that the name was changed to Redskin to avoid issues with the Boston Braves baseball team. Further, after an investigation, Dietz was found to have fraudulently posed as indigenous—the name of the football team only dishonors in many ways. Snyder argues that the term is one of honor and of benign origins—it is not. Native American leaders and peoples have been fighting to have the name changed across society, and have succeeded but in this one place. Since 1898, the term has been defined as one used contemptuously. If the Washington Football Team had to change the fight song for racist illusions, why not change the name? To claim that the term “redskins” honors Native Americans defies logic—no one would think to claim that, for example, a football team named for the confederacy honors African Americans. Other teams are named after animals (Philadelphia Eagles, Seattle Seahawks, Chicago Bears), after numbers (San Francisco 49ers), or after empowering, flattering, mythic characters (New England Patriots, New Orleans Saints, Houston Texans). In short, a racial slur has no place in the NFL's lineup. Academic studies continue to show that the name and mascot do not honor Native Americans; to the contrary, the term leads to “lower self-esteem, lower community worth, less capacity to generate achievement-related possible selves, and greater levels of negative effect” amongst Native American youth, perpetuating a cycle of poverty and oppression. The term, with its contemptuous nature, further builds a gap between native and non-native cultures, contributing to intergenerational trauma and continued racism. Leaders, historians, psychologists, and social scientists have concluded that “Native mascots are part of a much larger web of phenomena that contribute to oppression faced by Native Americans and thus it seems clear that these mascots should be eliminated.” While it should be clear, some people seem to be unwilling to see the continued consequences. Everytime the Washington team takes the field, the Redskins name conjures images of brutality. The Washington Redskins, the NFL, the media, and sponsors must discontinue profiting off of a racist trope. Native Americans are not mascots, they are people and are still here. Daniel Snyder cannot continue to muzzle and whitewash a people and history. Words have power. Symbols have power. It is time the media and sponsors cease their complicity in this cultural genocide, and stand with justice—boycott the name until the name changes.

Olentangy Local School District has a long history of not hiring people of color (especially for teaching positions) or providing an intersectional, diversified, honest education to its 21,711 students. As a former student, I can testify to never having had a teacher of color (I attended OLSD from 2nd to 12th grade), never learning about issues that didn’t specifically pertain to white people (severe lack of an intersectional education), lack of a feeling of safety in terms of bullying from students and teachers alike (even as a white student), lack of accountability and punishment for students and teachers who discriminated in any way towards other students. (For firsthand stories from current and former OLSD students in regards to discrimination against them, please see @dearolsd account on Instagram). There is a severe lack of inclusivity for the students who attend any OLSD school from K-12 that happen to not be white, cis-sexual, straight (and, if attending any of the schools in the Powell area) wealthy. The onus should not be on these students to educate their peers and teachers about their oppressions and oppressors; this education needs to come from the teachers in the OLSD beginning in Kindergarten all the way through 12th grade. It is an injustice to the hundreds of thousands of students that have passed through the halls of an OLSD school to have been denied the opportunity of an intersectional education. Going forward, it is imperative that the aforementioned major changes are made to OLSD. Note: This does not look like compulsory blanket apologies/statements made to students and parents of students across OLSD social media platforms. Actions always speak louder than words. It is better late than never to take advantage of the opportunity to properly educate the current and the future students (and staff) of OLSD so that they can all truly flourish.

We - Students, Parents, Family Members, Teachers, & Community Members demand our children see a brighter future - one where they are supported, not criminalized. Time and time again, children in the Kingston City School District have fallen victim to racial profiling, violence, sexual harassment, and trauma at the hands of the police. Due to the lack of Police Accountability, no justice has been served for most of the children who have been harmed. We do not understand why we have police in our schools. The narrative that Police make things safer has been disproved numerous times, An SRO at Marjory Stoneman Douglas never even entered the school during the shooting. Police contact can also hinder children’s educational performance through negative health consequences related to stress, fear, trauma, and anxiety (Geller et al. 2014; Golembeski and Fullilove 2005; Sugie and Turney 2017) The Memorandum Of Understanding between the KCSD and The Police Department says: “Under state law, the SRO shall not serve as a school disciplinarian, as an enforcer of school regulations, or in place of school-based mental health providers, and the SRO shall not use police powers to address traditional school discipline issues.” Despite the contract, the SROs in the schools are routinely involved in disciplining the children - criminalizing them at a young age. The $369,368.90 our district committed to spend in the 19-20 school year to criminalize our children should be used for counselors and education, not to feed the School to Prison Pipeline. We demand: 1. An immediate and permanent cancellation of contracts with Kingston Police Department, Ulster Police Department and all law enforcement. 2. A commitment to reinvest those funds into Mental Health and Community Resources for the children in the district. 3. Investigate all complaints of Police Violence and Misconduct that have been reported to the school district. Please sign the petition and contact members of the KCSD School Board and Superintendent Padalino to support the removal of School Resource Officers from KCSD and the reallocation of those funds towards mental health resources. In Solidarity, R!SE UP KINGSTON

Livonia has an unfortunate history as one of our country’s largest “Sundown Towns” - “all white” municipalities or neighborhoods that practiced a form of segregation by excluding non-whites through a combination of discriminatory local laws, intimidation, policing and violence. We urge the Livonia Police Department to set a higher standard of policing by strengthening accountability mechanisms and securing critical reforms to end police brutality, biased racial profiling, and policing targeting youth and communities of color. It’s time to not only address the racism and inequality that exists in our own community, but to address it with intention and ambition. Be a part of the Livonia Citizens Caring About Black Lives movement by following us at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1183500345325924 Read about the Campaign Zero initiative - https://www.joincampaignzero.org/#vision

There is a concerning lack of awareness around historically significant people and events that directly lend to race relations today, particularly as it relates to the challenges Black Americans face in fighting to bring awareness to the racial disparities in education, healthcare, homeownership, law enforcement interactions, criminal sentencing and much more. Critical omissions in California's educational curriculum perpetuate the misunderstanding of what it means to be American, while simultaneously reinforcing institutional ideologies birthed from White supremacy. California has long served as the trailblazer in progress, and we are looking to our elected officials in education to, once again, set an example by ushering in a more integrated and comprehensive curriculum, offering our bright-minded youth a truer and more holistic sense of who we are and where we come from.

I was born and raised in Glastonbury and received an amazing, world-class education there. All throughout college, I would always wear my Glastonbury Tomahawks sweatshirt because of how proud I was of my home. During college, I befriended a girl who is Native American, and I would find myself pausing every time I wanted to put on my Tomahawks sweatshirt. This sweatshirt was a symbol of a place that I took so much pride in. I thought of my education as progressive and shedding light on the world outside of the four walls of GHS. However, how can a place that I held in such high esteem continue to ignore this offense? What lesson does it teach the students of Glastonbury to continue to use a mascot that trivializes the culture of others? Glastonbury’s community must recognize that their mascot is not appropriate. We cannot use this symbol in good conscience when Native American tribes throughout the country, and here in Connecticut, oppose the use of Native American mascots. We must listen to their opposition, and be good allies by trusting and respecting their stance on the subject. Glastonbury was a wonderful town to grow up in, and I am generally very proud to be from there. Please do the right thing: stop appropriating Native American symbols. “As documented in [...] decades of social science research, derogatory 'Indian' sports mascots have serious psychological, social and cultural consequences for Native Americans, especially Native youth." Change Glastonbury's mascot to one that we can all be proud of. (Link to quote on NCAI's website: http://www.ncai.org/proudtobe)