Living in the post-truth era is confusing.
Normal rules just no longer apply, and I think I finally figured out the disoriented feeling I experience on a regular basis.
I have a history with narcissists. Both professionally and personally. When you spend any amount of time with one, you’ll begin to start questioning your sanity. Narcissists do this thing called “gaslighting” where they convince others that things aren’t as they appear. Narcissists portray events, chores, projects, personal interactions, and moments in history as happening completely differently than they actually did.
In a marriage, the narcissist may claim that they do all the chores in the house despite no evidence to support that claim, and gaslight their partner into doubting their own reality. They usually rely on the DARVO strategy to manipulate their victim.
The Post-Truth Era may as well be called the Gaslighting DARVO Era because wherever I go, I see a lot of gaslighting and victim-blaming, rather than collaborative adults who can work together to solve problems.
I’m so tired of it.
The current president has been doing this for the last decade, and his followers not only lap it up, but they model their behavior after him. It’s bad enough when they do it in their own personal and/or professional lives, but it’s dangerous when they do it from positions of power.
DARVO behavior was on full display at the most recent Peoria (PUSD) meeting. You may have read about the district’s decision to remove several titles of literary works from the newly-adopted curriculum. The district’s recent adoption of an anti-Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policy and another state law that Secular AZ warned everyone about back in 2022 lead to three titles, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, A Raisin in the Sun, and Summer of the Mariposas to be removed from the curriculum over concerns about age appropriateness.
If you noticed that all of these authors happen to be nonwhite, you wouldn’t be the only one.
The PUSD meeting was at full capacity and not one person spoke in favor of the removal of the literary works. Parents, taxpayers, members of the West Valley NAACP (WVNAACP), and countless others showed up to show their opposition to the removal, and more specifically, PUSD’s anti-Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policy.
But here’s the rub, Secular FAM. As administrators of the district pointed out in their presentation, this isn’t a direct result of the PUSD policy. It’s a result of a state law, formerly HB2495, that mandates that public schools “in this state may not refer students to or use any sexually explicit material in any manner.”
The burden then falls on the district to exempt materials if they “possess serious educational value for minors or [possess] serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”
Let’s talk about how that would play out in a public school district. Once a novel or other literary work is deemed “sexually explicit” an individual teacher or a department/grade-level chair would need to advocate for the book that contains prohibited materials to be taught in their classroom, department, or grade level.
Then, they would have to get parental consent from every student reading the book. If any parents object or if they just never return the form, teachers then have to create alternative assignments for those students so they could still earn a grade. There’s the added complication of where to put those kids when the book is being discussed, but it’s just a side dish of tater turds to go along with the giant shit sandwich public schools and educators are served on a daily basis.
The thing is, this is something parents in Arizona have been able to do ever since I’ve been involved in public education. At my old campus, we had religious parents who would want alternative assignments for their kids back in the 2000s and we just did it. Even before former Governor Doug Ducey signed HB2495 into law in 2022. But now, most districts just err on the side of caution and remove the books.
This has done two things: it has emboldened evangelical extremist parents (some of whom don’t even have children in the public schools) to demand titles be removed; and it has caused fear amongst educators, leading them to preemptively censor any titles that might cause them undue attention or stress. Both of these reactions lead to more book bans.
The broad language of the law means that any title that mentions sexual encounters can be challenged, and then the district’s anti-Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policy adds another layer of censorship by banning the ‘develop[ment], adopt[ion], or promot[ion] [of] programs, curricula, or initiatives that advance DEI as an ideological or prescriptive framework.”
As many speakers pointed out, the opposition to qualities like diversity, equity, and inclusion is anti-American, and though none said it explicitly, we all know what these wypipo mean when they say that they “oppose DEI.”
I encourage you all to watch the speakers from this meeting because they were incredible. They pointed out that the contents of the removed literature may be uncomfortable for some people, but for many of the students in PUSD, the content speaks to the very real struggles they face in their homes, schools, and communities every day.
Once the public comments for the curriculum agenda item ended, that’s when the DARVO behaviors were on full display.
First, Board Member Rooks rambled on about the timeline in an attempt to pass the buck about the removal of the materials. At no point did she address any of the concerns brought up by stakeholders during public comment. She said that the removal was triggered by a parent who sent an email to the board, and the district seems to have justified the removal because of HB2495 (sexually explicit materials), not PUSD’s anti-DEI policy.
Let’s not forget who all these pearl-clutching puritans voted for.
The anti-Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policy will act as a clean-up hitter for any books left on-base until all curriculum resembles propaganda and indoctrination reliant on rote memorization instead of rich, diverse works of literature and primary sources that provide children with an opportunity to critically analyze the world around them.
When this was passed last year, Board Member Ewing was the only opposing voice. During the meeting, she reminded everyone that when this policy was adopted last year, the justification given by the 4-1 majority was that the current pedo-in-chief threatened to withhold federal funding from any schools with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies.
She was quick to acknowledge the harm that was done, citing that many teachers in PUSD feel beat up and afraid to do their jobs. She stated that the board owes the community an apology for the violent rhetoric coming from some board members sitting at the dais.
The tough thing about governing bodies is that a lot of people who get elected to them don’t understand their roles. They think of themselves more like a legislator - the kind that give long-winded speeches and make everything about their own self-serving desires.
Melissa Ewing understands her role as a member of a governing body, and does her best to advocate for students and families in the district as the lone, pro-public education member. It’s a dirty, thankless job, and I appreciate her for doing it.
Many of the rest have Main Character Syndrome, if not straight-up narcissism.
And speaking of the Main Character of this meeting…it was none other than Janelle Bowles - sister to Arizona’s own J6 Insurrectionist, second-to-last vote-getter in the 2024 CD8 congressional primary, 2026 LD27 Senate primary loser, Fluent Speaker of “Tongues,” Fake Elector, Arizona’s Biggest Manbaby AND Mama Fratelli Look Alike, former Senator Anthony Kern (R-LD27)
She opened by letting everyone know she wasn’t going to make it about her and then immediately made it all about her. Like Rooks, she focused on the timeline of events and processes rather than the flawed policies coming from the state and district.
And then…it got…really, really racist.
I’m used to Ms. Bowles’s comments at board meetings being offensive, disjointed, and difficult to understand, but I never expected her to display her own ignorance in such a way that demonstrates exactly why policies that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion are so desperately needed in all of our schools.
Her seventeen-minute word salad buffet started with a reference to how much she prays, a phone call with her son, getting sworn in almost two years ago, unborn fetuses, Martin Luther King Jr, a podcast, a couple of money-grubbing pastors, and a story about cast iron goods.
The story was about a couple of preachers and how their ancestry is connected through slavery 👀 and how they go around the country telling people to “stop fighting racism with racism.”
Just a skosh of internet sleuthing found that these men are connected to some pretty extremist Christian nationalist congregations and “schools.” One is the Executive Director for the evangelical Justice House of Prayer in DC and the other once served at the unaccredited Texas-based Christ for the Nations Institute (CFNI).
If that name rings a bell, it’s because the Christian nationalist, Minnesota man convicted of murdering state legislators and their spouses in their own homes attended CFNI.
Ms. Bowles portrays the podcasts and sermons she listens to, watches, and shares (and shares, and shares) on social media as wholesome and unifying, but they are definitely neither of those things. Her rhetoric comes from dangerous extremists and it puts marginalized students and families in her district in harm’s way.
In fact, it already has. Students in PUSD will suffer because the Main Characters in this school board novella care more about their desire to always have a spotlight on them than prioritizing the safety, wellbeing, and education of the kids and families they were elected to serve.
School districts throughout Arizona face this kind of extremism, and in some districts, elections have been canceled because of a lack of candidates. Someone told me recently that a newly appointed school board member in an East Valley district wants to ban the book Elmer, a children’s picturebook about a patchwork elephant who gets picked on for being multicolored instead of monochromatic.
These aren’t grassroots movements. They’re designed by billionaires and their bible-beating buddies to radicalize people like Ms. Bowles into believing that she’s engaged in a Holy War. One either submits to the cherrypicked worldview shared by the extremists or they’ll get rid of apostates by any means necessary.
It’s basically the plots of 1984 and the Handmaid’s Tale combined.
The things she posted about Islam aren’t just her “personally held religious beliefs,” when she sits at the dais or posts on social media. They are very thinly veiled calls to convert, ostracize, or eliminate anyone who disagrees with her and her church leaders.
First she said that the snakeoil salesmenpastors she so deeply reveres say we need to get rid of “white baggage” and that white people can’t be made to feel bad about the treatment of enslaved people in the past. They also thought that Black folks spent too much time thinking about it as well and that we’ve tried darn-near everything to get rid of racism and it hasn’t worked, so she shared their brilliant idea: we just need to pray over racism.
She also wanted everyone to know that her family’s origins are Irish, and that white people were enslaved too, mmkay guyz? gah!
At this point, I locked eyes with a gentleman in the room, and we just shook our heads. The whole “white people were enslaved too” line is political propaganda. It falsely equates her ancestors’ alleged voluntary indentured servitude to the horrors of generational chattel slavery and subsequent Jim Crow laws.
This woman governs in the fourth largest K-12 district in Arizona and she doesn’t know basic history.
But wait! It gets worse! She told some convoluted story that no one could follow about a black “kettle/pot,” and I think a lot of us were waiting for a punchline or at least a sarcastic comparison between two things, but it never happened. The story was about a family whose ancestors were enslaved, but she didn’t use the terms “enslaved people” or “enslavers” when describing the people involved.
Instead she repeatedly used the terms “slaves” and “masters” which are not terms historians use anymore in history because it removes the humanity of the individuals who suffered because of it. American children aren’t as fragile as we think they are, and we can ease them into the dark times of our nation’s history beginning with simple vocabulary changes. The ancestors of the African American children and families in her district were not “slaves” - reduced to being property - they were “enslaved people” who had feelings, families, hopes, and dreams.
Reading about the institution of slavery in a history book once in a school year isn’t the same as reading a primary source memoir of someone who actually experienced it, despite how much Heather Rooks and Janelle Bowles believe it is.
She kept going on with her black kettle/pot story, and then, she cried. Yup. She used the tried and trusted strategy of White Woman Tears to assert that she understands the struggles of Black Americans because at some point in her Irish family’s journey, someone was an indentured servant. Allegedly.
As the Main Character in her own story, she probably had no idea how offensive her tears were to the people she ignored and condescended to in the audience. Yet another solid example of why we need MORE diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and policies in our society.
All of tone deaf racism is so disturbing, Secular FAM, but the thing I found the most disturbing was how very clear it was that Ms. Bowles has never read those books, and has no intention of ever doing so. Whenever she actually talked about the issue at hand, she could not name any of the books that were removed. Not one. She’s right around my age, so that makes sense, given the whitewashed education most Gen Xers received.
I didn’t read the Narrative of Frederick Douglass until I was an adult, and I only read A Raisin in the Sun in high school because I took drama during my senior year in high school. Summer of the Mariposas was written in 2012, so I haven’t read it…yet. Thanks to my local public library, it should be in my hot little hands in about five weeks.
As a school board member, if you’re receiving emails about book bans on Friday, and you have a board meeting the following Thursday, a responsible elected official would probably want to know what all the fuss was about and read a few excerpts, but this woman couldn’t even name the titles or authors.
She then let everyone in the audience know that she has Black friends and had a Black roommate in college in Prescott.
(She also mentioned getting arrested back in the day in Prescott for preaching at the courthouse, so if there are any Prescott area Gen X-vangelicals who knew Sister Fratelli back in the day, I’m all ears!)
Through several many twists and turns, the theme of her story seemed to mostly be that we don’t need education as much as we need prayer when it comes to history repeating itself.
Easy peasy.
Clerk Proudfit spoke of the flaws in the policy, despite voting for it last year, and added some thinly veiled digs towards her colleagues for always dragging the district in the spotlight for negative reasons.
President Tobey asked questions about the policy, and most of his comments were focused on “age appropriateness.” But seriously, as so many speakers stated: most kids in our schools have already been exposed to so much. Like, read the room.
Some of it is allowed by their parents, some is not, and some is a circumstance of their existence. Generally speaking, parents and guardians give the kids in their care access to video games, comic books, PG-13+ rated movies and shows, so seriously, what added dangers do these books pose?
What is so dangerous about children reading challenging books with difficult themes in a controlled school setting with educational professionals there trained to facilitate critical thinking? Are we really trying to protect kids here? Or is it about something else? Do the pearl clutchers who say that the death that occurs in the pages of the Summer of the Mariposas is “too mature” also plan on removing Charlotte’s Web or Bridge to Tarabithia from PUSD bookshelves for the same reason?
Another reason that Summer of the Mariposas was removed because of “situations involving potentially predatory adult behavior toward minors” and gee, gosh, golly, I wonder if there’s a school district whose students might benefit from learning about these very scary, real-life situations in a controlled school setting with educational professionals there trained to facilitate learning about them.
Better that than Flowers in the Attic.
The answers are right in front of us, Secular FAM, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies actually improve academic and behavioral outcomes in educational settings. Comprehensive Sex Ed leads to positive sexual, behavioral, and relational outcomes that last for generations. Yet, a small handful of racists and ideologues reject the facts in front of them. That’s fine when they’re simply the head of a household, but not when they’re head of the fourth largest district in Arizona.
Board members, like every other elected official, take an oath to the Constitution. Getting on a school board and then advocating for the destruction of the district from within isn’t normal behavior and we shouldn’t treat it as such. The tone in PUSD has shifted and the community is speaking out against the extremists on their school board, but the work is just beginning. PUSD will have a MAGA majority for at least two more years, but building a movement takes time.
Our public schools are on the front lines of our democracy, Secular FAM. So suit up, take your Vitamin C, do your cardio, show up to board meetings, and combat their lies with truth.
They may be loud, but we are many.
