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Highland Park residents recently opened their mailboxes to find flyers slamming a school board candidate because he put a Black Lives Matter sign in his yard.

Ahead of the May 1 municipal elections, some North Texas school board races have taken on a tenor infused with huge amounts of cash, political divisiveness and dog whistles evoking national wedge issues.

For more than a year, trustees have been at the center of some of the countrys most heated debates: People have packed into meetings to decry mask mandates or to demand they remain in place. Theyve come to say schools should be reopened to 100% capacity or that they must be closed completely to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Theyve testified that teachers should never talk about Black Lives Matter or that districts must be more active in dismantling systemic racism.

These high-profile debates made board members better known to their communities and considered with a more political slant, experts say.

While technically nonpartisan bodies, school boards have long dealt with questions that come with big political implications, including desegregation, said Donald Kettl, a professor at the University of Texas Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs.

The difference now is that society has become so polarized and almost every question has become political, Kettl said.

How trustees feel about mask mandates and public health guidance becomes a reflection of their political attitudes. And local elections held so soon after the latest presidential contest give candidates the opportunity to play to those already active in both parties and mobilize voters in what are often low-turnout races.

A candidate in Keller ISD, for example, took to Facebook to fend off a claim that he was affiliated with QAnon, a group associated with unfounded conspiracy theories. In McKinney ISD, one of the candidates helped form a group devoted to unmasking children. She took legal action against the district over the matter.

Theres a base out there to be tapped into for both the left and the right and a set of dog whistles and sort of key phrases or terms that might be useful in trying to galvanize that base, Kettl said. An example is Black Lives Matter.

Perhaps because of that shift, some residents say this years trustee elections brought out the uglier sides of their communities as huge amounts of money flowed, political action committees formed and political consultants joined in campaigns.

Its yet another arena of our public life that will be relentlessly politicized and drawn into the vortex of the culture wars, said Matthew Wilson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University.

Polarizing debate

School board seats typically are not the most glamorous of elected positions.

But in their unpaid jobs, trustees are responsible for hiring the superintendent, approving the budget and setting countless other decisions involving personnel, facilities and district policy.

Many trustees interpret their roles differently and attempt to exercise greater control, former Houston ISD Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra said.

Others, and Ive experienced this over the years, really want to get involved and basically micromanage in the district, Saavedra said.

Its not a new phenomena for trustees to be minutely involved in district affairs, but it becomes more complex when they incorporate their political agendas, experts say. And recent months have created an ample opportunity for polarized debates in school boardrooms.

In both Carroll and Highland Park two wealthy, mostly white areas much of the discussion during the school board elections has been on diversity issues.

A flyer, which was circulated by a PAC linked to hotel magnate Monty Bennett, attacked Highland Park ISD candidate Doug Woodward for displaying a Black Lives Matter sign, labelling him a New Jersey liberal, although he left the state after high school. It contrasted a darkened photo of him with a smiling Kelli Macatee, describing her as a Christian Conservative Texan.

Woodward said its unfortunate that allegations about his beliefs keep coming out of left field, including falsely saying he supports unisex bathrooms.

Macatee said she was not aware of the flyer before it was circulated and would never have approved of it.

The mailer touched a raw nerve.

Near the start of the COVID-19 crisis, some Highland Park families formed a vocal group known as Park Cities Parents Unite to argue against mask mandates. It soon began weighing in on other controversial topics and blasting out its opinions in mailers and emails.

The group recently uploaded a video of Woodward, dubbing him Diversity Doug. It also mass-emailed parents last week saying Woke Politics have infiltrated the schools and circulated flyers decrying cancel culture in the classroom.

The groups president, Spencer Siino, said it formed long before the school board election, but that many residents who support its goals also support Macatee. Siino donated $5,000 to her campaign, but the nonprofit itself is not endorsing a candidate.

I imagine the temperature gets raised wherever you challenge the status quo, and thats particularly true in the Park Cities, TX, he wrote in an email.

Overall, Macatee has raised more than $42,000, initial campaign records show, far more than what any candidate raised during the last contested election in that district. She says her donations come from a wide range of people in the community. Part of her funding has gone toward paying two political consulting firms, including one with a record of riling up a school board race.

Among the central issues listed on Macatees website is: DIVERSITY We MUST NOT engage in racism for the sake of diversity.

Issues of diversity and inclusion have similarly engulfed Southlake Carroll ISD. Two sitting trustees were recently indicted on charges of violating open meetings law by discussing a proposed cultural competency plan outside an authorized setting. A judge issued a restraining order in December and temporarily halted the plan from being implemented.

The plan which would mandate the district hire a director of equity and inclusion, establish a grievance system through which students can report discrimination and require cultural competency training was cast by opponents as reverse racism. They accused the district of trying to form diversity police, even as students pleaded that it was necessary to help end the discrimination they faced at school.

As the plan sits in limbo, trustee candidates have positioned it as a debate over the future of Carroll ISD. District 5 candidate Hannah Smith described the plan as a hindrance to free speech while opponent Ed Hernandez said the community knows the plan wont be implemented and should move past the fear-mongering.

In District 4, Cameron Cam Bryan claimed the plan would cause more divisiveness in the district while Linda Warner said theres a need for an alternative to a plan rooted in a lengthy student code of conduct.

Tarrant County pastors are getting involved with the race. Two pastors from Gateway Church stopped short of endorsing candidates but reminded congregants of the members who were running for election including Bryan for school board. They went on to encourage churchgoers to vote.

Another church was forced to distance itself from the Southlake race after a woman called members identifying herself as a congregant and encouraged them to vote for Bryan and Smith, saying they must be elected because they stand against critical race theory and in support of freedom of speech and religion.

Money has also flowed into the Carroll race. Southlake Families PAC which describes itself as unapologetically rooted in Judeo-Christian values and backs Smith and Bryan raised more than $57,000 in the early months of 2021 and reported having nearly $140,000 cash on hand.

Bryan and Smith reported raising more than $50,000 each from January through late March. Meanwhile, Warner raised more than $24,000 and Hernandez reported $3,400 in political contributions over the same period.

It can be hard to tell if the notable financial support in these races is the impetus for or result of political polarization, said Kettl, the UT professor.

Its both cause and effect in a way that the most successful way of raising money is to tap into some of these deep-seated opinions and, on the other hand, the money tends to follow those who advanced those opinions, Kettl said.

Viola Garcia, president of the National School Boards Association, said its important to remember that children are listening to the rhetoric engulfing these races.

Our students are actively participating in the conversations that adults are having across our country, she said.

For example, a coalition of Southlake students dedicated to making their district more inclusive has spent months encouraging older students to register to vote and is endorsing Hernandez and Warner.

Take a moment to think about what kind of progress you would like to see in Southlake for future generations, the students wrote on their Instagram page.

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The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.

The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from The Beck Group, Bobby and Lottye Lyle, The Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, The Meadows Foundation, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University and Todd A. Williams Family Foundation. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Labs journalism.

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Mailers, money and a churchs politics: How some North Texas school board races are drawn into the vortex - The Dallas Morning News

It looks as if the right are giving themselves heartburn to own the libs. Over the weekend, some prominent US conservatives shared pictures of themselves eating enormous slabs of meat in response to fabricated claims that president Joe Biden is planning to limit red meat consumption. Despite the fact that Bidens imaginary meat quotas exist only in these peoples heads, rightwingers have spent the last few days frothing at the mouth over them. Several Fox News hosts have repeated this baseless claim and a number of Republican politicians, including the governor of Texas, have tweeted their opposition to this fictional policy. Larry Kudlow, the former economic adviser to Donald Trump, even complained that Biden wants Americans to drink plant-based beer. You know, as opposed to the flesh-based beer that real Americans enjoy.

What on earth sparked this carnivorous conservative fever-dream? MailOnline. On Thursday it published a highly misleading article claiming: Bidens climate plan could limit you to eat just one burger a MONTH. The word could is doing a lot of heavy lifting there: Biden has said nothing of the sort. The assertion stems from a 2020 academic paper that has no connections to Biden; this study noted that if Americans made a 90% cut to their beef consumption, there would be a 51% reduction in diet-related US greenhouse gas emissions between 2016 and 2030.

Factchecking all this is largely futile, of course: the people who get het up about an imaginary war on burgers tend to not let reality get in the way of their feelings. I suspect many of the high-profile people pushing the Biden-bans-beef narrative knew very well it was baloney; they just wanted to stoke the culture wars. Fox News, for example, rammed the story down peoples throats for days then acknowledged on Monday that its reporting about Bidens meat quotas had been somewhat inaccurate. The rightwing grievance cycle goes like this: invent something to get upset about; have jowly men with names like Tucker and Chad amplify this imaginary grievance on conservative media outlets; find ludicrous and often self-defeating way to protest against this imaginary grievance; get Tucker and Chad to quietly admit they may have somewhat exaggerated things; conjure up something new to get outraged about.

This isnt the first time the right has had a meat-based meltdown. Meat has become a cornerstone of the culture wars, a recurring theme in the endless rightwing grievance cycle. They want to take away your hamburgers, the former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka yelled at the 2019 Conservative Political Action conference. This is what Stalin dreamed about but never achieved. Ah, yes, Stalins Five-Year Hamburger Eradication Plan I remember learning about that in history class. In todays polarised world, meat is no longer just a foodstuff: performative meat-eating has become a way to signal that youre a Real Man (or a Traditional Woman who appreciates Real Men) who loves guns and freedom and is sceptical about the climate crisis. Fox News host Jesse Watters once ate a steak on air to trigger a vegan. Very edgy stuff! Jordan Peterson, the rights favourite philosopher, has memorably endorsed a meat-only diet. (Tangentially, according to one study by researchers from the University of Hawaii, men incorporate more red meat into their diet when they feel like their manliness is threatened.)

Ultimately, however, it is not just the right that has an unhealthy obsession with meat. Global meat consumption keeps rising: the amount of meat consumed per person nearly doubled in the past 50 years. Plant-based eating may have become fashionable, yet the world is on track to consume more meat in 2021 than ever before. That is a problem because the meat industry has a huge carbon footprint. While banning people from eating animal products obviously isnt feasible, we desperately need to find ways to reduce global meat consumption. Food for thought while you enjoy a plant-based beer, anyway.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

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No, Biden has not declared war on meat. But maybe thats what the world needs - The Guardian

Anderson edited "Leveraging: A Political, Economic and Societal Framework" (Springer, 2014), has taught at five universities and ran for the Democratic nomination for a Maryland congressional seat in 2016.

Gallup's fresh quarterly assessment of Americans' political leanings finds 44 percent of Americans regard themselves as independents. This is a remarkable statistic especially because we are living in a time when traditional media and social media continue to hammer away at the claim that we are a nation that is polarized.

Our people are polarized and, the media's conventional wisdom holds, that is why they have sent politicians to Washington to engage in very little but horrific trench warfare the policymaking equivalent of what happened when the Allies and Central Powers squared off in France for the first three years of World War I. Our Congress is simply acting out the polarization of its constituents, the theory goes, which of course makes it impossible for them to agree on plans to tackle almost every major issue.

How can this be, that we are a polarized people even though 44 percent regard ourselves as independents? It is not easy to provide a convincing answer. Although Gallup calculated that the share identifying as independents increased 4 percentage points since the final quarter of last year, it was also astounding that two out of every five citizens did not identify with either major party at the time of the presidential election.

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Polarization theorists will tell you the vast majority of self-identified independents aren't really political free spirits because their voting patterns clearly unmask them as red or blue, in the main. And the fresh numbers from Gallup, which has been taking similar measurements every three months since the 1980s, bears this out somewhat: Only 11 percent insist they have no partisan lean at all. But when pressed, 19 percent of the electorate identifies as independent but with a Democratic tilt and 15 percent reveal themselves as Republican-leaning independents. (The numbers don't perfectly align because of rounding.)

But conceding a leaning toward one party rather than the other as opposed to claiming allegiance to one side still says a lot. It may mean that millions of voters have decided that, in deciding to get behind a candidate who has a chance to win, they have ended up pointed most often toward the Republicans or Democrats.

OK, but where is the polarization in the electorate? Where is the fabled 50-50 split? Where is the straightforward statistic that explains the culture wars? Do we need another dozen surveys, asking the political identity question every possible way, to settle the point that we are not divided right down the middle and maybe not even 55 to 45?

Nine out of every 20 adults do not profess to be either a Democrat or a Republican. This fact cannot be reconciled with the assertion the electorate is polarized, no matter how much you crunch data in an effort to prove otherwise.

What we do know is that the media loves a boxing match between two contestants. Many in the American political press corps if they were sent to cover the governments of Britain or France or Germany, would get recalled for poor performance in a matter of months. That's because European parliamentary systems often rely on coalitions among as many as five parties, and American journalists who have only been trained to perpetuate the us-versus-them narrative would lack the nuance and the vocabulary and the syntax to explain such complex politics.

They would do better in Russia or China, with systems just as binary as ours. While we have two "small-d" democratic parties, they have autocratic regimes and dissenters. There are the voices of the system, and the voices of the powerless. Democratic and autocratic systems are extremely different, but they share an overall similar structure.

It is also true there are segments of both the Republican and Democratic parties that are loud and clear, even violent. These segments, probably two-fifths of the total electorate, are definitely polarized. Their voters have an intense identity conflict even if they do not have an intense policy conflict one that pits those who are threatened by highly educated whites, racial minorities and the LGBTQ community against working-class whites, rural whites, and large segments of the middle class and high-income whites.

Many academics and pundits have discussed the distinction between identity and policy issues, and there is surely some merit to the distinction. It is far from clear, though, that it neatly applies to all 240 million voters even if it can explain a good deal of the tension between the extremists in the electorate, between the right-wing media and the left-wing media, and between many of the lawmakers at the Capitol.

Even recognizing the importance of the identity-versus-policy distinction, this still leaves all the people between the 20-yard-line "red zones" on the national political football field. Though they differ with those on the other side of the 50-yard line, they are not rigid and uncompromising and are not driven by issues of identity.

Many are moderates, and some are new centrists who want an ambitious synthesis of progressive and conservative values. Most hate gridlock and love bipartisanship.

One thing is plain, and underscored anew by the Gallup numbers released this month: It is time to put the polarization thesis about the American people aside. Washington is polarized. The people of the United States are not.

The rest is here:
Nine in 20 of us identify as independents. So how can we be polarized? - The Fulcrum

In a world where our lives are bounded by pandemic restrictions, performance and travel alike have been reduced mostly to private viewings and stay-cations. The situation has spawned experiments to create innovative artistic experiences, a latest one being Okinawa Field Trip, an interactive virtual theater piece from Georgetown Universitys Theater & Performance Studies Program conceived to explore themes of environmental issues, U.S.-Japan relationships, social justice, and historical reconciliation. Led by Associate Professor and Playwright/Director Natsu Onoda Power in a student-devised group process, Okinawa Field Trip is a curious study. As a performance it raises questions that professional and student artists alike need to wrestle with seriously in attempting cross-cultural work.

A first question is Who is it for? Who is the audience?

In the opening, Doug E. Dugong, a puppet representing an endangered sea mammal native to parts of the Indo-Pacific, invites us to join him on a magical bus. This cheerful, blubbery figure, who greets and wants to engage the audience in songs with lyrics like Who knows what well see/in the land of possibility/in Okinawa, leaves no doubt that the show is created for children. Its learning through entertainment. (Simple language lessons are thrown in and a little about the history of Okinawa.) But scenes grow darker and the material more adult, depicting situations of protest and political unrest. Theres even a scene in a bar, with alcohol shots lined up where the tour reveals another side of the port city and military-base culture. It throws the audience into a state of confusion, and everyone lapses silent unclear how to engage.

A more satisfying experiment that answers this question is found in the work of another company, BASAbali, which has engaged children all over the island of Bali in the creation of the superhero character Luh Ayu. In both books and recently an animated film, BASAbali tackles some of the same issues as Okinawan Field Trip, including environmental challenges affecting native fauna and flora and the rescuing of an indigenous language and culture. Its targeted audience of children is always kept in mind.

Another question that gets raised is Who gets to tell the story?

In recent years, this question has come to dominate the conversation and fuel the culture wars. Cross-cultural experiments are even more subject to criticism.

Power is a powerful local voice and advocate for authentic and respectful narrative. I would welcome her joining a conversation on this topic. For me, there were cringey moments throughout the evening.

However, one of the most successful depictions in Okinawa Field Trip is the insertion of a ghost character, an American GI who comes to life as someone stationed at the U.S base in 1969. Here we get a welcome taste of dramatic complexity of character. One could see the young actor had done his homework and selected a role and situation with built-in conflict. The character straddles the worlds of the U.S. military and Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. He is also an African American in what many felt was U.S.-occupied Okinawa while back home the Civil Rights Movement had exploded the previous year in riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

There is also a Japanese musician who serves as a local guide and teacher. He has made it his mission to use music and storytelling to rescue the local language of Okinawans of this island long colonized by the Japanese. His participation gave us rare moments of rich authenticity.

This leads me to a final question I had watching this piece: How to avoid surface skimming culture and instead take a deeper dive and activate an emotional connection at the heart of theater?

The International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme (PYP) and other international school models have wrestled with the same challenge for many decades. Leaders in best practices call out the pitfalls of annually trotting out what they term as flags, feasts, and festivals. Sadly, there were quite a few flags-and-feasts gaffes in Doug E. Dugongs tour. The show even included a pit stop for lunch where local cuisine was extolled and virtually sampled. Meanwhile, the puppet Doug-ee chomped on the manatee-like creatures preferred sea grass.

Finding mature and challenging source material appropriate to the age group and goals of Georgetown Universitys finest might offer some solutions. A couple of books come to mind: Director Sir Peter Halls Cities in Civilization about the intersection of civic and cultural histories, and local writer Blair A. Rubles fine work, The Muse of Urban Delirium: How the Performing Arts Paradoxically Transformed Conflict-Ridden Cities into Centers of Cultural Innovation. Rubles writing on the Japanese city of Osaka and the social-political-economic factors that brought the flourishing of Kabuki theater is particularly strong.

As for performance addressing our environmental crisis, you can bet there will be more companies wading in to save species like the dugong and hopefully move people to action in addressing climate change and humans ongoing degradation and disregard for nature. This project could be a step in preparing students for the new field of arts advocacy in the service of the planet.

Running Time: Approximately 90 minutes.

Okinawa Field Trip is available to view live at 7 pm ET April 19 to 22 and April 26 to 29, 2021. Register for free at Eventbrite.

This virtual event serves as the main project in the Georgetown University Theater & Performance Studies Programs Seeds of Change: Reimagining the World season celebrating the Davis Performing Arts Centers 15th anniversary.

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I took Natsu Onoda Power's 'Okinawa Field Trip' and came back with questions - DC Metro Theater Arts

The human body is constantly evolving, but tripling meat consumption in just over a century is a fairly remarkable update.

What we need in conjunction with these perfunctory fact-checks every time a conservative hallucinates someone coming to take their burger is a deeper interrogation of why meats have become such a foundational part of American meals. This was not always the norm, for either the Indigenous communities or for the majority of working people prior to the 1970s. To revert to the anecdotal once again, over the years I have asked my dad and my aunts and uncles, all of whom grew up on a tobacco farm, how often they ate meat growing up from the 1940s to the 1970s. The answer across the board has been that cuts of beef and pork, and even chicken to an extent, were rare dinner table items because of their scarcity and relative cost. And the Public Health Nutrition study backs this up: While Americans, per capita, were already consuming more meat than the rest of the world in the 1960s, the average person was eating roughly 250 grams of meat per day, or 100 grams less per day than they did in 2007. Go back to 1909, and the average American was eating just 150 grams per day.

The human body is constantly evolving, but tripling meat consumption in just over a century is a fairly remarkable update. This sudden uptick has far less to do with personal choice and much more to do with the way that the federal government has decided to act as a crutch for corporations like Tyson, Cargill, and JBS. Were that crutch ever kicked outby cutting some of the $38 billion in subsidies paid to dairy and meat industries and pushing for the increased presence of labor unions in the warehousesa new future might actually be possible. But, again, this is not the tack being pursued by the White House or Congress.

The reason that not even a trace amount of nuance can be added to this conversation on a national scale is because of how devoted Americans are both to meat and to reactionary culture wars. Meat isnt an organic protein to be devoured in moderation so much as it is a representation of American exceptionalism. Likewise, the need to fact-check every claim furthered by conservative grifters, while worthwhile in moderation, isnt so much a useful contribution to the discourse as it is an attempt to game the SEO and soak up as many clicks as possible from the deluge of Meat+Canceled+Biden Google searches. Aunt Joan is not clicking your CNN link, Larry Kudlow still doesnt know where beer comes from, and the White House is not remotely radical in its approach to climate change, meat, or almost anything else. OK? OK.

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There's No Biden War on Meat. There Should Be. - The New Republic