Episode 1
The Anti-Trans Hate Machine
Anti-Trans Attacks Tear Communities Apart
This short film is a companion to Episode 1 of Season 4 of TransLash Media’s limited podcast series The Anti-Trans Hate Machine: The Destruction of Public Schools.
The flood of anti-trans attacks in education isn’t a grassroots phenomenon, it’s part of a calculated attack on democracy. In the first episode of this series, journalist Imara Jones investigates right-wing efforts to take over school boards and throw communities into chaos. Join her as she travels to Pennsylvania to learn how these attacks are playing out in a vital swing district, shedding light on the powerful network behind them and how communities can fight back.
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In Bucks County, Pennsylvania, two neighboring school districts
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are the targets of anti-trans attacks.
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Suburbs like this have become battlegrounds for Christian nationalist
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and authoritarian movements looking to infiltrate
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public schools, all for a larger effort
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to undermine democracy.
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Interestingly, this fight starts with protest over COVID-19 masking.
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Soon, though, attacks expand to books with LGBTQ themes being pulled from the shelves.
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Local school board meetings, which are typically mundane, become sites for vicious debates.
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To the untrained eye, this sudden engagement with school boards
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may look like democracy at work, but it’s actually part of a well-coordinated effort
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to try to destroy it.
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The strategy?
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So division, gain control, and turn neighbor against neighbor.
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And it initially works.
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In November 2021, the Bucks County School Board is taken over by a right-wing majority.
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They work to get DEI and trans issues out of schools,
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and they vote to whitewash the teaching of slavery and
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various civil rights movements, including LGBTQ history.
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The good news is that change is possible when people and communities
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get involved, because in 2023, voters reject this far-right approach and flip the school board.
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But all across the country, anti-trans issues are being used to undermine public education, like in Bucks County.
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To find out more, visit www.translash.org.
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