Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) may be the next target of the “Cancel Culture” crowd as an advisory group seeks to rename a San Francisco school bearing her name.
A school renaming committee presented its recommendations to the school board earlier this month.
The group’s “guiding principles” for isolating a figure’s name for removal included:
- Anyone directly involved in the colonization of people
- Slave owners or participants in enslavement
- Perpetuators of genocide or slavery
- Those who exploit workers/people
- Those who directly oppressed or abused women, children, queer or transgender people
- Those connected to any human rights or environmental abuses
- Those who are known racists and/or white supremacists and/or espoused racist beliefs
A list of schools for potential renaming, peppered with errors, includes an elementary school bearing Feinstein’s name because she is “responsible for the eviction of a whole Pilipino [sic] neighboorhood [sic], and the police brutaility [sic], allowed police dogs to atack [sic] filipino [sic] veteran elders. She repeatly [sic] protected and flew the confederate flag in front of sf [sic] city hall.”
A Senate staffer for Feinstein disputed that notion to the Los Angeles Times.
“The eviction allegation was an apparent reference to the International Hotel, where 150 elderly Chinese and Filipino tenants were evicted in 1977, prior to the building’s demolition. Feinstein did not become mayor until the following year and had a hand in shaping the property’s redevelopment, according to a brochure from the hotel’s history committee,” the paper reported.
The Confederate flag incident occurred more than a decade before Feinstein was mayor.
“The school district is free to take whatever action it deems necessary, but it’s important to know the flag, part of a design installed years before Sen. Feinstein was a supervisor or mayor, came down during her tenure as mayor,” Feinstein spokesman Tom Mentzer told the San Francisco Chronicle.
Feinstein is not the only former San Francisco mayor who may be cancelled. Former Mayor Willie Brown (D) may have his name scrubbed from a middle school because he was allegedly “Responsible for much of gentrification in SF while he was mayor.”
In addition to the typical American leaders ridiculed by progressives, such as former presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Abraham Lincoln, several other noteworthy leaders, both local and national, may face deletion, as well.
Progressive environmentalist John Muir is on the list. The committee deemed him “Racist and responsible for theft of Native lands.”
Robert Louis Stevenson Elementary may be renamed because Stevenson wrote “Foreign Children,” which the committee document called “a cringeworthy poem.”
Former President Herbert Hoover gets labeled a “racist president” and “accepting of white supremacy.”
Presidio Middle School takes flak because the name means “a fortified military settlement,” according to the committee.
Paul Revere K-8 made the list because Revere “served as commander of land artillery in the disastrous Penobscot Expedition of 1779, this is directly connected to the colonization of the Penobscot,” the committee report said.
A new name may be in store for Thomas Edison Charter Academy because Edison “had a foundness [sic] for electrocuting animals, and did a whole sting of animals including Topsy the Elephant, who was a well loved circus elephant during that time.”
The committee disapproved of “Roosevelt” Middle School, but did not do enough research to determine whether it was honoring Theodore or Franklin. The committee’s criticism focused on the latter, identifying FDR’s creation of Japanese internment camps in the Bay Area.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed (D) blasted the effort to strip the historical names from the schools.
“It’s offensive to parents who are juggling their children’s daily at-home learning schedules with doing their own jobs and maintaining their sanity,” Breed said in October.
“It’s offensive to me as someone who went to our public schools, who loves our public schools, and who knows how those years in the classroom are what lifted me out of poverty and into college. It’s offensive to our kids who are staring at screens day after day instead of learning and growing with their classmates and friends,” she said.
According to Public School Review, San Francisco Unified School District has an 85 percent graduation rate, while only 50 percent of students are proficient in reading and math.
Kyle Olson is a reporter for Breitbart News. He is also host of “The Kyle Olson Show,” syndicated on Michigan radio stations on Saturdays — download full podcast episodes. Follow him on Parler.
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