(Stephen Horn, Headline USA) At a townhall hosted by Moms for Liberty Wednesday in Raleigh, N.C., concerned parents and policy experts gathered to discuss the hottest topics involving the state’s education system.
Of special interest during the roughly two-hour “Giving Parents a Voice” event was the topic of classroom violence and discipline issues. At least three of the featured panelists had left the public-school system due to violence or threats from students against themselves or their fellow teachers.
Unfortunately, the event itself may have given them unpleasant flashbacks after radical social-justice warriors attempted to disrupt the meeting—with one woman getting escorted out by Raleigh police following a profanity-laced tirade.
Leftist activist tries to disrupt @Moms4Liberty Town Hall, and is escorted out by @RaleighPolice (it’s a private event)
She shrieks “f— you, convict” and gives me the finger, I guess I’m famous? pic.twitter.com/eVsP80yENj
— Stephen Horn (@stephenehorn) April 18, 2024
The left-wing activist wearing a COVID face mask and a T-shirt that said “Ban Bigots Not Books” attempted to disrupt the event when she was not given a microphone at the end of the Q&A session following the panels.
Leftist state Rep. Julie von Haefen, D-Apex, also attened the townhall, tweeting that she was there not to hear parents’ concerns but to “learn about what this group has planned to attack our education system.”
I’m here at the Moms for Liberty Parents Town Hall in Raleigh. As a public school supporter, I am here to learn about what this group has planned to attack our education system. This was about 5 minutes before the program was supposed to start. 🤷️ #nced #ncpol pic.twitter.com/3K3J2aWBQC
— Rep. Julie von Haefen (@juliefornc) April 17, 2024
Although von Haefen was sitting in close proximity to the woman who was escorted out, the lawmaker denied claims that she arrived or sat with this demonstrator: “I don’t know her.”
Moms for Liberty, an education-focused grassroots organization, might be best known for its activism in regards to COVID-19 restrictions, leftist indoctrination, or pornographic material in school libraries.
However, much of the panelists’ discussion revolved around classroom safety and the failures of the public-school system in dealing with misbehaving students.
Susie Cole described the incident that led to her leaving the Surry County Schools after five years working with students with the in-school suspension program.
“I left the public school system because I was threatened by one of those students who did actually actively follow through on that threat,” Cole said.
“He didn’t hurt me physically, but that day we had the police involvement,” Cole continued. “At that point, I knew it was time to seek something else; [I] loved working with the students, but needed to move on.”
Annette Albright, a former behavioral-modification technician at Charlotte–Mecklenburg Schools, related how she had been brutally assaulted by a group of students in 2016
“I had a concussion, I had scratches, I had bruises…so many bruises through my head that two weeks later, maybe three, I went to my hairdresser and she actually started crying.” she said.
Instead of being supported by her school district, Albright was fired.
“I told the absolute truth, told what happened, got the report from CMS, and was like, ‘Whose report is this?’” she said. “Immediately, I was labeled the villain.”
Albright settled a lawsuit against the district in 2018.
“We have to make our schools safe or none of nothing else works,” she said. “We don’t have educators because they’re afraid.”
Albright also referenced a video that had gone viral via Libs of TikTok just days before, showing a student slapping his teacher in Forsythe County, N.C.
Wild footage shows a student slap a teacher across the face twice while he taunts her. This reportedly happened at Parkland High School in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
The sheriff’s office says they are investigating. pic.twitter.com/LpTHGY6B40
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) April 16, 2024
Although Moms for Liberty is a nonpartisan organization, its activism has attracted a great deal of negative attention from the Left.
Shortly before the group’s national summit last June at the Museum of the American Revolution on Philadelphia, a far-left hate group, the Southern Poverty Law Center, flagged the group as “extremist,” which resulted in acts of mass protest and vandalism, nearly leading the museum to cancel the event.
The SPLC smear attack was later discovered to have been done in direct consultation with the Biden administration, which had previously weaponized the Justice Department against concerned parents attending their local school-board meetings.
Local chapters have also been forced to deal with the harassment that comes, ironically, from left-wing extremists who accuse the parent group of the same sorts of radical acts for which they themselves are egregiously guilty.
During the townhall Albright relayed she was told that she “didn’t win a school board seat” in deeply-Democratic Mecklenburg county because of her friendship with the local Moms for Liberty chapter chair, Brooke Weiss.
Weiss, a former teacher, also left the profession over violence in the classroom: “A student that had been threatening me for the whole entire school year, when he attacked my partner teacher, beat him to a pulp, I decided that I needed to go,” she said.
“I’ll take my friend over a school board seat any day of the week,” said Albright.
Raleigh-based journalist Stephen Horn can be found on Twitter at @stephenehorn or on Substack (“This Week in the Triangle”).
