PTA Hides Radical Links of March 14 School Walkout on Guns

The California State Parent Teacher Association (PTA) is working with public schools across the state to organize student walkouts on March 14 in support of gun control legislation.

The protests are being billed as part of an effort to advance “gun safety” in the wake of the mass shooting at Marjory Stonemason Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, last month. But parents are not being told that the protest has explicitly political, and radical, connections.

The “#Enough” protests will be part of the nationwide “National School Walkout,” which is being organized by the Women’s March, an explicitly anti-Trump group. One of the its leaders is Linda Sarsour, a rabid anti-Israel activist who has called for “jihad” against President Donald Trump. Another is Tamika D. Mallory, who recently attended an antisemitic speech by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Farrakhan specifically praised her from the stage.

The date of the protest, March 14, coincides with the one-month anniversary of the Parkland shooting, and with the PTA’s national legislative conference in Washington, DC. But it also coincides with the 50th anniversary of mass walkouts from Los Angeles classrooms by Mexican-American students in 1968. The event helped fuel the growing Chicano movement, elements of which remain active today and are among the most radical in California politics.

Many school districts are organizing activities to coincide with the March 14 anti-gun protest, even if some of them are also urging students to stay in their classrooms and on school campuses.

There appears to be no consideration for students who might support the Second Amendment, nor any effort to represent the alternative point of view, expressed by President Trump and others, that stresses better school security as the primary response to Parkland.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named to Forward’s 50 “most influential” Jews in 2017. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.