By Marcy Winograd
The second-largest school district in the country has brought down the hammer on social justice educators following last year’s passage of AB 715, an “antisemitism” bill sponsored by the California Israel lobby and rubber-stamped by its minions in the state legislature and Governor Gavin Newsom.
The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has ordered Ethnic Studies and social studies teachers at the Downtown Business Magnet (DBM) to remove Palestinian and Black Lives Matter flags and require them to undergo training on the use of “neutral terms” to describe sensitive topics, including Israel’s slaughter and starvation of Gaza.
The order from the District’s Office of Student Civil Rights came after Emet Legal Services, contacted by another teacher at DBM, filed a complaint of antisemitism last February objecting to social studies and health teacher Tiffany Do’s display of a Palestinian flag and anti-genocide poster, as well as the wearing of a keffiyeh in class. In its 19-page “Report of Findings,” which Do said was not shared with DBM teachers, the District said the keffiyeh could stay, but advocacy posters had to go.
Community rallies in solidarity with Do
At a lively after-school protest in front of the Downtown Business Magnet on May 16, teacher and Union del Barrio organizer Ron Gochez said the District’s silencing of teachers in the face of a U.S.-subsidized genocide was like telling teachers in Nazi Germany to take a neutral stance on the Holocaust.
School psychologist Clemen Avalos also spoke at the rally sponsored by LA Educators for Justice in Palestine, Association of Raza Educators, Union del Barrio, Community Self-Defense Coalition and others. Avalos said, “Palestinian students, Mexican students, students born north or south of the border, Black students, Indigenous students–all of our students deserve the right to learn about the truth about their history, their identity and their culture.”
Ethnic Studies under attack
Avalos’ comments speak to AB 715’s threat to Ethnic Studies as an interdisciplinary study of decolonization that centers stories and struggles of people of color. The California Department of Education’s Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) underscores solidarity with the oppressed as a foundational value of Ethnic Studies, a course originally required for high school graduation under 2021 legislation, but now stalled due to zero funding in the state budget. From the start, the Israel lobby – JPAC/Jewish California and the California Legislative Jewish Caucus (LJC) — has objected to the mere mention of Palestine in Ethnic Studies, introducing one bill after another to either restrict Ethnic Studies to domestic issues or otherwise police the discipline’s teachers with AB 715, authored by Assemblymember Rick Chavez-Zbur (D-Santa Monica).
DBM Ethnic Studies and health teacher Do (Tido) told teachers, students, parents and community members gathered in the blistering sunlight in front of the school, “AB 715 is an erasure of marginalized people. The order to remove a Palestinian flag during an active genocide is actually Islamophobic, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian.”
The Institute for the Understanding of Anti-Palestinian Racism (IUAPR) is a non-profit of scholars and researchers that encourages victims of anti-Palestinian racism to report incidents to the organization for “education” and “advocacy.” IUAPR defines anti-Palestinian racism as a form of racism that “silences, excludes, erases, stereotypes, defames or dehumanizes Palestinians or their narratives.” Its list of examples of such racism includes “failing to acknowledge Palestinians with a collective identity, belonging and rights in relation to occupied and historic Palestine”… “pressuring others to exclude Palestinian perspectives” … and “defaming Palestinians and their [non-Palestinian] allies with slander such as being inherently anti-semitic.”
Back at the rally
Against a backdrop of teachers holding signs that read “Protect Ethnic Studies” and “Defend Palestinian Voices,” Do animatedly addressed an estimated 40 people — including Colin Hernandez, Zbur’s challenger in the June 2nd primary.
“AB 715 weaponizes civil rights advocacy against the people it was meant to protect, so that just the mere existence of a Palestinian flag is now considered antisemitic, but the overreach of AB 715 does not stop with Palestinians,” said Do. The crowd shouted, “That’s right! That’s right!” Do continued. “Under AB 715, the statement ‘Black Lives Matter’ is painted as discriminatory bias. Under AB 715, historical injustices like the theft of Native American land cannot be righted under the banner of ‘Land Back.’”
Since the District began its investigation, Do says she has removed the Palestinian flag, along with the BLM flag, Landback flag, and Puerto Rico flag.
Daniel, a member of Roybal Learning Center’s Social Justice Club, said students in the club stand behind Do in their outrage over AB 715’s straitjacket on speech and attack on Ethnic Studies. “From the Nakba to the current genocide, AB 715 is a violation of the First Amendment,” said Daniel, who noted Israel had infiltrated the US government, from the federal to the state level.
Following its investigation, the District determined that Do’s conduct “subjected students to discrimination on the basis of shared ancestry or ethnic characteristic in violation of the Civil Rights Act.” The report also noted, however, that “Students generally described her classroom environment as open, nonjudgmental, comfortable.”
The charge of discrimination based on “shared ancestry” assumes that all Jews and Israelis identify and support the State of Israel and perceive solidarity with Palestine or a Palestinian flag as antisemitic.
Not everyone agrees.
Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Zionist organization that features keffiyehs and watermelon caps on its website, argues that both Jewish and Arab peoples have ancient, ancestral, and spiritual ties to the land in West Asia. According to JVP, asserting exclusive Jewish rights to Palestine inevitably leads to the displacement of Palestinians and the erasure of their connection to the same ancestral land. Thousands of JVP members and supporters – some carrying Palestinian flags — have occupied state capitols, subway stations, and lawmakers’ offices to demand the US stop funding what Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry have all termed Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Daniel, the DBM student, also challenged the notion that expressing solidarity with Palestine was antisemitic or discriminatory. “A Semite is someone who speaks a Semitic language, of which includes Arabic,” said Daniel, adding that a Semite is not just limited to Jewish people. Being a Semite extends to the same people being murdered every day by Israeli bombs. To want Palestinians to live a peaceful life and talking ill of the Israeli government–that is not antisemitic; it is the opposite.”
“Israeli genocide bill”
Educator unions, administrator associations, Jewish Voice for Peace chapters and the ACLU all opposed AB 715 due to concerns over the chilling of instruction and conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism — yet the state legislature approved AB 715 after midnight on 9/13/25, prompting a protester to shout from the Senate balcony, “This is an Israeli genocide censorship bill and you all know it … this bill is aiding and abetting a genocide that is ongoing. You all have blood on your hands.”
AB 715 establishes a politically-appointed antisemitism coordinator to monitor teacher training and in-class instruction beginning with four-year-olds in transitional kindergarten, and to follow up on complaints which can be filed anonymously by those not directly harmed by alleged discrimination. So in theory, an IDF soldier in occupied Palestine could file a complaint against California teachers based on hearsay, and demand LAUSD administrators drop what they’re doing to pursue investigations of educators.
The District’s corrective actions, with a June 10th deadline for compliance, include administrative review of all DBM history, social science and Ethnic Studies displays and content; department-wide professional development on addressing sensitive topics; and implementation of a site-based review process for supplemental instructional materials. According to Do, DBM’s principal has already delivered the mandated professional development, reviewing the corrective actions, including follow-up monitoring to, in the District’s words, “verify continued compliance with nondiscrimination neutrality.”
Such mandates raise the question: What is neutral language for Israeli slaughter, starvation, and torture of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, for Israel’s obliteration of every school in Gaza and killing of over 200 journalists? The District’s condemnation of classroom bias also raises the question of whether the District’s repeated description of the genocide as a“conflict” reflects a pro-Israel bias. A conflict suggests two equal sides. Israel is a nuclear-armed state controlling over four million Palestinians living under military occupation. The “two sides” are not equal.
The avalanche
The controversy at DBM is not an isolated example of the Israel lobby’s attempt to chill debate over Israel’s colonization of Palestine. The District’s mandates come amid an avalanche of Public Record Requests from Israel supporters seeking copies of hundreds of LAUSD teacher lesson plans, according to one LAUSD high school teacher contacted by the District. In addition, the lobby is asking the Governor to approve $10 million more for the California Teachers Collaborative on Holocaust and Genocide Education to deliver Anti-Defamation League curriculum that includes a definition of contemporary antisemitism as demonization of Israel of Israel and that excludes the Gaza genocide from lesson plans.
As the State and District seek to silence teacher opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, annexation of the West Bank, and bombardment of Lebanon and Iran, Gochez suggests that instead of removing Palestinian flags from classrooms, teachers might all post Palestinian flags in a collective act of resistance. Similarly, the four teachers at DBM who, according to the District, removed their “Stop Genocide” posters might display them once again, with other teachers at the high school and across the District displaying the same message.
Or imagine faculties and students all wearing keffiyehs in solidarity with Palestine.
Dr. Lupe Carrasco Cardona, an Ethnic Studies adjunct professor and chair of the Association of Raza Educators, seconded the call for solidarity with all educators who “courageously, honorably and respectfully teach young people the truth about what is happening in our world.” Said Cardona, “Education should never be about fear, censorship, or intimidation. We cannot accept the banning of books, posters or flags, nor can we accept attacks on academic freedom and the professional integrity of educators.”
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Marcy Winograd is a retired public high school teacher and coordinates CODEPINK’s Drop the ADL campaign.
