Thoughts on Peter Beinart's new assessment of the way forward in Israel/Palestine.

Peter Beinart has made quite a splash with his recent Op-Ed in the New York Times and longer essay in Jewish Currents, arguing that it is time to think in terms of a single, bi-national state in Israel/Palestine.    

My friend Rabbi Michael Feshbach (who accuses me of not knowing how to spell my own last name) posted on Facebook Yehuda Kurtzer's Tablet Magazine critique of Beinart's essay.  My comments were too long for a FB response, so I have place them here.  I think Kurtzer may make too much of the Yavne metaphor, a reference to the rabbinic surrender to the Roman destruction of the Second Temple and Jewish sovereignty in return for a safe place to study and develop principles for what became the Jewish Diaspora.  Beinart does not even mention Yavne in his New York Times Op-Ed and only discusses it in the eighth paragraph and at the very end of the Jewish Currents essay, where he suggests that the metaphor is apt in the sense that it was an "acknowledgement that a phase of Jewish history had run its course."  Beinart poses the question of whether a sovereign Jewish state is the ultimate goal, or whether the ultimate goal is a safe place for the Jewish people in our ancestral home, regardless of purely Jewish sovereignty. Kurtzer asserts that it must be the former.  Beinart concludes that it will have to be the latter, in large part because he sadly has determined, with much justification, that the former is no longer possible without our becoming the very sort of people we do not want to be. 

I tend to agree with the late analysis of the late writer Amos Oz, set forth in Rob Eshman's Forward article about Beinart essays:

 "In a 2015 speech to the Institute for National Security Studies, . . . Oz sounded the alarm [about the dangers of annexation], but with far more pessimism than Beinart. 'I think the idea of a bi-national state is a sad joke,' he said. 'You can’t expect Israelis and Palestinians after 100 years of blood, tears and calamity to jump into a double bed and begin the honeymoon.'” 

That is why Oz so strongly supported a two-state solution, as did Beinart until now. 

But events of recent years seem to have made such a solution impossible. While I understand and appreciate Beinart's view and wish it was a viable solution, I am extremely skeptical. But I am also aware that of the various scenarios, Beinart's newly-arrive-at-approach -- while a long shot -- may well be the most likely way that the Jewish people can survive in Israel and still keep their souls. 

Suggestion on how to think about Winston Churchill & Richard Montgomery -- and so many others who we currently commemorate.

A report on a petition to rename Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, Maryland, brings into further focus the considerable public discussion of the last few years of how we should deal with the memorialization of historical figures whose views and actions regarding slavery and race, and the related issues of European colonialism, clash with our current (and, I hope, more permanent) sensibilities on these issues. See, e.g., here and a related blog post here.


The simple response has often been this: Confederate memorials Out/Founding Fathers memorials In.  But there are other example of the dilemma, as well.  I wrote this five years ago, when the status of Woodrow Wilson was at issue (as it is, again), and I think this basic formulation of how we should approach each situation still makes sense.

It was one thing to be a bystander to the evil of governmental race discrimination, or even to being a willing beneficiary of the slave system (e.g., Washington, Jefferson, Madison). Such people's positive societal contributions may keep them out of permanent historical hell. But those, like Calhoun, who seized the opportunity to be enthusiastic apologists for and defenders of the slave system and made that the centerpiece of their public careers are beyond the pale. By affirmatively acting to role back what little progress had been made once slavery was abolished, Wilson probably put himself beyond the pale in the 20th Century. Racism was not THE centerpiece of Wilson's Administration, but it was not merely an incidental part, either. Woodrow Wilson lived simultaneously in two worlds at the time of his election to the Presidency in 1912: The polite Progressive Movement which focused on reining in the excesses of concentrated wealth centered in Wall Street; but also the only semi-reconstructed aristocratic South which was resentful of Yankee (Wall Street) control over the American economy. These worlds joined forces over their resentment of the J.P. Morgan's of America. Some good did come out of it, but the cost was a full reimplementation by the federal government of Southern Jim Crow policies. Wilson's 1912 election as the first post-Civil War Southern President was seen in the South as a triumph over the hated Yankees -- and Wilson governed accordingly, and not at all reluctantly. (A. Scott Berg's admiring 2013 biography of Wilson lays out the facts underlying this analysis, even though Berg himself seems to view Wilson's racist policies as a relatively minor flaw as compared to his Progressive achievements. After reading the book, I drew a different conclusion.)

How to apply this formulation is not always easy -- but debates over such applications can be useful.  Take the question of Richard Montgomery High School -- and, indeed, the name of our own county, which was also named after the aforementioned Revolutionary War general, who was killed during an incursion into Canada in 1775.  General Montgomery had been a career British officer who fell into disfavor in the British Establishment for being sympathetic to the colonists and them emigrated to New York; he rose to prominence in the early days of the Revolution when he was chosen to succeed Philip Schuyler (Alexander Hamilton's future father-in-law) in command of a large Continental Army force when Schuyler fell ill.  General Montgomery never set foot in what is now Montgomery County; some now wish to remove his name from the high school because because, two years before his death, he married a woman whose family owned enslaved people.  Specifically, his wife was the daughter of prominent New Yorker Robert Livingston, who owned owned enslaved people, and he then came into possession of such "property."  Indeed, General Montgomery's wife's uncle Philip was deeply involved in the international slave trade, although her father had a mixed record on slavery, not dissimilar to (but a bit more enlightened, in a relative sense, than) Jeffersons'. See
 here.  

Ulysses S. Grant also married into a slave owning family, and while he eventually freed the slave he eventually owned, his father-in-law was an unabashed supporter of slavery.

The point about Generals Montgomery and Grant is that their historical significance is pretty much unrelated to slavery.  And that, arguably, their contributions far outweighed the taint of slavery, which was a common part of our sinful past.  We could say the same about Washington and Jefferson, who were far more implicated in, and benefitted from, slavery.  We certainly cannot say the same about John C. Calhoun, Chief Justice Roger Taney (the Marylander who authored the Dred Scott decision), and all the Confederate generals who are commemorated. (There are virtually no public memorials to Confederate General James Longstreet, and there is a reason why:  After the Civil War, Longstreet affirmatively fought against White Supremacists who sought to suppress the formerly enslaved. See  So when, in order to send a signal that, as a practical matter, the South had not entirely lost the Civil War, White Supremacists began erecting statues lauded the general's "virtues", Longstreet was left out.)

While Woodrow Wilson presents what many would see as a tougher case (for the reasons set forth above, I believe he falls on the Confederate side of the ledger), Winston Churchill presents what may be an even tougher case.  Churchill embodied European colonialism, with all the exploitation and racist rationalizations that grew out of it.  One of his most significant quotes came in 1942, in the midst of the struggle against Hitler, when he said, "I have not become the King's First Minister to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire."  Churchill was a politician of his time, and but for his leadership of the United Kingdom during World War II, no one in the United States would even think of commemorating him.  But that is a huge BUT FOR. See   As much as any other individual in history, he legitimately symbolizes the destruction of the 20th Century Voldemort.

I hope that discussion in the Winston Churchill High School community (and in the County generally) will be an opportunity to work through and develop a deeper understanding of the flaws and virtues of members of the human race, and how they are dealt with in the public square.   

What the Supreme Court's Bostock decision means for the ACA -- and what the dissents signal for progress.

On the evening of June 12, the Kulanu Committee at our synagogue, Temple Emanuel of Kensington MD, conducted its annual Pride Service on Zoom.  Earlier that day, the Trump Administration announced that it had "finalized a rule that would remove nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people when it comes to health care and health insurance." 

When our Temple participants (including LGBTQ+ teens) met in advance of the service, everyone expressed the fear that this new Trump action could negatively impact their and others' ability to secure health care services.  My initial take on the matter was that I thought that Maryland state law would still protect them, as local and state policies had provided protection notwithstanding the Trump Administration's withdrawal of the Obama Gender Identity Guidelines for public schools in 2017 (see here), but I was not sure and said I would try to find out. 

BACKGROUND:  In 2016, the Obama Administration issued a rule making it clear that Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of a number of reasons, including "sex", applied to discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.   (The ACA's non-discrimination provision incorporated the definitions from three other earlier statutes, including Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which included "sex" as a basis upon which there could be no discrimination.  The Trump Executive Order asserted that the Obama Administration had unlawfully interpreted the term "sex" to extend to sexual orientation and gender identity, and thus its new Executive Order stated that the ACA's anti-discrimination provision did not apply to LGBTQ+ people.   

BOSTOCK DECISION FROM THE SUPREME COURT:  Three days later, on June 15, while I was trying to assemble the various Maryland laws, the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, ruling 6-3 that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, barring employment discrimination based on, among other things, "sex", covered sexual orientation and gender identity.  Because the decision was based entirely on the Court's understanding of the word "sex" as a matter of statutory construction, the impact of this decision on statutes using the same term -- like Title IX (and, by its incorporation into Section 1557 of the ACA) -- is plain.  All federal statutes barring discrimination based on "sex" encompass discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. See, for example, here.

So it seems clear that the concerns expressed by our teens and their parents the evening of June 12 were satisfied by the Supreme Court's June 15 Bostock decision. 

(I subsequently determined that three Maryland laws, the Fairness for All Marylanders Act of 2014 and two statutes passed in the recently-completed session of the Maryland General Assembly (SB872/h8959 and SB738/HB1120 taken together provide all the anti-discrimination protections that the Obama ACA rules set forth, even if the Trump Executive Order was (which it is not) a legitimate re-interpretation of the ACA. (Thank you to Delegate Anne Kaiser and Metro DC PFLAG Co-Advocacy Chair for Maryland Mark Eckstein for tracking down the 2020 laws.)  So even if the Trump Administration continues, in the face of Bostock, to argue that the word "sex" in the ACA does not apply to sexual orientation and gender identity, state law protects people in Maryland.)  

POST-SCRIPT ON BOSTOCK:  In reading Bostock, I was particularly struck by what dissenting Justices Alito and Kavanaugh wrote about the struggles of LGBTQ+ people for fair treatment.  While taking the view that it was dispositive that Congress never intended in 1964 to cover sexual orientation and gender identity, these two extremely socially conservative justices wrote in terms that are sympathetic to the plight in which LGBTQ+ people have found themselves due to discrimination.

At p. 28 of his dissent, Justice Alito states that "[f]or most 21st-century Americans, it is painful to be reminded of the way our society once treated gays and lesbians, but any honest effort to understand what the terms of Title VII were understood to mean when enacted must take into account the societal norms of that time."  He then catalogues a long series of discriminatory laws as support for his legal analysis of what Congress intended in 1964, even as he suggests these laws might have been unjust.  At p. 54, he concludes as follows:  "The updating desire to which the Court succumbs no doubt arises from humane and generous impulses. Today, many Americans know individuals who are gay, lesbian, or transgender and want them to be treated with the dignity, consideration, and fairness that everyone deserves. But the authority of this Court is limited to saying what the law is."  However crabbed Justice Alito's statutory analysis might be, his characterization of LGBTQ+ people's struggle is the opposite of the vitriol we are accustomed to hearing from right-wing culture warriors.

Likewise, the language from Justice Kavanaugh, at p. 2 of his dissenting opinion:  "Under the Constitution’s separation of powers, the responsibility to amend Title VII belongs to Congress and the President in the legislative process, not to this Court. The political branches are well aware of this issue. In 2007, the U. S. House of Representatives voted 235 to 184 to prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. In 2013, the U. S. Senate voted 64 to 32 in favor of a similar ban. In 2019, the House again voted 236 to 173 to outlaw employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Although both the House and Senate have voted at different times to prohibit sexual orientation discrimination, the two Houses have not yet come together with the President to enact a bill into law. The policy arguments for amending Title VII are very weighty. The Court has previously stated, and I fully agree, that gay and lesbian Americans 'cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth.' [emphasis added] Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Comm’n, 584 U. S. ___, ___ (2018) (slip op., at 9). But we are judges, not Members of Congress."  

Justice Kavanaugh concludes his dissent (at p. 27) with this:  "Notwithstanding my concern about the Court’s transgression of the Constitution’s separation of powers, it is appropriate to acknowledge the important victory achieved today by gay and lesbian Americans. Millions of gay and lesbian Americans have worked hard for many decades to achieve equal treatment in fact and in law. They have exhibited extraordinary vision, tenacity, and grit—battling often steep odds in the legislative and judicial arenas, not to mention in their daily lives. They have advanced powerful policy arguments and can take pride in today’s result." (emphasis added)

Again, hardly the rhetoric of the bigoted right-wing. 

So what to make of the dissents?  One of the things we have learned is that the Supreme Court often is reflective of the zeitgeist of the nation.  Supreme Court Justices are often not immune from the changes in cultural norms.  When those whose personal and/or ideological discomfort with LGBTQ+ people begins to wane or reverse as they learn more about the human condition, then progress becomes not as difficult.  There is much to be depressed about with the current Supreme Court.  And we will be infinitely better off if the next crop of appointees to the Court are appointed by Joe Biden rather than Donald Trump. But we should not ignore the small glimmers of progress, even as we work for greater and swifter progress.  

My perspectives on the 2020 Montgomery County Board of Education election primary

UPDATE (June 20, 2020):  A few days ago,  the Maryland Board of Elections certified the results in the Board of Education primaries.  https://elections.maryland.gov/elections/2020/results/primary/gen_results_2020_3_by_county_16-1.html
     The top two candidates for the At-Large Seat were Lynne Harris, with 29% of the votes (63,467), and Sunil Dasgupta, with 21% (44,736).  Lynne and Sunil will now proceed to the general election in November.  I believe that Sunil is the best choice, but both are good, progressive candidates.   Stephen Austin (whose campaign is discussed below) came in a very distant third, with 13% (28,203).  
     Shebra Evans came in first in the District 4 race, with 65% (137,393).  



In past years, and again this year, many people have asked my opinion on Montgomery County Board of Education elections.  This year, there is a lot going on, so I am providing links for those who want to learn more.

For the June 2 primary, I endorsed, and have voted for, Sunil Dasgupta for the At-Large Seat and Shebra Evans for the District 4 seat. 

In January, I endorsed Sunil. https://davidfishback.blogspot.com/2020/01/sunil-dasgupta-for-montgomery-county.html  See also https://www.sunildasgupta.com/

I endorsed Shebra Evans in 2016, and set forth my reasons then:
https://davidfishback.blogspot.com/2016/10/endorsements-for-montgomery-county.html
Shebra, who this year is serving as President of the Board, has been very much as advertised, and that is why I endorse her again. See https://www.shebraevans.com/

As Metro DC PFLAG Co-Chair for Maryland Advocacy, I prepare questionnaires for BOE candidates every election.  Here are the questionnaires and answers for the 2020 primary, which I posted on March 22.
https://davidfishback.blogspot.com/2020/03/metro-dc-pflag-montgomery-county-at_22.html
https://davidfishback.blogspot.com/2020/03/metro-dc-pflag-montgomery-county.html
Metro DC PFLAG does not make candidate endorsements, but provides these questionnaires so that voters can make informed choices.

In February, I learned that John Garza, a local attorney who had been active in anti-LGBTQ+ activities dating back more than 15 years, was the attorney bringing new litigation against the Montgomery County School System, and that this litigation was part of the core of the campaign being waged by Stephen Austin, a candidate for the At-Large seat.  While this new litigation did not involve LGBTQ+ matters, Mr. Garza's involvement raised red flags for me with respect to Mr. Austin's candidacy. I then put together this blogpost, which laid out, with appropriate links, Mr. Garza's activities:  https://davidfishback.blogspot.com/2020/03/minority-retort-from-bethesda-magazine.html  These red flags concerned me even more when Mr. Austin was the only active candidate to ignore the Metro DC PFLAG questionnaire, even after I offered him an extension of time when he did not submit by the original March 15 deadline.

After consulting with other people who were concerned about the Austin candidacy, I co-authored a Guest Commentary in the on-line newspaper Maryland Matters.  The next blogpost contains the May 1, 2020 Maryland Matters piece, along with Mr. Austin's response, our reply to his response, and other relevant material, including, at the end, the link to a blogpost on the status of complaints made against the Austin Campaign for the illegal posting of campaign signs. https://davidfishback.blogspot.com/2020/05/fomenting-fear-and-division-in.html and https://davidfishback.blogspot.com/2020/05/confirmation-of-law-breaking-by-stephen.html

The Maryland Matters piece engendered considerable discussion on social media, including some strong statements against the Austin candidacy by prominent County elected officials, who usually do not get involved in BOE primaries.  I hope these materials will be useful to voters in the primary election.

Confirmation of law-breaking by the Stephen Austin for Board of Education Campaign

This morning, Victor Salazar of the Montgomery County Department of Permitting Services sent me this Political Sign Guidance for Candidates and Campaigns, which as noted in the e-thread below, has been sent to all Board of Education candidates.  Mr. Salazar informed me that he "sent Mr. Austin a set of these guidelines.  Moreover, he is given a compliance deadline of this Friday, May 15, 2020, to either remove or reposition his campaign signs in accordance with the attachment or be subject to the issuance of civil citations for each occurrence [emphasis added]."  Last Thursday, on May 7, Mr. Salazar advised me that he "will have our inspector reach out again, as well as myself, to remind Mr. Austin of the regulations and potential enforcement action if the violations persist." Mr. Austin himself has been aware of these violations since May 1, at the earliest, when they were pointed out in a Maryland Matters Guest Commentary, to which Mr. Austin responded -- but did not discuss the illegal sign-posting.

Note that Mr. Austin's Campaign could be liable for $500 per illegally-posted sign.

Mr. Salazar's e-mails were sent to me in response to my April 29 complaint about  Mr. Austin's illegal sign postings in Olney. (The pictures included with my complaint may be found here:  https://davidfishback.blogspot.com/2020/04/illegally-posted-signs-on-georgia.html)  Other complaints have been filed.  These signs have been proliferating all over the County.

Guidelines referred to in Victor Salazar's May 11, 2020 email, and presented to all BOE candidates, including Stephen Austin

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Salazar, Victor <Victor.Salazar@montgomerycountymd.gov>
Date: Mon, May 11, 2020 at 11:18 AM
Subject: RE: Status of Complaint No. 200073456 -- Illegal campaign sign on public rights of way
To: David Fishback 

Mr. Fishback,

Our office has been coordinating with the Board of Elections to insure all political candidates are adhering to County zoning laws, regulations and codes regarding the placement of campaign signs in the public-right-of-way.  To that end attached, herewith, is a set of guidelines we transmitted to the Board of Elections last Friday.  They are now transmitting these guidelines to all political candidates.

In addition to Mr. Austin receiving a set of guidelines through the Board of Elections, this morning, I sent Mr. Austin a set of these guidelines.  Moreover, he is given a compliance deadline of this Friday, May 15, 2020, to either remove or reposition his campaign signs in accordance with the attachment or be subject to the issuance of civil citations for each occurrence.

Victor Salazar, Program Manager II

DPS – Zoning & Site Plan Enforcement

Montgomery County Government

From: David Fishback
Sent: Monday, May 11, 2020 10:00 AM
To: Salazar, Victor <Victor.Salazar@montgomerycountymd.gov>
Subject: Re: Status of Complaint No. 200073456 -- Illegal campaign sign on public rights of way

[EXTERNAL EMAIL]

Mr. Salazar,

I keep getting reports that the Austin campaign violations are escalating. See, for example, the attached picture. 

Could you please let me know the date of when your office notified the campaign, and the documentation for that notification?

Thank you. 

David Fishback

On Thu, May 7, 2020 at 3:45 PM David Fishback <> wrote:

One more thing.  Could you provide me with the date the Austin Campaign was first informed of the violations by your office? (If there are dates of notifications to other BOE campaigns, I would appreciate those, too, so that I do not unfairly single out anyone.)

Thank you, so much.

David Fishback

On Thu, May 7, 2020 at 3:32 PM David Fishback <f> wrote:

Mr. Salazar,

 I certainly understand your staffing situation. It may be that the only timely way to secure compliance is to shame the offenders. 

Thank you for confirming that the Austin campaign has been notified by the County concerning their violations. 

David Fishback

On Thu, May 7, 2020 at 3:08 PM Salazar, Victor <Victor.Salazar@montgomerycountymd.gov> wrote:

Mr. Fishback,

This is to confirm that DPS has reached out to the Stephen Austin campaign and provided guidance on the installment of campaign signs.

Additionally, we’ve contacted the Board of Elections and are issuing guidance through them to all political campaigns related to unpermitted posting of signs in the County Right-of-Way.

Guidance to all political campaigns includes the following:

• Installment of campaign signs in public rights of way is prohibited.
• Campaign signs can only be installed on private residential and commercial properties with the consent of the owner.
• If remanded by DPS campaign signs must be removed by the candidate, campaign staff or volunteers.
• There are four polling sites designated by the Board of Elections.  Campaign signs maybe installed at these sites until polling sites close at the conclusion of primary or election voting.
• Non-compliance with the county code may result in the issuance of a civil citation with a fine of $500.

DPS has no control over whether a candidate, their campaign staff or volunteers, choose to violate the County code intentionally or through ignorance.

Mr. Austin is not the only candidate who has been found to violate the county code.  A few years ago DPS issued a Notice of Violation to the David Trone campaign for similar actions.

I will have our inspector reach out again, as well as myself, to remind Mr. Austin of the regulations and potential enforcement action if the violations persist.

Lastly, DPS, is not equipped nor is the agency that cleans, restores and maintains the public right-of-way.  Our office does not have the manpower nor the proper safety equipment to dispatch staff to remove signage on public roads and state highways that run through the county.  Sign violations are a very small subset of Zoning Ordinance regulations enforced by a staff of 5 people providing coverage to the whole county.

Thanks in advance for your continued patience.

Warmest regards,

Victor Salazar, Program Manager II

DPS – Zoning & Site Plan Enforcement

Montgomery County Government

***********************
For more information, see https://davidfishback.blogspot.com/2020/05/fomenting-fear-and-division-in.html 

"We're not stupid."

Today would have been my mother's 101st birthday.  A blunt spoken person, Hilda Fishback would have been horrified that she would be on Earth for that milestone.  With incredibly rare exceptions, the human body is not constructed for that sort of longevity.

I am grateful that she passed away before Donald Trump became president.  It would have been heartbreaking for her to see all she worked for and hoped for in the world being eroded and  possibly destroyed.

Recently, polling in Florida has revealed a massive shift among seniors against the president.  They are seeing through the lies.

My mother always saw through the lies.  The Florida report reminded me of something reported in the Washington Post in 2006, when my mother was 87 years old.  At a campaign forum run by a retirees organization in which perennial conservative gadfly Robin Ficker was making ad hominem attacks on Ike Leggett (who won that election for Montgomery County (MD) County Executive), Hilda Fishback took Ficker on, ending her response with this simple sentence:  "We're not stupid."  https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/27/AR2006092701157_pf.html ("Hard to Charm" item)

Fomenting Fear and Division in Montgomery County, from Maryland Matters, May 1,2020

NOTE:  Scroll to the end of the May 1 Commentary for five Updates. 

Posted on Facebook, May 1, 2020:

Political struggles go on at every level, even as we seek to navigate campaigns and elections in the coronavirus pandemic context. With fewer news outlets and the absence of local candidate forums, we need to be particularly vigilant. Thank you to Maryland Matters for posting this piece by Karin Chenoweth and me about the Montgomery County Board of Education At-Large seat contest. (The hyperlinks were not online this morning, but are now included.). County voters will be receiving their mail-in ballots for the June 2 primary very soon.

(I am voting for Sunil Dasgupta.)

Opinion: Fomenting Fear and Division in Montgomery County

By

 Guest Commentary

 -

May 1, 2020



, 

As essential workers and grocety shoppers move cautiously around Montgomery County,

we are reminded by newly placed campaign signs that Maryland’s June 2 primary 

election is only weeks away.

Most prevalent are the signs dotting public rights of way for Board of Education At-Large candidate Stephen Austin.

Anyone running for office in Montgomery County, even relative newcomers like Mr. Austin, should know that such postings are illegal.

But there may be a deeper significance to Mr. Austin’s flouting of Montgomery County rules. He may be signaling his contempt for the political norms that have allowed Montgomery County to thrive as one of the most diverse counties in America.

Using language that has been invoked since the 1950s to maintain segregation, Austin has led a campaign of lies and misinformation. In an attempt to block a much-needed study of Montgomery County’s school boundaries, he and his supporters have intimidated school officials, shut down a community meeting, and mocked and bullied high school students who object to the current boundaries as enforcers of racial and economic segregation.

The question for county residents is whether they will see his tactics for what they are and reject his attempts to sow fear and division.

Mr. Austin burst onto the Montgomery County scene last year as the face of the fear-mongering that followed the school board’s decision to develop a comprehensive picture of which schools are overcrowded, which underused, and which are economically or ethnically isolated.

The Board of Education’s decision to hire a consulting firm to study this important issue followed 40 years of drift. By not responding to new housing and school enrollment patterns with a comprehensive plan, the Montgomery County Public School system (MCPS) has more than 11,000 students sitting in overcrowded schools while nearly 10,000 seats sit empty in underused schools.

Schools with portable classrooms sit next to schools with empty classrooms, which represents a tremendous waste of public resources.

At the same time, racial and economic segregation has grown in recent years. Many schools in the eastern part of Montgomery County enroll mostly African American and Latino students while many toward the west of the county enroll primarily white and Asian students, a legacy of the many decades of Jim Crow laws that once governed Maryland, as well as the redlining and real estate discrimination that followed.

After MCPS high school students called the BOE’s attention to the terrible inequities present in MCPS, the BOE sensibly decided to gather as much data and information as possible to inform how it sets school boundaries in the future, and it hired an outside consultant to do a thorough analysis.

That one sensible decision launched Mr. Austin and his conservative allies into leading a campaign of misinformation, personal attacks, and fearmongering. The entire attack is based on a statement in the board’s September 2018 Educational Facilities Planning Policy.

That policy simply stated that in developing proposed options on potential boundary adjustments and new school placement, the superintendent should continue MCPS’s long-standing policy of considering geography, stability of school assignments, facility utilization, and student demographics. Mr. Austin and his allies seized upon the addition of language providing that MCPS “should especially strive to create a diverse student body in each of the affected schools.”

From this, Mr. Austin and his allies assert that the board is laying the groundwork for the destruction of neighborhood schools in favor of long-distance cross-county busing. They ignore the fact that the policy statement specifically provided that options should “take into account the geographic proximity of communities to schools, as well as articulation, traffic, and transportation patterns and topography” in addition to the “stability of school assignments over time.”

Indeed, last December, BOE President Shebra Evans and Superintendent Jack Smith issued a statement reaffirming the reasons for the boundary and utilization study and specifically countering “rumors that the districtwide boundary analysis will result in a ‘busing plan’ that will reassign students from one end of the county to the other to address issues of overcrowding and diverse learning environments.”

They explained, once again, that “schools and school clusters adjacent to one another across the county can have significantly different levels of utilization and student diversity . . . [and that] MCPS has and will continue to maximize walkers, in no small part, because it is economically efficient,” noting the obvious fact that “there always will be a need for some students to ride buses to school.”

In other words, while there will always be a need for buses in a sprawling 500-square-mile county, costs and traffic mean that there is absolutely no possibility of the study resulting in cross-county busing.

As Board of Education member Patricia O’Neill told The Washington Post in early March, “The fear is that we are going to willy-nilly bus kids from Bethesda to Silver Spring or from Potomac to Damascus. That’s not what we intend. We intend to maximize walkers and look at adjacencies.”

The Post reported that if shifts are being considered as a way to better use school buildings, O’Neill said, then officials would also look at socioeconomic balancing, as in the past.

Nevertheless, Mr. Austin sought to spread fear by repeatedly mischaracterizing the plans of MCPS. Just a couple of weeks after the MCPS statement, he once again warned in social media posts of a “large scale social engineering bus experiment” and a “busing scheme.” He stated that private schools had been advertising “specifically mentioning redistricting,” asserting that if the BOE implements “a large-scale bus experiment, people will leave the system.” He bizarrely implied that the “questionable social engineering experiment” would lead to brain cancer.

And his campaign is not limited to misrepresentations of public statements from MCPS. Some of the most recent targets of his and his Facebook group’s wrath have been the student members of the Board of Education and other students who are conscientious members of our community who have raised issues of disparity of educational opportunity. One of their supposed sins is that they are associated with U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin.

These are precisely the sorts of attacks that the 2016 Trump campaign launched, and that the Trump administration continues to peddle, in an attempt to delegitimize public institutions which, while never perfect, have served us well. They also echo the kinds of language used in the 1950s and 1960s by those supporting segregated schools.

In Montgomery County, where Hillary Clinton received 75% of the vote in 2016, a charge that a new group of political activists are right-wing Trumpian-style tactical practitioners is a serious one, not lightly to be made. But the evidence for it is mounting.

The campaign of misrepresentations was conducted on a private Facebook page, initially called Montgomery County MD School Redistricting Opposition Group, and later changed to Montgomery County MD Neighbors for Local Schools.

Right-wing connections

Mr. Austin also started a nonprofit group, Montgomery County MD Neighbors for Local Schools (aka MoCo Neighbors for Local Schools), which is soliciting donations. Documents filed with the State of Maryland show that one of Mr. Austin’s two fellow board members in MoCO Neighbors is Zhenya Li of North Potomac. Ms. Li, an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump, is also chairperson of the Coalition for a Better Montgomery PAC and is its largest contributor.  Mr. Austin is the only candidate endorsed by the PAC, which has donated $3,000 to his campaign.

MoCo Neighbors has touted two lawsuits accusing the BOE of violating its own rules. What leaps out is that the attorney bringing the suits is John Garza.

Mr. Garza, a personal injury attorney, is best known in Montgomery County as president and local counsel of Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum. This was an organization formed to oppose a health curriculum adopted by MCPS in 2004 to inform middle and high school students that being gay is not an illness and that “reparative” or “conversion” therapies are dangerous and ineffective.

Mr. Garza, working with notorious groups like PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays), the Family Research Council, and the Family Leader Network, brought numerous bogus complaints against MCPS. These legal attacks were ultimately unsuccessful, but not before costing taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars.

In other words, Mr. Austin, through his internet vehicle MoCo Neighbors, is promoting lawsuits brought by an attorney with a track record of pressing right-wing views that have been repeatedly rejected in our community. Thus, it is not at all surprising that that Mr. Austin, unlike six other candidates for the at-large BOE seat, ignored the candidate questionnaire presented by the Metro DC Chapter of PFLAG (formerly, Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). Since it is very likely that there will be no open, live candidate forums before the June 2 primary, Mr. Austin’s hopes may hinge on the absence of forums where he could be confronted on what agenda he would pursue as a board member.

After many in the county objected to the inflammatory rhetoric in Mr. Austin’s private Facebook group – which includes some truly repugnant attacks on high school students – Mr. Austin established a more benign-sounding campaign website that mostly talks about supporting neighborhood schools. Indeed, his illegally-posted campaign signs simply say, “Stephen Austin for Board of Education/Neighborhood Schools.”

This sentence on the first page of his website may be revealing, however: “Ask any parent if they want their kids at a school that is FARTHER away, and you will hear a resounding ‘NO’. Yet that’s exactly the path the BOE has been heading down due to outsized influence from special interests and radical activists.”

He apparently prefers to call names rather than address why we have situations where students currently are being bused past school buildings with space in order to attend overcrowded schools farther from their homes.

Mr. Austin and his allies appear to be seeking to whip up fear and anxiety through unfounded attacks on those who simply want to make school boundary and school site selections more reasonable. Preying on people’s fears by falsely suggesting that his opponents are against neighborhood schools in favor of cross-county busing, rather than discussing the actual facts, is a sad tactic that some groups use to try to fool people.

Montgomery County deserves to know who is behind Mr. Austin’s campaign and why they support him. His language and rhetoric put him squarely in the tradition of extremist right-wing activists, a tradition Montgomery County has firmly rejected in the past.

We need to know if he is serving those extremists’ ideological interests or the interests of the county’s children.

— DAVID S. FISHBACK AND KARIN CHENOWETH

The writers are members of One Montgomery, a group formed to support excellent and equitable education in Montgomery County

https://www.marylandmatters.org/2020/05/01/opinion-fomenting-fear-and-division-in-montgomery-county/?fbclid=IwAR3ZeamAf1oB0_vThbMDLwsSYjBbDXZcRC5wBpWUnOeAXvI02av_m6XFg9w

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UPDATES (5):

1.  On May 5, Maryland Matters published a response  from Stephen Austin.

2.  On May 7, Karin and I submitted our response to Maryland Matters.  Since it is not normally Maryland Matters' practice to publish a series of back and forth pieces, we post it here:

Commentary Authors Rebut Charges of “Outrageous Claims”

We have read Stephen Austin’s response to our May 1 Guest Commentary. We stand by everything we wrote, which is supported by evidence in the Guest Commentary hyperlinks.  As shown in our Commentary, it is simply incorrect to assert that the MCPS boundary change study would lead to new, massive busing.  Rationalizing school assignments while taking into account diversity AND the desirability of schools being near students’ homes is the purpose of the study, no matter what Mr. Austin and his allies assert. 

We do feel it appropriate to address what Mr. Austin states was an unfair attack on him.

He takes great umbrage at what he calls the “alarming claim” that he is anti-LGBTQ+.  He cites personal friendships with gay people and says generally that he would be “an advocate for LGBTQ+ “students, teachers, administrators and staff.”

We appreciate the sentiment, but Mr. Austin does not explain why he failed to answer the questionnaire submitted to all BOE candidates by the Metro DC Chapter of PFLAG (formerly known as Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians, and Gays). 

Equally troubling is Mr. Austin’s connection to John Garza, who is handling the two lawsuits against MCPS so vigorously touted by Mr. Austin.

Mr. Austin writes that he simply does not know Mr. Garza, and further asserts that was unfair for us to point out that Mr. Garza “was connected with a group that 16 years ago tried to keep some information about LGBTQIA+ issues out of the health curriculum.”  But Mr. Austin’s attempt to minimize the role of Mr. Garza is misleading.  This was not a small dispute – it went to the very ability of MCPS to present in the health classes the wisdom of every American mainstream medical and mental health professional association about sexual orientation and gender identity, and was not fully resolved until 2014. Mr. Garza was President and Chief Counsel of Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum, which sought to deny secondary school students straightforward information about human sexuality and wasted many thousands of dollars in taxpayer money in frivolous litigation against the county’s school board.

Nor is Mr. Garza’s activity a thing of a benighted past. Just last year, Mr. Garza was lead counsel in an unsuccessful federal suit  seeking to block Maryland’s prohibition of  licensed medical and mental health professionals from practicing discredited “conversion therapy” on gay minors. (Twenty states have such statutes, and attacks on them have been uniformly rejected by federal district and appellate courts all over the country.) 

We are glad to hear of Mr. Austin’s life experiences with gay people. But the “some of my best friends” approach is insufficient in this context. If Mr. Austin is the kind of ally he claims to be, we urge him to disassociate himself from Mr. Garza, specifically rejecting Mr. Garza’s efforts to make life more difficult for LGBTQ+ people.  And since LGBTQ+ matters have been quite pertinent to MCPS in recent years, we would think he would want to answer the questions in the Metro DC PFLAG questionnaire. Yet, he has not done so.

Absent rejection of Mr. Garza’s anti-LGBTQ+ actions and absent answers to the Metro DC PFLAG questionnaire’s specific questions, it is hard to take Mr. Austin’s protestations seriously. 

Similarly, if Mr. Austin is, as he claims, “not at all a Donald Trump supporter,” he should return the $3,000 given him by a PAC headed by a prominent supporter of Donald Trump (who, along with two other people, provided nearly 2/3 of the PAC’s funding) and which has endorsed only one candidate for office:  Mr. Austin.  
https://campaignfinance.maryland.gov/Public/CommitteeFiledReports?FileName=CampaignFinanceReport_Public_4481bbea-0160-46cc-8cfc-34462abc3ddb.pdf&memberID=6943784&memVersID=2&cTypeCode=03

If he is a supporter of schools that reflect the wide diversity of Montgomery County,

he should ensure that his Facebook group refrains from attacking students who

object to the racial and economic isolation of the schools they attend. He also should

stop accusing those who are working for more equitable schools of secretly plotting

to bus students from one end of the county to the other, when they have said

repeatedly that they have no desire to do so. 

And if Mr. Austin opposes the deportation of children and their parents, he should support Superintendent Jack Smith’s stance that the schools will not provide information about children’s citizenship status to ICE.

Such actions would demonstrate the values he says he upholds.

We recognize that as a relative newcomer to Montgomery County, Mr. Austin might not understand the rich local context and history that surrounds each of these issues. But it is important that anyone who runs for the Board of Education have such understanding.

Karin Chenoweth

David S. Fishback

4.  Also on May 7, a  commentary by former White House UPI correspondent Ira Allen was posted by One Montgomery.  

5.  On May 9, the Washington Post published an editorial  endorsing one of Mr. Austin's opponents, and severely criticizing Mr. Austin for "spread[ing] fear and misinformation about the boards' launch of a much-needed study of school boundaries.  Contrary to claims about plots to socially re-engineer the schools, there are no plans for massive cross-county busing.  Instead, there is an intent to remedy a lack of planning that has resulted in overcrowded schools with children stuck in porrables located right next to schools with empty classrooms -- and in segregation of students by race and income."

5.  On May 11, I received confirmation from Montgomery County Department of Permit Services official Victor Salazar that Mr. Austin had been given a compliance deadline of this Friday, May 15, 2020, to either remove or reposition his campaign signs in accordance with the attachment or be subject to the issuance of civil citations for each occurrence [emphasis added]."  Last Thursday, on May 7, Mr. Salazar advised me that he "will have our inspector reach out again, as well as myself, to remind Mr. Austin of the regulations and potential enforcement action if the violations persist." Mr. Austin himself has been aware of these violations since May 1, at the earliest, when they were pointed out in a Maryland Matters Guest Commentary, to which Mr. Austin responded (see Update No. 1 above) -- but did not discuss the illegal sign-posting.  See https://davidfishback.blogspot.com/2020/05/confirmation-of-law-breaking-by-stephen.html