A protest against the removal of a pro-Palestinian teacher interrupted a school board meeting in Philadelphia

Dozens of parents and students staged a protest at a Philadelphia school district board of education meeting on Thursday in support of a teacher who was recently fired for her outspoken views on the Israeli government’s genocide of Palestinians. The protest temporarily halted the board’s work, forcing it to reconvene in a remote location.

Keziah Ridgeway, a teacher of African American history, Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) courses at Northeast Philadelphia High School, was removed from her job at the beginning of the school year after complaints the school district received from a pro-Israel group.

“To every district official who participated in Ms. Ridgeway’s baseless condemnation, this is the legacy you will leave behind,” Hannah Gann, another Philadelphia teacher, said at Thursday’s board of education meeting.

Gann attended the event with a group of parents involved with Philadelphia Parents for Palestine. The group launched Change.org petition for the teacher’s reinstatement, which stated: “Every day that Keziah Ridgeway is not teaching her students, they fall behind in schoolwork, final exams, and other coursework. Students were dropping out of her classes because substitutes were unable to prepare them for AP tests, for example, and more and more damage was being done with each passing day.”

Ridgeway, the recipient of the prestigious 2020 Lindback Award for teaching, is an outspoken supporter of the Palestinian people in their fight against Zionist oppression. In January, she allowed several students in one of her courses to create a podcast about Palestinian resistance art. This presentation was visible to the school community and sparked attacks from right-wing groups.

The resulting smear campaign and witch hunt led to the school system’s cowardly decision to censor the student’s exhibition, while Ridgeway began to incur the ire of pro-Zionist groups in Philadelphia.

“For the past few months, I have been struggling with crippling anxiety and insecurity, and I have had to undergo therapy to deal with the abuse,” said Ridgeway, a black Muslim Questioner from Philadelphia.

The harassment she says she has experienced from members of the Jewish Family Association (JFA) includes being told to “go back where she came from,” being hit with an arm by a former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier, and having to endure threats that the group would “touch” her. .

In early September, Ridgeway wrote on her Instagram account that “Y’all (JFA) have been harassing me for almost a year. Writing 10-page letters to the U.S. Congress, Governor Shapiro, the Philadelphia City Council and the school district. Reporting me to Canary Mission as I give AF. She “took off her gloves” and asked if anyone knew of any Black-owned stores (gun emoji) in or near Philadelphia? Request for a friend.

JFA Legal Support quickly filed a complaint. Lori Lowenthal Marcus of the Deborah Project alleged that Ridgeway was an “aggressively anti-Semitic teacher” and made “public statements full of profanity and hate against Jewish families and students in the district.”

Project Deborah and Marcus have links with far-right circles. Marcus is a member of the American Zionist Movement and has publicly joined fascist attacks on the teaching of critical race theory (CRT) in schools. According to Deborah Project, CRT is a vehicle for alleged “far-left anti-Semitism” that “condemns the creation of the state of Israel as an exercise in land theft by white colonialists.”

The Philadelphia school district immediately caved to Zionist pressure, despite questionable claims and groups involved in the complaints. “Threats of violence against our school communities are not tolerated and we work closely with appropriate authorities as we respond to such situations,” district spokeswoman Christina Clark said last month.

School district officials have launched an investigation into the social media post. This is despite Ridgeway being twice cleared of allegations made by the same group.

The effort to muzzle anti-genocide advocates comes as the Philadelphia school district grapples with a severe teacher shortage, particularly in more impoverished areas. A report released this month by the Philadelphia Talent Coalition found that the crisis was so severe that the school district was using underqualified emergency personnel to conduct classes. The study found that 1 in 5 teachers in the district were unqualified in the classes they taught. In charter schools, the ratio was 1 to 4.

Concerned Ridgeway parents and students attended Thursday’s protest. The Inquirer students present said Ridgeway “strongly supports all young people, not just those who look like her and believe in what she does.”

Arun Kundnani, a parent at a nearby school, said of Ridgeway’s removal: “I think it’s a new form of McCarthyism.” The Northeast High School teacher “became a target because she didn’t want to censor her students from expressing opinions that some disagreed with.”

The attack on Ridgeway is part of an escalation of anti-democratic attacks on students and professors across the region. At nearby Swarthmore University, 11 undergraduate students face expulsion for using a bullhorn after the school changed its definition of assault to include “singing loudly.” Last week, the University of Pennsylvania ordered a police raid on an off-campus apartment belonging to student protest organizers.

At Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, anthropology professor Maura Finkelstein became the first tenured professor to be fired for exercising her right to speak publicly in opposition to the Gaza genocide.

“Zionism and Judaism are not the same thing,” explained Dr. Fineklstein, who is Jewish World socialism website in an interview earlier this month. “We know that ethnic and religious identity and political ideology are not the same thing,” she added, “But in fact, it is being used to silence any opposition to Zionism and all voices speaking out in the name of Palestine Liberation.”