3 Arrested After Antifa Clashes With Armenian Parents at California School Board Meeting

Several fights broke out between Antifa and parental rights activists Tuesday night outside the Glendale Unified School District’s administration building in Glendale, California, during a school board meeting discussing LGBTQ+ curriculum.

Law enforcement arrested three individuals amid the mayhem after the protest “exceeded the bounds of peaceful assembly,” the Glendale Police Department announced Tuesday night.

Following the Glendale school board’s decision to incorporate LGBTQ+ “Pride” festivals and celebrations into June school days, dozens of parents pulled students from classrooms—with some elementary schools seeing only 40% of students show up for class on June 2.

Additional documents revealed that Glendale staff have attempted to incorporate LGBTQ+ materials and ideology into other curriculum. One assistant principal even told staff to teach children that every person is, by default, “queer” and “socialist.”

Parents from the traditionally conservative Armenian and Hispanic communities in Glendale planned to protest the board’s decisions at an upcoming school board meeting. Antifa Southern California called for activists to counter protest against these parents, whom they labeled “hate groups.”

Several parents told Glendale’s board that they were concerned with Glendale’s transgender policies, such as allowing students of the opposite sex to use the same bathrooms and locker rooms, putting their children at risk.

One father told the board:

I graduated from Glendale in ‘96, and I have two daughters. My daughter is afraid to change in the locker room because she knows another guy could come into the room. When I asked the principal, he told me there were no cross-gender bathroom policies.

Other parents previously told The Daily Signal that their children changed in locker rooms with students of the opposite sex multiple times, and that this is standard practice in Glendale.

The father finished by telling the Glendale board: “All of these fake people [pointing to several masked crowd members] are going to go away, and we’re going to vote every one of you [pointing to the school board] out.”

About 42 minutes into the meeting, Board President Nayiri Nahabedian stopped the public comment session as law enforcement locked down the building due to disturbances outside. The board meeting went into recess for almost 20 minutes while police attempted to manage the situation. 

According to footage from Los Angeles news networks and on-site independent journalists, masked progressive protesters in pink bandanas and progress flags traded blows with Armenian and Hispanic parents.

Glendale police then announced over loudspeakers that the assembly was now considered “unlawful” and ordered the crowds of protesters to disperse. They then arrested at least three members of the crowd on “various charges.” The department did not specify either the affiliations of the suspects or the charges involved.

Many of the speakers claim it is essential to teach children about LGBTQ+ topics, even though critics claim some of the materials are sexually explicit, even pornographic.

“Schools should teach kids to grow up in a diverse world, with different colors, religions, and sexualities,” one woman shouted at the board. Most of the pro-LGBTQ+ speakers shouted into the microphone, causing it to short out momentarily.

Several of the speakers turned their attention towards the parents protesting Glendale’s LGBTQ+ policies.

A man in a skirt, high-heel boots, and a women’s leather jacket who claimed to have three daughters told the board: “Their ideology is the same as the Proud Boys. Hiding their hate behind their kids just as Proud Boys hide behind their masks.”

A speaker claiming to be a representative from the “Revolutionary Communists” told the board that all socialists had a duty to protect LGBTQ+ students from “Christofascism.”

One Glendale teacher used her time to lecture white and Armenian Americans:

[I volunteer] extensively in South LA and work with the children’s hospital of Los Angeles with queer/trans youth in large groups, and so I deal with a lot of their trauma related to the hetero-normative, Judeo-Christian, patriarchal, imperialist, capitalist system that oppresses them. 

And so, I’m not just here in support of our LGBTQ youths, it’s all connected. I’m here in support of Critical Race Theory and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training because white people participate, for example, in the largest social welfare program in the history of the United States, and yet—now they put their hands up in the air and look at our housing crisis.

Armenians talk about the genocide that they received SSI, but they don’t want to talk about the indigenous genocide in 1850, and the lack of reparations for indigenous and black people in this country.

They don’t want to talk about—how dare you talk about how marginalized people come here…and you don’t want to talk about the oppressed trans youth who… you know those kids aren’t even learning to learn in this.

[At this point a bell sounded as her time speaking was up]

One in two will commit—attempt suicide and 95% know that they are “trans” when they are three, four, and five.

While the teacher didn’t explain what genocide occurred in 1850, what “SSI” was, or from what social welfare program “white” people supposedly benefit, progressive members of the crowd cheered as she sat down.

As of 9 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time, crowds outside had not yet dispersed, though Glendale police were ordering all to leave or face arrest for unlawful assembly. 

The Glendale Unified School District did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment on the events of June 6 or the district’s LGBTQ+ policies.

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