Oklahoma Faculty Official Appoints ‘Libs Of TikTok’ Proprietor

Ryan Walters, the highest faculty official in Oklahoma, has appointed an inflammatory right-wing activist identified for focusing on LGBTQ+ lecturers to the library media advisory committee on the state Division of Schooling.

Chaya Raichik runs “Libs of TikTok,” a well-liked account on X (previously Twitter) the place she posts movies about LGBTQ+ educators, typically smearing them as “groomers” or “indoctrinators.”

Walters claimed that Raichik, who lives in California, is a helpful asset to Oklahoma faculties.

“Chaya is on the entrance traces displaying the world precisely what the unconventional left is all about — decreasing requirements, porn in faculties, and pushing woke indoctrination on our youngsters,” Walters, the state superintendent of colleges, said in a press release Tuesday. “Due to her work, households throughout the nation know simply what’s going on in faculties across the nation.”

“Her distinctive perspective is invaluable as a part of my plan to make Oklahoma faculties safer for teenagers and pleasant to oldsters,” he continued. “Chaya has a much-needed and highly effective voice in addition to an incredible platform that may profit Oklahoma college students and their households.”

The conflict on books is part of the fitting’s bigger struggle in opposition to public faculties, and its efforts to maintain libraries from offering books to kids and college students that characteristic LGBTQ+ themes and progressive ideas. In an try to take away these books from faculties, conservatives have likened them to pornography and different subjects unsuitable for youngsters.

Each Raichik and Walters are well-versed within the conservative tradition wars. Raichik started posting movies in 2021 the place she criticized educators and claimed they have been indoctrinating kids, and Walters has been smearing Oklahoma lecturers and making false claims about sexually express supplies in faculties since his days as Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt’s secretary of schooling.

Raichik doesn’t seem to have any expertise in faculties or authorities, however her platform has already led to bomb threats in Oklahoma faculties.

In August, Raichik posted a video to X of a librarian on the Union Faculty District, in suburban Tulsa, making mild of the conservative ethical panic that lecturers are pushing a “woke agenda.”

Walters retweeted the video, saying: “Woke ideology is actual and I’m right here to cease it.” Based on NBC, the college district started receiving bomb threats the identical day.

Raichik’s movies have affected lecturers and educators throughout the nation. In August, a majority-white California elementary faculty was evacuated attributable to bomb threats after Raichik criticized a playdate occasion for college students of coloration there. In November, a public faculty district in Iowa acquired a deluge of threats and upped its safety after Raichik reposted a video of a trainer joking about “forcing” college students to be homosexual.

The state’s largest lecturers group spoke out in opposition to the appointment. “Oklahoma has hundreds of certified lively and retired library media specialists along with schooling specialists able to evaluating Oklahoma requirements. Nevertheless, as an alternative of elevating Oklahoma educators, an out-of-state political actor with no experience is appointed to OSDE’s Library Media Advisory Committee,” the Oklahoma Schooling Affiliation instructed HuffPost in an announcement.

“This appointee posted a doctored video which provoked assaults on a Tulsa Union educator, which led to bomb threats that shut down an Oklahoma faculty district for days. That is a part of a disturbing development of permitting disreputable and inflammatory exterior voices to have affect over Oklahoma public schooling. Oklahoma’s educators need to have their voices heard and represented by these invested in Oklahoma communities.”