CV NEWS FEED // On Friday, a mob of Antifa and LGBTQ activists fought with a group of Armenian-American parents outside a school board meeting in Glendale, California.
According to the city’s police department, three arrests were made following the event. Glendale is a large suburb of Los Angeles.
Journalist and anti-extremism advocate Andy Ngo tweeted a video of the scuffle. “Immigrant families have been furious that elementary schools are doing pride events,” he wrote. “Antifa have gathered to oppose the parents.”
As The Daily Signal reported:
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.”
One of the concerned parents who petitioned the school board said that one of his daughters was “afraid to change in the locker room because she knows (a) guy could come into the room.” When the father reached out to the principal, he informed him “there were no cross-gender bathroom policies.”
Armenians are a historically persecuted minority group from Western Asia who are predominantly Orthodox Christians. Approximately one million Armenians were killed in a genocide during World War I.
The city of Glendale is well-known for its vibrant Armenian-American community. Many local Armenians came in the 1970s to escape communism. The area currently has the largest Armenian population outside of Armenia.
Notably, one of the teachers at the Glendale School District was recently caught on camera downplaying the Armenian Genocide. This teacher also works at a Los Angeles children’s hospital with “queer and trans youth.”
She spoke at the school board meeting, saying: “I deal with a lot of the trauma of LGBT youth related to the hetero-normative, Judeo-Christian, patriarchal, imperialist, capitalist system that oppresses them.”
“Armenians talk about the genocide,” she added, “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.”
Significant amounts of footage of the “all-out brawl” circulated on the internet in the hours following the incident. One of the leftist rioters, a man in a pink bandana, was seen assaulting the parent protestors before police arrested him.
The riot was led in part by local far-left politician Maebe A. Girl, D-CA, a male drag queen who identifies both as “transgender” and “nonbinary” – preferring “she/they pronouns.” He serves on the Neighborhood Council of Silver Lake, an up-and-coming Los Angeles neighborhood that has been described as “trendy and hip.” Girl ran for Congress in 2020 and 2022, losing both times in landslides to incumbent Adam Schiff. Girl is currently running again in the crowded 2024 race to replace Schiff, who is running for the U.S. Senate.
Girl was present at the event and live-tweeted it, incorrectly using the term “Proud Boys” to refer to the group of fathers who opposed his mob.
A previous quarrel between Antifa and mostly Armenian-American parents took place outside of an elementary school on Friday, June 2.
The attacked parents, many of them reportedly immigrants, were waving American flags and wearing shirts bearing the words “Leave Our Kids Alone.” Several of the aggressors were draped in “pride” flags.
