Fireworks at Springboro Ohio School Board Meeting

I wasn’t at the Springboro School Board meeting, but I talked to someone who was and I am following several twitter accounts to get a sense of the fireworks that took place. Local news reporters were there and I will provide more information as I find it.
According to the person I spoke with and a tweet (see below), one speaker unfurled a Confederate flag in defense of the League of the South.

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According to witnesses, the flag waver was Sonny Thomas, tea party leader in Springboro. Thomas also runs the twitter account for the Ohio branch of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white nationalist organization.
Preliminary news coverage from WDTN.
Witness to the Confederate flag waver.
Prior post on Institute on the Constitution and the League of the South.
Dayton Daily News Story is posted at the Springboro parents Facebook page.
Huffington Post picked up the Confederate flag waving story here. The fact that Sonny Thomas showed up to support the IOTC course seems to validate the problems with the course in the first place. From Thomas’ point of view, attacking the course is akin to attacking the League of the South.

20 thoughts on “Fireworks at Springboro Ohio School Board Meeting”

  1. Putting a guy with a deep tan in the oval office has driven these people over a cliff. The latest conspiracy theory is that Obama stole the election through the NSA. The Washington Times distributes five or six slightly less preposterous ideas about Obama every day.
    The asylum, formerly known as the US House of Representatives, is controlled by these nitwits. Due to gerrymandering it is going to be very hard to get rid of them. They worship at the feet of David Barton. Seriously. They believe every syllable from Barton’s mouth.
    The CCC, by the way, is the successor to the many “white citizens councils” that were prevalent throughout the South

  2. Has it seriously not occurred to these people that Ohio was not part of the Confederacy?

    1. What? Are you some sort of left wing commie? Details, details, details. We don’t need to get hung up on details.

  3. Has it seriously not occurred to these people that Ohio was not part of the Confederacy?

    1. What? Are you some sort of left wing commie? Details, details, details. We don’t need to get hung up on details.

  4. Kohls stated that she looked through the book by Howard Zinn and was also concerned and offended because it was “anti-american”. She stated that she was not going to make her daughter read that book and suggested we all look into it for ourselves. I found what she said to be a double standard. She wants the community and public school system to be subjected to her ideology, both political and religious, but is “offended” by a view opposite of hers.
    Perhaps, but if you consider yourself more intellectually honest than her, you should oppose the schools teaching Howard Zinn to our kids.
    In fact the Barton class wasn’t even taught to the kids–it was an adult class.
    FTR, I’m opposed to Zinn and Barton in the kids’ classrooms, I approve of freedom of speech in the adult/community classes and am fine with both being taught. But in this case, Barton was subject to the Heckler’s Veto while it looks like Zinn is being slipped in by the [presumably liberal] education establishment.
    http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/03/the-peoples-historian

    Much of the criticism of Zinn has come from dissenters on the left. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. once remarked that “I don’t take him very seriously. He’s a polemicist, not a historian.” Last year, the liberal historian Sean Wilentz referred to the “balefully influential works of Howard Zinn.” Reviewing A People’s History in The American Scholar, Harvard University professor Oscar Handlin denounced “the deranged quality of his fairy tale, in which the incidents are made to fit the legend, no matter how intractable the evidence of American history.” Socialist historian Michael Kazin judged Zinn’s most famous work “bad history, albeit gilded with virtuous intentions.”

    So all you friends of truth and of free speech out there–take a fresh look at this mess in Springboro, esp if you consider yourself more enlightened than the Tea Party types. Bringing barton in is a reaction to the current imbalance in the schools–it’s not the right corrective, but it’s not coming out of thin air either.
    Right now, the real outrage the school board should be concerned about is Howard Zinn in the schools, not David Barton after hours for adults. First things first.

    1. Thanks. But the ACLU-empowered hecklers’ veto will keep first things from being addressed first.
      Diane Ravitch noted over a decade ago, “… the vacuum created by our failure is being filled not by cutting-edge critical theorists, but by the commercial entertainment industry. If we do not teach our children history, Walt Disney and Oliver Stone will do it for us.”
      From Zinn’s obituary in the Telegraph, “Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, both of whom grew up near Zinn in Cambridge, Massachusetts … repeatedly plugged the book in their Academy Award-winning screenplay for the film Good Will Hunting (1997). As well as Springsteen, film director Oliver Stone was also a fan.”
      Has Zinn’s perspective become mainstream through the National Center for History in Schools? Gary Nash sought a more inclusive narrative.

      1. Completing that thought…
        Have the political interests of the commercial entertainment industry and the cutting-edge critical theorists merged with Howard Zinn or Gary Nash?

  5. The Springboro BOE mentioned amending tonight’s agenda to discuss the Liberty Institute (http://www.libertyinstitute.org/) that they are going to use for legal council. When they took a vote, it was 3-2 (Kohls and Rigano for, Petroni, Miller and Kull against) so they did not discuss it.
    BOE President Kohls tried to shut down public participation speakers saying they were not sticking to the agenda items, even though they were talking about teachers and personnel. The first speaker to be shut down kept standing at the podium until Kohls asked Sgt. Don Wilson to escort her out. Sgt Wilson looked perplexed and shrugged his shoulders. She walked out on her own accord to applause and a standing ovation by the audience in her support..
    Sonny Thomas talked about the Constitution classes and ridiculed a letter to the BOE in opposition to the classes. His continued with one racist slur after the other to the audience’s moans and complaints. The finale was his holding up of the Confederate flag and asking if this offended anyone? I told my sister that this was exactly the reason the Constitution classes chosen by the BOE majority should not be invited into our community. I felt sorry for the public speaker that had to follow Sonny. He stood there for awhile shaking his head and finally began by saying, “That’s just sad.”
    Towards the end of the meeting, Kohls began talking about an AP History book that her daughter had brought home that she was concerned about. Kohls stated that she looked through the book by Howard Zinn and was also concerned and offended because it was “anti-american”. She stated that she was not going to make her daughter read that book and suggested we all look into it for ourselves. I found what she said to be a double standard. She wants the community and public school system to be subjected to her ideology, both political and religious, but is “offended” by a view opposite of hers. As she was talking, about half of the audience began getting up and walking out on her while she was speaking. If she didn’t want to listen to us, we were not going to listen to her.

    1. “suggested we all look into it for ourselves. … we were not going to listen to her.”
      Howard Zinn did to American History what Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee did to the Scopes trial. Are Springboro kids asked to take his work seriously? That’s moving beyond indoctrination and malpractice toward child abuse. Will Kohls’ opponent this November address these issues? Or will Springboro United for Responsible Education pursue willful ignorance?

  6. Putting a guy with a deep tan in the oval office has driven these people over a cliff. The latest conspiracy theory is that Obama stole the election through the NSA. The Washington Times distributes five or six slightly less preposterous ideas about Obama every day.
    The asylum, formerly known as the US House of Representatives, is controlled by these nitwits. Due to gerrymandering it is going to be very hard to get rid of them. They worship at the feet of David Barton. Seriously. They believe every syllable from Barton’s mouth.
    The CCC, by the way, is the successor to the many “white citizens councils” that were prevalent throughout the South

  7. Putting a guy with a deep tan in the oval office has driven these people over a cliff. The latest conspiracy theory is that Obama stole the election through the NSA. The Washington Times distributes five or six slightly less preposterous ideas about Obama every day.
    The asylum, formerly known as the US House of Representatives, is controlled by these nitwits. Due to gerrymandering it is going to be very hard to get rid of them. They worship at the feet of David Barton. Seriously. They believe every syllable from Barton’s mouth.
    The CCC, by the way, is the successor to the many “white citizens councils” that were prevalent throughout the South

  8. Kohls stated that she looked through the book by Howard Zinn and was also concerned and offended because it was “anti-american”. She stated that she was not going to make her daughter read that book and suggested we all look into it for ourselves. I found what she said to be a double standard. She wants the community and public school system to be subjected to her ideology, both political and religious, but is “offended” by a view opposite of hers.
    Perhaps, but if you consider yourself more intellectually honest than her, you should oppose the schools teaching Howard Zinn to our kids.
    In fact the Barton class wasn’t even taught to the kids–it was an adult class.
    FTR, I’m opposed to Zinn and Barton in the kids’ classrooms, I approve of freedom of speech in the adult/community classes and am fine with both being taught. But in this case, Barton was subject to the Heckler’s Veto while it looks like Zinn is being slipped in by the [presumably liberal] education establishment.
    http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/03/the-peoples-historian

    Much of the criticism of Zinn has come from dissenters on the left. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. once remarked that “I don’t take him very seriously. He’s a polemicist, not a historian.” Last year, the liberal historian Sean Wilentz referred to the “balefully influential works of Howard Zinn.” Reviewing A People’s History in The American Scholar, Harvard University professor Oscar Handlin denounced “the deranged quality of his fairy tale, in which the incidents are made to fit the legend, no matter how intractable the evidence of American history.” Socialist historian Michael Kazin judged Zinn’s most famous work “bad history, albeit gilded with virtuous intentions.”

    So all you friends of truth and of free speech out there–take a fresh look at this mess in Springboro, esp if you consider yourself more enlightened than the Tea Party types. Bringing barton in is a reaction to the current imbalance in the schools–it’s not the right corrective, but it’s not coming out of thin air either.
    Right now, the real outrage the school board should be concerned about is Howard Zinn in the schools, not David Barton after hours for adults. First things first.

    1. Thanks. But the ACLU-empowered hecklers’ veto will keep first things from being addressed first.
      Diane Ravitch noted over a decade ago, “… the vacuum created by our failure is being filled not by cutting-edge critical theorists, but by the commercial entertainment industry. If we do not teach our children history, Walt Disney and Oliver Stone will do it for us.”
      From Zinn’s obituary in the Telegraph, “Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, both of whom grew up near Zinn in Cambridge, Massachusetts … repeatedly plugged the book in their Academy Award-winning screenplay for the film Good Will Hunting (1997). As well as Springsteen, film director Oliver Stone was also a fan.”
      Has Zinn’s perspective become mainstream through the National Center for History in Schools? Gary Nash sought a more inclusive narrative.

      1. Completing that thought…
        Have the political interests of the commercial entertainment industry and the cutting-edge critical theorists merged with Howard Zinn or Gary Nash?

  9. The Springboro BOE mentioned amending tonight’s agenda to discuss the Liberty Institute (http://www.libertyinstitute.org/) that they are going to use for legal council. When they took a vote, it was 3-2 (Kohls and Rigano for, Petroni, Miller and Kull against) so they did not discuss it.
    BOE President Kohls tried to shut down public participation speakers saying they were not sticking to the agenda items, even though they were talking about teachers and personnel. The first speaker to be shut down kept standing at the podium until Kohls asked Sgt. Don Wilson to escort her out. Sgt Wilson looked perplexed and shrugged his shoulders. She walked out on her own accord to applause and a standing ovation by the audience in her support..
    Sonny Thomas talked about the Constitution classes and ridiculed a letter to the BOE in opposition to the classes. His continued with one racist slur after the other to the audience’s moans and complaints. The finale was his holding up of the Confederate flag and asking if this offended anyone? I told my sister that this was exactly the reason the Constitution classes chosen by the BOE majority should not be invited into our community. I felt sorry for the public speaker that had to follow Sonny. He stood there for awhile shaking his head and finally began by saying, “That’s just sad.”
    Towards the end of the meeting, Kohls began talking about an AP History book that her daughter had brought home that she was concerned about. Kohls stated that she looked through the book by Howard Zinn and was also concerned and offended because it was “anti-american”. She stated that she was not going to make her daughter read that book and suggested we all look into it for ourselves. I found what she said to be a double standard. She wants the community and public school system to be subjected to her ideology, both political and religious, but is “offended” by a view opposite of hers. As she was talking, about half of the audience began getting up and walking out on her while she was speaking. If she didn’t want to listen to us, we were not going to listen to her.

    1. “suggested we all look into it for ourselves. … we were not going to listen to her.”
      Howard Zinn did to American History what Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee did to the Scopes trial. Are Springboro kids asked to take his work seriously? That’s moving beyond indoctrination and malpractice toward child abuse. Will Kohls’ opponent this November address these issues? Or will Springboro United for Responsible Education pursue willful ignorance?

  10. Putting a guy with a deep tan in the oval office has driven these people over a cliff. The latest conspiracy theory is that Obama stole the election through the NSA. The Washington Times distributes five or six slightly less preposterous ideas about Obama every day.
    The asylum, formerly known as the US House of Representatives, is controlled by these nitwits. Due to gerrymandering it is going to be very hard to get rid of them. They worship at the feet of David Barton. Seriously. They believe every syllable from Barton’s mouth.
    The CCC, by the way, is the successor to the many “white citizens councils” that were prevalent throughout the South

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