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   Given the choice between housing people in sidewalk tents or in new   
   buildings that might risk blocking an inch of their view of the bay, San   
   Franciscans, for years, chose the tents.   
      
   The anger directed at Chesa Boudin probably could have been contained.   
   The petty crime was frustrating, but it wasn’t what lit the city up for   
   revolution. The housing crush is miserable, but it’s been that way for   
   more than a decade now. The spark that lit this all on fire was the   
   school board. And the population ready to rage was San Francisco’s   
   parents.   
      
   The city’s schools were shut for most of the 2020–21 academic   
   year—longer than schools in most other cities, and much longer than San   
   Francisco’s private schools. In the middle of the pandemic, with no real   
   reopening plan in sight, school-board meetings became major events, with   
   audiences on Zoom of more than 1,000. The board didn’t have unilateral   
   power to reopen schools even if it wanted to—that depended on   
   negotiations between the district, the city, and the teachers’ union—but   
   many parents were appalled to find that the board members didn’t even   
   seem to want to talk much about getting kids back into classrooms. They   
   didn’t want to talk about learning loss or issues with attendance and   
   functionality. It seemed they couldn’t be bothered with topics like   
   ventilation. Instead they wanted to talk about white supremacy.   
      
   One night in 2021, the meeting lasted seven hours, one of which was   
   devoted to making sure a man named Seth Brenzel stayed off the parent   
   committee.   
      
   Brenzel is a music teacher, and at the time he and his husband had a   
   child in public school. Eight seats on the committee were open, and   
   Brenzel was unanimously recommended by the other committee members. But   
   there was a problem: Brenzel is white.   
      
   “My name’s Mari,” one attendee said. “I’m an openly queer parent of   
   color that uses they/them pronouns.” They noted that the parent   
   committee was already too white (out of 10 sitting members, three were   
   white). This was “really, really problematic,” they said. “I bet there   
   are parents that we can find that are of color and that also are queer …   
   QTPOC voices need to be led first before white queer voices.”   
      
   Someone else called in, identifying herself as Cindy. She was calling to   
   defend Brenzel, and she was crying. “He is a gay father of a mixed-race   
   family,” she said.   
      
   A woman named Brandee came on the call: “I’m a white parent and have   
   some intersectionality within my family. My son has several   
   disabilities. And I really wouldn’t dream of putting my name forward for   
   this.” She had some choice words for Cindy: “When white people share   
   these kinds of tears at board meetings”—she pauses, laughing—“I have an   
   excellent book suggestion for you. It’s called White Tears/Brown Scars.   
   I’d encourage you to read it, thank you.”   
      
   Allison Collins, a member of the school board, dealt the death blow: “As   
   a mixed-race person myself, I find it really offensive when folks say   
   that somebody’s a parent of somebody who’s a person of color, as, like,   
   a signifier that they’re qualified to represent that community.”   
      
   Brenzel remained mostly expressionless throughout the meeting. He did   
   not say a word. Eventually the board agreed to defer the vote. He was   
   never approved.   
      
   The other big debate on these Zoom calls was whether to rename schools   
   named for figures such as Abraham Lincoln and Dianne Feinstein, the   
   first female mayor of San Francisco. The board labeled these figures   
   symbols of a racist past, and ultimately voted to rename 44   
   “injustice-linked” schools—though after a backlash, the board suspended   
   the implementation of the changes.   
      
   The board members were arguably doing what they had been put there to   
   do. Collins and her two most progressive colleagues were elected in   
   2018, the year before Boudin, and it was a headier time, when Trump’s   
   shadow seemed to loom over even the smallest local office. Collins had a   
   blog focused on justice in education, and there was a sense that she   
   would champion a radical new politics. But during the endless lockdown,   
   enthusiasm began to wane, even among many people who’d voted for her.   
   They found themselves turned off by the board’s combative tone—as well   
   as by its actual ideas about education.   
      
   In February 2021, board members agreed that they would avoid the phrase   
   learning loss to describe what was happening to kids locked out of their   
   classrooms. Instead they would use the words learning change. Schools   
   being shut just meant students were “having different learning   
   experiences than the ones we currently measure,” Gabriela López, a   
   member of the board at the time, said. “They are learning more about   
   their families and their cultures.” Framing this as some kind of   
   “deficit” was wrong, the board argued.   
      
   That same month, the board voted to replace the rigorous test that   
   screened applicants for Lowell, San Francisco’s most competitive high   
   school, with a lottery system. López had explained it this way: “Grades   
   and standardized test scores are automatic barriers for students outside   
   of white and Asian communities.” She said they “have shown to be one of   
   the most effective racist policies, considering they’re used to attempt   
   to measure aptitude and intelligence. So the fact that Lowell uses this   
   merit-based system as a step in applying is inherently racist.”   
      
   Collins echoed that: “‘Merit’ is an inherently racist construct designed   
   and centered on white supremacist framing.”   
      
   If you didn’t like these changes, tough. A parent on Twitter accused   
   López of trying to destroy the school system, and she replied with the   
   words “I mean this sincerely” followed by a middle-finger emoji. In   
   July, on the topic of the declining quality of life in San Francisco,   
   she wrote, “I’m like, then leave.”   
      
   Gabriela López must have thought that history was on her side. Boudin,   
   too. But things are turning out differently. If there was a tipping   
   point in this story, it was when the city’s Asian American parents in   
   particular got really, really mad.   
      
   As Allison Collins’s profile rose during the pandemic, critics started   
   looking through her old tweets. There were bad ones. In 2016, she had   
   written: “Many Asian Americans believe they benefit from the ‘model   
   minority’ BS. In fact many Asian American teachers, students and parents   
   actively promote these myths. They use white supremacist thinking to   
   assimilate and ‘get ahead.’”   
      
   She also complained about Asian Americans not speaking out enough about   
   Trump: “Do they think they won’t be deported? Profiled? Beaten? Being a   
   house n****r is still being a n****r. You’re still considered ‘the   
   help.’”   
      
   The San Francisco Bay Area is 52 percent white, 6.7 percent Black, and   
   23.3 percent Asian. And many Asian San Franciscans were horrified by the   
   tweets.   
      
   “Her comments deeply insulted my family and the entire Chinese community   
   in San Francisco,” Kit Lam told me. Lam is an immigrant from Hong Kong   
   with two children in public school. He works for the school district, in   
   the enrollment department, though he just learned that his job will be   
   eliminated next month. He said he knew what richer parents were doing   
   during the pandemic because he saw the paperwork: They were pulling   
   their kids out and sending them to private schools. Lam didn’t have that   
   choice.   
      
   In April 2021, he started going on 1400 AM, the Bay Area’s   
   Chinese-language radio station, to express his outrage. He spoke out   
      
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)