A bomb threat forced the evacuation of a North Oakland elementary school on Tuesday, just days after a parent group began receiving a torrent of racist and threatening messages for organizing a play date welcoming children of color to the school.
The threat — which was sent to the school’s principal and itself included “racist undertones,” police said — led to the cancellation of classes while Oakland police and Alameda County bomb sniffing K-9s searched the North Oakland school for explosives. They cleared the scene by noon, having found nothing.
But the incident marked a dramatic turn in an escalating barrage of online vitriol aimed at the organizers of the school’s second-annual “playdate social” on Saturday, which aimed to offer a space for children of color — who represent more than half of the school’s population — to meet and play together at the school.
One recent email to the parent group called for a “race war” while threatening to “put you back in chains or in the jungle where you belong” if the organizers “keep pushing for segregation,” according to Briana, a playdate organizer and parent. She asked Bay Area News Group not to publish her last name, out of concern for additional online harassment.
She said she reported the threat to the school district, who then passed it along to the Oakland Police Department.
The entire saga marks a sad end to an event that aimed at building community and a sense of belonging for children at the school, Briana said.
“I feel sad about it, because it was meant to be a positive thing — to build inclusivity,” Briana said. “And I kind of, in some ways, regret even having it, because of the harm that it’s caused to families and children.”
In a statement, the Oakland Unified School District called the event “one of many examples of the important work we do for equity and inclusion across the District.”
District officials said in the statement that the playdate was organized by the school’s Equity and Inclusion Committee, and it aimed to “create an affinity space where Black, Brown, and API families can build and sustain connection and belonging at the school.”
The school district plans to reopen Chabot Elementary School on Wednesday with mental health professionals in attendance, and extra police on hand through the end of the week.
In a news release, Oakland police said they were working jointly with the Federal Bureau of Investigation on “actively investigating a hate speech incident” at the school. The statement said that investigators were “looking into any possible connection between this incident and the bomb threat.”
Oakland police were told of the bomb threat at Chabot Elementary shortly before 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, before most students had arrived at the school. About 50 children were at the building when the principal called police; they were later reunited with their parents.
The “play date” event, held Saturday at the school’s upper yard, included board games, table tennis and painting, and was attended by about 40 people of myriad ethnicities — including white people, who were never barred or discouraged from attending, Briana said. It followed a similar event near the start of last year’s school year, which only garnered limited pushback from a couple parents, Briana said.
“It was never meant to be a segregated group, where we’re not inviting white people,” said Briana. “It was a very positive event, it was a really great turnout, new parents who really wanted to connect with other parents who looked like them.”
An online flier advertising the event was posted to social media accounts later in the weekend and quickly spread. One social media post, which garnered nearly 17,000 likes by Tuesday afternoon, falsely claimed the event was “race segregated” and “for all students except the white kids.”
Oakland Unified School District board member Sam Davis lamented that social media postings about the event “just went out of control” — a frustrating result, he said, to an event that sought to bring the community together.
“The school is in a pretty privileged part of town and they’ve made an effort over recent years to expand their environment, so that they would be more of a diverse school,” Davis said. “And as part of that, they’re trying to also just make the school community more welcoming to the families who are new.”
Davis said he feared that the messages and bomb threat would keep the school from hosting such events in the future.
“It has exactly the impact that these folks from outside of Oakland are trying to have on us, which is dividing us when we’re trying to bring people closer together,” Davis said.
District officials said they planned to hold a town hall soon to listen to parent concerns and complaints about the incident.
Rather than contemplate any more such playdates, Briana said she is first worried about her son’s safety at the school. She said she was unlikely to send her son to school for the remainder of the week, and has been contemplating enrolling him in some kind of independent study.
“It just turned into a huge firestorm, and a lot of it has to deal with the climate that we’re in right now,” said Briana, noting how right-leaning politicians have pushed back against such topics as teaching slavery to children. “We’re going backwards and it’s getting worse and worse.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com