Junior high school students caught forming swastika with their bodies

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Junior high school students caught forming swastika with their bodies

California youths traded racist and violent messages in county called ‘hotbed for white supremacists’

Sam Levin in Oakland
Tue 15 Jan 2019 22.01 GMT

A group of California junior high students were caught forming a swastika with their bodies on school grounds and exchanging racist and violent messages on a group chat, administrators said.

The scandal at Matilija junior high school, which culminated in an emotional meeting with parents and school officials Monday night, has sparked intense debate in a region that has experienced a sharp increase in reported antisemitic incidents.

The middle school in Ojai, a small city 80 miles north-west of Los Angeles, told parents in a letter in December that officials had discovered photos showing “nine students laying on the field together to form the shape of a swastika during lunch”. Administrators said the images appeared in a group chat that was active in November and December and featured “racist, sexually inappropriate and threatening commentary”, including one student’s call “to bring knives to school”. The photos and texts have not been released.

Cyndi Silverman, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), who has been working with Ojai school officials, told the Guardian that there were 28 students on the group chat, which featured a wide range of hateful content: “There were a number of texts that were anti-LGBTQ, antisemitic, anti-black, anti-Latino.”

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/15/students-swastika-bodies-junior-high-school-california

[violetpastille]

1. Ojai.

It's absolutely everywhere.