Note: Click here to read Part I
This summer Toronto parents will have the unique opportunity to send their kids to Black Lives Matter Toronto’s Freedom School, a three-week summer daycare for children aged 4-10. The school intends to provide students with “political education,” teaching kids about “Black Canadian and diasporic history”, and engaging them in “political resistance to anti-Black racism and state violence through a trans-feminist lens.”
Organizers claim that they designed the program “to support children and families living and growing in a reality of witnessing police violence.” The school is free of charge, kids will get free snacks and lunch, and there will be free transportation to and from their homes. Field trips will include visits to the Black Farmers Market, Nashama Water Park, and the Six Nations reserve near Brantford.
It’s sounds like attractive proposition on the surface, particularly for low-income parents worrying how they’ll cover childcare costs during the summer break. That said people who are considering sending their kids should beware, offers that sound too good to be true usually are. To be fair, families whose goal is to raise anti-social “fuck the police” anarcho-kids will be thrilled with the program and staff- those who want well-adjusted offspring without criminal records might want to look for other opportunities.
A Brief History of Freedom Schools
Mississippi Freedom School in 1964
The freedom school concept was created by Charles Cobb of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1963. He originally intended to create a summer residential school program for 10th and 11th-grade students that taught an academic and cultural curriculum with a focus on political and social studies.
Cobb’s idea was adopted and used as part of the 1964 Freedom Summer, a campaign to bring volunteers from northern states down to Mississippi to encourage black voters to register to vote. Over 1,000 volunteers came down that summer, trained in advance in a two-week program in Oxford, Ohio.
Over 40 schools were set up in black communities with over 2,500 students and 250 volunteer teachers. Most of the schools were based out of churches, others were wherever space was available- schools, parks, and people’s homes. Classes were focussed on the positive; teaching academic skills, building self-confidence, and helping them understand their rights as citizens.
The schools were highly successful, and the concept has been kept alive. Modern Freedom Schools teach kids about the civil rights movement, lessons about nonviolence and leaders like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandella.
This isn’t Your Grandfather’s Freedom School
BLMTO explains on their fundraising page that they’re launching their Freedom School in response to the “lack of humanizing, self-affirming, queer positive educational opportunities for Black children in the GTA.” Their target market is working families from working class neighborhoods who don’t feel their kids are being “taught self-love, and a passion for justice and liberation through their formal education.”
But while freedom schools have traditionally focussed on nonviolence, promotional materials for BLMTO’s indicate their version will be very different. Rather than focussing on peaceful activists like King and Mandella, their promotional materials focus on armed rebellions and riots- and, sadly, they don’t even get their names right.
Their first example in their promo video is “the Bussa Rebellion” (Bussa’s Rebellion), an armed Barbados slave uprising where rebels burned down sugar cane crops and violently clashed with the military. Next comes the “Stonewall Rebellions” (Stonewall Riots), violent demonstrations in New York City in response to a raid on a gay bar and treatment of the LGBT community. The final example is the “Nanny Maroons” (the Maroons), a Jamaican group that engaged in a guerilla war against the British led by Nanny of the Maroons.
“Homage to the Black Panther Party” by Elizabeth Catlett
The video goes on to explain that the Freedom School will “teach art and technology as tools of resistance.” Mediums taught will include visual art, drumming, singing, poetry, and writing. Students will learn about artists connected to the Black Power movement including Nikki Giovanni, Elizabeth Catlett, and Emory Douglas– the Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party.
LMTO’s Freedom School is led by Leah Newbold who, on the surface, sounds like an excellent candidate for the job. Newbold, who also goes by the name LeRoi Newbold, is a teacher at the Toronto District School Board’s Sheppard Public Africentric Alternative School. She has an interesting background, it appears she has a long history with militant anti-police groups.
In 2006, she participated in one of Montreal’s infamous anti-police brutality marches. She attended as part of the “Pink Bloc”, a queer group who showed up wearing pink outfits and strap-on dildos. About 500 protesters got into a clash with the police that day, throwing “beer bottles and squeegees” at police officers who were brought in to keep the peace. Street signs and mailboxes were vandalized.
Newbold’s Facebook page has several examples of postings where she writes “FTP”, an anarchist abbreviation for “fuck the police”. One posting features a drawing of two masked protesters (one wearing an FTP hat) and poetry from Assata Shakur, a member of the Black Panthers and Black Liberation Army who was convicted of two counts of murder after a shootout with New Jersey police.
In a 2015 interview with the anarchist run Guelph Prison Radio, Newbold discussed a lesson she gave students at the Africentric School about the novel Nightjohn. She explained to her students that “if people were caught teaching slaves to read in Canada and the US they would often have a finger or toe cut off.” This was reported to have happened in the US, but there’s no evidence of it happening in Canada (where we had only a small number of African slaves).
Newbold doesn’t appear to have great respect for her student’s privacy. In October 2015, she posted pictures of her student’s drawings of “Superheros of Black Liberation” on her Facebook page. The same drawings were used in the Freedom School’s promotional video. The video also includes a clip of students singing about Black Lives Matter in what appears to be one of the Africentric School’s classrooms.
Drawings from Newbold’s students at the Africentric School
Newbold teaches Black Panthers at the Africentric School too
Newbold indoctrinates her kids against oil pipelines
Ex-Con Offers “Decision Making” Course for Freedom School Fundraiser
Leah Henderson (blue hat) at BLMTO police HQ occupation
BLMTO launched a crowdfunding initiative last month to raise money to fund Freedom School teaching materials. The web page claims that “the lack of educational materials for children aged 4-10 that teach about Black Canadian and diasporic history is glaring, so we need to make it!” Money raised from their $15,000 target will be used to pay black artists to create the material.
People who donate to the project are able to claim from several different “perks”. Options include a BLM poster, an “End Police Brutality” poster, cupcakes, a manicure, and a tarot card reading. But the most interesting of the perks (and perhaps the most telling) is a “Decision Making” course by city councilor Shelley Carroll’s assistant Leah Henderson.
Henderson is a “white ally” of BLMTO who has been working closely with the group for at least the past 18 months. She was highly active during the occupation of Toronto police headquarters and was seen on-site several times. When the police cut-off the occupier’s power supply shortly before their biggest rally, Henderson helped to coordinate efforts to bring in generators.
Readers who are familiar with Henderson’s background are likely to have already realized the irony of her offering decision-making lessons. She and her ex-boyfriend Alex Hundert (who was also active at the occupation) were both arrested together shortly before the Black Bloc riots at the 2010 G20.
The two anarchists were sentenced to and served over a year in prison- Henderson for councilling young activists which windows they should smash, and Hundert for teaching them how to “de-arrest” people from the police. Both stood up in court to pronounce they were proud of their crimes and that they wouldn’t hesitate to do the same in the future. Neither has made any effort to apologize or make amends.
Henderson has also been assisting BLMTO with their fundraising efforts, both for the overall movement and for the Freedom School. She made a Facebook posting in November 2015 that explained her view on why people should contribute to the school:
“One of the most threatening things the #blackpantherparty ever did was serve breakfast to black children. Food security. Education. Fast Forward to 2015 – where more black lives are in jail and killed by police then [sic] there were then. Black Lives Matter-Toronto Coalition is putting together a Freedom School for black children and parents. To do that, we need to raise funds!”
It’s unknown where BLMTO is getting the money to pay for the costs of operating the school. It’s an expensive proposition to feed and transport students to-and-from the school every day. BLMTO applied for a $22,700 grant from the City of Toronto’s (Henderson’s employer) Community Festivals and Special Events fund earlier this year- city staff recommended against the request due to lack of funds, it would be seriously disturbing to find out if the grant was actually approved.
Is The Freedom School a Safe Space For Toronto Kids?
BLMTO isn’t exactly kid friendly
The Freedom School is promoted as “an entry point” into the Black Lives Matter movement. This might sound alarm bells for people familiar with the movement. Neil Macdonald of the CBC (who supports BLM) described it as “angry”, “mouthy”, and “offensive”- most parents work hard to teach their children to be the exact opposite.
BLMTO has had no shortage of anger and offensiveness and is hardly a kid-friendly environment. It’s not unusual to hear people yelling out angry obscenities like “fuck the police” and “kill the pussy fucking police” at their rallies. Their occupation of Toronto police headquarters blasted out NWA’s Fuck The Police- Toronto Star columnist Desmond Cole tried to justify this by claiming their “rage” is acceptable under the status quo.
The rhetoric one hears from BLMTO’s leaders is often hardcore. Their leaders have claimed that the Toronto Police Service is committing a “genocide” against black people, and they they’re a “terrorist organization” that’s killing blacks “every single day”. Most adults will realize they’re exaggerating, but young children aged 4-10 are more prone to take these statements literally- this could be damaging to young minds.
In Part I of #BLMTO Unmasked we explored the hardcore racism of co-founder Yusra Khogali, and her deeply concerning statements about white people being “sub-huxman”. People would be up in arms if an organization whose leader called black people sub-human set up a summer daycare program.
Khogali isn’t the only example of this type of extremism. BLMTO organizer Zidane Mohamed publicly applauded the murder of two police officers in 2015, Ryerson University president Sheldon Levy called his comments “disgusting”. Co-founder Janaya Khan’s blog is filled with postings about militancy and Black Panthers- in July 2015, she made a Facebook posting praising the Panthers and proclaiming that peaceful tactics are “nonsense”.
Parents who are considering sending their kids to the school, and don’t want them to end up as violent ex-convicts, might want to think twice before enrolling them. Organizations who are considering funding the school would be doing a great disservice to the people of Toronto (let’s hope the city didn’t). People spend a lot of time talking about creating “safe spaces” for kids in this city- all indications are that BLMTO’s Freedom School is anything but.
Co-founder Janaya Khan speaks out against peacefulness
Stay Tuned for Part III:
At the end of Part I of #BLMTO Unmasked I promised to dig into the organizations alarming connections to city council and the Toronto Police Services Board. I haven’t forgotten this, we’ll dig into these subjects in great depth in the next couple of installments.
I’ve added a lot to the BLMTO interactive relationship map since the last installment, including connections to the #OccupyINAC protests- click here for a full-size version of the chart.
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Well Done. Your first post regarding Ms Khogali’s statements was excellent and should be disseminated to every major newspaper in the country, especially to the Toronto Star who gave Ms Khogali a platform, after the initial tweet controversy, where she claimed she was being vilified. I found her Facebook post to be even more egregious and it clearly reveals Nation of Islam/pseudo science race hate propaganda. What irks me more than anything is the fact that major media sources like the Star are giving her a platform and tacitly supporting her views. If this language had been used by a white male there would be police charges, human rights tribunals, media condemnation, etc… The premier of Ontario would never agree to meet with a group who refused to condemn their co founders racist vitriol. This information, especially the Facebook post, needs to be reported in the mainstream media. Excellent work, will stay tuned.
The Toronto (Red) Star is already starting to pay the price apparently, they lost millions of dollars over the last quarter. Whether this has to do with their propensity towards trash journalism, or as shameless Justin Trudeau fanboys, or as a platform for extremists I do not know, but someone is clearly voting with their wallet here. They should realize that publishing newspapers is a business, this is not like the Soviet Union of yesteryear where the government would pay Pravda to publish whether anyone reads it or not, you need subscribers and you need advertisers.
Excellent Greg!
Greg, GREAT story , nicely done ……
It may also interest your readers to learn that the black lives matter movement has a connection to the muslim brotherhood terrorist organization as seen here : http://www.undercoverkity.com/?p=4690 .
Greg and I are doing our very best to make sure that every media outlet is aware of this groups true agenda , as well, every politician they want to met with . This organization must be exposed for the racist organization they really are, and their leaders / organizers must and will be exposed for the racist scum they really are .
As I stated in the comments of the last installment regarding BLMTO, I really question why a self described black activist would adopt or keep an Arab/Islamic name given that the Islamic world is one of the few places where slavery is not only practiced but condoned, and where blacks are regarded as sub human. If this group is connected to the Muslim Brotherhood this is especially puzzling since BLMTO seems to continually spout off about LGBT rights, under the type of society that the Muslim Brotherhood has openly decreed that they wish to create there will be no LGBT rights, because LGBTs will be liquidated according to sharia law. Do these people really think that the granddaddy of El Qaeda and ISIS is their friend and ally, really?
Perhaps we should indulge in the possibility that most of these people are…well, what’s the polite way of saying mentally disabled, bad at math? Like, I don’t see most of these protesters getting through even first year University calc, tho I bet they can regurgitate anything that their left-wing humanities profs tell them to…or how about the first year philosophical logic course? How many of them are engineering grads?
It’s time for responsible people to have a discussion about how our political culture in Canada has been dumbed down to the point that it’s only accessible to the mentally challenged, because that’s the level it operates at. Politics has always to some degree been this way, but in Canada it is becoming obscene—like every now and again I’ll get into it with some humanities major who “doesn’t believe in borders.” I ask him about Vancouver’s watershed, if he knows its history, how it can only service a finite number of people, a number far smaller than the number of asians who would like to immigrate here, and who would be landing boat after boat if not for the Canadian Navy. At some point they realize there is no quantitative argument against what I’m saying, so they call me racist, and then either go silent or tell me “you’re making me feel unsafe.”
These people are foolish, and if we don’t do something about them, they’re going to ruin all of the general social progress made last century, replaced with a corporate friendly “rights for this group, rights for that group” mentality. General welfare is never cheap, but it’s fair. What’s cheaper, tho less fair, is special perks for special people. The shamelessness of, for example, advocating for free tuition for blacks and indigenous persons instead of for everyone—it’s just lunacy.
So, to answer your question, these people should be treated as mentally disabled folks being taken advantage of, not as fully formed adults who have made a reasonable decision to opt for a different politics. They’re not reasonable, nor are they logical, and this is not because they’ve made such a choice, it’s because they’re unable to be reasonable and logical.
I’m not so sure that this is because these people are mentally disabled, at least not in the sense that they were born with something like Down’s Syndrome, so much as that they have never had to think for themselves. The mind is like any other part of the human body, if it’s never used it will grow weak and waste away.
In truth they remind me of members of a religious cult, and in a manner of speaking they are, the methods of indoctrination, mind control, and group think in some of these B.S programs that masquerade as “arts degrees” isn’t much different. What was it that Ezra Levant said? That the easy way to identify a worthless university program/department is if the name of it ends in the word “studies”. These are not only a waste of money but a waste of productive lives.
This BLMTO people are an embarrassment to the real Black Panthers they seem to idolize. I don’t admire the Black Panthers Party or their political ideas but at least the people involved had some reasons for what they were doing, and they were not made up of mindless drones, or goldbricks. In fact when the leadership became increasing autocratic, and thuggish most of the membership left.
Great investigation as always.
Really, tho, there’s very little to be done—the Universities have no effective opposition to this nonsense. That’s where it’s coming from, it’s not “Grass Roots” at all, no more than eugenics was last century. And like the eugenics movement, there’s a dangerous group of people who think that if only their particular policies can be put into place, everything will be better.
I mean, just hanging around, not taking notes like you do, in Vancouver it’s always the same faces at any protest, with the 420 protests excepted. They clearly have a mailing list of disabled/unfortunate people on whom they prey, who they get to do these events—whether it’s for $$$ or not, who knows.
They have been caught doing just that, pressing homeless people into service just to fill out their numbers, for a free lunch, money, or pot, take your pick. But the ones organizing the events are puppets themselves, our humble narrator has spent a great deal of time investigating these so called movements.
Thank God someone is reporting what’s really happening, one thing’s for sure, sending a child to this “summer camp” is child abuse in every sense of the term.
Every person who knows of someone that sends their child to this degenerate hate camp should report them to children’s aid, if enough people do it perhaps there will be a proper response from an agency whose mandate is to protect children from this type of trash.