Inclusive school says students are being accosted on campus after Republican ad singled it out
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Tim James, a Republican who is running to be the next governor of Alabama, issued a truly disturbing TV ad targeting a public charter school in the Birmingham area. The principal of the school, Michael Wilson, told local outlet CBS 42 he was stunned to realize images appearing in the Republican’s ad featured a school fundraiser including not only the teachers’ faces but also the students. He believes the pictures were taken from the school’s social media.
“And now, right here in Alabama,” James says in the ad. “Millions of your tax dollars are paying for the first transgender public school in the South. Enough of this foolishness.” As his voice bellows out, images of the Magic City Acceptance Academy run, including one from a drag show fundraiser. According to Wilson, less than 10% of the student population is openly trans, and while the school is explicitly inclusive, students don’t have to be LGBTQ+ to attend.
And the ad isn’t it. While that would be violence enough, according to Wilson, someone drove by the school, which serves just over 200 sixth to twelfth-grade students, and shouted slurs at students standing outside. Beyond that, Wilson says a woman attempted to film students on campus before staff intervened.
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Wilson says he spoke to some of the students featured in the Republican ad and said they’re “angry” and have a right to be. At least one parent has already filed a cease-and-desist letter with James’ campaign, according to Wilson, and while the campaign edited that child out of the photo, they left the others in.
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The campaign released a press statement saying they didn’t receive such a letter but did receive an email from the parent. Communications director for the campaign Elizabeth Jordan suggested that if parents were truly concerned, they could pull their children from the school. Lovely!
“What he’s doing and what others are doing in the way they’re campaigning is pushing voters away instead of bringing them in,” Wilson told the outlet. “It’s absolutely disgusting the angry nature of nearly every candidate’s commercials.”
“What should scare mothers and fathers of these children is what the faculty is doing by presenting this ungodly display through the drag show to which the children were subjected,” the statement reads in part. While there’s nothing wrong with exposing children to age-appropriate drag shows, like storytime events at a local library or classroom, Wilson says the children came up with the drag show idea but weren’t actually present for the fundraiser anyway.
Wilson stressed that the sheer hate spewing from James’ ads could incite violence in the community. He said ads like those “empower and embolden” people who have enough hate in them to “take action.”
In speaking to AL.com, Wilson said the ad is “scaring the hell” out of students and that the id is “nothing short of an adult bullying children,” adding that it’s bringing students more anxiety, especially cruel given the higher rates of reported depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation in LGBTQ+ youth.
In addition to inaccurately describing the school as the first “transgender” school in the south, James also misgenders swimmer Lia Thomas by calling her a “man in a woman’s bathing suit.” He also includes a misleading clip of Honorable Ketanji Brown Jackson from her confirmation hearings.
“Male and female, He created them,” James says in the closing moments of the ad. “It’s time to fight back.”
Well, if that’s not a latent call to violence, I’m not sure what it is.
You can see the ad below, which is ripe with transphobia. The kicker? It’s called “Genesis.” Sigh.