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Howard BryantESPN Senior WriterMay 19, 2023, 07:50 AM ET7 Minute Read

Twenty-one and a half years ago, one of the greatest baseball games ended one of the greatest World Series ever played. There was, in the cacophony of the moment, so much to process with virtually no time to do so. The 2001 New York Yankees had lost the World Series in the bottom of the ninth inning, missing the chance to win a fourth straight World Series and conclude a dynasty with a championship. The Arizona Diamondbacks, in only their fourth year of existence, had done something the Boston Red Sox hadn't done since 1918, the White Sox since 1917 and the Cubs since 1908. They were champions, and needed just 48 months to do it.

How to encapsulate it all? The valiant Yankees, who probably deserved to be swept, mercilessly or gentlemanly, extended the series to seven games hitting .183 by producing magic, and then producing it again with soul-sucking (or dynasty-affirming, if you're from the 917, 212 or 718 area codes), late-game home runs in Games 4 and 5. Curt Schilling or Randy Johnson, when starters still mattered, won all four games for Arizona. Yankees reliever Mariano Rivera proved human in Game 7. And then there was America, wounded, mourning, vulnerable, briefly unsure if it wanted a hug or revenge (it would emphatically choose the latter) in the numbing, ashen haze of 9/11. The athletes had given so much that the actual winner of that Series remains to this day secondary to the gift of its existence.

In the clubhouse postgame, the defeated Yankees captain Derek Jeter encapsulated it all his way, by repeating the mantra he first used in 1997, and would repeat in each of the following years until 2009 -- and for five more years when he retired. "If we don't win the World Series," Jeter said, "the season's a failure."

Two decades later, Jeter's alpha found itself challenged in the form of Milwaukee Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, who responded to a reporter's question of whether he felt the Bucks' season was a failure after top-seeded Milwaukee crashed out of the playoffs in the first round in a five-game stunner to the Miami Heat, an eight-seed that had to win two play-in games just to qualify for the postseason.

"Michael Jordan played 15 years, won six championships. The other nine years was a failure? That's what you're telling me? I'm asking you a question, yes or no?" Antetokounmpo said. "... It's the wrong question. There's no failure in sports. There're good days, bad days. Some days you are able to be successful, some days you are not. Some days it is your turn, some days it's not your turn. And that's what sports is about. You don't always win."

As much as the last decade has been defined by protests and pandemics, it also has seen a shift in the perception of the athlete's mission, from complete victory to philosophy. In taking control of the profession by countering prevailing attitudes -- many self-introduced -- the professional athlete can be General Patton or the Dalai Lama. The considerations of mental health, work-life balance, political world view and labor relations have provided ample grist for the culture wars that undergird the anger over players having the agency (read: financial freedom) to reshape their working conditions. The response to Antetokounmpo has been to view his philosophy as strength, where that sort of response once was viewed by some as weakness. Male players once ridiculed and culturally ostracized by fans, teammates and their own front offices for even thinking about family during the season, now take paternity leaves -- even during the playoffs, as Boston Celtics guard Derrick White did last year during the Eastern Conference finals. From Serena Williams to Naomi Osaka to Angelique Kerber, female athletes are having children without announcing their retirements. Some players in individual sports are taking time away from the sport and then returning at their pace. Simone Biles lost her way athletically, and a generally compassionate sports public has given her all the time she needs to rediscover it.

Sports has always existed in the world of the "winner/loser, hero/goat, do/die" binary. The absolutism has been just as essential to the framework of creating the athlete colossus as militaristic cliches are to raising the stakes of this battle fantasy. It stokes the mythology, gives it the requisite dramatic components, allows us to separate the poor from the exceptional and the exceptional from the legendary. The players who embrace the binary ally themselves with fans in the suggestion that they care as much about winning as the ticket buyers. It buys them the currency of protection.

There's no tomorrow because sports have mastered the illusion of appearing deathly important -- and yet, of course there is always a tomorrow -- and people like Giannis are dousing that part of the fantasy. The Jeter position always felt like an unrealistic pander to the ridiculousness that is the overwrought and unrealistic expectation by Yankees fans, for only one team wins the final game of the season. The wonders and discoveries of a season cannot be negated by not winning a championship. By these metrics, the team that doubles its win total from the season before is a failure, as is the team that makes the playoffs for the first time in 25 years, as is the team that started the season losing its first 10 games but finished 10 games over .500, as is the team that discovered it had a future Hall of Famer on its roster. Thirty teams, 29 failures.

And yet, Giannis is only partially correct. Under no circumstances is he ever a failure in life, comparing his Greek-Nigerian upbringing and the prospects for him as a child against the life he now lives. There is not a day in his life, from now until the end, when he is not a winner.

All of which is a different dynamic from the obvious: The Boston Bruins won more games in a regular season (65) than any team in the storied history of the National Hockey League. They had an unprecedented season in their home building, losing only seven times, four in regulation. They amassed more points than any team in history, and like the Bucks, lost in the first round of the postseason. The Bruins were the No. 1 overall seed heading into the Stanley Cup playoffs. They lost three games at home to the Florida Panthers. They lost a 3-1 lead in games. In a Game 5 home elimination game, the Bruins never led. In a Game 6 elimination game, they lost two third-period leads and eventually the game. In the Game 7 clincher at home, the Bruins led with 60 seconds left in the game -- and lost in overtime.

Was the Bruins' regular season a failure? Of course not, but nor was it a coin toss where sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains. The way the hockey season ended in Boston was a colossal disappointment.

Milwaukee was the top seed, won 16 straight games at one point this season and had plans to avenge last season, when it felt injuries robbed it of the chance to defend its NBA title. The Bucks lost in five games to the Miami Heat, including consecutive games with double-digit fourth-quarter leads. There's no philosophy in this: It was a collapse, and for it, Milwaukee coach Mike Budenholzer got fired.

If the fear is that Antetokounmpo's ability to put his life in the proper perspective will undermine the gladiatorial fantasy and its accompanying clichs of warriors, intestinal fortitudes, clutch genes and all the other rhetorical nonsense sports relies upon so desperately, then it is a fear that will be largely unfounded for two primary reasons. First, for every Giannis, there remains a Jeter -- and an enormous, enraged subsection of the fanbase that is never in the mood after crashing out of the playoffs for metaphysical analysis. Second, although Giannis might have been measured in how he spoke of his season ending, he emerged with even more respect because, for all of his mature perspectives, there was nothing in his play charging him with an athlete's greatest crime: playing as if he doesn't care. He simply recognized publicly and without clich, that losing is an inevitability that cannot and should not reduce a six-month journey into meaninglessness, even if -- as seen in Milwaukee and Boston -- there was so far to fall.

There is also a third reason, and it goes back to that November night in 2001: The final score is rarely the most comprehensive measure of victory. Ask anyone who lived through those weeks and months when something as ephemeral as hitting a ball with a stick contained the restorative power to motivate some people to get up in the morning. Failure because the Yankees lost a game was the last thing on anyone's mind.

Link:
From Jeter to Giannis, failure is a matter of perspective - ESPN - ESPN

WASHINGTON For the past few years, the culture wars have been a dominant force in American politics. The debate over what kind of country the U.S. should become and how fast it should change have been themes at the national and state level.

Now, a new poll from NBC News suggests the nation might be more accepting of a need for societal change than some have theorized, at least in some areas. The numbers indicate Democrats might have an advantage on some big cultural issues with the national electorate.

One of the broad debates in politics over the past few election cycles has been over the need (or lack of need) for greater social justice in the U.S. Democrats have largely trumpeted the concept, while Republicans have largely criticized it as a Trojan horse for more liberal policies.

The new poll finds large support for the idea of social justice.

Overall, 70% of those polled said they believed the country needs to do more to increase social justice. That number is surprising. In 2023, getting 70% of Americans to agree on anything is something of a rarity, but thats especially true for an issue many saw as polarizing.

There are, of course, splits along party lines. Among Democrats, the needs to do more number was a stratospheric 91%. Independents came in lower, at 67%. But even among Republicans, the idea was perhaps more popular than expected, with 50% agreeing to the idea.

The data at least suggest that phrases such as social justice warrior," which conservatives sometimes use pejoratively, might not be resonating with the public. Thats not to say liberals have carte blanche on the idea. Needs to do more doesnt mean needs to do everything possible. But the data suggest there is nothing inherently risky about politicians advocating for social justice at least nationally.

That attitude is evident in other areas of the poll, as well. For instance, Americans seem supportive of increased acceptance of the LGBTQ community.

On the whole, 61% of American adults in the poll say they want the country to become more tolerant and accepting of the LGBTQ community. Thats obviously lower than the social justice number but still impressive.

The partisan splits are wider on this topic. For Democrats, the figure for more tolerant and accepting is 87%. Independents sit right at the national figure, 61%. But Republicans are far lower, with only 38% saying they want the country to become more accepting of the LGBTQ population.

The numbers suggest the issue could be a complicated one in 2024. Republican candidates might see an advantage in opposing greater LGBTQ tolerance in their primaries to appeal to GOP voters, but if and when they reach a general election, those stances could be a problem. That depends on the specific race and electorate, of course, but the differences in attitudes between Republican-leaning adults and the rest of the population are stark.

There might be at least one culturally divisive area in which Republicans hold a small advantage: how the nation feels about the transgender population.

The poll found a small plurality of those surveyed believed we have gone too far in accepting transgender people. In total, 48% in the poll said they agreed with that statement, while 43% said the nation has gone far enough in ending discrimination against transgender people a 5-point gap.

And the partisan splits on this question were particularly sharp. Only 19% of Democrats in the poll said they thought the country had gone too far in accepting trans Americans. For independents, the number was 50%. And among Republicans, the number was much higher, at 79%.

The data suggests Republican candidates have an issue that might be able to motivate their base and probably not hurt them in the general election, but the larger point in the numbers may be their unsettled nature. The poll numbers slightly lean toward gone too far, but not decisively. Ultimately, the power of the issue is likely to be tied to the specific electorate in question and how far it leans Republican.

And, as a reference point, the unclear attitudes about accepting transgender Americans look somewhat similar to another recent issue over which attitudes shifted quickly, gay marriage.

Less than 20 years ago, those surveyed in the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll opposed same-sex marriage by more than 30 points only 30% favored allowing it, while 62% opposed it. Those numbers are more negative than the current attitudes toward transgender Americans.

The climb to acceptance of gay marriage happened steadily and quickly, however. By last year, the numbers had more than reversed, with 65% saying they favored allowing it and only 20% opposing. Its a reminder that American cultural attitudes arent set in stone, particularly in the evolving areas of gender and sexuality.

But the larger message in the latest NBC News poll may be about the power of the culture wars as 2024 approaches. Issues like social justice and LGBTQ and trans rights might be big in the political conversation, but their influence on the electorate is far from clear.

Dante Chinni

Dante Chinni is a contributor to NBC News specializing in data analysis around campaigns, politics and culture.

Read more:
Most Americans want societal change but are divided on specifics - NBC News

Chaotic scenes at a Monash City Council meeting on Wednesday night, at which a loose coalition of right wing extremists tried to force councillors to cancel a sold-out drag queen story-time event, were the latest salvo in a growing series of attacks against the LGBTIQ+ community.

Wednesday nights fracas featured protesters who have previously railed against COVID vaccinations, 5G and other conspiracy theories, alongside members of far right groups such as My Place and Reignite Democracy Australia.

Similar extremist protests in the past including an anti-trans demonstration on the steps of Victorias Parliament House in March attended by neo-Nazis have occurred nationally and globally.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has slammed protesters at such events for importing the worst of American politics into our state.

Often, such protests have led to the cancellation of drag events designed to support rainbow families and young LGBTIQA+ people, as was the case in December 2022 when the City of Stonnington cancelled such an event after threats from neo-Nazis and local members of self-described Western chauvinists the Proud Boys.

In the case of the City of Monash, however, Council remained firm and the drag story-time event featuring drag queen Sam Thompson and marking the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia will go ahead as planned.

The majority of anti-drag protests are focused on claims that drag is a form of adult entertainment failing to recognise the fact that, like all professional artists, drag artists are adept at pitching their performances to an individual audience depending on where and when they are performing.

Drag king Belial BZarr recently planned to run a series of workshops called The Art of Drag at Bunjil Place for the City of Casey, only to have the five-part workshop series cancelled after increasingly aggressive protests.

Ive done these workshops for adult groups, Ive run them in universities, Ive done them in person and over Zoom for people who are aged 12 to 18, and then 18 to 25. And there are definitely ways to change the content to make it appropriate to whatever group Im speaking to, BZarr said.

The City of Casey workshops were planned for two separate groups, each with age-appropriate content.

We had one group that was people in the high school age range, and then people who were in the uni age range in the other group. And a lot of the workshops remain the same; you dont really need to change things for the performance workshop. Its all about using your body and getting comfortable and knowing how you can communicate, BZarr said.

However, the Intro to Drag [session] changes pretty significantly. So for the kiddos, I do run a section on consent and getting them thinking about it early [for example, saying], Hey, if youre in a big fancy costume, that doesnt mean its OK for people to grab you. It doesnt mean its OK for people to ask you weird questions. You can say no. And then for the older group who can actually like go into bars and clubs, its [along the lines of], All right, this is how you tell someone to bugger off, this is how you keep safe and this is what isnt appropriate to do as a performer, they said.

Read: Reclaiming Australian history one gay at a time

Once publicity for the Art of Drag program was announced, the backlash was immediate.

Literally the moment we started posting, within a couple of hours, people were commenting and saying horrendous things, BZarr told ArtsHub.

As detailed on their Instagram page, the attacks came from both the far right and the religious right.

Theyre very much the same. Theyre certainly both on the same pipeline. Some of them are just a little bit more fashionable than others, BZarr said.

The personal toll on BZarr has been significant, especially given that this is not the first time their events have been targeted by the far right.

I had one event, which was a youth fest event in Moonee Ponds, attacked in September [2022]. And they came and they stood around and shouted a lot of slurs in front of children and these are people who claim they are protecting the children, by yelling slurs at them? Very odd. So its gone from that to harassment online to literal threats and people busting into the [City of Casey] Council meeting.

Many commentators believe that the increasing attacks on the qieer community are a direct response to the religious right losing the marriage equality debate in Australia, the US and other countries.

As journalists Adam Nagourney and Jeremy W Peters wrote in The New York Times earlier this month:

When the Supreme Court declared a constitutional right to same-sex marriage nearly eight years ago, social conservatives were set adrift.

The ruling stripped them of an issue they had used to galvanise rank and file supporters and big donors. And it left them searching for a cause that like opposing gay marriage would rally the base and raise the movements profile on the national stage. We knew we needed to find an issue that the candidates were comfortable talking about, said Terry Schilling, the president of American Principles Project, a social conservative advocacy group. And we threw everything at the wall.

What has stuck, somewhat unexpectedly, is the issue of transgender identity, particularly among young people, Nagourney and Peters reported.

Motivating such protests are the suggestion that drag performers are sexualising children, a slur that will be familiar to many LGBTIQA+ people who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s.

Read: Is staying in the closet bad for your career?

A similar spurious claim is that children at drag story-time events are being groomed by the performers.

Writers Aoife Gallagher and Tim Squirrell explored the origins and impacts of the groomer slur in their well-researched article of the same name, noting that it sprang from a variety of sources, including conspiracy theorists associated with Pizzagate and QAnon, dark corners of the web such as 4Chan, and the so-called gender critical movement, often also known as trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs).

The overall effect of this complex web of moral panics, conspiratorial thinking and old-school anti-gay tropes is an atmosphere where the groomer narrative has served as justification for harassment, attacks, discrimination, intimidation and the erasure of the LGBTQ+ community, argue Gallagher and Squirrell.

Another performer who was recently the focus of death threats from right wing protesters is cabaret artist Dolly Diamond.

Diamond was scheduled to host her popular Dolly Diamond: Story Time event at the Mount Gambier Library on Saturday 25 March in the lead-up to subsequent gigs at Fringe Mount Gambier.

As reported by the ABC, a library staff member received a threatening phone call in response to publicity for the event.

Diamond told ArtsHub she had no fears for her safety until the death threat was received.

None at all, she said, though I know other artists in Australia and the UK well, all over the world, I guess that have gone through this. I always wondered whether I was getting away with it because I didnt use the word drag in it, you know, drag story time.

In addition to the threat made directly to the library, additional abuse was left on the events Facebook page.

One of the organisers rang me and said, Are you all right? and I said yes, and then she elaborated on it, because I didnt even know about it. And then the ABC ran with it, and then their local newspaper, Diamond said.

Media attention seems to have only inflamed the situation in the lead-up to the Story Time event, leading protestors to make wild allegations, whereas the performance Diamond offered was naturally age-appropriate.

I have no idea what they expected me to be wearing probably some sort of S&M outfit, which is just ridiculous, she said.

When asked if she was concerned for her safety on the day, Diamond replied, Yes, without a doubt, because its the unknown You have absolutely no idea if someone is going to leap through the crowd, and it almost sounds ridiculous, but if this sort of [moral panic] continues then I think it will happen, unless we find some way to make things calm again. The fact that were having to justify [drag] at all is f***ing ridiculous.

Next week: Are graphic novels the next target of the culture wars? Plus, tips for Councils on standing up to the far right when queer artists are attacked.

Read this article:
Queer community the latest target of culture wars - ArtsHub

A little-noticed casualty of the culture wars in the Lone Star State has been the training students receive to participate in American democracy

The defining experience of Jordan Zamora-Garcias high school career a hands-on group project in civics class that spurred a new city ordinance in his Austin suburb would now violate Texas law.

Since state legislators in 2021 passed a ban on lessons teaching that any one group is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, one unprecedented provision tucked into the bill has triggered a massive fallout for civics education statewide.

A brief clause on Page 8 of the legislation outlawed all assignments involving direct communication between students and their federal, state or local officials. Educators could no longer ask students to get involved in the political process, even if they let youth decide for themselves what side of an issue to advocate for short-circuiting the training young Texans receive to participate in democracy itself.

Zamora-Garcias 2017 project to add student advisors to the City Council, and others like it involving research and meetings with elected representatives, would stand in direct violation.

Since 2021, 18 states have passed laws restricting teachings on race and gender. But Texas is the only one nationwide to suppress students interactions with elected officials in class projects, according to researchers at the free expression advocacy group PEN America.

Practically overnight, a growing movement to engage Texas students in real-world civics lessons evaporated. Teachers canceled time-honored assignments, districts reversed expansion plans with a celebrated civics education provider and a bill promoting student civics projects that received bipartisan support in 2019 was suddenly dead in the water.

By the time we got to 2021, civics was the latest weapon in the culture wars, state Rep. James Talarico, sponsor of that now-defunct bill, told The 74.

Texas does require high schoolers to take a semester of government and a semester of economics, and is one of 38 states nationwide that mandates at least a semester of civics. But students told The 74 the courses typically rely on book learning and memorization.

Talarico, a former middle school teacher and the Texas legislatures youngest member, came into office during a statewide surge in momentum to deepen civics education. A 2018 study out of the University of Texas highlighted dismal levels of political participation the state was 44th in voter registration and 47th in voter turnout and Democrats and Republicans alike were motivated to reverse the trend. Meanwhile, academic research found lessons directly involving students in government could activate future civic engagement.

So when the freshman legislator proposed that all high schoolers in the state learn civics with a project-based component addressing an issue that is relevant to the students, colleagues on both sides of the aisle stamped their approval as the bill sailed through the House. Although the legislation then stalled in the Senate, Talarico said he came away very optimistic the policy would become law next session.

But in the two years before the next legislative session, he watched as the political tides turned. Flashpoint issues like George Floyds murder and the Jan. 6 insurrection brought on a disagreement over democracy itself, he said. And when his conservative colleagues passed a 2021 bill limiting school lessons on race and gender, he mourned as a few brief clauses dashed all his hopes for project-based civics.

Students are now banned from advocating for something like a stop sign in front of their school, Talarico said.

The sections of the 2021 law limiting civic engagement pull directly from model legislation authored by the conservative scholar Stanley Kurtz, whose extensive writings seek to link an approach called action civics what he calls woke civics with leftist activism and critical race theory. Critical race theory is a scholarly framework examining how racism is embedded in Americas legal and social institutions, but became a right-wing catch-all term for teachings on race in early 2021.

Kurtz argues the practice is a form of political indoctrination under the deceptively soothing heading of civics, a cause long celebrated on both the right and the left.

The action civics model was popularized by the nonprofit Generation Citizen and is used in over a thousand classrooms across at least eight states. It teaches students about government by having them pick a local issue, research it and present their findings to officials.

The central philosophy is that students learn civics best by doing civics, Generation Citizen Policy Director Andrew Wilkes said.

Generation Citizens method has been studied by several academic researchers who found participants experienced boosted civic knowledge and improvements in related academic areas like history and English.

Kurtz, however, contends the projects tilt overwhelmingly to the left.

Political protest and lobbying ought to be done by students outside of school hours, independently of any class projects or grades, he said in an email to The 74.

Civics experts, however, argued otherwise.

The notion that its activism happening in classrooms thats just so far from the truth, said Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University in Boston.

Rep. Steve Toth and Sen. Bryan Hughes, the GOP lawmakers who sponsored the 2021 anti-CRT legislation, did not respond to requests for comment.

The 74 reviewed over three dozen action civics projects in Texas from before the 2021 legislation and found that the vast majority dealt with hyperlocal, nonpartisan issues.

Students most often took up causes like bullying, youth vaping, movie nights in the park or bringing back student newspapers. A handful in Austin and nearby Elgin could be considered progressive, including projects dealing with gun control or school admissions prioritizing diversity, topics educators said students selected based on their own interests.

Under the 2021 law, all of those projects now must avoid contact with elected officials. The restrictions have resulted in initiatives more contained to schools themselves like advocacy for less-crowded hallways or longer lunch periods, educators said.

This particular legislation ties [students] hands as to how involved they can get while in high school, said Armando Ordua, the Houston executive director of Latinos for Education.

His own political awakening, he said, came three decades ago growing up in Texas when a teacher assigned him 10 hours of volunteering on a political campaign of his choice. He opted to work on the 1991 Houston mayoral campaign of Sylvester Turner, then a young state representative who lost his bid that year but went on to become the citys mayor in 2016.

Back then, the attitude was how to fight teenage apathy regarding politics and now its quite the other way around, Ordua said. Now politicians are working to tamp down the next generation of leaders.

Young progressives have become a considerable force in American politics, fueling recent electoral wins in the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the Chicago mayoral race and a base-rousing standoff in the Tennessee legislature. In the eyes of some members of the GOP, their activism is seen as a threat.

Though some project-based civics lessons in Texas continue with a pared-down scope, others have disappeared altogether.

One school district north of Dallas decided out of an abundance of caution to reverse years of precedent and stop offering course credit to students involved in a well-regarded national civic engagement program, The Texas Tribune first reported.

And Generation Citizen, too, has seen its footprint in Texas dwindle.

After a 2017 launch in the state, the organization underwent several years of steady growth, with more than a half dozen districts using its programming or curricula. At the time, districts in San Antonio, north Texas, the Rio Grande Valley and several rural regions had expressed interest in beginning programming, former regional director Meredith Stefos Norris said. She spent most of her days criss-crossing the sprawling state meeting with interested school leaders. Austin schools expanded their contract with the nonprofit to $58,000, according to records The 74 obtained from the district through a Freedom of Information request. And Dallas said it wanted to bring Generation Citizen programming to every high schooler in its 153,000-student district, Norris said.

It felt at the time that we were just going to keep going and keep growing and there was no reason that we werent going to be a statewide organization, the former Texas director said.

Then came the 2021 legislative session and everything got turned upside down, said Megan Brandon, Generation Citizens current Texas program director. It zapped their efforts and districts backed out of partnerships.

The organization now primarily works with just three Texas districts, including an updated contract with Austin schools for $3,000 a tiny sliver of the sum from a few years prior. The other two are Bastrop Independent School District and Elgin Independent School District.

Meanwhile, across the states northern border in Oklahoma, where Generation Citizen also operates, lawmakers passed a classroom censorship bill around issues of race and gender, but one that did not limit students contact with elected officials. The organization has been able to maintain all its programs while following the letter of the law, Oklahoma director Amy Curran said.

This isnt organizing about big culture wars, national stuff, she said. This is, literally, the sidewalks are unsafe around our school.

Brandon, a former social studies teacher herself, grieves not just for the Texas branch of her organization, where the nature of the projects are similar, but for the youth in her state. Her former students in Bastrop ISD outside Austin, most of whom did not have parents who attended college, never had access to civic engagement opportunities before her class, she said.

Students in Texas need civics more than students in many other states, she said. It feels like were going backwards in time.

Zamora-Garcia remembers striding to the dais of the Bastrop City Council in 2017 with seven of his peers the boys clad in too-big blazers and bow ties, the girls in dresses and laced-up heels. For a project they began in Brandons civics class, the team sought to boost youth voices in their local government. After meeting with officials, researching models and drawing up bylaws, the students eventually made history by passing a city ordinance in the Austin suburb to add student advisors to the City Council.

It made me feel more important and more involved, actually being able to have a voice that can make a change, said Zamora-Garcia, now a junior at Texas State University studying business.

The course activated his potential in class and in the community, he said. Before the experience, school had felt more like being a cog in a machine, he said.

Mabel Zhu, who took the same class two years later, said the experience was life-changing, igniting her passion for civic engagement for years to come.

After the class, she began working with a local nonprofit, then organized a youth summit bringing awareness to the issues of mental health and substance abuse. She eventually joined the Youth Advisory Council that Zamora-Garcia and his classmates helped launch and worked with the Cultural Arts Board to put up a new mural that will define her citys downtown space for years to come. A waving flag on the painting proclaims, The future is ours!

Without [the class], I wouldnt have been able to make such an impact within my community, Zhu said.

The loss of such opportunities are what Rep. Talarico calls the unseen opportunity cost of the culture wars.

What are we missing out on that we could be doing if we werent playing political games with our students education? the Democratic lawmaker asked.

Many students in Texas either learn how to engage with the political system in school or not at all, teachers said. Kyle Olson, an educator at an East Austin high school that serves predominantly immigrant families, taught his students that, as constituents, they could write letters to their elected representatives.

They didnt know that that was even something that was possible, he said.

Neutering those lessons flies in the face of American democracy itself, argues Alexander Pope, who leads the Institute for Public Affairs and Civic Engagement at Marylands Salisbury University.

Part of the job that schools have in this country is to help prepare people for democracy, he said. The idea that, in a representative democracy, youre going to literally ban people from writing their elected representatives is just backward.

The risk, believes Tuftss Kawashima-Ginsberg, is that a generation of Texans may grow up with a stunted sense of citizenship.

Its going to really damage their idea of what democracy is, she said.

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How Texas Lawmakers Gutted Civics The 74 - The 74

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) When Oklahomas newly elected Republican head of public schools campaigned for the job last fall, he ran on a platform of fighting woke ideology in public schools, banning certain books from school libraries, empowering parents with school choice and getting rid of radical leftists he claims were indoctrinating children in classrooms across the state.

While the political strategy was successful and Ryan Walters won the race for superintendent of public instruction by nearly 15 percentage points, many expected him to pivot toward more substantive education policy: working with lawmakers to improve education outcomes and overseeing the states largest and most-funded agency.

Instead, Walters, a former public school teacher from McAlester, has doubled down on his political rhetoric, focusing his energy on culture-war issues like targeting transgender athletes in schools, banning books and fighting what he calls Joe Bidens radical agenda.

In doing so, the 37-year-old political newcomer has frustrated even his fellow Republicans in the Legislature, who have publicly voiced concern about whether Walters can effectively improve public education in Oklahoma, which consistently scores below the national average on most standardized testing and where average scores have declined in recent years.

State Rep. Mark McBride, a veteran Republican lawmaker who heads a key education budget committee in the House, said hes disappointed Walters has continued to engage in inflammatory commentary and take advice from his campaign consultant instead of working with lawmakers on policy.

If he would come over here and talk to us instead of a political hack, I think it would move the state forward and move education forward, said McBride, who said Walters recent refusal of an invitation to address a committee hearing was the first time in his 11 years in the House that an agency head had done so.

Even Senate President Pro Tempore Greg Treat, who said he considers Walters a friend, said hes turned off by Walters fiery rhetoric.

I wish we could get down into the details of trying to deliver on school choice and a real teacher pay raise, Treat said.

In an editorial, the states largest newspaper, The Oklahoman, called on Walters to end the divisive rhetoric or resign from office.

Walters is a strong supporter of a voucher-style plan that would allow parents to use taxpayer money to homeschool their children or send them to private schools, even religious ones. The issue is a major one the Republican-controlled Legislature is considering this year amid bipartisan opposition. But several lawmakers working on the proposal say Walters has had little, if any, input.

For his part, Walters said hes got great support in the House and Senate and that hes continuing to work with lawmakers to get some kind of voucher proposal, which he calls school choice, to the governors desk.

Im going to continue to fight for that in both the Senate and the House, and were working closely to get this done, he said.

He also proposed a new teacher recruitment pilot program that includes a $50,000 sign-on bonus for new teachers in certain instructional areas who spend at least five years in the classroom.

While many public school teachers and administrators fiercely oppose the idea of sending public money to private schools, several who spoke to The Associated Press say theyre more concerned about Walters talking points and his threats to punish teachers.

I would say fear is the most poignant emotion that is felt, said Jaime Lee, a ninth-grade U.S. government and history teacher in the Tulsa suburb of Bixby.

She said many teachers are afraid of violating a state law approved two years ago that prohibits the teaching of certain concepts of race and racism, commonly referred to as an anti-critical race theory law, which Walters vowed to strongly enforce. Critical race theory, a way of thinking about Americas history through the lens of racism that is generally taught at the university level, recently morphed across the country from an obscure academic discussion point on the left into a political rallying cry on the right.

Its frustrating as a teacher, Lee said.

Those fears were heightened earlier this year when Walters threatened to revoke a Norman teachers teaching certificate because she provided her high school students with a QR code that linked to the Brooklyn Public Librarys section of banned books.

Walters also has not shied away from his support of private Christian schools. He even encouraged a state board to approve what would be the nations first religious charter school, despite an explicit prohibition in the state constitution and the states Republican attorney generals warnings.

After a parent and some ministers raised concerns to the board, Walters dismissed them as radical leftists who hate the Catholic church.

(Walters) just could not help himself but interject with very inflammatory, partisan language, said Erika Wright, a mother of two children in public school and the leader of the Oklahoma Rural Schools Coalition who spoke to the board. Im a Republican. Im not a radical leftist.

Walters also has faced criticism for his previous work as Republican Gov. Kevin Stitts secretary of education, when he had oversight of a program to distribute federal coronavirus relief funds intended for education. A scathing federal audit of the program recommended the state return nearly $653,000 it said families had spent on items like Xbox gaming systems, grills and televisions.

Some of Walters other actions have been seen as petty digs toward educators, like when just a month into the job, he removed portraits of members of the Educators Hall of Fame that had been hanging for decades in the Department of Education building. He replaced them with artwork from students.

He also faced criticism for a tweet in December that showed his family posing with a white Santa Claus and said: No woke Santa this year :). Many interpreted the message as a thinly veiled racist response to news stories at the time about a Black Oklahoman who dressed as Santa, although Walters rejected any suggestion the tweet was racist.

Despite the controversy, Stitt, who is serving his second term as governor, said he continues to have confidence in Walters.

I think hes easy to target, maybe, and I think he has some social media stuff, Stitt said. I know his heart, and his heart is to improve education in Oklahoma and to empower parents.

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Follow Sean Murphy on Twitter: @apseanmurphy

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Oklahoma's top education official embraces culture wars - The Associated Press