Tag Archives: Asra Q. Nomani

Meet Abrar Omeish, Exhibit A in the Woke Army

Posted on March 15, 2023 by | 60 comments

by Asra Q. Nomani

Exclusive: In 2019, Abrar Omeish canvassed for support at a fundraiser for the anti-Semitic group American Muslims for Palestine and said she wanted to change the “narrative” on Palestinians. She was elected to office and launched a tirade against the state of Israel, which she smeared as an “apartheid” nation, repeating the talking points of an anti-Semitic brigade in the Woke Army. Here is the full transcript.

Last month, at Luther Jackson Middle School, parents gasped as a Fairfax County Public Schools board member, Abrar Omeish, stumbled through a clumsy speech and called the historic battle of Iwo Jima “evil,” even though the decisive victory by U.S. Marines led to eventual victory by Allied forces against Japan and Nazi Germany and its leader Adolph Hitler, ending the brutal genocide of Jews in the Holocaust.

In the days after, the remarks sparked a national outcry, even spilling over globally, with Virginia Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears, a former U.S. Marine, assailing the remarks and a pair of comedians asking indelicately: “How did this clown get elected to a school board?”

Editor’s note: For Asra’s twitter conversation on the event see here.

I know the answer because I witnessed it happen, and the answer reveals an unholy alliance that I expose in my new book, Woke Army, between the Democratic Party and rigid anti-Israel, anti-Semitic establishment Muslim leaders in the United States. These establishment Muslims include activists, politicians, and academics — from Women’s March co-founder Linda Sarsour to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), University of California at Berkeley academic Hatem Bazian. and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

What is particularly disturbing is that this Woke Army set its sights on K-12 schools and their children. School board member Abrar Omeish is Exhibit A in this dangerous alliance in K-12.

I saw it first-hand one Saturday night on Sept. 7, 2019, documenting the evening in video shared here for the first time.
Continue reading →

60 Comments

Posted in Book review, Children and families, Courts and law, Culture wars, Democracy and Western Civilization, Demographics, Education (K-12), Elections, General Assembly, Leadership, Money in politics, Political Influence, Politics, Uncategorized

Tagged

Suparna Dutta: Ilhan Omar is ‘Completely Unaware’

Posted on February 9, 2023 by | 11 comments

Suparna Gutta
Photo credit: Education News

by Asra Q. Nomani

Awakening in the darkness of the predawn, brave Virginia mother Suparna Dutta spoke out on Fox and Friends First, challenging not only the hegemony of Democratic power over parents in Virginia but also the nation, as she fired back on not only Virginia Democrats who attacked her with the “white supremacist” smear but also Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, who tried to gaslight parents this week in the U.S. Congress.

Omar claimed in a congressional committee hearing she was “unaware” of school boards ignoring parents. Suparna fired back and said Omar is a “completely unaware” politician if she hasn’t see the evidence in school districts around the country of parents treated “like dirt.”

This is Omar’s first serious emergence in the debate over parental rights and reveals how the Woke Army of Islamists working with leftists is going to see cracks in their ranks if they keep trying to sideline parents.

Are Omar’s Islamist supporters going to accept schools keeping secrets from them about their children’s pronouns? You can bet the answer is no.

In fact, Omar needs look no further than her own state and her own congressional district where Muslim parents with immigrant backgrounds from Lebanon, Egypt, Sudan, her native Somalia and elsewhere are demanding their rights at fiery school board meetings. One parent is Shukri Abdrirahman @ShuForCongress, a religiously conservative Muslim immigrant mother from Somalia in Minnesota, who opposes the new age-inappropriate sexual books being taught in schools. Shukri ran as a Republican against Omar and she is building awareness now in Minnesota among her Somali-American community over how the alliance of Muslims with Democrats — embodied in people like Omar — ignores the values of parental rights sacred in immigrant communities. Stay tuned for more on Shukri’s efforts.

Watch Suparna’s interview with ToddPiro@ToddPiro to see that the Woke Army may have won a vote to oust Suparna from the Virginia Board of Education but they have just empowered a mother to fight even harder against their tyranny.

Parents around the world are cheering you, Suparna! Send her a note of support if you’d like to at coalitionfortj@gmail.com.

This column is republished with permission from Asra Investigates. 

11 Comments

Posted in Education (K-12)

Tagged , ,

Woke Army Puts American Hindu Mom in its Crosshairs

Posted on February 8, 2023 by | 8 comments

Fairfax journalist Asra Q. Normani continues her remarkable reporting on the Virginia Senate’s refusal to endorse Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s nomination of Suparna Dutta to the state Board of Education. Dutta is a brave immigrant mother who has advocated for the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, democracy and meritocracy.

Read all about it at Asra Investigates.

8 Comments

Posted in Education (K-12), General Assembly

Tagged , , ,

Fairfax County Officials Pay Big Bucks to Another Controversial Author

Posted on January 27, 2023 by | 81 comments

by Asra Q. Nomani

Fairfax County Public Library officials are paying controversial writer Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of The 1619 Project, $35,350 for a one-hour lecture on Feb. 19 at the McLean Community Center, with a price tag that amounts to $589 per minute, according to a copy of the contract obtained by the Fairfax County Times.

Fairfax County Public Library, a county government agency, is paying $29,350 of the  total fee and the McLean Community Center is paying $6,000, according to Jessica Hudson, library director.

Local taxpayers are raising issues with the expenditure, coupled with the $22,500 that the Fairfax County Library paid for divisive author Ibram X. Kendi for a 60-minute virtual discussion last month. The combined amount to both speakers comes to $57,850, or about the annual starting salary of $54,421 for a librarian in Fairfax County. This past August, library officials announced they were curtailing operating hours because of “ongoing staff recruitment challenges.”

“By my estimates, the Fairfax County Public Library is using over $60,000 in taxpayer funds to host Ibram Kendi and Nikole Hannah-Jones as speakers,” said William Denk, a local resident who first alerted the Fairfax County Times to the bill, after discovering the fee. “I would like to see the Board of Supervisors reach out to Kendi and Hannah-Jones to ask that they return these funds to Fairfax County to help our local homeless population.” Continue reading →

81 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Race and race relations, Uncategorized, Virginia history

Tagged

Area Principals Admit to Withholding National Merit Awards From Students

Posted on January 8, 2023 by | 73 comments

by Asra Q. Nomani

While Fairfax County Public Schools Superintendent Michelle Reid claims the principal at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST) withheld National Merit awards from students in a “one-time human error,” parents at two local high schools got a Friday and Saturday night surprise.

The revelations are emerging after school district principals scrambled to a meeting Wednesday afternoon with the superintendent, after Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares announced a civil rights investigation into the controversy. Just as at TJHSST, the new revelations appear to impact many Asian-American students – one focus of the investigation.

In an email, obtained by the Fairfax County Times, Langley High School Principal Kim Greer pressed send on a mea culpa at 9:29:30 p.m. on Friday night, confusing, agitating, and angering parents and students already on edge during the tumultuous college admissions season.

Greer told parents that she was “delighted” to let them know that “your student was designated a Commended Student by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation.” She then immediately followed up by saying, “I must apologize that certificates were not distributed to these Langley High School students in the usual way this past fall.”

Tonight, another email shared with the Fairfax County Times went out to parents at 8:39 p.m. This time, Tony DiBari, the “Proud Principal” at Westfield High School in Chantilly, told parents that “it has come to light that Westfield High School students designated as Commended Students this past fall were also not notified by the school.” Continue reading →

73 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Culture wars, Education (K-12), Uncategorized

Tagged

As TJHSST is Investigated, an Email from 2020 Reveals a ‘Pattern and Practice’ of Hiding Awards

Posted on January 7, 2023 by | 9 comments

by Asra Q. Nomani

This week, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares walked through the glass doors of the Korean Community Center off Little River Turnpike, the dome of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology visible through the window, and with him stood five parents of current and former students at TJ, as the school is known locally.

In a devastating announcement for Fairfax County Public Schools, Miyares announced twin civil rights investigations into, first, the withholding of National Merit Commended Student awards by TJ administrators and, second, a Fairfax County school admissions policy, put in place in December 2020, that a federal judge ruled discriminates illegally against Asian American students.

Miyares’ team will be seeking to identify a “pattern and practice” of discriminatory actions, a standard in civil rights cases. Currently, in defense of the school district, FCPS spokeswoman Julie Moult told reporters on Dec. 29, that withholding National Merit Commendation awards from students this year was a “one-time human error in the fall of 2022 only.”

“To suggest a deliberate intent to withhold this information would be inaccurate and contrary to the values of FCPS,” Moult continued. The district, she went on, values “hard work and dedication.”

“Fairfax County Public Schools also seems to value obfuscation and deception,” said Norma Margulies, the mother of a student at TJ, an immigrant from Peru, and one of the parents standing on stage with Miyares.

An email, obtained by Fairfax County Times, reveals that, indeed, in fall 2020, TJ staffers misled parents and students about the National Merit Commended Student award, presented to the top 3 percent of 1.5 million students who take the PSAT exam.

In the email, dated Nov. 24, 2020, at 11:53:25 a.m., a TJ staffer copied and pasted information about the Commended Student award into an email to a parent, who was asking about the award, incorrectly stating, “There is no letter and no formal announcement for Commended scholars and the list of Commended scholars is not made public.”

In fact, more than two entire months earlier, on Sept. 10, 2020, according to a National Merit Scholarship Corporation spokeswoman, the Illinois-based nonprofit sent a letter to TJ Principal Ann Bonitatibus notifying her the school had 230 National Merit Commended Students. Most of them were Asian- American. The school district typically releases the names of National Merit Semifinalists, who advance to compete to be National Merit Finalists.

The National Merit letter included a note with the explicit expectation that schools will inform students and parents, “Please present the letters of commendation as soon as possible since it is the students’ only notification.” Continue reading →

9 Comments

Posted in Education (K-12), Ethics, Parental Rights, Race and race relations, Uncategorized

Tagged

The War on Merit Takes a Bizarre Turn

Posted on December 22, 2022 by | 37 comments

by Asra Q. Nomani

For years, two administrators at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ) have been withholding notifications of National Merit awards from the school’s families, most of them Asian, thus denying students the right to use those awards to boost their college admission prospects and earn scholarships. This episode has emerged amid the school district’s new strategy of “equal outcomes for every student, without exception.” School administrators, for instance, have implemented an “equitable grading” policy that eliminates zeros, gives students a grade of 50 percent just for showing up, and assigns a cryptic code of “NTI” for assignments not turned in. It’s a race to the bottom.

An intrepid Thomas Jefferson parent, Shawna Yashar, a lawyer, uncovered the withholding of National Merit awards. Since starting as a freshman at the school in September 2019, her son, who is part Arab-American, studied statistical analysis, literature reviews, and college-level science late into the night. This workload was necessary to keep him up to speed with the advanced studies at TJ, which U.S. News & World Report ranks as America’s top school.

Last fall, along with about 1.5 million U.S. high school juniors, the Yashar teen took the PSAT, which determines whether a student qualifies as a prestigious National Merit scholar. When it came time to submit his college applications this fall, he didn’t have a National Merit honor to report — but it wasn’t because he hadn’t earned the award. The National Merit Scholarship Corporation, a nonprofit based in Evanston, Illinois, had recognized him as a Commended Student in the top 3 percent nationwide — one of about 50,000 students earning that distinction. Principals usually celebrate National Merit scholars with special breakfasts, award ceremonies, YouTube videos, press releases, and social media announcements.

But not at TJ. School officials had decided to withhold announcement of the award. Indeed, it turns out that the principal, Ann Bonitatibus, and the director of student services, Brandon Kosatka, have been withholding this information from families and the public for years, affecting the lives of at least 1,200 students over the principal’s tenure of five years. Recognition by National Merit opens the door to millions of dollars in college scholarships and 800 Special Scholarships from corporate sponsors. Continue reading →

37 Comments

Posted in Civil Rights, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12)

Tagged

Fathering While Black

Posted on December 6, 2022 by | 31 comments

by Asra Q. Nomani and Debra Tisler

STAFFORD, VA — “They are not taking my baby girl!” cries Sean Jackson, the black father of a beautiful girl, Amoria Adams, 10 months old, holding his beloved daughter.

This week, a school board member from Fairfax County, Va., Karen Keys-Gamarra, put in motion a judge’s order that tonight took a beautiful baby girl from the home of her doting father and paternal grandparents. At this moment. At 8:33 PM.

“You guys are taking my child,” says Jackson, distraught.

“No!” cries the paternal grandmother, Kimberly Jackson-Makle.

Three Stafford County sheriff’s officers moved tonight — Monday night, to seize this baby, nicknamed “Mori,” because of a judge’s order put in place by Keys-Gamarra on Monday without the father’s or paternal grandparents’ awareness.

Then, in the darkness of the night, little Amoria was strapped into a car seat in a white car and driven away by a stranger. Her father and grandparents have no clue where she is tonight.

How did this miscarriage of justice happen?

The writing on the wall was written on May 4, on the fourth floor of the Arlington Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court, a bailiff held Amoria as a three-month-old baby girl and shouted, “Father? Where’s the father?”

Jackson, 28, a paramedic in nearby Stafford, Va., stepped forward and declared, “I’m the father.”

The bailiff thrust the baby into his arms.

Ever since Jackson had learned through a paternity test that he was Amoria’s father, he had been trying to win visitation. It seemed his case might have suddenly been strengthened. A few feet away, Arlington police led away the baby’s mother, 21, in handcuffs, arrested on an outstanding warrant for alleged assault and battery involving abuse of another of her daughters.

What are you? Retarded?

In the confusion, Jackson wondered what happened next.

But when he sought advice from the person who would know, Karen Keys-Gamarra, Amoria’s court-appointed attorney, he got a shocking answer – one that he says telegraphed her bias against him.

“What are you?” Keys-Gamarra snapped: “Retarded?”

While Keys-Gamarra denies using the term, it wouldn’t be the first time the lawyer, a Black activist and Fairfax County School Board member who ran as a “voice for the voiceless,” used the slur. On Thursday, Oct. 20, at a public meeting of the school board of Fairfax County Public Schools, Keys-Gamarra blurted out at one point during a dispute, “We cannot be this retarded,” in a hot-mic moment. The next day, disturbed by the use of the word, school board chair Rachna Sizemore Heizer told a local WUSA9 TV reporter, “That is actually the third time she’s used it.” Little did Sizemore Heizer know that a young father had also heard the word used to demean him. And according to someone close to Amoria’s mother, Keys-Gamarra refused to give Amoria to Jackson once when the baby was sick, saying: “He is retarded.”

For Jackson and his parents, the case illustrates the biases of a system rigged against fathers even by so-called progressives. Amoria’s mother, who is also Black, was three months pregnant with her when she was jailed in July 2021 for felony charges of possession of controlled substances and “gross, wanton or reckless care of a child.” Continue reading →

31 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Culture wars, Parental Rights, Race and race relations

Tagged

TJ Math Teachers Note “Lowering of Standards”

Posted on June 13, 2022 by | 41 comments


by Asra Q. Nomani

On May 31, the public relations team at Fairfax County Public Schools scored a big “hit,” as it’s called in PR, getting the stories of four hand-selected students from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology featured in a Washington Post article by education reporter Hannah Natanson, headlined: “Hear from four TJ freshmen admitted under controversial circumstances.”

In the article, Natanson disparaged a “a group of disgruntled parents” that filed a lawsuit against new race-based admissions changes to the school, even though a federal judge, Claude Hilton, ruled earlier this year that the changes are illegal, “patently unconstitutional” and anti-Asian. That would be like calling the Brown family in Brown v. Board of Education “disgruntled.”

Weaponizing innocent students for its PR, the school district used the article to try to vindicate the school board’s failed policies with America’s No. 1 high school. School board chair Stella Pekarsky shared the article on Facebook with the hashtag: #studentvoices. Continue reading →

41 Comments

Posted in Education (K-12)

Tagged

Grandparents Ask Supreme Court for Justice

Posted on April 12, 2022 by | 59 comments


Recommendation to readers: Be sure to delve deep enough into the story to read Asra Nomani’s personal story. She describes the values to which Asian-Americans owe their academic success. — JAB

by Asra Q. Nomani

WASHINGTON, D.C. — This past Friday, Dr. Mridula Kumari, 71, walked up the stairs to the U.S. Supreme Court, and soaked in the festive atmosphere on the sidewalk off 1st Avenue S.E. A band played, as children danced and women clapped, pumping their hands in the air to the beat, one woman in New Balance sneakers carrying a bag that read, “Our Rights. Our Future. Our Power. Our Courts.”

As war waged across the world in Ukraine, a people trying to defend their future, their rights, their nation, Dr. Kumari understood well the power of those words. The courts can protect the rights of the citizenry. The courts can pave a path to a better future. The courts can empower the citizenry.

She hoped these protections would also be extended to her granddaughter: a first-generation American and a seventh grader in Fairfax County Public Schools, across the Potomac River in the northern Virginia suburbs of the nation’s capital. As the daughter of immigrants from India, her granddaughter faces a new racism in America: an anti-Asian admissions process to schools, including Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a school fondly known as TJ. Continue reading →

59 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (K-12), Race and race relations

Tagged

Steve Descano: Will “Not Prosecute” Harry Jackson

Posted on April 8, 2022 by | 23 comments

by Asra Nomani

FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. — An attorney from the office of Fairfax County Commonwealth Attorney Steve Descano has filed a motion to nolle prosequi, Latin for “not prosecute,” Harry Jackson, a former U.S. Naval intelligence officer and father who has been a strong parent advocate against the war on merit education in this Washington, D.C., suburb.

A judge will hear the motion at a scheduled hearing on Friday, April 8, at 10 a.m. in Fairfax County District Court in Fairfax, Va.

In this truly bizarre case, chronicled fully here, a local woke activist, Jorge Torrico, filed four criminal complaints starting in September 2021 with the local magistrate, alleging that Jackson broke a little-used criminal law against “slander and libel,” by posting a tweet asserting that Torrico had engaged in “‘grooming’ behavior” during a November 2020 Zoom meeting of the PTSA at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. Jackson has a son at the school. Torrico is a 1998 graduate of the school and does not have any children who attend the school. Continue reading →

23 Comments

Posted in Courts and law, Culture wars, Uncategorized

Tagged

Prosecutor “Evaluating the Facts” in Virginia v. Anti-Woke Dad

Posted on April 6, 2022 by | 13 comments

Harry Jackson displays pornographic images taken from books in Fairfax County Public School libraries.


by Asra Q. Nomani

FAIRFAX, Virginia – A spokeswoman for Fairfax County Commonwealth Attorney Steve Descano says the prosecutor’s office is “evaluating the facts” of four criminal cases that accuse a black father, Harry Jackson, of “slander and libel” for raising concerns that a local woke activist was engaging in “grooming behavior.”

I have evaluated “the facts,” and there is only one conclusion to be reached: Descano is engaging in prosecutorial overreach to intimidate a parent who has dared to challenge the all-Democratic school board in court for its racist, anti-Asian admissions changes to America’s No. 1 high school, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, affectionally known as TJ.

The unprecedented criminal case, Commonwealth of Virginia v. Harry Randall Jackson, comes after the National Association of School Boards sent President Biden a letter on Sept. 29, 2021, accusing parents of engaging in “domestic terrorism,” leading to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland dispatching the FBI against parents in October 2022, even creating a terrorism threat tag, EDUOFFICIALS, to track incidents. Continue reading →

13 Comments

Posted in Courts and law, Culture wars, Education (K-12)

Tagged

We Won! Coalition for TJ Won Against Racism.

Posted on February 26, 2022 by | 14 comments

by Asra Q. Nomani

My hands are trembling as I share this news. We won! Two years of moral courage by parents from around the world with names like Suparna, Harry, Yuyan, Glenn, Marissa, Helen, Hemang. We won today. The American Dream won today. You won today.

PRESS RELEASE
Pacific Legal Foundation
Kate A. Pomeroy
Coalition for TJ
Asra Nomani

Alexandria, Virginia; February 25, 2022: Today, a federal judge ruled that Fairfax County school officials violated the law by changing admissions requirements at the nation’s top public school to deliberately reduce the number of Asian-American students enrolled.

Last March, a coalition of parents, students, alumni, and community members filed a lawsuit challenging admissions changes at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ). Continue reading →

14 Comments

Posted in Education (K-12), Race and race relations

Tagged

Fairfax County Bars Maggie, 9, and Max, 7, from School

Posted on January 26, 2022 by | 112 comments

by Asra Nomani

Brave mama bear Carrie Lukas walked two of her cubs, fourth grader, Maggie, 9, and first grader Max, 7, up to the front doors of Forestville Elementary School here in Fairfax County, Va., for another day at school, but an interim assistant principal barred the two young children entry into the school, citing the school district’s mandatory mask policy.

The refusal of educational services raises legal issues for new Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Attorney General Jason Miyares because of state law that protects the right of children in the Commonwealth of Virginia to receive educational services and a new executive order by Youngkin allowing parents the right to choose if their children wear masks at school.

An officious security official for the school district and a community relations official for the school district, both dispatched to the school over the mask issue, tangled with a local reporter (and local father) whom they demanded stand on the nearby sidewalk. Later, school officials called Fairfax County Police and squad cars arrived, the school district posting a tweet that the police were called on the journalist, not the mother and her children. Continue reading →

112 Comments

Posted in Education (K-12)

Tagged ,

A Win! Va. Ed Dept Removes “Virginia Math Pathways Initiative”

Posted on January 24, 2022 by | 9 comments

by Asra Q. Nomani

Yes, Virginia, there is critical race theory in the state. Read our examples at Parents Defending Education. There were 20. Now, there are 19.

In their first week in office, Jillian Balow, the new Virginia superintendent of schools, and Elizabeth Schultz, the new Virginia assistant superintendent, have eliminated the Virginia Department of Education’s controversial “Virginia Math Pathways Initiative” that was set to eliminate accelerated math options for students.

The initiative outraged many parents for dumbing down math in the state and reducing advanced math courses for students prior to 11th grade, essentially blocking advanced learners from from moving forward in earlier grades. Continue reading →

9 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (K-12)

Tagged