MAGA.
The southern California city of Huntington Beach, a bastion of conservative voters, has made the move to block diverse monthlong celebrations of Black history, women’s history and Pride, in favor of observing the revolutionary and civil wars, California’s history and America’s independence.
An agenda item introduced on 19 December forbids any programming that pertains to previously established honorary celebrations for women, people of color and LGBTQ+ groups from taking place on city-owned property, including libraries, or of being featured in city communications such as social media posts, according to Natalie Moser, a city council member who voted against the action.
This means that monthly programming meant to acknowledge and teach the history of historically marginalized groups such as Black Americans and LGBTQ+ people will be replaced by “content” about local railroad and surfing history and a monthlong tribute to the discovery of oil in Huntington Beach called Black Gold Jubilee, according to the agenda item’s language. It’s still possible that the city can establish a day of observation for marginalized groups, Moser adds.
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This is the latest action in a series of local actions that mirror national culture wars over the past year, since four conservative council members were elected on anti-housing development platforms. In the year since their elections, mayor Gracey Van Der Mark, mayor pro tem Pat Burns and councilmembers Casey McKeon and Tony Strickland have voted to disallow Pride flags from being flown on city property, declared itself a “no mask and no vaccine mandate” city and created a review board for children’s library books.
“This traces back to a larger systemic apathy for what our libraries provide and support of the new culture wars, it’s just continuing down that path,” said Dan Kalmick, another Huntington Beach city council member who voted against the agenda item. “This is just an ignorant attempt to try to make the utopia that they accuse everyone else of trying to create. This is all a hand-wave to distract from the fact that they’re breaking the city.” Huntington Beach is a majority white community of nearly 200,000 in Orange county.
While the most recent moves by the conservative city council majority have grabbed local and regional headlines, they did not begin with the November 2022 elections. The city and county have grappled with decades of racial tensions and extremist demonstrations and actions including a stop the steal rally in 2020, a white lives matter rally in 2021, and the distribution of Ku Klux Klan propaganda that same year. Similar materials were found in Newport Beach, just 5 miles south.
To me, the obvious response is flash mobs in each of the prohibited places. Staging simulated underground railroad reenactments, BLM & MeToo demonstrations massing inside & walking out, outside & walking through, & above all, anti-oil demonstrations (neglecting to tell the permitters the anti- part until it happens, of course)… Demonstrators in drag & maybe whiteface or masks so the authorities aren’t tipped off early… A parade of oil-spewing oil platforms leaving a trail of (water-soluble) gooey black slime behind… Free vaccine offerings & mask handouts. If they want wars, how bout a reenactment of Crispus Attucks’ murder at the Boston Massacre? The Black military units in the Civil War & beyond? (Informal, no uniforms required.)