Biden Approved CRT Group Wanting to Be "Feared" Has Connections to Top Dept. of Education Officials

By Brandon Morse | 11:30 AM on July 22, 2021

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As RedState previously covered, the Abolitionist Teaching Network (ATN) that openly promoted Critical Race Theory and vowed to “disrupt and dismantle Whiteness and other forms of repression” was promoted by the Biden administration. The organization said it wanted to be “feared.”

The pushback came swift, and before long, the Biden administration said that the group’s promotion was “an error” according to Fox News, but now we can see why the ATN was being foisted on the people in the first place. As it turns out, its co-founder has connections to top figures in the Department of Education.

Bettina Love, ATN’s co-founder, was paid $11,000 for a speaking event by San Diego school system head Cindy Marten, who now sits as the Deputy Education Secretary.

On top of that, the largest teacher’s union in the nation, The National Education Association (NEA), also had Love as a speaker in June of 2020 thanks to an invitation by then-senior NEA director Donna Harris-Aikens who now serves as Assistant Secretary at the DoE.

These two are clearly fans of Love and the ATN, so it’s no wonder that the ATN’s materials appeared on the DoE handbook intended to assist more than 13,000 public school districts.

As Mike Miller previously reported, Love and the ATN have made it clear that their approach to CRT is the destruction of “whiteness” in schools:

The Abolitionist Teaching Network’s guide also lists the group’s demands, which include “[f]ree, antiracist therapy for White educators and support staff.” Additionally, it demands that teaching and learning standards, as well as teacher evaluations, should be “grounded in the pursuit of Black, Brown, and Indigenous liberation, criticality, excellence, and joy.”

It’s clear that there are extremists at the top of the Department of Education, and those extremists are friends with extremists who push highly racist ideas meant to define how our public schools proceed in teaching our children.

These extremists need as much light on them as possible and ousted where necessary. While the Biden administration may have walked back from this group, there are many others waiting in the wings. Vigilance is key.