Mike Klotz is a teacher. He wears black rimmed glasses, a black beanie pulled back on his head. He sports black and white sneakers as footwear. He casts a hipster feel. If what you wear could offer a “tell,” Mike’s look screams a progressive teacher. And Mike describes himself as a hardcore liberal - even after his neighbors, his school district and its superintendent maligned his son as a racist-adjacent. “The truth didn’t matter,” said Mike. Unfortunately, we’ve seen this story before. The truth was an afterthought. Evidence proved that Klotz’s son and another boy were both innocent, but in the cult of progressives, once accused, evidence that you are not a "racist" is irrelevant. That ink is indelible. The entire Klotz family was tarred, then tossed under the progressive bus and forced to move.
The Free Press reported that three years ago, on an Evanston, Illinois school playground where 6th graders were at recess, an "incident" occurred. It was May 13, 2022. Friday the 13th. A Haven Middle School student was having a mental health crisis. The 11-year-old boy was tying jump ropes into knots. He tied three of them into nooses. He put one of the nooses around his own neck. A girl noticed what was happening. The boy had “tied knots” before. He was clearly in the middle of a mental breakdown. The other student found Mike Klotz’s son on the playground. Klotz’s son was a friend of the knot-tier. The Klotz boy talked to his friend and eventually convinced him to stop. The “nooses” stayed. And, inevitably, a parent noticed the nooses and reported what was seen. Then, the long knives and torches came out. By the end of the day, an email from the District 65 Superintendent, Devon Horton, was blasted to everyone in the district. The subject was:
“Haven Student Sit-In & Hate Crime”
The statement read in part:
This is a hate crime and a deliberate and specific incidence of an outwardly racist act. It resounds with a tone of hate and hurt that will impact members of our entire community, namely Black and African American students, staff, and families who have experienced generations of harm.
Devon Horton is an acolyte and proponent of the Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo “racial justice” grift. For Horton, everything is cast in the jaundiced light of “racial equity”. And, being that the country had just pulled out the smoldering wreckage of the George Floyd/BLM riots, this seemed to be a perfect storm for Horton and Haven’s principal Christopher Latting (both Black men) to ignore evidence that, instead of being a race-based incident, it was an 11-year-old boy having a mental health breakdown.
After a second email sent just to Klotz, Klotz spoke to his son and was convinced that he had done nothing wrong. In fact, Klotz was “damn proud” of his son for helping his friend. But that didn’t matter to the torch-holders, including school administrators. Within days, Klotz was told that his boy was on administrative leave. He missed the rest of the school year.
At a school board meeting with the majority of the board still wearing masks and sitting behind plexiglass, they had their chance to vomit their own feckless nonsense and fan racial flames.
The meeting resembled the torch-bearing assembly in Young Frankenstein, with board members not waiting for facts. They all wanted blood.
People outside the meeting didn't have literal torches with them - just signs that carried the same meaning:
...“white silence is violence” and “denounce racism.”
Soo La Kim—who is also the assistant dean of graduate programs at Northwestern’s School of Professional Studies—says the students involved in the noose incident “translated the subtext of anti-black adult discourse into the text of profanity-laced chants and an act of racial terrorizing.”
“By the way,” Kim continues, “the suggestion circulating that perhaps these were not in fact nooses representing lynching but lassos or something else is offensive on multiple levels. That kind of denial—in the face of facts, context, and history—is gaslighting of the worst kind.”
Another member, Elisabeth Lindsay-Ryan, who also works as a professional diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant, says: “I’m hoping that since our children have chosen to use nooses—a symbol of white terrorism, white supremacy, and murder—in their advocacy, that at least some of you will finally listen and reflect on the ways you are participating in this pattern.”
Afterward, board member Anya Tanyavutti chimes in, saying the district’s students are being taught “murderous values.”
Board member Marquise Weatherspoon then says she always intended to use her school board seat “to speak on what is the obvious.”
The board didn’t wait for facts. They didn't need facts. They “knew.”
Within weeks, the police had concluded that the incident was not a “hate crime.” Their 33-page report is not public, but the summary is here. The evidence was clear. The police had concluded that no crime had been committed. Evidence be damned. Instead of trying to help the boy who tied the knots, Kim Foxx (the Cook County prosecutor who dismissed the case against Jussie Smollett) had other plans. She ignored the police report, the facts and the evidence and charged the boy with “disorderly conduct”. The case was referred to juvenile court, where someone with common sense and the ability to read dismissed the case. Foxx is no longer in office, but she is being sued by a former prosecutor for, unironically, racial discrimination.
Facts and evidence didn’t stop social justice torch bearers on Facebook. A group calling itself the District 65 Parents & Guardians wanted their pound of flesh.
One wanted the 11-year-olds to: “[B]e outed so the citizens of this town know who the terrorists are.” “Call them out on their white privilege and racist behavior,” wrote another. Yet another wanted the parents “sued.” For what didn’t matter. Apparently, the local Home Depot was out of tar and feathers.
After the “incident,” there was an “all hands on deck” to counsel students who might have been “harmed” by the “racist” nooses. But almost none of the 6th students saw the nooses and equally few equated nooses with race or lynching. They equated nooses with suicide. For Mike Klotz, that carried a bitter irony. Why? Because historical “racist lynching” would not be taught until 8th grade, by him.
Another Facebook message was posted by someone still dissatisfied with facts. Klotz saw it. “We know who you are” was the not-so-veiled threat.
Haven’s principal Chris Latting wasn’t satisfied with facts either. After the police had examined the evidence and determined there was no “racist intent or crime,” within hours Latting informed everyone via email that the school would do its own investigation:
“...to determine the appropriate level of interventions, both disciplinary and restorative.”
No mention that a troubled boy had put the noose around his own neck, in a clear cry for help.
Mike Klotz and his wife Melissa had had enough. They thought their fellow progressives would think and consider facts before making assumptions. They were wrong. They sold their home and moved to another district. Mellissa no longer trusts people, or assumes people are inherently “good”.
The Klotz boy went from an A student to struggling in school. He can’t trust teachers or adults, and for good reason.
It could have been a “teaching moment” about jumping to conclusions before the facts are in. But then, Latting and the Board and the District’s Superintendent Devon Horton wouldn’t have had the chance to rant. Had facts been the focus, then people like Horton, a “well-known pioneer” of Ibram X. Kendi’s feckless “antiracist" dogma, wouldn’t have been rewarded. Apologies would be needed. That would never happen. Just the opposite.
Six months after Horton led the charge to tar and feather one boy and drag Klotz's son through the mud, Horton was named “Black Superintendent of the Year”.
"He is a visionary leader who is not afraid to try new approaches to make systemic change,” said School Board President Sergio Hernandez.
Latting is still the principal of Haven Middle School. His bio reads in part:
We have expanded our capacity to be more responsive and provide additional support to the students and families we serve.
Well, unless you’re falsely accused of racism and you’re white. No apology for getting it wrong. Terribly wrong. Klotz would like an apology. He won't get it.
Help us continue to Fight! Fight Fight! and consider becoming part of the RedState team. Join our VIP membership today, and use promo code FIGHT to get a whopping 60% off!
Join the conversation as a VIP Member