Residents Rally For Fairfax County School Board, Muslim Member

MERRIFIELD, VA — Two protests merged into one Thursday night before a meeting of the Fairfax County School Board outside Luther Jackson Middle School in Merrifield.

Dozens of people gathered outside the meeting to show their support for the county school board, while dozens of others demonstrated their support for a Muslim member of the school board who is under attack by conservative groups.

The Fairfax County Democratic Committee organized the larger of the two rallies, a protest where they accused a vocal minority of parents in the county of manufacturing controversies since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The smaller rally included supporters of Abrar Omeish, a Fairfax County School Board member who has been under attack recently for publicly expressing her opposition to Israel's treatment of Palestinians and a commencement speech she gave at Justice High School where she urged students to embrace diversity and not to give in to bullies.

Speakers at Thursday's night rally also denounced a racist flyer, purportedly from the KKK, that was distributed to homes in the Springfield and Sully districts earlier this week. The flyer, which was directed at members of the Fairfax County School Board, contained racist, homophobic and antisemitic language.

"I’m going to admit something,” Sujatha Hampton, chair of the education committee for the Fairfax NAACP, said at the rally. “I’m afraid that there are students in our collective care who came to speak to you today and the KKK is out. The KKK is out in Fairfax County as they were decades ago, riding free and recruiting members. And our queer students, our Black students and our marginalized students have come out to speak today."

Groups such as Open FCPS and Do Better FCPS "are ranting and raving about our schools, our teachers, those who are working to recall a democratically elected school board are now trying to tell us that these KKK recruitment notices are a hoax," Hampton said. "They are trying to tell us that we should not believe our eyes, that we should not believe the feeling in the pits of our stomachs that tell us that we are not safe."

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For years, groups across the country, including in Fairfax County, have fought for racial justice and marginalized students. Each year, the county makes strides, but it still has a long way to go, according to Hampton.

"The forces standing against our schools are outraged by even this incremental, maddeningly slow, inching toward equity," she said. "In fact, the word equity is their clarion call. What does anyone who wants justice fear from equity?"

Conservative groups across the country are campaigning against what they view as the adoption of the principles of critical race theory, a term that entered the vernacular of opponents of public schools in the past year.

"Don’t tell me to be afraid of CRT [critical race theory] when the KKK is on the loose," Hampton said.

"A small minority of very vocal people try to reap chaos," she said. "So much damage can be done by so few people when chaos is the weapon."

"Let us not allow the will of the majority be drowned out by the organized chaos of the minority," she said.

Saehee Perez, a student at McLean High School, told the crowd that the Fairfax County School Board needs support in the face of the "hate and the bigotry" that groups like Open FCPS and Do Better FCPS have been perpetuating over the past year.

These groups have argued for in-person learning throughout the pandemic and fiercely criticized the Fairfax Education Association, which represents teachers in the county.

“The school board did not succumb to unions over kids," Perez said in response to arguments by these groups. "They understood the science of COVID-19 and listened to the guidelines. ... They [school board members] don’t need bigots breathing down their necks, sending threats and getting in the way of progress."

Speakers also addressed the attacks on Fairfax County School Board member Abrar Omeish, mostly by conservative groups, but also by some members of the school board itself.

Jimmy Le, who graduated this month from Anandale High School, told the crowd that he first met Omeish a year ago.

"I’ve been so lucky to know someone with such a pure heart," Le said. "I have never met someone as committed to equity as Ms. Abrar Omeish. She stands up for every student in this county “regardless of their race, nationality, sexual orientation, gender or able-bodiedness."

"She inspires us to keep fighting, to keep fighting against systems of oppression in which have tied us down for too long," Le said.

Omeish delivered the commencement address at Justice High School in the Falls Church area on June 7 where she urged students to stand up for what they believe is right.

"In her speech at Justice High School graduation last week, she reminded us that always there are those who will see the ways you are different before they see you as human," Le said. "I support Abrar Omeish because I want to live in a world where it is not a political statement to look up to a strong woman who wears the hijab, who has immigrant parents, and who stands up for what is right no matter what."

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