Lt. Colonel John Foley for BuzzFlash: Colorado Middle School Parents Stand Up to Militia Bullying
Chinook Trail Middle School in Colorado
October 30, 2021
By John Foley
This week the parents of Chinook Trail Middle School in Colorado Springs, Colorado, learned that an outraged militia group was planning to descend on their school in armed protest. Why the outrage by the militia? In our age of viral social media, one harmless cell phone photo caused controversy. A photo a Chinook student sent to her mother had wider unintended ramifications. The mask taping incident occurred a week earlier and is still under investigation yet, it appears the daughter pranked her mother with a photo of her with her mask taped to her face. The militia believed it was an out-of-control teacher taping the mask to the child's face as a sign of government tyranny and overreach.
Nationwide our pandemic protection measures are the new scapegoat for the extremist militia movement quick to sow division in society for political gain. Colorado has a history of extremist activity with a long history of Klu Klux Klan activity and radical libertarianism. The current incantation of extremism is the radical takeover of the Colorado GOP by the FEC United, a radical libertarian group disguised as a conservative organization. FEC United stands for Faith Education and Commerce, is led by Joe Oltmann and he has at his disposal what the Colorado Times Recorder calls its armed wing the United American Defense Force (UADF), an Unconstitutional militia formed by John Tiegen, a former Marine and local Trump campaign spokesman.
The simplest way to conceptualize these two groups is to think of the Iraq War and the Shia Insurgents fighting US Forces. Mr. Oltmann is a figure similar to Shia Iraqi insurgent leader Muqtada al-Sadr. Sadr mixed theocracy, nationalism, and populism into an armed political movement. The UADF is akin to Sadr’s armed militia Jaysh al-Mahdī, or the Mahdi Army, the Shia militia fighting US Forces in Iraq. This example is fitting as many US veterans are prevalent in America’s militia movement. This highlights how our Middle East wars have seriously undercut our civil society. Our recent wars have radicalized some veterans who now join these groups. Since they saw the Iraqi and Taliban insurgencies succeed, many are now copying the radical Islamist playbook, and want to unleash their insurgency on America.
This extremist group is active throughout Colorado and now agitates at local school boards to influence this year’s school board elections in favor of a white Christian nationalist agenda. These groups are agitating against non-issues such as Critical Race Theory (CRT), which is not in the school curriculum but serves as a political rallying cry to a radical Trump base. So it should not have surprised anyone when the CTMS mask incident hit social media and the UADF exploited the situation for political agitation and organized a protest against the teachers and staff at CTMS.
The leadership at Chinook Trail Middle School learned of the protest from Colorado Springs Police, telling them about a protest permit granted for the militia. By the afternoon of 25 October, school leaders decided to switch to online or synchronous learning for the following day. In an email, to parents, Chinook Trail leadership said “This decision was made from an abundance of caution after learning of a large protest (that) may be scheduled at Chinook Trail Middle School.”[i]
News about the militia protest spread quickly among the concerned parents. Parents were both frightened by militia involvement but also outraged. Parents immediately took to social media to organize a counter-protest.
The next day approximately a dozen parents gathered in front of the Middle School with signs supporting the teachers and staff. However, the militia was officially a no-show. Several likely militia members unofficially drove past the Chinook Trail parents multiple times with cell phones recording but did not stop or get out of their vehicles near the school and the counter-protesters. Some militia members repeatedly drove by the counter-protesters offering up their middle fingers to the counter-protesting parents. The militia group monitoring the activism by parents opted to change plans and headed to Douglas County, Colorado to harass that school board meeting.
Even though the concerned parents presented a small crowd, their organizational effort represented a much larger movement. Each member had additional counter-protestors standing by to add to the ranks and reinforce the counter-protest if the militia group appeared in sizable numbers. As for the parents themselves, they consisted of a diverse bunch. Within their ranks were a mix of progressives, unaffiliated, and conservatives, coming together to oppose an extremist group at their school. The lesson here is that parents who are organized and quick to respond can stand up to the hate of an extremist group.
Author: Lieutenant Colonel John Foley is a retired U.S. Army officer and career Intelligence Officer. He served 27 years in the U.S. military service with both the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Army. He is an Iraq War veteran with the 5th Special Forces, 101st Airborne Division and 1st Cavalry Division. He currently lives in Colorado.
Sources:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10108099/Teachers-TAPING-masks-kids-faces-Colorado.html
https://history.denverlibrary.org/news/when-kkk-ruled-colorado-not-so-long-ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muqtada_al-Sadr
https://irp.fas.org/eprint/rightwing.pdf
Lieutenant Colonel John Foley is a retired U.S. Army officer and career Intelligence Officer. He served 27 years in the U.S. military service with both the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Army. He is an Iraq War veteran with the 5th Special Forces, 101st Airborne Division and 1st Cavalry Division. He currently lives in Colorado.