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HANDS Effort Resists Right Wing Moms for Liberty Charleston, SC School Takeover [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-18 Lowcountry Up is Good activists working for better transit in Summerville prior to the Pandemic Charleston, SC, USA From Lowcountry Up is Good, PAC Dated Feb. 16, 2023 Hand colored button art in button making machine Image, Right, HANDS button design colored by activist in button making machine Charleston, SC- Activists who have sat out years of Charleston County School District controversies are moving away from their work on other issues like affordable housing, transit, the living wage and gun violence to launch the HANDS initiative to push back against the attempt to compromise the integrity of Charleston County’s public schools with a rightwing agenda inappropriate to a cosmopolitan community like Charleston County, being pushed by new school board members supported by Moms for Liberty. Moms for Liberty captured control of the adjacent Berkeley County School District and it’s board in the last elections, firing the African American district superintendent and district legal counsel at their first board meeting last month. The effort began with a button making social session downtown on Wednesday, Feb. 15. Participants from several organization which have traditionally avoided school district politics here decorated colorful buttons showing two clasped hands and the Motto “HANDS- Schools for Everyone.” HANDS stands for History, Nurturing, Diversity and Science. The effort is being coordinated by Lowcountry Up is Good, PAC and it’s Executive Director, William J. Hamilton, III, who was happy to retire from educational activism after his son graduated from Wando High School in 2011, but now feels he has to return with others to that battlefield. Information on the HANDs effort can be found by checking the Lowcountry Up is Good webpage on Facebook www.facebook.com/lowcountry.up.is.good.PAC or my calling (843) 870-5299. Lowcountry Up is Good, PAC is offering to bring their button making templates, supplies and equipment to events around the Lowcountry so citizens who support inclusive, forward looking education can customise the design by coloring it in and have it finished with thier button making machine (see image above.) Finished buttons, lots of variation on a common design The effort will continue with button making events around the country, development of availability of clothing and other materials to make support for the HANDs effort more visible at school board meetings. It will continue with advanced tactics activist training to bring pressure on decision makings to conclusively resolve these issues in favor of real history, a nurturing school environment, diversity and science in our schools. Lowcountry Up is Good, PAC was instrumental is securing the defeat of Mark Sanford in the Republican Primary in June 2016 due to his opposition to federal public transit funding. It ran the Transit Complete the Penny campaign in fall 2016 to deliver the margin of victory in Charleston’s half penny transportation sales tax referendum. It built a demonstration Tiny House to address the problem of affordable housing charleston on Martin Luther King weekend, 2016. It supported a demonstration against a Union Buster who received an award from a local business group last week, Feb. 9, 2023. It coordinates the Blue Cell Devil Elves holiday protest against Walmart. It developed and deploys the Charleston Progressive Unity Flag. It’s supported protests and actions to return the planned Lowcountry Rapid Transit System to its original footprint, running all the way to Lincolnville (a historically African American freedman’s settlement) and Summerville. It’s primary mission is advocacy for public transit, affordable housing, a living wage and progressive leadership development. Hands stands for History, Nurturing, Diversity and Science. Page of button patterns used at events in Charleston History is currently under threat by groups like the Moms for Liberty who demand that lessons about the flaws of American conduct in the past like slavery, the native American genocide and the oppression of labor by purged from the curriculum. HANDS believes that only a warts and all view of history builds the solid foundation which will allow our children, the citizens of our future to work towards a truly United nation with Liberty and Justice for All. Nurturing is threatened by a right wing belief that schools should mold students into conformity with a narrow, conservative life expression where issues like gender, sexuality and disability needn’t be acknowledged, making it impossible to address struggles which have made suicide one of the leading cause of death among adolescents in conservative states like South Carolina. A lack of emotional support for those who struggle also drives many of our brightest young people away as soon as they’re old enough to leave. Diversity practice is under attack by groups who feel they have a privileged right to demand conformity from others and believe they have the right to use our schools as a tool to mold a population which will conform. These people labor under the misguided delusion that America is strongest when we feel obligated to pretend, we are all the same. Science education is being undermined by an agenda which posits an equality between the results of data driven experimentation and theoretical advances through application of the scientific method and religious and mythological cultural legacies. A strong understanding of cause and effect, physics, the mechanisms of evolution and environmental change and human behavior on a planet groaning under social, economic, and environmental stresses is essential to human survival. Bringing New People and Tactics to the School Controversy The HANDS initiative will bring new people and tactics to the battle over Charleston County Schools. According to William Hamilton, Executive Director of the Lowcountry Up is Good, PAC, “Most of our people are the parents of grown children, or are volitionally childless. The parents have no desire to go back into the educational political area, which many of them spend years in when their kids were in school, on top of the endless fundraising to make up the gap in resources forced on our schools by our areas legacy of segregationist and classist driven private education. We’re happier working on other issues like preserving our natural environment, LGBT issues, seeing that the long promised Lowcountry Rapid Transit System gets constructed, providing affordable housing and securing a living wage for the people working in our community. Those joining the effort who have chosen never to have children have indicated their decision to be childless had as one of it’s motivations the near impossibility of secure access to a high quality childhood education in SC.” Lowcountry Activists with SC Progressive Unity Flag, Summerville, SC Image, Right, William Hamilton, installing a "Bus Start" sign on Highway 78 near Lincolnville, SC on Transit Equity Day, 2022. Hamilton says, “Our effort is composed of seasoned activists, many in their 50s and 60s who have become concerned that the disasters happening in red counties like Berkeley, where the school superintendent and district legal counsel were terminated, will be even more destructive in a blue county like Charleston where progressive politics have majority support. The fights at the school board are devouring huge amounts of energy, participation and good will Charleston County can’t afford to waste when we should be confronting problems like sea level rise, an acute shortage of labor due to costs of living out of line with available pay, a severe housing shortage and rising losses in mobility due to traffic congestion and sprawl development.” “Charleston County can’t afford to spend years fighting battles where groups like the Mothers for Liberty have gained a surprise advantage due to outside political funding and anemic campaigns for school board by well meaning, but unprepared progressive candidates. We have a new politics which doesn’t work due to gerrymandered districts inherited from County Council which don’t align with school district organization. We’re absolutely confident that progressive elements in Charleston County will regain control of the school district in the future, but large, diverse community like Charleston which depends on talent, commerce, tourism and trade with people around the world can’t afford to be labeled backward or intolerant. The battle to preserve out schools has to be won quickly and ended. People who want a less tolerant, less forward-looking context in which to raise their children will probably be more comfortable in Dorchester or Berkeley Counties.” Logo of Lowcountry Up is Good, PAC For more information and interview availabilities about the HANDs Initiative and Lowcountry Up is Good, PAC contact William J. Hamilton, III at wjhamilton29464@gmail.com or (843) 870-5299. High quality online video availably can be provided through their Mt. Pleasant zoom studio. 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