In deep blue California which voted 58 percent for Kamala Harris, our Democratic Party state lawmakers — including progressive Assemblymember Gregg Hart (D-Santa Barbara) — risk following in Trump’s footsteps to silence dissent over Israel/Palestine. As the Trump administration seeks to erase the Palestinian narrative and attack public education, our State Assembly, including Hart, voted 68-0 (11 not voting) to pass AB 715, a bill deceptively titled “Educational equity: discrimination.”
In fact, this bill, principally co-authored by assemblymembers Rick Chavez Zbur (D-Hollywood) and Dawn Addis (D-Morro Bay), discriminates against Black, Latino, Asian-Pacific Islander, and Indigenous students by pledging lawmakers to appoint a statewide anti-Semitism coordinator when no such equivalent exists for marginalized student communities. Certainly, anti-Semitism exists as a heinous manifestation of white supremacy, but singling out Jewish students as needing an anti-Semitism coordinator risks isolating Jewish students to brand them as privileged, to set them apart from their classmates, and to stereotype them as ideologically uniform on the question of Jewish identity.
In addition, the bill commits lawmakers to make it easier to file unsupported complaints with the California Department of Education to charge public school teachers, administrators, and school board members with anti-Semitism during nationwide protests over what Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International describe as Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
AB 715 refers to “anti-Semitism” five times, yet fails to define the term.
How convenient.
This failure leaves wiggle room for adoption of the International Holocaust and Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) examples of anti-Semitism which equate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.
Ironically, such conflation is arguably anti-Semitic for it suggests that Judaism equals Israel, despite the Torah’s biblical Ten Commandments, central tenets of Judaism, that prohibit worship of idols, including nation states.
AB 715 would amend the state education code with pretzel-twisting language to redefine nationality “to also include a person’s actual or perceived shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics, or residency in a country with a dominant religion or distinct religious identity …” This verbiage plays into the hands of religious nationalists by conflating national identity with religious identity to leave state education officials scratching their heads to make sense of it all.
If AB 715 is confusing, vague, and MAGA bad, why then would our Democratic Party lawmakers vote for it? Why would Hart, a member of the powerful Assembly Appropriations Committee, say “aye” for an ill-defined bill the Legislative Fiscal Analyst wrote will cost the state millions of dollars during a $12 billion state deficit? Why would the chairs of the Black, Latino and AAPI legislative caucuses sign on as co-authors of a bill that, if implemented, could chill speech to deny California’s public schools students, 90 percent students of color, an opportunity for vigorous debate amid pro-Palestinian demonstrations rocking college campuses.
Herein lies the answer.
Zbur and Addis introduced AB 715 in a backroom deal after abandoning their previous bill to restrict Ethnic Studies to “domestic” narratives and skip over movements for decolonization. That bill, AB 1468, promoted by the Legislative Jewish Caucus, met with strong opposition from the California Teachers Association, which represents 310,000 teachers in California.
Chairs of the diversity caucuses want Ethnic Studies funded, but to date it remains unfunded even though one semester of Ethnic Studies was legislated as a high school graduation requirement come 2030.
The quiet part not said aloud is that chairs of the Black, Latino, and AAPI caucuses may be hopeful Ethnic Studies will finally be funded if they support AB 715 and play ball with the Legislative Jewish Caucus, the chief proponent of AB 715. Legislative Jewish Caucus co-chairs, Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino) and Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), also co-authors of AB 715, happen to chair the budget committees in the State Assembly and Senate.
As AB 715 heads to the California Senate Education Committee, opponents of the bill are organizing to defeat it. In a press release, Jewish Voice for Peace Action writes, “Under AB 715, teachers could be charged with discrimination for identifying Palestine as a state or showing a map of historic Palestine. The bill also allows right-wing style book banning and could make school board members and third-party contractors liable for alleged antisemitism.”
During a heated hearing this May 14 in the Assembly Education Committee, opponents of AB 715 outnumbered supporters almost two to one, yet the nine-member committee rubber-stamped the bill, even after hearing from David Goldberg, the president of the California Teachers Association, who said the union was “leaning” in opposition to the bill.
During that hearing, AB 715 co-author Addis ominously told the Assembly Education Committee the bill would be amended “to strengthen it” as the bill wound its way through the Legislature. If the amendments require more policing of instruction and encourage more special interest litigation over the teaching of Israel/Palestine, the costs of AB 715 could skyrocket for California taxpayers. Thus, our Assemblymember Hart — a climate champion — may have another opportunity as an appropriations committee member to reconsider a bill that would create a climate of fear among educators who simply want to educate their students.
Stay tuned.
Marcy Winograd, a retired teacher, is a volunteer organizer with the California legislative team for Jewish Voice for Peace-Action. She also co-chairs the Central Coast Antiwar Coalition, a chapter of CODEPINK. Marcy@codepink.org
