Petition Panic: The Manufactured Outrage Against Two ASD Teachers

In the wake of Christian Nationalist podcaster Charlie Kirk's killing, MAGAlaska politicians and influencers had an awful lot to say. Republican State House Representative Jamie Allard stoked the fires of civil war on her X account. Chair of the Alaska Republican Party, Carmela Warfield, issued a statement sending thoughts and prayers. Governor Mike Dunleavy wrote an op-ed suggesting that Kirk, who said he'd have difficulty trusting a black airline pilot, had lived a life that called Americans to a "higher standard of civic responsibility."

Those who didn't condone Kirk's murder but spoke out against the "firebrand's" far-right ideology found themselves in the crosshairs of a Republican led mass doxxing campaign by anonymous website creators and the stochastic terrorist account, Libs of TikToKKK - which brings us to this insane thing.

A Pipeline of "Panic"

Dawn Bockelman, a former Anchorage School District teacher and ally of Representative Jamie Allard, has spent the past few years on social media railing against imaginary “pornographic” school library books. A far-right busybody all too eager to poke her nose into the business of others, because indeed she knows better than you what your kids should be allowed to read - Bockelman is hellbent on injecting dangerous MAGA ideology into schools and perpetuating the divisive culture wars that threaten children's education.

Bockelman is heavily involved in the Alaska chapter of Parents’ Rights in Education (PRIE), a far-right organization with a slick name and a rotten core. She is a listed top group contributor and serves as an administrator.

PRIE's Facebook group is a steady drip of grievance politics and anti-LGBTQ panic, a right-wing echo chamber where “concerned parents” and low-level political operatives swap conspiracy theories and scheme about how to drag our schools backward. I’ve covered PRIE at length before, but the short version is that long before Moms for Liberty was making national headlines, PRIE was already here in Alaska, smearing teachers and librarians as villains and sexual groomers with the failed goal of "taking back" the Anchorage School Board.

In 2023, both Allard and Bockelman championed the Anchorage School District going national after dangerous MAGAlaskans coordinated with Libs of TikToKKK to rain right-wing extremism down on the school district. The twisted sisters were upset about the book 'Wait, What?'  - a guide for young readers that covers topics such as bodies, puberty, consent, boundaries, and relationships. The book has been praised for being inclusive, clear, affirming, and well-suited to its intended age group.

Anyway, all that to say, Bockelman openly celebrated the wave of threats that followed ASD being targeted over the book - her joy and exuberance rang through loud and clear in her Facebook post as she fed off a hate machine that doxxes teachers and terrorizes schools.

Turning Teachers Into Political Pawns

Two years later, Bockelman is back at it again - this time weaponizing a half-baked petition against two ASD teachers. The flyer, splashed in angry red and stamped with Charlie Kirk’s photo, screams “accountability," but peel it back, and you'll find that it's a play out of the MAGA handbook. Take a national culture-war figure, slap their name on a local thing, and pretend that punishing teachers for expressing their opinions on private time is a community service.

Let's unpack.

Hiding under the oh so thin cover of “demanding accountability,” Bockelman is calling on the school district to publicly investigate two educators: one, a Black special education teacher; the other, a drag performer the far-right has been desperately and repeatedly trying to cancel since August, after right-wing media falsely accused the drag performer of threatening the Insurrectionist-in-Chief in a social media post. By the way, neither of these educators has ever been accused of harming students. Their only “offense” (if you can even call it that) is that their personal views and critiques of MAGA podcasters and politicians don’t line up with Bockelman’s extreme politics, which includes contributing to the doxxing of teachers employed by the Anchorage School District.

As she did in 2023, Bockelman is chasing her next fix - attempting to drum up outrage by turning teachers into political targets. Her entire petition, which has garnered little more than 200 signatures primarily from outside of Anchorage, is built on censoring and punishing much-needed teachers for speaking out about racism, equity, and heaven forbid, the deranged, divisive politics oozing from Washington, D.C.

The most glaring problem with Bockelman’s petition is its blatant attempt to whitewash political retaliation as neutral oversight. It pretends to be about “professional conduct,” but in reality, it is nothing more than a hit job on two educators she’s chosen to vilify - again, not for anything they’ve done in the classroom - but for comments made on their own time.

Bockelman’s petition also reeks of selective outrage. She isn’t really calling for blanket reviews of teachers across the board… juuuuust the ones who’ve spoken out in ways that make her uncomfortable and hurt her fee-fees. That double standard exposes her true intent, which is to plaster educators’ names in a public petition even after both teachers in question were doxxed this month by Libs of TikToKKK and subjected to death threats, violent harassment, and a flood of unwarranted abuse, which Bockelman self-admits to condoning.

Silencing anyone for their personal opinions is a slippery slope, and “investigating” teachers for doing so on their own time won’t end well. Free speech is, after all, the hallmark of a thriving democracy. And if you don’t believe me, take it from President Trump and his cohort of MAGA minions. The video below says it all.