Anonymous email threatens students at Berkeley school after Sacramento rally tied to local teacher
A police cruiser was parked outside Martin Luther King. Jr. Middle School on Monday. Photo: Emilie Raguso
Local and federal authorities investigated threats Monday targeting youth at a North Berkeley middle school by a group that demanded the termination of a teacher who protested against a neo-Nazi rally in Sacramento over the weekend.
The rally Sunday made national headlines due to violent clashes between the white supremacists who took out a permit to rally at the state capitol and the counter-protesters who showed up to confront them. According to some news reports, members of the counter-protest appear to have initiated the violence. The LA Times reported that seven people were stabbed and 10 hospitalized.
One of the people who took responsibility for helping organize the counter-protest was Yvette Felarca, a teacher at North Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, at 1781 Rose St. Felarca is an organizer with the activist group By Any Means Necessary, which helped lead a series of Black Lives Matter protests in Berkeley in December 2014.
Parents of day campers were told Monday morning that one of the counter-protesters from Sacramento had been linked to the Berkeley school where the camps were located. The public outing had prompted an influx of emails to the principal demanding that the teacher be fired.
The Berkeley Unified School District confirmed, in a prepared statement at 5:40 p.m., it had been informed Monday morning that a King teacher had been involved with the protest in Sacramento.
“Since that incident, the school and principal have received calls and emails from parents and community members. One anonymous email in particular threatened that if certain actions were not taken against the teacher within the week, someone would come to King with the intent to harm students,” according to the statement. “The FBI has reviewed the email in question and has determined that by their criteria it should be considered a low level threat.”
The statement continued: “Meanwhile, the Berkeley PD has said that they are taking this threat seriously. They have increased their patrols around our schools and are assigning an officer to King. We have sent security staff to King, and we have moved two outside user groups who are renting space for summer programs to other locations. We do not have any BUSD programs at King at this time.”
BUSD Superintendent Donald Evans said, according to the statement, that the district would do “whatever is necessary” to protect students and staff, and “continue to work closely with law enforcement to monitor this situation.”Anonymous email threatens students at Berkeley school after Sacramento rally tied to local teacher | Berkeleyside:
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