JoAnna St. Germain, the Waterville teacher who made international headlines in May for her Facebook posts calling for President Donald Trump and his supporters to be murdered, appears to no longer work as a teacher for the city’s high school and seems to have returned to calling for violence online.
“Peaceful protest only goes so far in squaring up with these monsters,” said St. Germain in her most recent Facebook Post, criticizing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
St. Germain, a former English teacher at the Waterville Senior High School, posted a statement in May calling for the Secret Service to murder President Trump and his supporters.
“The Secret Service has the perfect opportunity, if they choose to step up and take it. You are the ones with power. Coordinate. Take out every single person who supports Trump’s illegal, immoral, unconstitutional acts. Look at the sycophants and give them what they’re asking for. Every other country sees what’s happening and they are taking stands. If you step up, we can avoid a civil war,” said St. Germain in her now-deleted post.
Following backlash against that post, she apologized for her statement, blamed it on poor mental health, insomnia, and trauma. She eventually appeared to rescind the apology, with posts saying that she stood by what she said.
She then deleted all posts relating to the controversial incident, and, throughout the controversy, appeared to remain employed by the school, while the school’s superintendent, Peter Hallen, declined to respond to questions from The Maine Wire.
More recently, though, St. Germain appears to have returned to her old ways, with more posts hinting at the need for violence.
As of Monday, St. Germain no longer appeared on the school’s directory, though it is unclear when she stopped working at the school, whether she voluntarily left the position or was fired.
The most recent archived version of the directory, from May 25, still listed St. Germain as a teacher, so her resignation or firing could have taken place any time after that.
The Maine Wire reached out to Hallen, asking whether St. Germain was fired or resigned, but he did not immediately respond.
St. Germain apparently returned to advocating for political violence on Monday with a post suggesting that peaceful protests are not enough to fight back against deportations.
St. Germain’s post came in response to an Instagram account angelfromthebloc, suggesting that Americans need a violent revolution to stop deportations, akin to the slave revolt that led to the founding of Haiti.
“Sometimes resistance requires more than peaceful pressure- ESPECIALLY when your oppressors are overly militarized and don’t see you as an individual deserving of the same rights and respect- as was the case in Haiti in 1804 when they became the first liberated slave colony. To argue that it isn’t the case today (when the BBB gave ICE more funding that the entire militaries of other countries) would simply be sticking your head in the sand. We need to be taking notes from 🇭🇹 [sic],” read the Instagram post.
Along with her post apparently advocating violence against immigration authorities, St. Germain’s other recent posts largely focus on boilerplate left-wing criticism of Israel and Pro-Palestine activism.
“Palestinians are a semitic people. It is inherently pro-semitic to fight for their rights. Death, death to the IDF,” said St. Germain in a July 1 post.
