Maine schools are now showing a “recruitment video” put out by the Maine Office of the Attorney General (AG) aimed at children that promotes Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and radical gender ideology to entice minors to join a so-called Civil Rights Team Project.
“We can start by examining and engaging with issues related to race and skin color, national origin and ancestry, religion, disabilities, gender, including gender identity and expression, and sexual orientation,” says the recruitment video.
The Maine Wire received information claiming that the video was shown recently at Mt. Ararat Middle School in Topsham, Maine, to inform students about the local civil rights team, which, along with the Pride Club, is one of the extracurricular groups middle school students can join there.
The video presents a variety of far-left DEI-related ideas in a cartoon style, apparently designed to make them appealing to children.
According to the AG’s office “The mission of the Civil Rights Team Project (CRTP) is to increase the safety of elementary, middle level, and high school students by reducing bias-motivated behaviors and harassment in our schools.”
The project works by recruiting students to form local civil rights teams, where they accomplish their goals through discussions of race, gender, and sexual orientation. Since the teams are intended to encompass even very young, elementary-school-aged students, the AG’s office carefully claims that discussions will be “age-appropriate.”
It is unclear what the AG’s office considers an “age-appropriate” discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity for elementary school students.
In the video, one person describes his struggle as a Cambodian immigrant in Maine, interspersed with footage that includes images of what appears to be a child dressed as a female with a mustache, and a cartoon child in fishnets holding a Pride flag.
“It’s one thing to say that everyone is welcome, but it definitely takes it to the next level to show that everyone is welcome, that’s part of what we do,” the video says.
At one point, the video shows a variety of left-wing imagery, such as a pride flag and something the official captions describe as a “Black Power fist.”
In another clip, a child struggles to decide which bathroom to use after apparently being kicked out of the girls’ room.
The polarizing video is likely being shown in far more schools than just Mt. Ararat Middle School. The AG’s official website describes it as a “recruitment video” “intended for use in schools by our civil rights teams for recruitment purposes. It serves as an excellent introduction to civil rights teams.”
The recruitment video may run afoul of President Donald Trump’s executive order “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling.”
Under that order, schools caught teaching DEI principles that say people are inherently oppressors or victims, good or evil, based on immutable traits, or radical gender ideology that says gender is unrelated to biological reality could lose federal funding.
The video simply adds to the long list of grievances that the Trump Administration has against Maine, beginning when the Maine Department of Education, Maine Principals’ Association, and Gov. Janet Mills (D-Maine) all refused to comply with a different order barring transgender-identifying males from girls’ sports and spaces.
That defiance, along with President Trump’s attempts to pull federal education funding from Maine, sparked an ongoing legal battle between the federal government and Maine.
Watch the full video:
