On Tuesday we told you about Jason Levin, a teacher from Oregon whose group, Crash the Tea Party, aims to bring down the tea parties from the inside. Now, as The Oregonian reports, his school district is investigating his actions after hundreds of calls and emails poured in calling for his dismissal.
The district is investigating whether he used work time to create his web site, crashtheteaparty.org. A school spokesman said he won’t be disciplined for his political beliefs.
“That’s a free speech issue,” said the spokesman. “That’s his thing, but what we want to make sure is that he has been appropriate in terms of his actions during his … work time.”
The Tea Party Patriots may be behind the flood of calls. The group included the school district’s phone number and contact form in an email Tuesday to supporters.
“And by the way, if you’d like to let Mr. Levin’s school district know what you think of his behavior, and his potential influence on public school students in Beaverton, Oregon, you can contact them …,” the email reads. It goes on:
If you choose to contact them, in direct contrast to Mr. Levin’s behavior, please be polite. Remember, just because he’s exposed himself publicly as a vile, indecent human being who will stoop to Nazi symbolism, and the promotion of racism and bigotry to silence those with whom he disagrees, doesn’t mean everyone in the school district is bad.
A local talk radio host, Lars Larson, also railed against Levin on his show Wednesday.
“This is a man who thinks it’s legitimate to further your political goals by lying, by stealing and damaging somebody else’s reputation,” Larson said. “I don’t want a kid like that teaching kids.”
“If you ran a Klan Web site on your own time, do you think you would be excused?” he went on. “If you ran a porno Web site, which is also legal, do you think you would be excused in that kind of job?”
Levin, who teaches media technology to middle schoolers in Beaverton, told a local TV station he’s received threats.
Levin’s plan is to get people to show up at today’s tax day tea parties as tea partiers, and to act as crazy as possible.
“Our goal is that whenever a tea partier says ‘Barack Obama was not born in America,’ we’re going be right right there next to them saying, ‘yeah, in fact he wasn’t born on Earth! He’s an alien!” Levin explained Tuesday to TPMDC. He said that by making the tea parties sound like a gathering of crazy people, the movement will lose its power.
He also told TPMDC that his group’s supporters may be the ones wearing Nazi uniforms at tea parties. They’d also be carrying misspelled signs and making “wild claims” in TV interviews.
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