A film crew affiliated with Turning Point USA allegedly pushed an ASU English professor to the ground while trying to confront him about a drag story hour group he co-founded.


The right-wing group Turning Point USA has found itself at the center of a hate crime investigation after two local members of the group allegedly assaulted a queer professor at Arizona State University on Wednesday.

Two members identified of the conservative group waited outside the classroom of David Boyles, an English professor at the college and co-founder of Drag Story Hour Arizona, according to a statement by ASU President Michael Crow. The pair then harassed and shoved him to the ground, ā€œbloodying his face,ā€ Crow wrote in a letter to faculty and staff.

ā€œThis is the kind of outrageous conduct that you would expect to see from bullies in a high school cafeteria,ā€ wrote Crow. In security camera footage captured by the ASU Police Department, two men clad in all black clothing can be seen surrounding Boyles as he passes through a courtyard. As Boyles reaches his arm out toward their camera, one of the men, identified as Kalen Dā€™Almeida, runs up behind Boyles and forcefully knocks him to the ground.

ā€œYou canā€™t run,ā€ Dā€™Almeida told Boyles in a clip of the altercation posted the following day, according to NBC. ā€œItā€™s best if you just talk to me on why you want to push sodomy to young people.ā€ In a Facebook post sharing his condition, Boyles said his injuries were ā€œrelatively minorā€ but that the incident left him feeling ā€œangry, violated, embarrassed, and despairingā€ that society has come to ā€œnormalize this kind of harassment and violence against anyone who tries to support LGBTQ+ youth.ā€

Police are investigating the altercation as a ā€œpotential bias or prejudicially motivated incident,ā€ reported KPNX-TV. ā€œCowards that they are and so confident in the legality and appropriateness of their actions, the Turning Point USA ā€˜reporterā€™ and ā€˜cameramanā€™ then ran away from the scene before police arrived,ā€ Crow noted.

link: https://newrepublic.com/post/176271/queer-arizona-state-university-professor-injured-right-wing-activists

archive: https://archive.ph/5fE5N

    • treeOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      Ā·
      1 year ago

      A lot of people have made this comment and the obvious reason they donā€™t use more loaded language is that these groups are quick to sue and you can get the gist of what the group is like by reading past the headline

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        2
        Ā·
        1 year ago

        So theyā€™re cowards, gotcha.

        They have no problem calling out terrorism in other cases, but for some reason right-wing extremists get a free pass. It could be fear of lawsuits, but I have a different explanation: the state department only cares about certain terrorists, and the far right isnā€™t among them.