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

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    I am, and yes, it IS. Have you read any history yourself? As itā€™s hard to understand the reason and tranquillity if you havenā€™t.

    Being anything LGBT was a surefire way to get beaten up, killed, raped or whatnot for most of the entirety of human history until really the past two decades and even then itā€™s only acceptable in a few countries.

    Since I think itā€™s safe to assume you live in one of those countries, yes, being LGBT is safer than ever before, even with attacks and what not. Did you really believe that in the past we were all Kumbaya together?