Getting students into the “revolutionary pipeline."
Philadelphia Public Schools are having a rough go of things lately. The district is facing an ongoing congressional investigation into their failure to curb anti-Semitism and a $300 million deficit amidst abysmal proficiency rates in math and reading. Yet instead of focusing on academics, the radical school district chose to use public funds to host “liberation” workshops for students as young as 12 led by a convicted felon and a cabal of anti-Semites.
Over 150 Philadelphia Public Schools students as young as 12 attended workshops over the past two years on topics such as “Imagining A World Without Prisons,” “”Restorative Yoga for Restorative Justice,” and “”Let’s be Forreal: What does restorative justice look like in practice?” Described by district officials as “Liberation Symposia,” attendance at each event was reportedly mandatory although students were allowed to pick from a variety of sessions.
The educators leading these workshops are notable for more than for their educational attainments. Anthony Smith is a self-described “organizer and educator” at the W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition & Reconstruction, which partnered with Philadelphia Public Schools to organize the so-called “Liberation Workshops.” The Movement School lists creating a “revolutionary pipeline” for K-12 students as among its goals and its website proudly quotes Karl Marx. As for Smith, the man chosen to lead workshops for schoolchildren has a criminal record and was convicted for his role in aiding and abetting arson after he participated in the deliberate burning of an empty police car during the riots that took place after George Floyd’s death.
Smith also has a long history of promoting anti-Semitism. He praised Hamas’s brutal October 7 massacre of innocent Israeli Jews, saying that it “sounded lit” and has parroted anti-Semitic conspiracies, writing in a social media post that “the secret illuminati made of Jewish billionaires … are desperately trying to *cancel* the REAL revolutionaries standing up against the ‘man’ by ruining their white-owned, million dollar business.”
“We can tell the media is Jewish owned because look how quick they cancel you over anti-semitic comments,” Smith also stated. “They don’t do that for anti black shit though.”
Other facilitators leading the workshops are notable for their anti-Semitic and extremist views. Those include Eliana Atienza, a University of Pennsylvania student who took part in that school’s illegal “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” and Professor Geo Maher, currently a lecturer at U Penn, who notoriously tweeted in 2017, “All I want for Christmas is white genocide.” --->READ MORE HERE
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| Anthony Smith (abolitionschool.org), Instagram post |
Other symposium facilitators included a UPenn student who participated in the school's encampment and a lecturer who tweeted support for 'white genocide'
The Philadelphia public schools hosted a series of "liberation" workshops for students taught by a convicted felon who has argued that Jews control the media and was involved in torching a police car.
Anthony Smith, who has also praised the Hamas "freedom fighters" behind the October 7 terrorist attacks, facilitated workshops for hundreds of students—including some as young as seventh grade—as part of a partnership between the school district and the W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition and Reconstruction, a self-described "political education program for aspiring revolutionaries."
Held between 2025 and 2026, the workshops drew more than 150 students and included a session titled "Imagining A World Without Prisons," according to emails and documents obtained by North American Values Institute (NAVI). Other facilitators included Eliana Atienza, a University of Pennsylvania student who participated in the school's "Gaza Solidarity Encampent," and Geo Maher, a Penn lecturer who was pushed out of Drexel University after he tweeted in 2017, "All I want for Christmas is white genocide."
Attendance at each "Liberation Symposium" was mandatory, though students could choose between different sessions. The workshops were endorsed by Assistant Superintendent for School Performance Jeffrey MacFarland, who thanked the organizers of the symposium in a February 2025 email, and appear to have had the sign-off of the district's social studies director, Ismael Jimenez, who sits on the Movement School's board.
The Movement School has said that its goal is to create a "revolutionary pipeline" for K-12 students. The group's Study With Us page, which says "young people are the key to … resisting capitalist imperialism," advertises its curriculum to public schools and includes a quotation from Karl Marx.
"The District needs to answer for why it has repeatedly allowed a radical organization, one that boasts of creating a 'revolutionary pipeline' into K-12, access to its students," said Mika Hackner, NAVI's director of research.
MacFarland, Jimenez, and the School District of Philadelphia did not respond to requests for comment.
Hosted at the Workshop School—where zero percent of students are proficient in math, according to state test scores—the sessions show how self-proclaimed radicals have influenced the curriculum of Pennsylvania's largest school district, which is facing a $300 million deficit and where just 18 percent of eighth-graders read at grade level. The workshops came amid an ongoing congressional probe into reports of antisemitism in the district, including statements from Jimenez, the social studies director, who has praised the convicted cop-killer Assata Shakur and argued that "every child should walk into a classroom and feel the revolution stirring in the air." --->READ MORE HERE
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