November 5, 2023:
The October 2023 official HOA magazine, News & Views, contained a report that did a political hit on an entire group of citizens.
The below October 31, 2023 email was sent to the Chairperson and Editor of the HOA’s official magazine, News & Views, with a cc to the Board of Directors. No response was ever received. Here is the email unedited:
“Subject: Bias Alert/Political Hit Piece: News & Views From The Left
Leslie and Marion (News & Views Chair and Editor), with cc to the Board of Directors and Property Manager:
Regarding the October 2023 News & Views: I thought this was a nonpartisan, nonpolitical magazine. Apparently, I was wrong.
On page 13, an article entitled “Library News” opens with a pointed political salvo against conservative women and others who don’t want to have the government co-parent their children and grandchildren and who don’t want schools indoctrinating and brainwashing their kids behind their backs with leftist, socialist, and/or Marxist ideologies. The article specifically attacks MomsForLiberty.org and falsely states that this organization is leading the charge in attacking libraries.
The article, written by Steven Nobel, opens with the following: “Libraries are under attack across the United States, nowhere more so than in Florida. The ultra conservative group, Moms for Liberty, is leading the charge, with several other groups and individuals taking up the cause.”
It is clear that the author didn’t bother to go to this organization’s website, read their mission statement, and learn what they are really about. The writer is clearly a liberal, which is his prerogative, but News & Views is supposed to be apolitical, and certainly not antagonistic to its conservative readers.
Apparently, the writer wants books with sexual themes, including gay sex, masturbation, and other sexual themes and deviations in the libraries for elementary school children to freely access, with pictures and instructions. When parents bring to the attention of school boards these same books, they are specifically disallowed to read or show pictures from them and are removed by police from the podiums of these so-called open meetings. There are numerous videos online of this reality. Apparently, the material is too offensive for adult school board meetings, but fine for the single digit aged schoolchildren.
Again, these materials are too offensive and inappropriate for adults to expose other parents and the community to at an open school board meeting as to what their little ones are reading and looking at, but they’re fine for six- to nine-year-olds to read and view in class and in the library.
These materials are also offensive to some parents’ religious beliefs, and this organization also fights to stop the indoctrination of their children behind their backs where children are instructed in the schools not to tell their parents about what they are being taught that includes normalizing debauchery and moral depravity.
Now I understand that supposedly being liberal is synonymous with tolerance, except for different political opinions of course, but this email is not about liberal hypocrisy per se. It’s about keeping political agendas out of the community magazine.
Where is the editorial control to ensure that political biases stay out of this community magazine? This community likely has more than 35% of its members who politically lean right, and that number is growing with the influx of new people coming and replacing the traditionally liberal teachers that used to populate this place.
The article’s slant is offensive. If you want to have a politically biased community magazine, then just say so, and rename it News & Views From The Left.
Vicki Roberts”
That was the email to which no one responded. By the way, I’m curious, is News & Views ok with elementary school libraries carrying Hamas instruction manuals on how to blow up Israel? How about bomb building techniques for beginner jihadists? How about books that compare Jews to pigs? Are all of those ok, too, with all you off-the-deep-end kumbaya leftists?
Here’s an idea: instead of attacking civilian groups who are trying to protect our children, how about just focusing on what our library actually offers? In the meantime, silence from those who have a duty to speak is deafening. But thank goodness for groups like Moms For Liberty for holding the high ground and demanding accountability, ethics, and morality in our schools.
Vicki Roberts Editor