![]() Similar materials were found in Newport Beach, just 5 miles south.īut Moser and Kalmick both argue that those on the far-right fringe do not represent the majority of Huntington Beach residents, several of whom voiced their disapproval of the agenda item via emails sent to council members. The city and county have grappled with decades of racial tensions and extremist demonstrations and actions including a stop the steal rally in 2020, a white lives matter rally in 2021, and the distribution of Ku Klux Klan propaganda that same year. While the most recent moves by the conservative city council majority have grabbed local and regional headlines, they did not begin with the November 2022 elections. ![]() This is all a hand-wave to distract from the fact that they’re breaking the city.” Huntington Beach is a majority white community of nearly 200,000 in Orange county. “This is just an ignorant attempt to try to make the utopia that they accuse everyone else of trying to create. “This traces back to a larger systemic apathy for what our libraries provide and support of the new culture wars, it’s just continuing down that path,” said Dan Kalmick, another Huntington Beach city council member who voted against the agenda item. In the year since their elections, mayor Gracey Van Der Mark, mayor pro tem Pat Burns and councilmembers Casey McKeon and Tony Strickland have voted to disallow Pride flags from being flown on city property, declared itself a “no mask and no vaccine mandate” city and created a review board for children’s library books. This is the latest action in a series of local actions that mirror national culture wars over the past year, since four conservative council members were elected on anti-housing development platforms. Instead, we are thrust into this war and I think that this council majority is trying to make a name for itself as a model or symbol of the extreme-right side of that war.” ![]() “I want Huntington Beach to be seen as a welcoming and inclusive community. “I was really disappointed to see it on the agenda but wasn’t surprised given the past year,” said Moser, who is from Huntington Beach. It’s still possible that the city can establish a day of observation for marginalized groups, Moser adds. This means that monthly programming meant to acknowledge and teach the history of historically marginalized groups such as Black Americans and LGBTQ+ people will be replaced by “content” about local railroad and surfing history and a monthlong tribute to the discovery of oil in Huntington Beach called Black Gold Jubilee, according to the agenda item’s language.
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