Taxpayer-Funded Woke Calendar Erases Traditional Holidays Such as Christmas and Easter
Yes, I get it. King County, Washington, is home to Seattle. That means its Office of Equity and Social Justice is especially social justice-y. However, if they’re going to give out a calendar with holidays circled, they probably should identify those holidays.
The good news is that the 2021 calendar the OESJ sent out, according to KTTH-AM’s Jason Rantz, named a few of the circled holidays in which county employees get days off. That’s useful. If, of course, you want to remember when International Human Rights Day or Juneteenth are.
If, however, you wanted Christmas, Easter, the start of Hanukkah, Eid al-Adha or any other major religious holiday mentioned, you’re out of luck. But don’t worry — the county insists this is all in the name of inclusivity.
According to an article Wednesday by Rantz, the OESJ sends out the calendars to King County employees every year. This is an interesting decision inasmuch as the free desk calendar is a thoroughly outmoded way of self-promotion because most of us use the calendars on our phones. Plus, an office of equity and/or social justice in Seattle’s county needs little promotion. It’s also a waste of paper, which I thought the woke weren’t all about.
Maybe it’s not itself that the OESJ is promoting, though:
NEW: King County erased Christmas, Easter & Hanukkah from woke, taxpayer-funded calendar. In their place? Social justice holidays & heritage months.
Replacing Xmas is International Human Rights Day.
Hanukkah? Nope. You get Arab American Heritage Month. https://t.co/nHN9Osx3iY— (((Jason Rantz))) on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) January 20, 2021
These trees died so that you could remember International Human Rights Day is Dec. 10. That’s reason enough for the woke to approve the environmental degradation. Not that county employees get the day off, but it’s good to know.
The county gave out a similar calendar in 2019 for 2020. That calendar suffered from the same unbearable wokeness — except that Juneteenth wasn’t a public holiday in 2020. But it now is listed as a day off for King County employees.
Thanksgiving isn’t listed, however. Instead, you have Native American Heritage Month. April is Arab American Heritage Month, although they forgot Jewish American Heritage Month in May. (As Rantz notes, “Acknowledging Jews stopped being progressive around the start of the anti-Semitic Boycott-Divest-Sanction movement.”)
Rantz tried to get answers, but no one from the King County Executive’s Office or the Office of Equity and Social Justice would give him one.
King County Council member Kathy Lambert said she actually got an answer when she asked about the calendars, although it’s not what you might expect: “They said they did not intend to be excluding anyone,” Lambert said.
Lambert, who told Rantz the calendar was funded with taxpayer dollars, said OESJ members told her the holidays were left off for reasons of “equity.”
“When I asked about why it was left off, I was told that this is from the perspective of equity and social justice,” she said. “Well, I believe equity and social justice should be respectful of all beliefs and include major significant dates for every group, which would include people of faith.”
Lambert also noted the obvious: “Inclusion is not accomplished by exclusion,” she told Rantz.
The information Lambert gleaned from the inside might be the most we end up knowing about either the decision-making or the source of the funding that went into OESJ’s calendar.
“Neither members of the OESJ nor the spokesperson for the King County Executive’s Office provided any meaningful details around the calendar. But I sure did get plenty of emails telling me nothing,” Rantz wrote.
“No one from OESJ responded to my request for more information, which simply asked for context around the calendar. A county spokesperson did, however, respond.”
But again, not meaningfully. At first, they said they could “maybe get more info” for Rantz.
According to Rantz, the only info they really ended up getting for him was this: “The additional acknowledgements underneath each month reflect best practice Heritage Months (or Commemorative observances) that are recognized by a variety of institutions across the country.”
“I already knew this because I looked at the calendar,” he wrote.
“When I again asked for context around why they formatted the calendar in this way, my emails weren’t returned.”
They could always say what the answer obviously is: As a social justice office in one of America’s most liberal cities, they’re merely doing what they’re supposed to do. Rest assured, if they wanted to list the holidays in small font below the months, they could have.
It would have been easy to mention Christmas Eve was a day off for workers (Christmas falls on a Saturday in 2021) while still highlighting “best practice Heritage Months” in large letters.
If that’s the case, though, don’t call it “inclusion” — and own up to what it really is.
King County taxpayers deserve to know if their money was wasted on this frivolous poster.
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