California’s public schools aren’t just run by some of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s staunchest allies and beneficiaries, but also serve as theaters for his wife’s leftist propaganda, allegedly paid for in part at taxpayer expense.
A new report from the Illinois-based transparency watchdog OpenTheBooks.com has revealed that Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s nonprofit, the Representation Project, has garnered nearly $1.5 million screening four films she is credited for having either written or directed. American public schools are believed to have coughed up the majority of the funds to screen these films, two of which feature Mrs. Newsom and her husband.
Adam Andrzejewski, founder and CEO of OpenTheBooks.com, remarked on these and the related findings, “The Representation Project not only solicits donors from big-money political supporters of Gavin Newsom, but also receives public tax dollars through schools to create a new generation of supporters and activists in the state’s—and country’s—schoolchildren.”
Newsom’s agitprop outfit
The Representation Project is a nonprofit that claims to “fight sexism through films, education, research, and activism.” It was founded by Mrs. Newsom in 2011 after the debut of her premier agitprop piece “Miss Representation,” which enjoyed moderate success.
In addition to attempting to use media to manufacture or augment public opinion, the group admits to utilizing “the collective pressure of social activism” to make content creators conform to their thinking on sex, race, and on other issues. Mrs. Newsom and her acolytes have previously sought to financially ruin those who haven’t ideologically conformed, going after publications’ advertisers when they wouldn’t play ball.
“Miss Representation” is one of the four propaganda pieces Newsom’s nonprofit has licensed out to schools across California and throughout the United States.
The film presumes at the outset that “boys learn that their success is tired to dominance, power, and aggression,” whereas girls are led to believe that their “value lies in their youth, beauty, and sexuality and not in their capacity as leaders.”
According to IMDB, “The Great American Lie,” also written and directed by Mrs. Newsom, “examines how a US value system built on the extreme masculine ideals of money, power and control has glorified individualism, institutionalized inequality, and undermined the ability of most Americans to achieve the American Dream.” It appears to neglect recognition that the director’s husband is a state governor in and amongst said value system.
Newsom’s “The Mask You Live In” suggests that masculinity has been too narrowly defined in America and maintains that this has had a negative impact on the nation and its boys.
This film not only contains website addresses of porn sites with images tagged with descriptions like “face f***” and “kinky couples,” but also includes partially blurred images of sexual violence against women from pornographic videos, which Andrzejewski stressed were “graphic even when blurred.”
The Representation Project framed the fourth film, “Fair Play,” as an attempt to press the issue of “gender inequality at home.”
Newsom co-wrote this film with Eve Rodsky, who has intimated that a mother who says at home to raise her children is “doing unpaid labor, staying quiet and small.”
According to a 2011-2021 impact report issued by Newsom’s nonprofit, these four propaganda films — designed in part by those with an apparent disdain for stay-at-home mothers — have been played in over 5,000 schools before over 2.6 million children in the United States.
OpenTheBooks.com indicated that schools must pay between $49 and $599 to expose kids to these films, and have done so willingly.
Since 2012, the Representation Project has reportedly taken in $1,483,001 in screening revenue. It is unclear how much of this was generated in California alone.
Shaping prospective Newsom voters, activists
The films are not the only thing Newsom’s nonprofit is trafficking in. Accompanying each piece of agitprop is curricula students must engage with.
For instance, after subjecting students to “Miss Representation,” Newsom’s curricula has kids: “understand how gender representations influence the ways that we see each other and ourselves”; “critique media images as they begin to recognize the qualities that make for good leadership and uncover ways that they can act as allies for each other to support an end to stereotyping”; and “create their own media images to respond to the dearth of positive representations of women and girls.”
After watching Newsom’s “The Great American Lie,” students are reportedly prompted to do a so-called privilege walk, whereby classrooms temporarily segregate more and more on the basis of immutable characteristics, socioeconomic status, and deeply personal information.
According the Representation Project’s impact report, its efforts have been consequential. Students who endure their curricula report a significant increase in knowledge of feminism, racial justice, and a desire to engage in activism.
After pushing similar messaging at its youth media summit, the Representation Project claimed that afterward, 33.3% of enrollees indicated they planned to organize “a protest for social change” and 60% planned to “use social media for social change.”
The benefit may not only be monetary but electoral.
Gov. Newsom appears in two of his wife’s films, the purpose of which Andrzejewski suggested is clear: “Jennifer Siebel Newsom makes a movie portraying Gavin Newsom as a politician that supports certain policies, and then in the movie’s curriculum advises students to vote and campaign for politicians that support those policies.”
The schools receive taxpayer money and effectively use those funds or the resources those funds secure (e.g., class time) to foist the Newsoms’ messaging on American youths.
While Mrs. Newsom’s Representation Project may be a nonprofit, she has a for-profit company that appears to have done well as a result of at least one of her films.
Newsom’s Girls Club Entertainment has taken in over $1.6 million from her nonprofit since 2012.
Mrs. Newsom has also reportedly collected $1,501,727 in salary from her nonprofit since its founding.
What’s a nonprofit amongst friends?
The Free Beacon reported that extra to promoting her husband’s policies and building her brand with taxpayer-funded school resources, Newsom’s nonprofit may have yet more uses, which may ultimately trip up Gov. Newsom should he run for president.
Between 2011 and 2018, the Representation Project took $358,000 from the Pacific Gas and Electric Company — the same utility linked by state investigations to fires that claimed at least 85 lives and destroyed hundreds of acres of land. The utility’s philanthropic arm also cut a sizable check to Newsom’s sister Hilary.
This utility was also reportedly listed as an associate producer on two of Mrs. Newsom’s pieces of agitprop, going so far as to host the screening of “Miss Representation” in 2011.
When the state House came down on DNA-sampling firms, Newsom reportedly found his way to veto the legislation in 2020. It turns out, Anne Wojcicki, founder of one such firm called 23andMe, was another donor to Mrs. Newsom’s Representation Project.
Jeff Hauser of the government watchdog Revolving Door Project told the Free Beacon, “We’re going to need a rethink of ethics laws that allow people to work without making political officeholders easy to bribe via their partners.”
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