Dear Evan Blake: It's Not Us, It's You by Dr. Michael Flanagan

This week, BATs was the subject of an editorial in the World Socialist Website (WSWS). One of the writers named Evan Blake was banned from BATs for trying to repeatedly post his own articles, directly ask members for responses to his posted questions as research for his own reporting, repeatedly private messaging people in their in-boxes and then demanding that BATs administrators give him detailed explanations of why his posts were not let in, and later demanding he be reinstated into the group after he was finally banned. 

He would not accept the explanation that there were already a couple of articles on the CDC topic he was posting about currently on the BATs page. He, and others who were apparently working in tandem with him, were continuously posting links to his own articles in thread comments, and argued with our moderators when told it was spamming. 

Spamming, solicitation of members of BATs, self promotion, arguing with moderators, not accepting the explanations, then in-boxing our private messages making more demands. In the words of our mostly female group administrators, he was “creeping me out”. 

When four different women (three of whom had to block him) feel that they are being harassed by a guy they are calling creepy and demanding, then yeah, I vote to ban that person. 

We do not work for Evan Blake or the WSWS. I had never heard of him before two days ago. But after I read his incoherent, delusional article about his banning from BATs, I am even more happy we banned him. 

In an effort to explain to our members why he was banned, as many read and support the ideas of the WSWS, here are some of his quotes from the article: 

“Many members of the BATs Facebook group are either members of the DSA or sympathetic to its politics, with most likely unaware of the leadership’s vicious anti-communist tweets.”

“BATs administrators are attempting to stifle the growing opposition of teachers to the policies of the Biden administration and the complicity of the unions.”

“From the start, BATs has been politically subordinate to the Democratic Party and the teachers unions and heavily promotes racial and identity politics.” 

Now, I wish he had told us how he really feels. I question why he is so determined to be reinstated into the group, if we are really this bad? Could it be to use our social network to promote his own writing? Our group has a reach of 68,000 members, and 40,800 twitter followers, so that would be my guess. But then I checked his Twitter (430 followers) and his Facebook (444 friends) and I confirmed my answer. 

Basically he is alleging that we administrators-all teachers and former teachers-moderating the BATs group on our free time, are either democratic operatives or members of DSA-which I had never heard of until yesterday. I guess that being a pushy, entitled and annoying random Facebook group member who did not know how to take no for an answer never crossed his mind. 

BATs is full of teachers with various backgrounds, political leanings and social awareness. We do not always agree with our union leadership, and we have been vocal about those disagreements. But we are union members, and will support them, even while trying to change certain policies and actions from within. 

We are very critical of the Biden administration's education policies, especially their stance on standardized testing, charter schools and privatization. We were also critical of the Obama administration and regularly protested his policies, and organized BATs because of his administration. 

And yes, we do promote racial and identity politics. We are fighters for and advocates of social justice and are virulently anti-racist. If that is not your predilection, have a nice day. You are not wanted in this group. 

BATS has a long history of contention within our group and has been accused of just about everything from the political left and from the political right. We are very often not union enough for the unions. Not social justice enough for the social justice movement. Not liberal enough for liberals. Nowhere near conservative enough for the conservatives. We are accused both of censorship in our group and of not moderating well enough.

So pretty much we’re damned if we do damned if we don’t. Over the years we have had numerous people come and go as members, and as administrators to the group. We have banned many, even some of our own founding members. Sometimes we were wrong and made mistakes. We regret them, but we are all grown ups, and being kicked out of a Facebook group is usually not that big of a deal. Except apparently for Evan Blake. 

Those of us still administering BATs take this group extremely seriously. But at the end of the day the Facebook group is just one part of the larger actions of BATs. We are activists, and our actions need to speak louder than our posts. We are made up of teachers, educators, college professors, writers, retirees and parents. We work in the schools and classrooms every day. Even during this pandemic. Putting our lives on the line, to support the students. We have pushed back on school building reopenings, and we got vaccinated when it was available. But through it all, we taught. Every day. 

Government should be for the people-that’s the majority of people. We should defend those among us who have the least ability to protect themselves. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. 

Many of us in this group do feel that our government needs to be more socialist rather than capitulating to capitalism at all times. To me that means funding public schools, lowering student debt, raising the minimum wage and eliminating for-profit healthcare. Most feel that the corruption of our politicians and control of our government by billionaires and corporations is wrong. 

We teach children. We want better lives for our students. We want better working conditions for ourselves and our colleagues. 

We advocate under the current political system. In a two party system we have had to choose one party over the other and that has not always been an easy choice-except during this last election. While we may not be pure socialists we are absolutely not fascists. But, like I said, we are a Facebook group, and we can admit or refuse any content to the group page that we determine to be appropriate for our group. We also have the right to ban anyone from the group that we do not feel is a good fit for us. Sometimes it is not us, it is you. But luckily, there are lots of other Facebook groups out there. Good luck to you.

The one thing I do thank him for though is the advertisement for BATs. The fact that Evan Blake is mad at us and writing about us on his webpage is much appreciated. I am sure his article about BATs got him more hits than most stuff he writes. That is why he wants back in. To use us to promote his own writing. I guess any publicity is good publicity. Be safe all.