This article was a collaboration between Stumptown Research Collective and Salem residents. If you’d like to enlarge an image for easier reading, just click on it to open a larger version in a new tab.
If you’ve got any pertinent information about Casity Troutt or her associates that you’d like to share, please email us at:
stumptownresearchcollective@riseup.net.
Casity Troutt is running for the Zone 2 seat in the Salem-Keizer School District (SKSD). If she wins the election this May it would have disastrous results for public education in the district. Casity is deeply connected to right-wing extremism in Oregon, and while she maintains a veneer of respectability she functions as a gateway for extremism to make its way into our mainstream politics, similar to how disgraced state representative Mike Nearman did in 2020 when he literally opened the door for extremists to enter the Capitol building in Salem.
Casity Troutt exists within a relatively small yet vocal ecosystem of local far-right groups and individuals who have made their focus fighting a culture war in our public schools. They have harassed school boards, teachers, students, and fellow community members alike in an attempt to gain influence over the education system. Their aim is to weaken teacher’s unions, impose their own cultural and political values onto students (including the erasure of LGBTQ+ youth and the censoring of the historical struggles of Black and Indigenous folks), and divert tax money from public schooling into their own private/religious and homeschooling ventures.
This is part of a national movement that is nothing less than an attempt to destroy public education from within, and Casity Troutt is spearheading that movement in Salem.
Casity Troutt
Casity’s career in right-wing activism began in 2020 when she entered the anti-mask/anti-vaccine movement, which contributed to the public health crisis and extended lockdowns by exacerbating the spread of Covid. A quick look through her Facebook page during this time shows that she was still regularly posting Covid disinformation throughout 2021.
As the collective energy around protesting Covid mitigation measures dwindled, Casity predictably moved on to the next big trend in far-right politics: harassing school board meetings in an attempt to influence their policies and, when this fails, attempting to take over the boards themselves.
As first reported by Salem-Keizer Proletariat, Casity harassed the SKSD meeting last August. When students in attendance called out her bigoted speech before the school board Casity called them ‘brainwashed’, publicly slandered them on Facebook, and when others were talking about committing violence against them, she encouraged it. Again, these are students who Casity is attacking. At this same meeting Casity’s associate Mike Slagle took photos of those same students, despite their requests to stop, in an attempt to publicly identify them.
![Facebook comment exchange between Casity Troutt and Deb Romano on 8/11/22. It reads:
"Casity: Deb Romano, that is their intention. To intimidate parents so they stop coming and opposing their radical ideology. They want to be the only voice at the table to give the illusion theirs is the only opinion. We need more parents to be brave and come despite their tactics.
Deb: Casity Troutt, I get that but i also know my boundaries. I would end up in jail [eyeroll emoji]
Casity: Deb Romano, I have bail money [laugh emoji]"](https://stumptownresearchcollective.noblogs.org/files/2023/02/casity-troutt-encouraging-threats-of-violence-against-students.png)
Casity has a handful of close associates who share her focus. While their numbers are small, they have started many groups—all of which are simply rearrangements of the same people in their circle—to give the appearance of having a substantial following.
One such group, SK We Stand Together (SKWST), was founded by Linda Farrington, who is currently serving as president with Casity Troutt as vice president. Linda is a failed school board candidate (as well as a racist and a transphobe) who, after losing her election in 2021, has taken to bringing racist rhetoric to school board meetings and berating the youth who stand up to her.
In the audio clip below, at the 10/12/21 SKSD meeting she laments “gender inclusivity” while saying that she believes in “traditional values”—the implied point of course being that she wishes to impose those values on everyone. She also expresses anger that she was called a white supremacist by non-white youth, claiming they have no right to speak on that while implying that she, as a white woman, does.
To be clear, Linda is well-known in the community as a racist, and was even rebuked by the NAACP for a series of comments she made, which included “You look at me and think that I have a particular experience, but actually, you know, I’m not white like you are. I’m, I’m in my heart Asian because I was born and raised for 12 years in Thailand.” Linda has no capacity to understand that there’s an important difference in having the lived experience of being a marginalized person, and simply being an observer of that experience.
Given Linda’s racism, it’s not surprising that her group, SK We Stand Together, attempted to ban Stamped (For Kids), a book written by Black authors that explains the history of race relations in the US. SKWST published an open letter to the district arguing that Stamped represents a “one-sided historical approach” that is “preying” on children.
When people like Casity Troutt and Linda Farrington claim that something is “one-sided”, what they really mean is that it comes from a viewpoint other than their own. In their letter, they claim that everything from the institution of slavery to the Black Panther Party to MLK’s speeches were misinterpreted. The implication is that they as white women are the arbiters of how Black history not only should be interpreted, but how it is allowed to be interpreted—a fact made evident by their demand to literally ban the book from an entire school district.
The letter received only around 200 signatures, with Casity Troutt being the second to sign it. Casity then filed a formal petition with SKSD to have the book removed from all school libraries, and was rejected by an 8-1 vote of the review committee. Shortly after, the district considered another potential book ban—this time a book on gender identity called Gender Queer—and SK We Stand Together members spoke at a hearing in favor of the ban (which was also rejected).
After Casity’s two failed attempts at banning books, she moved on to retaliating against three elected school board members by initiating a recall campaign. While the recall effort predictably failed to gain enough signatures, it put her on the map in local far-right circles as a leader of the fight against public education in the Salem-Keizer district. Perhaps making a name for herself was her goal all along because now, six months later, she is running for a seat on the school board herself.
To organize the recall Casity founded a group called Salem-Keizer Education First, and she currently serves as its director. The core membership of Salem-Keizer Education First is practically the same as Linda Farrington’s SW We Stand Together, and Linda was heavily involved in helping Casity with the recall effort. On their website, Casity openly laments that her group is called “bigots and racists,” but perhaps she should reflect on why people would think that in the first place.
Other members of Casity’s circle include Jenny Maguire, Mike Slagle, Abigail Eckhart, Tracy Pratt, and Beth Freeborn. More groups sharing these same core members include Oregon Moms Union, Neon Kidz, and Oregon Parents Rights in Education, and they are all doing basically the same thing—attempting to chip away at public education—under different names. Once we look beyond the core members and leadership though, another pattern emerges: all of these groups regularly attract the support and participation of far-right extremist elements.
Casity’s ties to right wing extremism
Marion+Polk First, a political action committee, donated over $12k to Casity’s recall effort which represents roughly 75% of the overall funding received. The director of Marion+Polk First PAC is Debora Nearman, the wife of former state representative Mike Nearman. Nearman was ejected from the state legislature in 2021 for allowing armed far-right extremists into the Capitol while there was a protest occurring outside during a legislative session.
Marion+Polk First, Casity’s biggest funder.
The armed break-in at the state Capitol was a planned event. Below is a video of Mike Nearman instructing a group of far-right extremists on how he would get them into the building, a crime he was later prosecuted for and pled guilty to. These are the type of people who are funding Casity Troutt’s political activities.
Among the crowd of far right protesters in attendance that day was Patriot Prayer member Chandler Pappas, who was sentenced to 13 months in prison for macing police officers during the break-in attempt. Also present was Travis Taylor, a notoriously violent Proud Boy who stood at the front door of the Capitol as frequent Proud Boy collaborator Jeremy Roberts kicked it and shattered the glass.
Travis Taylor was just one of many Proud Boys at the Capitol break-in. While Casity Troutt wasn’t there that day, she has attended numerous protests and rallies side by side with members of the Proud Boys, a political street gang that regularly engages in violence. She’s avoided mentioning the group in a public capacity, but has made multiple posts on her personal Facebook account promoting them.
In the second image above, you can see Casity imply that the Proud Boys are not a violent group. However, there hundreds of instances of documented Proud Boy violence, from the J6 riot at the Capitol in DC to numerous events in Salem.
Through her political work on the far-right, Casity is regularly engaged with countless people who have direct connections to the Proud Boys. This includes failed gubernatorial candidate Marc Thielman, who has participated in numerous political events with Proud Boys and is a close associate of Dan Tooze. Tooze is a leader of the Portland Proud Boys, and is notorious for his violent behavior at rallies.
Casity also works closely with Ben Edtl and his group Free Oregon, which was a major promoter of Casity’s SKSD recall effort. Ben, in turn, works closely with the Proud Boys. He has received campaign donations from Dan Tooze, and the Proud Boys provided the stage—and security—for several of Ben’s events at the Capitol last year.
Recently, Casity Troutt attended an event in Salem called March for Life, which was put on by the anti-abortion group Oregon Right to Life. In attendance alongside her were uniformed members of the Proud Boys, as well as the neo-Nazi group Rose City Nationalists, whose leader Casey Knuteson is an ex-Proud Boy and convicted child abuser.
Oregon Right to Life allowed these self-proclaimed Nazis to attend their March for Life event, where they handed out Nazi propaganda to passersby and shot a promotional video which they use for recruitment. The video contains clear shots of countless members of the crowd, including children, and has now been shared on a neo-Nazi Telegram channel where it received almost 5000 views.
The blowback from the presence of these extremists at the event was so strong that Oregon Right to Life felt compelled to issue a public apology for their presence and distance themselves from these groups.
Unlike Oregon Right to Life, Casity did not denounce the presence of neo-Nazis and other far-right extremists at the event, instead opting to make a cheery Facebook post about attending the event with her children.
For someone who claims to be proud of their Jewish ancestry, who regularly makes Holocaust remembrance posts and shares news stories of synagogue attacks, one might think Casity would feel compelled to make sure that Nazi groups were not welcome in the same spaces as her. But alas, as is common with nearly everyone on the far-right, Casity’s stated values are just that—stated—and are readily discarded the moment it becomes convenient.
Casity even had a family member escape the Holocaust, a point which she likes to bring up in order to claim that she’s an authority on who is or is not a white supremacist, as can be heard in the audio clip below from her testimony at the 10/12/21 SKSD meeting. But there’s no denying that the guys posting swastikas and sieg heiling in their photo ops are Nazis. We find it doubtful that Casity’s Jewish ancestor would have anything good to say about her having avoided publicly acknowledging or condemning the presence of neo-Nazis, choosing silence for the sake of political expediency. While she may not have known the political ideology of the men in skull masks during the event, it is common knowledge now and it is not hard to come out and rebuke Nazis. Furthermore, we would offer that finding yourself and Nazis on the same page regarding political issues ought to be concerning.
Anti-Union Organizing
Returning to the topic of schools, another of Casity’s far-right associates includes Dmitriy Sashchenko. Dmitriy is an outreach director at the Freedom Foundation, an anti-union group that is funded by right-wing billionaires. Mike Nearman is a Senior Fellow at the Freedom Foundation, and the meeting discussed above where he instructed far-right extremists on how to breach the Capitol building took place in the local Freedom Foundation offices.
In addition to its general anti-union work, Freedom Foundation is heavily involved in fighting against the public school system and specifically targets teachers’ unions. Casity directly supports the anti-union movement, and SK We Stand Together recently sponsored an event for Dmitriy Sashchenko to spread Freedom Foundation’s anti-union sentiment to SKSD teachers.
You’d think that folks like Casity, who claim they are committed to improving public education, would be in favor of a teachers’ union. It’s critical to understand though that, like Casity’s values, her claims are a means of political expediency rather than an accurate representation of her goals. As we show below, Casity and her associates are not trying to improve public education, they are actively undermining it.
School Choice
Organizing against teachers’ unions is directly tied to “school choice” because teachers’ unions consistently fight against such policies and are therefore an impediment to those who wish to implement them. It is well documented that school choice is a scheme with racist origins that aims to divert money from public education into private and religious schools.
Casity Troutt is a strong proponent of school choice, and is a disciple (and personal acquaintance) of Corey DeAngelis. Corey is a Senior Fellow at the American Federation for Children, a right-wing dark money group founded by billionaire—and notorious opponent of public education—Betsy DeVos. As such, he is at the forefront of the coordinated, national-level push for school choice policies, which are ultimately nothing more than a disguised effort by the far-right to dismantle the public education system. And Casity Troutt is following their playbook to the tee, enthusiastically joining the nationally funded and directed anti-mask/anti-vax to anti-public-education pipeline.
![Facebook post from Jenny Maguire on 9/17/22. She tags Casity Troutt along with 3 others. The text reads: When Corey DeAngelis gives you the down-low on owning Twitter [heart eyes emoji] ". Below the text is a photo of Corey DeAngelis at a table with Casity Troutt and 3 others. Corey and Casity both have their hands on the same phone, which they are looking at together.](https://stumptownresearchcollective.noblogs.org/files/2023/02/casity-troutt-corey-deangelis-meeting.png)
In the last image above, you’ll see Casity’s group SK We Stand Together hosted a school choice event with Donna Kreitzberg. Donna is a major player in school choice advocacy in Oregon, and was co-petitioner with Marc Thielman on a rejected ballot measure that would allow tax dollars allotted to public education to be diverted to private and religious schools as well as homeschooling hubs.
While the initial ballot measure was rejected by the state, they have a revised measure ready and will likely begin collecting signatures for it soon, although this process has been held up by a lawsuit from the Oregon Education Association, Oregon’s largest teachers’ union. It’s no surprise that public school teachers, who are already drastically underpaid, don’t want any more money drained from public education.
School choice policies are a direct assault on the funding of public education, and as such it’s not possible to be invested in public school system while promoting school choice. If someone claims this is the case, as Casity does, they are simply lying.
Parents’ Rights
Like school choice, “parental rights” is not just a local initiative but rather a nationally organized effort by the far-right to gain control of public education.
Parental rights advocates like Casity Troutt aren’t actually asking for any rights they don’t already have, they are demanding that the rights of others be revoked whenever they don’t align with their personal culture or politics. It is the ultimate Karen move, demanding to be allowed to micromanage professional educators, librarians, administrators, and even students themselves under the guise of “parents know best”—even when, as in Casity’s case, they have no background in education.
What parental rights advocates really want is for a group of a select few people (themselves), many of whom often do not even have children in the public school system, to be issued veto power over an entire district. They want to dictate the curriculum itself, what books are available in libraries, what material a teacher is allowed to discuss with students, and even bathroom policies.
What this looks like in practice is the banning of teaching and books that illustrate the struggles of Black and Indigineous people, or that even acknowledge the existence of LGBTQ+ people (especially LGBTQ+ youth). It looks like teachers being forced to refer to students by names and pronouns they do not identify with. And it looks like outing queer and trans teens to their parents, despite the fact that many do not feel safe with their parents knowing this information. But according to people like Casity it is a parent’s “right” to know what is going on in their child’s head, regardless of the fact that it could put youth in danger of abuse and completely destroys the sense of privacy that everyone, including teenagers, deserve. And of course, the end goal here is to prevent LGBTQ+ youth from existing in public.
Casity is a member of the group Oregon Parents’ Rights in Education, yet another group which appears to be local but is actually nationally organized and funded. And like many of these groups, it has attracted the majority of our local far-right extremists.
You’ve probably heard of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, a devastating anti-LGBTQ+ law passed last year, but you may not have heard is that it’s actual name is the “Parental Rights in Education Act”. When you hear someone say “parents’ rights,” this is the kind of thing they are talking about.
For a detailed overview of the parents’ rights movement, and how it has been used as a right-wing political tool since its inception in the 1930’s to fight against child labor laws, check out this podcast.
Casity’s anti-LGBTQ+ agenda
Its clear that parental rights has become a euphamism for an anti-LGBTQ+ agenda, and Casity herself can aptly be described as an anti-trans activist. On April 6, 2022, Casity spoke at a press conference with failed gubernatorial candidate Stan Pulliam. There, she recited with audible disdain some of SKSD’s new gender-affirming policies, blaming these for faltering performance in public schools despite the fact that they had only been passed a few weeks prior to her speech.
Casity took particular umbrage with the new policy stating that “books or resources with anti-LGBTQ+, racist, ableist, and/or other harmful narratives or agendas will not be assigned to students.” Her response was “I ask who decides if books or resources are anti- or pro-anything? Who decides what narratives or agendas are harmful? It can be argued that these [LGBTQ+ affirming] policies have harmful narratives and agendas.” Her unspoken answer, of course, is that she believes she is entitled to decide.
Casity then asked “Where is the oversight? And I’m not talking about false oversight, like creating committees out of thin air to counter specific opinions.” The comment about committees is a reference to the committee created by SKSD to review book challenges, which has consistently rejected Casity’s attempts at book banning. This makes it illegitimate in her eyes, because once again her position is that her and her small group of similarly-bigoted associates have a mandate to determine what is and is not acceptable.
Less than a week later after this speech, Casity’s group SK We Stand Together organized a protest against those same gender-affirming policies. At this point in time, the purpose of SKWST is largely to advocate for restricting the rights of trans youth to exist in public, and a visit to their Facebook page and subsequent search for the word “trans” will confirm that.
![Facebook post from Casity Troutt on 4/10/22. The text reads "[siren emoji] Join us tomorrow!!! Boys do NOT belong in girls sports and kindergarteners do NOT need to learn about sexuality!!! [siren emoji". Below the text is an image of a flyer from SK We Stand Together and Oregon Moms Union. It reads "Boys dont belong in girls sports or bathrooms. Teach facts not feelings. Join us for a rally against new transgender policies in SKSD." The date listed for the vent is 4/11/22, from 11am to 1pm.](https://stumptownresearchcollective.noblogs.org/files/2023/02/casity-troutt-transphobic.png)
Casity is a big fan of LibsOfTikTok (LOTT), a far-right, anti-LGBTQ+ social media account run by Chaya Raichik, a far-right extremist who participated in the January 6, 2020 storming of the Capitol in DC. LOTT posts inflammatory, misleading, and false information about LGBTQ+ issues in an attempt to rile up their supporters. For example, they were responsible for the hoax that made its way to SKSD about students identifying as cats and litter boxes being placed in classrooms for them.
Casity regularly retweets and likes posts by LibsOfTikTok on Twitter, and it appears she may be collaborating with them in order to spread news of her own manufactured claims against SKSD to their large platform of nearly 2 million followers. LOTT is a large, nationally-focused account, so it’s odd that they have posted about Salem-Keizer—a relatively small and nationally-inconsequential school district—over a dozen times. LOTT admits they have an inside source in Salem, and the account has covered both of Casity’s attempts at banning books from the district, as well as the trans-inclusive policies against which she led a protest.
![A tweet from LibsofTikTok on 10/31/22, which Casity Troutt retweeted. It reads: ".@salemkeizer advised teachers during a teacher training to go to a drag show in order to "increase positive contact [with students]"". Below it is a slide from SKSD, which lists ideas for teachers to broaden their experiences to better be able to connect with and relate to the youth they are helping to educate. One of those options is "go to a drag show".](https://stumptownresearchcollective.noblogs.org/files/2023/02/casity-troutt-retweet-libsoftiktok-1.png)
The collaboration between Casity Troutt and LibsOfTikTok is concerning. Many of LOTT’s followers take the anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric they see online and funnel it into real world threats and violence. For example, LibsofTikTok is directly responsible for promoting a hoax that resulted in doctors at a children’s hospital receiving death threats.
LibsOfTikTok is also perhaps the greatest single contributor to the widespread and growing problem of attacks on drag shows and the venues that host them, with well over 100 drag events being targeted in 2022. Many of those faced not just threats but in person intimidation from armed far-right extremists, as well as physical attacks on the venues themselves.
This trend has manifested locally as well, when in October LOTT promoted the protest of a drag show in Eugene. A large group of far-right extremists showed up, many of them armed. Among them were dozens of Proud Boys along with the aforementioned neo-Nazi group Rose City Nationalists.
You can see from the comments under LOTT’s posts that they clearly cater to violent extremists, and a homeland security advisor has stated unequivocally that what LOTT does qualifies as stochastic terrorism. In this context, it’s extremely troubling that Casity appears to be not only boosting LOTT’s content but working directly with that account, as every time they post about SKSD it increases the risk of someone committing real-world violence here in response.
Violence is ultimately the end game for this type of rhetoric, and we saw this taken to its logical conclusion recently with the mass shooting at Club Q, a gay bar in Colorado Springs. This article covers how that shooting is tied to a marked increase in the intensity of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, which is spearheaded by LibsOfTikTok and boosted by Casity Troutt.
Understanding Casity’s Platform
Now that we’ve explored the context of Casity’s niche in the far-right political scene, and the euphemisms she employs to disguise her actual intentions, we can better understand the platform on which she is running for school board.
On her webpage, Casity claims that youth in public schools have fallen behind because of “relaxing our academic standards.” She blames this on “an inappropriate curriculum being pushed on our kids,” and says that her answer is “to stop pushing political agendas of any kind in our classrooms and stick to the basics.”
It’s worth noting that her claim of relaxed academic standards has absolutely nothing to do with her proposed solution of eliminating “political agendas.” What’s more though, is that Casity is flat out lying about not wanting to push a political agenda. She says as much herself in this video clip, posted on SK We Stand Together’s website, where she says “we want to bring excellence back to education by influencing the culture and writing the narrative back towards the center.”
Another point in Casity’s platform is “restoring trust with parents,” about which she says “Parents need to be informed about their kids’ school lives—from curriculum choices to whether their kids are struggling emotionally or in their studies. Parents must also be a part of the solution to a child’s problems.” She calls this “true transparency.” The “transparency” that Casity calls for is just another way of saying “parental rights,” and is nothing more than a demand to be allowed to micromanage the public school system and intrude on the private lives of youth.
Transparency to Casity means having veto power over every detail of a teacher’s curriculum, and the ability to ban books she doesn’t agree with from an entire school district. She also believes that youth have zero right to privacy, and is adamant that if teens are experimenting with different names or pronouns for themselves at school, that their parents must be informed even if their child does not consent.
This is a gross invasion of privacy and there are good reasons someone may not be comfortable with their parents knowing their feelings. Teenagers generally have a sense for whether their parents will be affirming or not, and in cases where their parents are non-affirming, being out to them puts them at increased risk of emotional, verbal, and physical abuse. LGBTQ+ youth are often disowned by non-affirming parents, and this in combination with abuse is responsible for them facing disproportionately higher rates of homelessness than their peers.
What should be clear is that Casity does not actually care about the welfare of children, as she claims. This is simply a guise she uses to cover for her desire to have control over them—from what they think to what they read to what they discuss with their peers and mentors. Her entire platform is about how to control our youth, and this is especially concerning coming from someone with such deep ties to far-right extremism. Casity Troutt’s school board candidacy is a clear example of the vital need to pay attention to local politics and elections and keep right wing extremists out of positions of power, especially over children.
If you’re wondering why this article does not directly link to any of Casity’s media, please see The Oxygen of Amplification.
For more consistent coverage of Casity Troutt and the Salem-Keizer School Board election, as well Salem politics in general with a focus on far-right extremism, check out the Salem-Keizer Proletariat Substack. They recently published an article titled “Right-Wing Activists Define Salem-Keizer School Board Race Early”, which provides additional context on Casity Troutt’s connections to the local far-right political scene, and her connections to the Newberg School Board disaster.
If you’re still reading this and you live in Zone 2 of SKSD, please consider running for school board against Casity. If you’re interested and you need resources or support, shoot us an email at stumptownresearchcollective@riseup.net.