TWIBS: Strange Things Are Happening in Redlands, CA
Redlands is the latest Southern California town to fall victim to right-wing efforts to turn the historically blue state red… but these bad actors are having a hard time keeping their neuroses in check!
Don Graham (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Humor by Alyssa Steinsiek
This Week in Barrel Scraping (TWIBS) is Assigned Media’s oldest column! Every Friday, Alyssa Steinsiek digs deep from the well of transphobia and finds the most obnoxious, goofy thing transphobes have said or obsessed over during the week and tears it to shreds.
Hey, have you heard about what’s going on in Redlands, California?
Have you even heard of Redlands before?
Let me fill you in.
Redlands is a town of more than 70,000 people in Southern California, and despite San Bernardino County being majority Hispanic, Redlands is extremely white. The town is almost evenly split when it comes to registered voter party affiliation, and has become one of the latest culture war battlegrounds in the ostensibly liberal state. Last year, the LA Times reported on Redlands and other towns facing similar struggles. They included a story from a transgender student in Redlands who, after attending a school board meeting with his mother, was accosted by Adam Kiefer, “a far-right extremist who has marched with the Proud Boys wearing their insignia and colors, though he has denied membership in the group.”
In February of this year, a “MAGA themed” acai bowl shop opened up in Redlands. More bizarre and less harrowing than a potential Proud Boy chasing you down outside of a school board meeting, it is at least a strong indicator of the ways in which the aesthetics of the culture war invade spaces where they don’t belong.
More recently, in June, Redlands’ city council voted 3-2 against flying rainbow flags during Pride Month. Despite flying the rainbow flag for Pride in 2021 and 2022, a “lengthy discussion” led to the discontinuing of that policy last year and this year. While one council member declared the raising of the flag a “statement of our shared humanity,” another crybaby on the council shed great big crocodile tears over the fact that he’d lost his friends due to his overt bigotry. “I am accepting of everybody,” he said dishonestly, while trying to shun people who are unlike him.
Now, Redlands’ latest drama was reported in a Twitter thread published by user eyerollsandbloodlust. She alleges that bad actors attempting to take over Redlands’ school board are funded by outside agitators and connected to the Council for National Policy, a secretive and evil conservative think tank. She also claims that one of the new candidates for school board, Candy Olson, is a believer in the Q-Anon conspiracy theory, a supporter of book bans, and has “enlisted the help of Proud Boys” to silence her.
Strangest of all, eyerollsandbloodlust links to a TikTok video that appears to be Olson intentionally destroying roadside memorials in Redlands because she allegedly believes them to be “satanic rituals.” Curiously, Olson isn’t the only one destroying these shrines; one of her apparent supporters, local pastor Heather Holly-Baeumel at True Grace Church, has uploaded videos to TikTok in which she hunts down more of these shrines and accuses their erectors of being in league with demons.
And even Candy’s husband has gotten in on the shrine-destroying action, behaving very normally when confronted by a community member.
eyerollsandbloodlust goes on to tweet about other people seeking elected positions in Redlands who have the support of fascist groups like the Proud Boys, and regularly terrorize her and her trans teen. She even posted a sequel thread exposing even more unhinged nonsense from the people she already outed as lunatics.
Suffice to say, there’s a war going on for the hearts and minds of voters in Southern California. Traditionally a very liberal region—Redlands itself is barely an hour and a half from Los Angeles—we’re seeing more and more attempts to push right-wing talking points across the board, in particular anti-LGBTQ hatred.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t be worried about this strategy, but I will say I’m glad that these people are very visibly insane. Hopefully that keeps them out of any office they pursue!
Alyssa Steinsiek is a professional writer who spends too much time playing video games!
