Earlier this week, the Israeli-American Civic Action Network (ICAN) announced that it had acquired exclusive leaked footage from the annual UTLA Leadership Conference, which was held in Los Angeles at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel from August 1st to the 3rd, 2024.

On September 18th at 6 pm, ICAN broadcast the full leaked video from the UTLA Conference exclusively on X, unveiling for the first time the disturbing antisemitic and anti-Israel discussions, strategies, and tactics being promoted within the Los Angeles public school system by UTLA the Los Angeles public teachers’ union. The footage features several educators, including UTLA Board Member and Santee Education Complex teacher David Feldman, Ron Gochez of Maya Angelou Community High School, Guadalupe Carasco Cardona at the Roybal Learning Center, Will Shattuc at John Adams Middle School, and Ingrid Villeda, a teacher at  93^rd Street Elementary.

The video, shared in its entirety, captures an hour of deeply alarming discussions that not only vilify the State of Israel and Jewish people but also promote strategies to integrate extreme antisemitic and anti-American political ideologies into public school classrooms, even targeting elementary school-aged children.
A high-resolution video is available on YouTube:

Concerning highlights:

• Vilification of Israel and Zionism: In one particularly shocking moment, Guadalupe Carasco Cardona claimed that Israel intentionally placed the Star of David, a Jewish religious symbol, on its flag so that it could falsely accuse critics of antisemitism. (Clip: https://youtu.be/m6x1qSQw6nM?si=GWFpEDqyMeiG_VSc&t=1530) This blatant trivialization of Jewish national identity and antisemitism sends a dangerous message that reinforces harmful stereotypes about the Jewish community. Cardona also states, “once the Jewish legislative caucus caught wind of BDS being in there, they became the enemy of ethnic studies.” (Clip: https://youtu.be/m6x1qSQw6nM?si=A4GEE5912ZhrKSUp&t=1469)
• Political Indoctrination and Targeting Teachers: A disturbing accusation was raised when Gochez claimed that a fellow educator had inappropriate materials related to a minor planted on their computer in retaliation for their support of Palestinian activism. (Clip: https://youtu.be/m6x1qSQw6nM?si=6XZX6zbT_2kijUKK&t=2030)
• Taking Students to Political Demonstrations: The video also features an open admission by Gochez and others that they take their students to political demonstrations and events—without official school oversight-and with third-party organizational involvement. This raises significant safety concerns about whether students are being coerced into political activism and being placed in dangerous environments. (Clip: https://youtu.be/m6x1qSQw6nM?si=neUCu2SRx4Pc6fsL&t=2127)
• Manipulating Elementary Students for Political Activism: Even more troubling is the explicit mention of tactics and strategies by Villeda to manipulate elementary school students into political activism by subtly eliciting them to engage on “what they see in the news.” These actions violate the fundamental responsibility of educators to provide balanced and age-appropriate education rather than politically exploit impressionable young children. (Clip: https://youtu.be/m6x1qSQw6nM?si=oNN5jhXH-U9E-tRU&t=3719)
• Schools as Centers for Political Organizing: The transcript reveals a calculated strategy to use public schools not as places of learning but as centers for political organizing. Educators repeatedly encouraged each other to leverage school resources, time, and space for advancing specific political agendas, showing a clear disregard for the separation of political activism from educational responsibilities. (Clip: https://youtu.be/m6x1qSQw6nM?si=MsouJH_13eCH7uxU&t=3520)

ICAN strongly condemns the use of public schools to promote hate, misinformation, or political extremism and calls on the LAUSD Board of Education to take immediate steps to ensure that our schools remain a safe and inclusive environment for all students and educators, we cannot stand by while this kind of discourse becomes normalized within our public institutions.

We also call on parents, educators, and elected officials to take a stand against extremism being promoted by UTLA which threatens our educational system and the safety of our students and faculty.

ICAN remains committed to shining a light on these issues and advocating for positive change in our schools and communities.

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is the second-largest public school district in the United States, serving over 565,000 students across more than 1,000 schools. LAUSD covers a vast geographic area, including the city of Los Angeles and 31 surrounding municipalities. Established in 1853, the district has grown to accommodate one of the most diverse student populations in the country, with a significant proportion of students from Latino, African American, and Asian backgrounds. Recent studies indicate that 18% of students at LAUSD schools are Jewish.

LAUSD operates under a seven-member elected Board of Education, with its Superintendent, Alberto Carvalho, serving as the top executive. Over the years, the district has faced challenges related to budget constraints, teacher strikes, overcrowding, and disparities in education access, particularly for low-income and minority students, including Jewish students.

United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) is the labor union representing over 35,000 public school educators within the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). It was founded in 1970 following the merger of the Los Angeles Teachers Alliance and the Classroom Teachers Association of Los Angeles.

UTLA has faced controversy over its antisemitic stances and positions on Israel, particularly regarding proposed resolutions in support of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and keeping Hamas in power. Since October 7th, controversy around UTLA has only intensified as parents and community leaders accused the union of fostering a divisive and hostile environment for Jewish educators, students, and families. The newly leaked footage appears to confirm those concerns.

How the footage was acquired
As a next-generation advocacy organization, ICAN utilizes a comprehensive suite of open-source information-gathering techniques, including in-person engagement, remote monitoring, and both active and passive systems.

ICAN’s robust capabilities enable the organization to stay ahead of emerging risks and rapidly respond to shifts in the public policy landscape. Our in-person engagement efforts provide direct insights from key events and meetings, while remote monitoring ensures a constant watch on digital platforms, news outlets, and social media channels.

ICAN employs advanced analytics to parse large amounts of public affairs data, allowing us to track sentiment, identify trends, and flag concerning rhetoric and actions from officials. Additionally, our active engagement leverages the mobilization of community stakeholders in relevant public forums, ensuring that ICAN remains at the forefront of advocacy with real-time updates. Through these combined efforts, ICAN can pinpoint critical areas for intervention to effectively counter public policy risk and disinformation while strengthening our advocacy across multiple platforms.

In this instance, our monitoring system alerted us to a live stream from a related organization. Once we understood the nature of the content, we immediately reacted to preserve and archive the video.