‘Instincts just took over’: Coach describes stopping gunman at Portland high school

Former University of Oregon football star Keanon Lowe said he had just entered a classroom at the Portland high school where he works as a coach and security guard when a student armed with a black shotgun appeared in the doorway.

Lowe had just seconds Friday to react. He lunged at the gunman and wrestled with him for the weapon as other students ran screaming out a back door, Lowe told reporters Monday at a news conference.

Lowe said he managed to get the gun away from the student and pass it to a teacher while Lowe held down the student with his other hand. Lowe wrapped the student in a bear hug until police arrived, he said.

No one was injured. Police are still trying to determine if any shots were fired.

“I saw the look on his face, the look in his eyes, I looked at the gun, I realized it was a real gun and then my instincts just took over,” Lowe, 27, said.

“I lunged for the gun, put two hands on the gun and he had his two hands on the gun and obviously the students are running out of the classroom.”

Lowe, who is head football and track coach at Parkrose High School, said he had a few moments with the teenager, who was distraught, before police arrived.

“It was emotional for him, it was emotional for me. In that time, I felt compassion for him. A lot of times, especially when you’re young, you don’t realize what you’re doing until it’s over,” Lowe said.

“I told him I was there to save him, I was there for a reason and this was a life worth living.”

The suspect, 19-year-old Angel Granados-Diaz, pleaded not guilty Monday during a brief court hearing to a felony count of possessing a weapon in a public building and three misdemeanors.

His public defender, Grant Hartley, declined to comment.

Granados-Diaz turned 19 in jail on Monday, the same day students at Parkrose High returned to class after an emotional weekend that included their prom.

Parkrose School District Superintendent Michael Lopes-Serrao said two students had previously informed a staff member of “concerning behavior” by the student before the incident.

He said school security personnel were responding to those concerns when Granados-Diaz arrived at the classroom.

A police report says the incident was a “suicide attempt with a gun” and someone added in bold handwriting “enhanced bail/suicidal.”

Granados-Diaz was being held on $500,000 bail and has another court appearance next week, according to court papers.

Lowe said he was called on a radio to go to a classroom in the fine arts building and get a student. When he got there, the substitute teacher told him the student wasn’t in class. Lowe said he was about to leave when Granados-Diaz entered the room.

“The universe works in crazy ways so I just happened to be in that same classroom,” he said.

“I was within arm’s length of him so it happened fast and I was able to get to him,” he said. “I’m lucky in that way.”

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Leftist racism: Teachers allegedly told to favor black students in ‘racial equity’ training

In controversial “implicit bias” training, New York City’s public-school educators have been told to focus on black children over white ones — and one Jewish superintendent who described her family’s Holocaust tragedies was scolded and humiliated, according to firsthand accounts.

A consultant hired by the city Department of Education told administrators at a workshop that “racial equity” means favoring black children regardless of their socio-economic status, sources said.

“If I had a poor white male student and I had a middle-class black boy, I would actually put my equitable strategies and interventions into that middle class black boy because over the course of his lifetime he will have less access and less opportunities than that poor white boy,” the consultant, Darnisa Amante, is quoted as saying by those in the room.

“That’s what racial equity is,” Amante explained.

Mona Davids, president of the NYC Parents Union, was appalled.

“It’s completely absurd — they want to treat black students as victims and punish white students. That defeats the purpose of what bias awareness training should be,” said Davids, who is black.

DOE spokesman Will Mantell would not say whether Chancellor Richard Carranza supports Amante’s statement about favoring black children.

“Anti-bias and equity trainings are about creating high expectations and improving outcomes for all of our students,” Mantell said in a statement. “These trainings are used across the country because they help kids, and out-of-context quotes and anonymous allegations  just distract from this important work.”

The DOE’s anti-bias training — a $23 million mandatory program for all DOE employees — has irked some administrators, teachers and parents who contend parts are ugly and divisive.

Four white female DOE executives demoted under Carranza’s new regime plan to sue the city for racial discrimination, claiming whiteness has become “toxic,” The Post revealed last week.

At a monthly superintendents meeting in the spring of 2018, shortly after Carranza’s arrival, members were asked to share answers to the question: “What lived experience inspires you as a leader to fight for equity?”

One Jewish superintendent shared stories about her grandmother Malka who told of bombs falling in Lodz, Poland, and running from the Nazis in the wee hours by packing up her four children and hiding in the forest, and her grandfather Naftali, who spent nearly six years in a labor and concentration camp, where he witnessed the brutal execution of his mother and sister.

“My grandparents taught me to understand the dangers of ‘targeted racism’ or the exclusion of any group, and the importance of equity for all people. This is my core value as an educator,” the superintendent told colleagues.

“At the break, I stood up and, to my surprise, I was verbally attacked by a black superintendent in front of my colleagues. She said ‘This is not about being Jewish! It’s about black and brown boys of color only. You better check yourself.’”

“I was traumatized,” the Jewish educator said. “ It was like 1939 all over again. I couldn’t believe this could happen to me in NYC!”

However, two other superintendents — one black and one Dominican — defended the Holocaust comments as valid and vouched for their colleague as one who fights to level the playing field for all students.

In Manhattan, a middle-school teacher with her own kids in public schools, said the DOE training “is a catalyst for hate and division.”

“I have colleagues who won’t participate during ‘Courageous Conversations’ (the DOE protocol for implicit-bias workshops) because they don’t feel safe.”

She cringes at training phrases like “replacement thinking” and the disdain for “whiteness.”

“My ancestors were enslaved and murdered because of their religion, I am now being forced to become ‘liberated’ from my whiteness. I am being persecuted because of the circumstances of my birth. I was not aware that I needed to be liberated from how God created me.”

Despite Carranza’s contention that those who complain about the training need it the most, she said, “I will never be brainwashed by Richard Carranza and his minions. I cannot support a schools chancellor who is implicitly biased against me and my children.”

Emboldened by his support, some of Carranza’s top managers openly use the expression “disrupt and dismantle” as a new battle cry for equity.

In her training session in February 2019, consultant Amante told DOE higher-ups to face the fact that issues of race, power and privilege will rise to the forefront and shake things up.

“Through this process of moving towards racial equity, we will have to pull layers back on who we are. You are going to have to talk about your power and your privilege. You will need to name your privilege,” Amante is quoted as saying.

She also warned that jobs in the new climate may be shaky.

“You are going to have to acknowledge that you will have to step back. You might fear losing your job. When we get to true racial equity you will have to define new institutional policies. This might feel dangerous because you are going to have to talk about race daily.”

Amante, a lecturer at Harvard University Graduate School of Education, is CEO of Disruptive Equity Education Project, or DEEP, a group aimed at “dismantling systemic oppression and racism,” it says. She did not respond to emails seeking comment.

The DOE’s Office of Equity and Access has contracted DEEP for $175,000. Another anti-bias consultant, Glenn Singleton, the author of “Courageous Conversations,” which includes a critique of the “white supremacy culture,” has a $775,000 contract.

Some parent leaders support Carranza’s campaign.

“We agree with the chancellor that those who do not see the value in this work are the ones who must look inward harder,” said Shino Tanikawa, a parent in Manhattan’s District 2 and member of Mayor de Blasio’s School Diversity Advisory Group.

“This work requires everyone, including people of color, to look inward and confront prejudices we all harbor. For some of us, this work also requires us to acknowledge the privilege bestowed upon us by the power structure. It creates a great deal of discomfort but that is the nature of the work. Disrupting the system is difficult and sometimes painful.”

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Australia: Catholic schoolgirls are being taught that God is GENDER-NEUTRAL and are banned from using the words 'Lord', 'Father' and 'Son' in prayers

This is theologically unobjectionable but repudiates church tradition.  And church tradition is very important to the Catholic church.  It undermines church claims to authority

Catholic schoolgirls are being taught that God is gender-neutral and banned from using the words 'Lord', 'Father' and 'Son' in prayers.

A number of elite Catholic schools in Brisbane are making moves to teach their students to use inclusive language when referring to God.

Top schools including All Hallows, Stuartholme, Loreto College and Stuartholme School are leading a push towards a feminist interpretation of the Christian Bible.

Students at Stuartholme School in Brisbane's inner-city, which charges upwards of $40,000 a year, are taught to use the word 'Godself' instead of 'himself'.

'As we believe God is neither male or female, Stuartholme tries to use gender-neutral terms in prayers … so that our community deepens their understanding of who God is for them, how God reveals Godself through creation, our relationships with others and the person of Jesus,' a spokeswoman told The Sunday Mail.

Loreto College in Coorparoo has taken the word 'Lord' from their prayers as it is a 'male term'.

The school's principal Kim Wickham said prayers written for use within the college didn't assign God a gender.

Ms Wickham said the school had a commitment to inclusive language, but admitted there were instances where gendered language is appropriate.

St Rita's College Clayfield tries to use gender-neutral terms but for traditional prayers still uses gendered language.

The assistant principal Richard Rogusz said context is important and helps decide what language is appropriate.

The Catholic Office for the Participation of Women director Andrea Dean told the publication that she was 'thrilled' and it was 'terrific' schools were moving towards inclusive language.  

The Queensland Catholic Education Commission  does not provide guidelines for what language is appropriate but the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference did suggest schools use gender-neutral terms where appropriate.

Brisbane's top Catholic boys' school St Joseph's College has replaced the term 'brothers' with 'sisters and brothers' and 'brotherhood' with 'international community'.

'This has been an area of growth for us in recent times,' a spokesman told Sunday Times. 'We have made changes to a number of prayers to be more gender-inclusive.'

SOURCE