The New Battleground for Critical Race Theory: YMCA After School Programs

The New Battleground for Teaching Critical Race Theory: YMCA After-School Programs

By Carole Hornsby Haynes January 10, 2021

While parents have been battling hostile school boards and classrooms over Critical Race Theory, left wing activists have gained under-the-radar access to children through YMCAsponsored after-school programs. These “family friendly” afternoon sessions are teaching Critical Race Theory through Social Emotional Learning – a socialist-style psychological conditioning of students.

Founded in London in 1844 as the Young Men’s Christian Association, the organization was in response to unhealthy social conditions arising in big cities at the end of the Industrial Revolution. Today the nonprofit organization serves more than 64 million people in 120 countries with 17.5 million in the United States. The organization’s website announces a change in their mission – from Christian principles to race-based Marxism. 

“We recognize that the effects of systemic racism show up in every aspect of society, from disparities in health care and education to housing, employment and more.”

“We're on a journey to become an anti-racist, multicultural organization….to lead social change through anti-racist policies, words and actions.”

“Consistent with our mission and cause, we stand in solidarity against all manners of racism and social inequity…..we work to ensure that everyone, regardless of ability, age, cultural background, ethnicity, faith, gender, gender identity, ideology, income, national origin, race or sexual orientation, has the opportunity to reach their full potential with dignity.”

In 2020, the YMCA of Metropolitan Dallas created a new Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) team that launched Racial Equity and Innovation Centers across nine Dallas YMCA locations. The initial funding of a $100,00 grant from corporate America – Reliant – was part of its commitment of “$1 million toward organizations and initiatives that combat racial inequities, injustice and related violence.”

After-school programs have been set up on the campuses of several public school districts -- Anna, Coppell, Frisco, Irving, Midlothian, Waxahachie, and Dallas with 25 of its elementary schools as well as Catholic schools, Dallas private schools, and Uplift Charter schools.

In 2021, the YMCA of Greater Houston announced the opening of the region’s first Equity Innovation Center Powered, also with a grant from Reliant.

Two YMCA after-school school curriculum calendars show that Social Emotional Learning is taught daily with identity politics thrown in….“I matter, you matter, we matter.”

Never to miss an opportunity to warp young minds with the U.N.’s agenda of climate change, one Thursday afternoon includes a lesson on “repair the ozone.”

Monday enrichment classes indoctrinate impressionable young children in “global awareness.” This is a standard topic in academic classes where students learn they are -- first -- “citizens of the world” instead of America.

A Thursday afternoon STEM enrichment class teaches “’Love’ in Binary.” Since binary code is used in digital computers and “represents text, computer processor instructions, or any other data using a two-symbol system,” this is a strange way to describe a class. Red flags should be flying for parents since, according to an Epoch Times national survey, all SEL programs include sexuality, gender, race, racism, class, and the nuclear family.

hould be flying for parents since, according to an Epoch Times national survey, all SEL programs include sexuality, gender, race, racism, class, and the nuclear family.

Sanford Harmony, a social emotional learning program for pre-K-6 children, is used in the YMCA after-school program on two days each week. The Harmony website boasts a presence in 20 countries and all 50 states with 45,000 schools and districts “at no cost to schools and organizations.” Funding comes from billionaire philanthropist Thomas Denny Sanford, founder of First PREMIER Bank and PREMIER Bankcard who has vowed to die broke.

Harmony addresses the traditional five core competencies of Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), a leading SEL purveyor, but is adding a new unit

Sanford Harmony, a social emotional learning program for pre-K-6 children, is used in the YMCA after-school program on two days each week. The Harmony website boasts a presence in 20 countries and all 50 states with 45,000 schools and districts “at no cost to schools and organizations.” Funding comes from billionaire philanthropist Thomas Denny Sanford, founder of First PREMIER Bank and PREMIER Bankcard who has vowed to die broke.

Harmony addresses the traditional five core competencies of Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), a leading SEL purveyor, but is adding a new unit structure aligned to CASEL’s updated competencies “to be more inclusive of equity and excellence.” This is a reference to CASEL’s five core “Competencies with Equity Focus” including cultural competency, diversity, inequity, equity, racial equity, and inclusive – Critical Race Theory terms.

With this new SEL structure,Harmony is sneaking Critical Race Theory broadly into academic studies including after-school curriculum.

Along with the intense battle being waged against dictatorial schools boards, now parents have to fight Critical Theory at their local family YMCA.

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Notre Dame Cathedral Goes Woke with Disney-style Theme Park Renovation

By Carole Hornsby Haynes December 23, 2021

As Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ this week, we are reminded of the ongoing war to cancel our Western culture and religion by the proposed plans for a Disney-style theme park restoration of the Notre Dame Cathedral.

In April 2019, people across the globe watched in horror as a massive inferno caused the 19^th century spire and two-thirds of the roof to collapse. The people of France wept in the streets as the fire destroyed France’s most emblematic place of worship. One Parisian told the New York Times, “Paris is beheaded.”

President Emanuel Macron promised to restore the 858-year-old Gothic cathedral and the world responded with nearly one billion dollars in donations. Within days of the fire, however, the French government made it clear this would be a “new” Notre Dame, not a restored cathedral.

Architects from around the world offered designs for a new spire and roof. The proposals included a swimming pool and a car park on top, a rooftop villa for Quasimodo (the fictional protagonist in Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame), turning the cathedral into a McDonald’s restaurant, building a translucent dome as a monument to peace, and turning the building into a giant circus with a big top replacing the roof.

Catholics and traditionalist architects worldwide were outraged. Quickly Macron’s office backpedaled, announcing that the crown jewel of Paris would be restored to its former state – but only the exterior.

A sacrilegious transformation was being planned for the interior. Father Gilles Drouin, advisor to the archbishop of Paris, led the restoration of the interior. Confessional boxes, altars and classical sculptures would be either altered or replaced with contemporary art and new light and sound effects to create "emotional spaces." A "discovery trail" would lead visitors through themed chapels, including one with an environmental focus. Five chapels would be named for five continents, with multi-lingual quotes – including Mandarin – from the Bible projected onto chapel walls.

In an effort to justify his radical plans, Drouin said his proposed changes would make the cathedral more accessible to visitors “who are not always from a Christian culture.” Yet Drouin admitted that, before the devastation of the 2019 fire, 12 million tourists a year came to the cathedral with “most of them from non-Christian or post-Christian cultures.” Apparently it had been quite accessible despite its Christian culture.

That Father Drouin would propose such radical alterations to the historical Catholic cathedral is not unexpected. Christian churches and their leaders have been moving leftward for decades with the infiltration of Communism through liberation theology, a marriage of Marxism and Christianity.

Though many believe this was invented by Latin American Catholics, it was actually developed by the Russian KGB. In 1971 Kirill, who had just been elevated to the rank of archimandrite and also secretly worked for the KGB under the name of “Mikhailov,” was sent to Geneva as emissary of the Russian Orthodox Church to the World Council of Churches. His mission was to engage the WCC in spreading liberation theology in Latin America. In 1975 he was appointed to a position on the Central Committee of the WCC which he held until he became patriarch of Russia. Over the term of Kirill’s position in the Central Committee, liberation theology did become deeply entrenched in Latin America.

In 2013 Francis (former Archbishop Jorge Maria Bergoglio) became the first pope from the Western Hemisphere and the first from South America (Argentina). While some view Pope Francis as a refreshing change from the conservatism of previous popes, others say he has the “mind of a revolutionary” and excoriate him for his promotion of cohabitation, contraception, same-sex civil unions, and supporting pro-LGBT Fr. James Martin and the radical New Ways Ministry. Now the pope is under fire for his new restrictions on the traditional Latin Mass.

Not only have Marxists infiltrated the church but also departments of theology in major universities.

The efforts to radically alter Notre Dame are merely a symptom of a greater global scheme. To impose communism worldwide, Marxists must first cancel all memory and evidence of Western culture and Christianity. The underlying pillars of Western culture are its Christian religious traditions, especially the Ten Commandments. Western culture cannot be erased until Christianity is canceled.

The radical plan for renovating the interior of Notre Dame is evidence of how successful the war on Western culture has been.

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