Posted to Education October 06, 2025 by Linda Stein
Some Philadelphia public school teachers are using the second anniversary of the Hamas terror attack on Israel to show their support for the “Palestinian resistance fighters” who killed more than 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.
Philadelphia Educators for Palestine (PEFP), its parent organization Racial Justice Organizing Committee (RJOC), and the Philly Palestine Coalition posted news of their “Rally for Rage and Resistance” on social media.
“Oct. 7 marks two years since Palestinian resistance fighters bravely broke out of the prison that the Zionist regime has turned Gaza into. Since then, more and more people around the world have awoken to the atrocities of the Zionist regime as well as the steadfastness of Palestinians. It is undeniable that a genocide is being enacted by Israel in full collaboration with the U.S., and that the imperialist genocidal ethnostate responsible for the murder of 680,000+ lives has no right to exist.
“Now more than ever, we must reject all normalization with the Zionist regime, uplift Indigenous Palestinian resistance, and honor the martyrs,” the post says.
PEFP was founded by Philadelphia School District teachers Keziah Ridgeway and Hannah Gann, according to the K12 Extremism Tracker. Both have held “teach-ins” for other educators on the Palestinian cause. Ridgeway filed a lawsuit against the district claiming discrimination and violation of her First Amendment rights. She was temporarily removed from the classroom after Jewish parents and another teacher alleged she threatened them. The district responded to her suit in a court filing asking that the case be dismissed.
In a social media post, Ridgeway said she “can’t wait to… teach my lesson from ‘Teaching Palestine’ about civil rights leaders and Palestine.”
Racial Justice Philly also reposted the notice about the rally. That group was co-founded by Ismael Jimenez, director of social studies curriculum for the Philadelphia School District.
Monique Braxton, a spokeswoman for the Philadelphia School District, said, “Everyone has the right to free speech. We cannot comment on teachers going to a rally after school hours and not on school property.”
However, Lori Lowenthal Marcus, a lawyer with the Deborah Project, a public interest law firm, believes the district should be concerned.
“While teachers have every right to be vile, bigoted antisemites on their own time, so long as they keep their opinions out of their classrooms, they are merely odious people,” said Lowenthal Marcus. “But should any Philadelphia—or any other public school teacher—bring their glorification of Jew-hatred and Jew-murder into their classrooms or express it while acting in their official capacities as public school teachers, the Deborah Project will be eager to represent clients and haul those teachers into a court of law.
“On the other hand, it would behoove public school districts to pay attention to what their teachers are saying and doing in public, and they should decide whether and how to discipline their employees for such conduct and for displaying such ignorance of history and of current events (or even math—‘Israel has “murdered” more than 680,000 Gazans’—?! That’s more than ten times what the Hamas Ministry of Health claims). What’s more, the parent of any child with a teacher affiliated with the organizations holding this ‘rally’ should be calling and writing the school district and demanding that such a teacher be watched carefully, thereby putting the school district on notice,” she added.
Other left-wing organizations participating in the rally include: Anakbayan-USA, a Filipino activist group which believes that “Only through militant struggle can the best in youth emerge;” the Philadelphia branch of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO); the Philadelphia branch of the World Workers Party, a Marxist-Leninist party; Penn Faculty and Students for Justice in Palestine; Students for Justice in Palestine Philadelphia Coalition; and Temple Students for Justice in Palestine
