A Tulsa, Oklahoma elementary school has been targeted twice in two days with bomb threats because of a video posted to TikTok by the school’s librarian.
In the video, librarian Kirby Mackenzie walks into a library holding books and approaching the camera, bouncing along to a song.
Words over the video read: ‘POV: teachers in your state are dropping like flies but you are still just not quite finished pushing your woke agenda at the public school.’
The video initially garnered tens of thousands of views, but was amplified further when popular Twitter account ‘Libs of TikTok’ re-posted the video on Monday. The post has been viewed more than 2.6million times.
The Twitter post was captioned: ‘This is an elementary school librarian in Oklahoma,’ and featured a shot of what seems to be a professional biography of Mackenzie, which lists ‘teaching with an emphasis on social justice’ as one of her passions.
Oklahoma police are working to find the people who sent multiple bomb threats to a Tulsa elementary school last week after a video of its librarian saying she was pushing a woke agenda went viral
What the Twitter post did not include was Mackenzie’s original TikTok caption, which read: ‘My radical liberal agenda is teaching kids to love books and be kind hbu?? I think I’m going to make one of these every year until I die or end my teaching era #teachersoftiktok #schoollibrarian #liberalagenda #scandal #okpolitics.’
After the video was shared on Twitter, the school received a bomb threat early in the morning that read: ‘The innocence of children is sacred, that is a fact that has been known for the entirety of human history and the end of civilizations such as in ancient Rome are often marked by normalization pedophilia and child abuse.’
‘I’m not going to stand by as you b******s continue to indoctrinate and prey upon our children. This is why we placed a bomb in the school. You will evacuate the building so nobody dies.’
The threat to Ellen Ochoa Elementary was signed by someone going by the name ‘Made John.’
On Tuesday, Tulsa Police Department Captain Richard Muelenberg IV told local outlet KFOR that the school had a delayed start because of the threat.
‘We’ve got bomb sniffing dogs, everything else. We lock it down. We’re going to do everything we can to make sure that area is safe because the biggest thing is these children.
‘You got to protect your kids. More often than not, you know, this is just some person looking for attention. They want to disrupt a system,’ he said.
The department found no credible threat.
Then another threat came in on Wednesday.
A sender who went just by the name ‘Yessy’ wrote: ‘We placed a bomb at Ellen Ochoa Elementary. You will stop pushing this woke ideology or we will bomb every school in the union district.’
Mackenzie was again singled out, and this time the email said a bomb had also been placed inside her home.
In what appears to be a professional biography of Kirby Mackenzie, ‘teaching with an emphasis on social justice,’ is listed as one of her passions, driving further backlash at her video
The Tulsa elementary school received two bomb threats last week after Mackenzie’s video went viral
Muelenberg IV said that even though the threats have, at this point ‘become kind of a cry wolf situation,’ the bottom line is that ‘this is now allowable.’
‘It’s not something that’s acceptable in society. You know, you’re basically threatening the lives of innocent children who have nothing to do with whatever your problem is. That is not going to be okay and we are going to prosecute and we are going to find this person and will put them in jail,’ he said.
‘We’re going to find this person and we’re going to come wherever, whatever little tent you’re in right now, you know, sending your emails from. We’re going to come and find you. We’re going to arrest you.’
The school was put into shelter-in-place mode Wednesday, until it was deemed safe for classes to continue, which did not take long, according to Union Public Schools Chief Communications Officer Chris Payne.
Payne said the reaction to Mackenzie’s video stemmed primarily from its meaning being ‘misconstrued.’
‘There’s no evil agenda. There’s none of that. Just very misconstrued,’ he said.
Despite claims from some school officials that Mackenzie’s video was taken out of context, State Superintendent Ryan Walters seemed to endorse the idea that radical woke ideology needed to be stopped in public schools: ‘Woke ideology is real and I am here to stop it,’ he wrote
Payne added that the school is standing behind its employee amid the backlash.
‘She is one of our long time librarians, highly respected, has done a lot of really good work at Union. We stand behind Kirby. She is a terrific employee,’ he said.
Mackenzie was at school on Wednesday.
State Superintendent Ryan Walters, however, did not necessarily agree that the video had been misunderstood by the masses.
On Tuesday, he posted the video and wrote: ‘Democrats say it doesn’t exist. The liberal media denies the issue. Even some Republicans hide from it. Woke ideology is real and I am here to stop it.’