The Winooski School District was inundated with angry calls and threats on Monday after conservative social media accounts reposted a video of students and staff hoisting a Somali flag outside its preK-12 school building.
Libs of TikTok ran the video on its X account along with the school district’s phone number; other popular accounts did, too. Benny Johnson, a right-wing podcaster who is reportedly on close terms with the Trump administration, posted the video with the comment, “I’ve got a suggestion for ICE’s next stop.”
The posts have received hundreds of thousands of views and thousands of comments, most of which excoriate the school district for raising a foreign flag and some which falsely state the Somali flag replaced the U.S. flag.
The video, taken Friday, shows Winooski students and staff gathered outside the school to celebrate the raising of the baby blue flag of Somalia on a flagpole that flanked one with the American flag. It was meant to fly for a week as the first of several concrete steps that the district — which educates students from all over the globe, many of whom are refugees — planned to reassure its Somali students that they are valued and supported.
The flag raising was a direct response to statements made by President Donald Trump last week in which he called Somali immigrants “garbage” and said he did not want them in the United States.
This week, the district also plans a celebration with Somali food and a civil-rights work-shop, according to superintendent Wilmer Chavarria, who is an immigrant from Nicaragua.
Chavarria said a deluge of phone calls from out-of-state numbers to the district’s central office started around 9:30 a.m. Callers yelled at staff and in some instances used the N-word, Chavarria said. The district began to route callers directly to voicemail. It also took down its website and notified the Winooski Police Department.
Chavarria said he’s been able to monitor hundreds of phone messages, some which have included violent threats. That led to a heightened police presence at school on Monday. Chavarria said he has let staff and students know about the threats, and tried to reassure them that the school district will continue to stand up for their rights.
He said that he’s not surprised by the fact that some are “sensationalizing” a good-faith gesture the school district is making “so it provokes violent threats and racist rhetoric against our students.” But the situation is the most extreme he’s encountered as superintendent.
“I believe this is going to get worse before it gets better,” Chavarria said of the backlash. Still, he said, the district will continue “visibly standing up for students with actual actions.”
Earlier this month, the school district announced it was working to help a second-grade student at the school who was being held in immigration detention in Texas after being stopped with his mother while traveling over the Thanksgiving holiday.
On its Facebook page on Monday, the Winooski School District posted a photo showing the American flag flanked by the Vermont State flag and the Somali flag.
“First, we want to assure everyone that the United States flag remains in its proper place at the highest point, in full compliance with the U.S. Flag Code,” the post reads. “Winooski is a proudly diverse community, and we are committed to recognizing and uplifting the cultures and identities represented in our schools.”
In neighboring Burlington School District, which also has Somali students, superintendent Tom Flanagan last week wrote a letter to the school community calling out Trump’s “overtly hateful and racist remarks” and reassuring its Somali community that “we see and love them, and that we will condemn hateful, racist messages that impact our community, from anyone.”