A Maryland School Removed These Pro-Diversity Posters Because They Were “Anti-Trump”

What happens when you're a teacher who decides to put up posters showcasing diversity in your classroom? Well, school administrators may ask you to take them down because they're deemed "anti-Trump." That's exactly what happened to teachers at the Westminster High School in Maryland, the Carroll County Times reported. A group of educators put up posters from the "We the People" series, which was created by Shepard Fairey, the artist behind the "Hope" election posters featuring President Obama back in 2008. The new posters show Latina, Muslim, and Black women in the same red-white-and-blue color scheme, and include messages like, "We the People Are Greater Than Fear." But after some staff members complained, administrators asked the teachers to take down the posters. "They were being perceived as anti-Trump by the administration," Carey Gaddis, a spokeswoman for Carroll County Public Schools, told The Huffington Post. The art was designed with communities that have been marginalized by then President-elect Trump in mind, Fairey told The Los Angeles Times back in January. But he told The Huffington Post that the "We the People" campaign is not anti-Trump in nature. He said that the idea behind the creation of the posters is that "equality, respect, and religious freedom are unassailable American values and non-partisan." "I find it very disturbing that someone could find those ideas specifically, and by extension inclusion in general, to be partisan or problematic," he added. Meanwhile, students at Westminster are not happy with the administration's decision. "Since the posters were taken down, what does that tell the students?" Hamial Waince, a 17-year-old Pakistani-American Muslim student asked The Huffington Post. "That it’s perfectly fine to remove something which supports a moral value that each human being should have?" That's why Sarah Wack, a 2012 graduate, started a GoFundMe campaign to print free T-shirts displaying the "banned" artwork for current students to wear on March 1. The campaign has already raised over $5,000. "Celebrating diversity in our community is not a political statement," the page reads. "We trust our CCPS teachers to promote an environment in our schools where all students feel safe and encouraged." Wack told The Huffington Post that after the shirt order is finalized, the remaining money will be donated to The Amplifier Foundation, the nonprofit organization that made the "We the People" posters available online. Current students plan to support Wack's plan. "I’m wearing the shirt to school to stand by those affected by the posters being taken down," senior Delaney McKelvie told The Huffington Post. "I also hope to get the message across that promoting diversity should be commonplace."