Billionaire-Backed Bigots in the Big Apple

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In progressive New York City, it’s easy to think that rampant racism and homophobia in schools is unique to far-away conservative places like Florida and Texas. However, a faction of right-wing parents has infiltrated NYC’s schools and communities, unleashing targeted attacks and harmful vitriol on our students.

This report highlights what you need to know about the racist, anti-LGBTQ, anti-public-school extremists who have gained outsized influence over NYC schools and the billionaires funding their agenda.

The Right-Wing Ring Leaders: Maud Maron and Yiatin Chu

Maud Maron is an openly racist, homophobic, and self-proclaimed TERF-y* member of Community Education Council 2, with connections to Moms for Liberty and Megyn Kelly. Her partner in crime, Yiatin Chu, is a transphobic extremist who is vehemently opposed to civil rights and anti-discrimination laws.

The Hate Groups:

Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education (PLACE NYC) is an across-the-board propaganda mill that was created to block educational equity efforts and spread racism, homophobia, and transphobia throughout NYC. The leaders of PLACE include multimillionaires from Manhattan and Brooklyn with finance industry fortunes and luxury apartments, as well as a problematic cop with a record of misconduct allegations.¹ Maron and Chu are two of the co-founders.

The Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR) is a national right-wing attack organization that’s closely allied with PLACE. Both Maron and Chu held leadership positions within the organization. FAIR shares many alt-right donors and advisors, including Christopher Rufo, with the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank with an anti-LGTBQ and pro-billionaire agenda.

The Billionaire Backers:

The aforementioned hate groups are bolstered by billionaires, including Nazi enthusiast Harlan Crow, Republican hedge fund billionaires Joseph Edelman, Dan Loeb, Paul Singer, Cliff Asness and Bruce Kovner, the hyper-conservative Bradley family from Wisconsin, the foundation of the late “funding father of the right” Richard Mellon Scaife, and the controversial and scandal-marked Walton Family.²

More on Maron and Chu, two neighbors no one wants in their backyard.

Maron is the former Interim Executive Director of FAIR and a Co-Founder of PLACE NYC. Maron has expressed feelings of admiration for Moms for Liberty, and, when asked whether she was affiliated with the conservative group, Maron said, “I am, at this point, a member of Moms for Liberty, yes I am.”³

In a 2020 interview with Nikole Hannah-Jones, Maron defended parents who believe that integration may lead to their “kid getting a less good education”, saying that “you have to take that concern as a valid” one, “even if you think it’s racist, and it may be.”⁴

Another one of Maron’s greatest hits was the lawsuit she lost against her former employer, the Legal Aid Society. Maron, a white woman, asserted that she was “discriminated against on the basis of race” and “effectively forced out of her job” for opposing anti-bias training in NYC schools.⁵ Her coworkers tweeted the following about her:

“It is obvious to anyone with any sense of racial justice that Maud is racist and openly so. She attacks efforts to end racism by claiming there is no racism. … Maud Maron has no business having a career in public defense, and we’re ashamed that she works for the Legal Aid Society.” – Black Attorneys of Legal Aid⁶

“There is no such thing as ‘trans kids’ bc there is no such thing as transition” – Maud Maron

Additionally, both in public and in private, Maron has said that trans children do not exist, and she has questioned the existence of queer women, referring to someone who self-identified as a “proud queer woman” as a “straight girl without a boyfriend.”⁷

Maron has also claimed that the NYC public school system is an “oppressor woke environment” where educators “pledge allegiance” to an “LGBTQI+ religion”.

While serving her third term on CEC 2 in Manhattan, Maron introduced and passed a resolution attacking the DOE’s existing protections for trans kids, the “Guidelines to Support Transgender and Gender Expansive Students. Due to this and her repeatedly offensive comments, Chancellor David Banks removed Maron from CEC 2 in June 2024. In typical Maron fashion, she filed a lawsuit against the NYC DOE, Chancellor Banks, CEC 14, and the CEC’s First Vice President and Former President. According to a declaration submitted by Maron as part of the suit, the First VP of CEC 14 “insists that she can prohibit [Maron] from expressing ‘transphobic views’ in public, in violation of [Maron’s] First Amendment rights.”

Somehow Maud’s egregious lawsuit worked. In September 2024, a judge granted Maud an injunction and reinstated her to CEC 2. Maron is also a member of Stuyvesant High School’s School Leadership Team – although she was demoted to a non-voting member after a petition to remove her gained over 900 signatures.⁸

Next up, we have Yiatin Chu, who is equally as offensive as her co-conspirator, espousing unabashed transphobia on her Twitter page.⁹

She has been a guest on Fox News multiple times to discuss her anti-affirmative action views, and, after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action, she “rejoiced” over a “ruling” she had “long hoped for”.¹⁰

Chu is currently suing the New York State Education Department over the Science and Technology Entry Program, which aims to “increase the number of historically underrepresented and economically disadvantaged students prepared to enter college” and STEM fields.¹¹ The Pacific Legal Foundation, an associate member of the State Policy Network, a network of conservative organizations with ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC), is representing Chu at no cost.¹²

Chu’s virulence is not constrained to the courtroom, Twitter or Fox. She is the Co-Founder and Co-President of PLACE NYC and a former board member of FAIR. Chu has also wormed her way into New York City politics, earning a spot on a 2023 list of “the most powerful New Yorkers you’ve never heard of” for her work opposing progressive causes and supporting Lee Zeldin, a zealous Trumper.¹³Currently, Chu is running for State Senate as a Republican against longtime education champion State Senator Toby Stavisky in this year’s election.

Maron and Chu paint themselves as average NYC parents, but they’re far from it – ideologically and economically. Maron lives in a Soho loft valued at $4.5 million and her husband is a partner at the multi-million-dollar private equity firm Australis Partners.¹⁴ Chu owns multiple homes in New York, including a nearly one-million-dollar home in Queens and another million-dollar unit on Lower East Side Park.¹⁵

These aren’t your run-of-the-mill New Yorkers, but they are running the show with the help of the hate groups attacking our kids.

PLACE NYC says its mission is to “improve the academic rigor and standards of all NYC Public Schools’ Curricula,” but none of its founders have experience teaching in NYC public school classrooms. They do, however, have a history of endorsing known racists like Nicole Malliotakis, QAnon conspiracy theorists and anti-semites like Mark Szuszkiewicz, and Republican candidates like George Santos.¹⁶ Not to mention they work in tandem with alt-right groups like Moms for Liberty, Curtis Sliwa’s Guardian Angels, and the New York Young Republican Club.

In the last CEC elections, PLACE gained outsized influence; nearly 40% of current CEC members in New York City were endorsed by PLACE. This means that, even in liberal New York City, almost half of the individuals overseeing their neighborhood schools are aligned with the right-wing agenda and are misaligned with what most parents believe. New York City’s class size law is the perfect example of this. Despite the fact that the majority of parents prefer smaller class sizes for their children, PLACE has opposed NYC’s class size law by propagating myths about its funding and impact, just because it doesn’t serve their own agenda.¹⁷

Additionally, PLACE is a partner organization of FAIR and does the national organization’s bidding in NYC. The deep connection between PLACE and FAIR is evident through the individuals that play key roles in both organizations, including Maron and Chu.

FAIR was founded as an anti-woke organization with the goal of attacking civil rights policies from the racist right. The organization receives major funding from billionaires with conservative agendas. Early FAIR advisors include Christopher Rufo, who is credited with starting the opposition to CRT, and Megyn Kelly, who has defended blackface and perpetuated Islamophobia.¹⁸

With the help of many of the same billionaire funders who donate to FAIR, the Manhattan Institute has put significant resources and clout behind policy efforts to attack transgender and queer children, eliminate civil rights laws and regulations, and erode the social safety net that sustains low-income New Yorkers.

The billionaires bankrolling FAIR and the Manhattan Institute are behind this assault on our children.

FAIR’s VIP donors include:

Billionaire Harlan Crow, best known for his Nazi memorabilia collection, including a copy of Mein Kampf signed by the author and swastika-embossed linens, and for treating Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to (undisclosed) “extravagant trips” and rides on his private jet.¹⁹
- Harlan’s wife, Kathy Crow, is a Manhattan Institute trustee.
Joseph Edelman, a hedge fund billionaire who is a primary donor to Do No Harm, a conservative organization behind anti-LGBTQ+ legislation across the country, and his wife, Suzy Lebovitz Edelman.²⁰
- Suzy is also a Manhattan Institute trustee and transphobe with a belligerent Twitter presence.

In 2022 and 2023, the Manhattan Institute racked up $7 million in donations from right-wing billionaires, many of which were specifically earmarked for anti-transgender and education initiatives.

Check out the donors and the conservative cash flow:

Right-Wing Billionaires	Donation Amounts
Joseph and Suzy Edelman²¹	$475,000
Daniel and Margaret Loeb²²	$375,000
Paul E. Singer (Chairman of MI’s Board of Trustees)²³	$1,635,000
Cliff Asness²⁴	$2,500,000
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation²⁵	$1,000,000
The Walton Family²⁶	$300,000
Bruce Kovner²⁷	$175,000
Sarah Scaife Foundation²⁸	$570,000

Dan Loeb

Said that NY’s Black Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins did “more damage to people of color than anyone who has ever donned a hood”.²⁹

Loeb sits on $3.2 billion.³⁰

Paul Singer

Attempted to seize pension assets of thousands of workers in Argentina during a time of widespread poverty and depression, helping to drive millions into poverty.³¹

Singer sits on $6.2 billion.³²

Cliff Asness

Invests billions into fossil fuels while pushing denialism on climate change.³³

Asness sits on $2 billion.³⁴

Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation

Donated millions of dollars to conservative causes, including to organizations that lead the climate change denial charge.³⁵

The founders sold their business for over a billion dollars.³⁶

Waltons

Gave money to Gov. DeSantis right before he and the Florida state legislature passed a bill that allows billionaires to conceal their fortunes.³⁷

The Waltons sit on $267 billion.³⁸

Bruce Kovner

“George Soros’ right-wing twin,” according to New York Magazine — multi-million dollar backer of right-wing think tanks and conservative politicians.³⁹

Kovner sits on $8.6 billion.⁴⁰

Sarah Scaife Foundation

The foundation’s CEO, Michael Gleba, is a member of the Heritage Foundation’s Board, the organization behind Project 2025.⁴¹

The founder sat on $1.45 billion.⁴²

The billionaire to bigot pipeline starts at the top and runs all the way down to local education politics.

Christopher Rufo, a former advisor to FAIR and a current Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is the man responsible for crafting and disseminating the right’s most incendiary rhetoric. He is brazenly transparent about his plans to turn the media and the public against the left. For instance, in a recent interview with POLITICO’s Ian Ward, he took credit for Claudine Gay’s resignation, saying that the strategy he used to “topple the president of Harvard University” is the same one he has used to attack critical race theory, gender ideology, and the “DEI bureaucracy” in the United States.⁴³

Rufo strategically feeds conservative conspiracies to the members of the American right, knowing that they will regurgitate them in their own communities. Maron and Chu are perfect examples of this. Their words come from Rufo, and he is the master propagandist behind their hate speech.

In addition to receiving their talking points from the top, dollars from the Manhattan Institute’s most generous billionaire donors flow to Maron and Chu as well.

Representing Maron in her lawsuit against CEC 14 is Alan Gura, the Vice President for Litigation at the Institute for Free Speech. The Institute for Free Speech is a legal non-profit that represents groups like “Gays Against Groomers”, and has received just over $900,000 in donations from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and nearly $1.3 million from the Sarah Scaife Foundation since 2018.⁴⁴

In her lawsuit against NYSED, Chu is being represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation. Since 2018, the Pacific Legal Foundation has received nearly $1.5 million from the Sarah Scaife Foundation, $385,000 from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and nearly $500,000 from the Kovner Foundation.⁴⁵

Even though PLACE may seem like a local mom and pop organization that lacks the potential to gain real traction in NYC, PLACE and its members have connections to highly influential people and places.

It’s time to put PLACE in its place.

The abhorrent opinions of Maron, Chu and PLACE are grossly out of step with everyday New Yorkers on every issue from gender identity and race to class size. Yet, the fate of New York City and its children has fallen into the hands of the right’s latest foot soldiers. We are at risk of becoming a city where the identities of our children are degraded daily, where discussions of race and gender are banned from schools, and where the conservative agenda is reality.

We cannot let this happen. Our communities, students, and families deserve better.

TAKE ACTION

Take the following actions to ensure that NYC schools are safe, welcoming places for all students.

I. Share this report with the other parents at your children’s school. They deserve to know what’s happening in their school community.

II. Join a Community Education Council (CEC).

New York City has a CEC for every geographic district as well as citywide councils for high schools, special education, English language learners, and District 75. CECs are advisory bodies that provide input on educational policies to the chancellor and the Panel for Education Policy. CEC members are elected in biennial elections, the next of which will be in 2025.

To find out more about running for a CEC position in the next election, visit the following links:

About Community and Citywide Education Councils

Roles and Responsibilities of CEC Members

Run for a Seat on a Council

Campaigning Guidelines

III. Stop Yiatin Chu from joining the New York State Senate.

If you live in NY Senate District 11 in Queens, get out and vote on election day – not just for Kamala Harris, but for Senator Stavisky as well.

The general election is on Tuesday, November 5th, 2024.

Early voting starts October 26th, 2024, and ends November 3rd, 2024.

You can check your voter registration status here: https://voterlookup.elections.ny.gov/

You can find your poll site for early voting and election day here: https://findmypollsite.vote.nyc/

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT: