An LA teacher said she and her daughter had to flee their home after she received threats for wearing a Black Lives Matter T-shirt to class

• A teacher at a charter school in Los Angeles County said she faced harassment and was forced to flee her home after she wore a pro-Black Lives Matter T-shirt on the first day of classes, the Los Angeles Times reported.
• The teacher, who remained anonymous in several news reports over fears of further harassment, said the harassment worsened after a conservative personality amplified a student's father's social-media post with a picture of her.
• The school's executive director told the Times that the teacher had not broken any school policies by wearing the shirt to class, which was virtual because of the coronavirus pandemic.
• "I can't afford to go to a hotel, and I can't go home," the teacher told CBS LA, adding that she and her daughter "can't stay in our home."
• In an email to her students informing them of her absence from class, the teacher said she felt that the school administration had "abandoned" her, the Times reported.

A high-school teacher in Woodland Hills, California, said she was forced to flee her home after being harassed for wearing a pro-Black Lives Matter T-shirt to class and planning to incorporate discussions about social-justice movements in her teaching.

On the first day of virtual school, the teacher wore a T-shirt that said "I can't breathe," the phrase that has become synonymous with the Black Lives Matter movement against racism and police brutality. Several Black Americans who were killed in police custody said "I can't breathe" before their deaths.

The woman — whom several news outlets did not name, citing fears of further harassment — is an English teacher at El Camino Real Charter High School in Woodland Hills in Los Angeles County.

A parent of a student at the school had posted a picture of the teacher and her email address on social media because he was unhappy that his daughter was learning about social-justice causes in her English class, CBS Los Angeles reported.

Then on August 16, Elijah Schaffer, a podcast host and social-media personality, tweeted the photo of the teacher wearing the "I can't breathe" shirt." The teacher told CNN that she received hundreds of threatening messages after that.

"A concerned father reached out to me because his daughter was not being taught English in her online English class," Schaffer, the host of the podcast "Slightly Offens*ve," tweeted.

Schaffer did not immediately return Insider's request for comment on Sunday.

The local community rallied behind the teacher, who said in an email to students that she felt 'abandoned' by school administrators

"The start of the school year with distance learning has been stressful and traumatic enough, but now this teacher has the stress and trauma of being attacked and harassed with hate speech and threats," Cecily Myart-Cruz, the president of the United Teachers Los Angeles union, told CNN. "This is absolutely unacceptable."

The Los Angeles Times reported that the teacher had recently attended a school workshop about how to create an anti-racist curriculum.

"Please let other students know that the school has abandoned me, ironically after we had a whole day of professional development on how and why to create an anti-racist curriculum," the teacher told students in an email explaining that she wouldn't be in class, according to the Times.

David Hussey, the school's executive director, told the Times that the teacher had been employed by the school for more than a decade and that she hadn't broken any rules by wearing the "I can't breathe" shirt to teach students, though he said the policy was ambiguous.

"We're going to have to reevaluate our policies," he told the newspaper. "We're in a new era now."

He said the school had reached out to the teacher "to try to help her and support her as best as we can."

On Wednesday, about 100 students protested outside the school in support of the English teacher, and hundreds of teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District wore Black Lives Matter shirts in solidarity, the Times said.

"Simply saying Black Lives Matter is not enough: educators and administrators must actively show it in their work in creating and promoting anti-racist curriculum," Myart-Cruz told CNN. "It is paramount that our educators are able to teach these subjects knowing they will have the support and protection of their administration."

The teacher told CBS LA that she and her teenage daughter had left their home because of the nature of some of the threats she received and because someone had shared her address online. She also filed three restraining orders, including one against the parent who initially shared her image and one against Schaffer, the report said.

"I can't afford to go to a hotel, and I can't go home," the teacher told the local CBS station. "My daughter's a ninth-grader starting at this school. She wears a mask. We can't stay in our home."

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