Knock LA

Towards the beginning of the 2023/2024 school year, Daniel*, a Glendale Unified School District (GUSD) high school teacher, was taking a shower late at night when his home phone rang. Daniel lives with his parents, and they answered the phone. A man angrily demanded to talk to their son. After the caller got frustrated with Daniel’s confused parents, he hung up. Around the same time, Daniel also received an email containing a death threat.

These threats followed Daniel speaking out at school board meetings. After Daniel spoke at GUSD Board of Education meetings, he was the subject of posts on right wing social media accounts, particularly that of GUSD Parents’ Voices, a group that initially emerged as an anti-COVID measure parents’ group. 

“There were a couple of posts about me when I went to the board meeting and I spoke out against some of the hate that was being spread,” Daniel said. “And then I was targeted.”

Daniel was not the first GUSD teacher to receive hate and harassment for supporting LGBTQ+ rights. In 2021, Tammy Tiber, a third-grade teacher in GUSD, showed videos to her third grade class about LGBTQ+ pride as part of a Teaching Tolerance/Learning for Justice pilot program. A parent of a student in her class complained, and Tiber emailed a pilot program supervisor to ask how she should proceed. The supervisors told Tiber that she should proceed with the lessons, and she did so without incident.

Aneta Krpekyan, another current GUSD School Board candidate, shared Tiber’s full name and email address in social media posts, urging people to call Tiber’s school to get her fired. Krpekyan and others also tried to get Tiber’s teaching accreditation revoked. Tiber also received death threats. She was subsequently involuntarily transferred to a different school, a move that GUSD claims was for her safety.

Taline Arsenian, the President of the Glendale Teachers Association, told Knock LA that the incident with Tiber “fueled the fire” of reactionaries in Glendale, empowering them to harass and threaten teachers through email and social media posts, adding that teachers are also “being attacked in person, in the parking lot of the district office. People yelling at you that you’re a pervert or a pedophile, that you’re a groomer, and these are folks that are strangers who I’ve never met before in my life pointing, yelling and telling me to leave their kids alone.”

Tiber and Daniel are just two examples of Glendale community members who have received harassment and threats after becoming the subject of inflammatory social media posts by Henry, Krpekyan, and their allies. Parents, teachers, a recent GUSD graduate, and other community members have all been harassed and threatened by the two candidates, their proxy groups, and their allies. They have also been harassed and, in a few cases, assaulted at Board of Education meetings and other GUSD events. Henry and Krpekyan’s supporters include known Proud Boys and January 6 insurrectionists, including Andy Lai, who harassed the owner of the “Once Upon a Time” bookstore in Montrose for having a sign for Henry’s opponent, and refused to leave until the police arrived.

Henry is not currently and has never been the parent of a GUSD student, and neither have many of his most vocal supporters. “One of the dads from my school was being filmed and harassed by Jordan [Henry],” said Sarah*, the parent of a GUSD elementary school student. “And I think that’s what really got to me. Like, this guy has no kids here. Why is he harassing this parent who does and has every right to be there?”

In regard to the harassment and threats coming from his supporters, Henry told Knock LA via email, “I should not be held accountable for the poor behavior of others, just as those who oppose my campaign in a civil way should not be accused of actions they themselves did not commit.” He, however, declined to address his own actions. Krpekyan did not respond to requests for comment.

New Neighbors Join the Conversation

In July 2021, two years before the protest outside the June 6 school board meeting and ensuing melee, Henry moved into the district and signed up for a school board committee, the Committee for Culturally Responsive Education. He brought alternative curriculum materials from the Foundation Against Tolerance and Racism (FAIR), a right wing nonprofit founded by Bari Weiss and funded by Harlan Crow that, according to the Guardian, “spread the fear of critical race theory far and wide,” months after the district had already unanimously approved the adoption of a pilot program developed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Learning for Justice.

Krpekyan became a GUSD parent in 2020. On a November episode of the Wise Nuts podcast, she described how she and a group of other parents were frustrated with Zoom classes and school closures. “My tipping point was when I was driving on Central, and I saw a tanning salon [that was] open and operating while GUSD schools [were] still closed,” she said.

Nazi Symbolism and Violence at School Board Meetings

In April 2023, Ray Shelton, a former GUSD teacher, brought a swastika in the colors of the trans pride flag to a school board meeting, which also happened to take place on Holocaust Remembrance Day. In a picture on social media, Shelton holds up the swastika next to a smirking Henry.

Shelton’s retirement was one of the agenda items for the April 18 meeting. His retirement was approved, but while it was set to start at the end of the school year, Shelton was placed on administrative leave until then due to the swastika incident. Shelton has claimed that he was fired and is raising funds for his “First Amendment Defense.” on a crowdfunding platform. 

However, Arsenian told Knock LA,, “It is my understanding that he continued to receive his paycheck for the rest of that school year until his retirement date became effective, which was two months later. And now he’s enjoying his pension.” 

Shelton is a regular anti-trans and anti-woman voice at GUSD school board meetings.  On separate occasions, he told Arsenian to “stay away from the buffet,” and according to a Glendale parent, called school board candidate** Neda Farid a “fat bitch.” Shelton also assaulted a volunteer and a recent GUSD graduate at the Glendale PTA’s Candidates Forum on February 7. Edgar, a 2022 GUSD graduate who does not want his last name published, covered the forum as a photographer. Edgar began filming Shelton after he got aggressive with another volunteer. Shelton, seeing Edgar filming, lunged at him, shoving a forum volunteer in the process.

Edgar has also been harassed by Krpekyan via social media, after he made a critical comment about her — a current candidate for office and a public figure — at a school board meeting. “I criticized her for launching her campaign and not condemning Nazis and other extremists, because she has been seen in photos with a bunch of  January 6-ers and Proud Boys,” he told Knock LA. “So she went on her Instagram, and posted a bunch of stories about me. And she called me a stalker, which was very defamatory, by the way, because it was totally not true.”

Instrumentalizing Armenian Culture

In 2023, anti-LGBTQ+ activists posted flyers near the Americana mall with the faces and names of GUSD school board members and teachers headlined with the phrase: “Groomer Alert!” An Instagram account, “Unclaimed Armenians,” posted pictures of the flyers, with the caption: 

“Child groomers – whether from gangs, Glendale city reps or in the elementary school system, posted all over the Glendale city Americana and surrounding areas. . . . Truly humiliating that many of the posters were not only of those who have ample access to vulnerable children, but are of own [Armenian] people openly contributing to the child abuse for pay raises.”

The name of the Instagram account, “Unclaimed Armenians,” also points to the continued weaponization of Armenian identity by anti-LGBTQ+ activists. Glendale has the largest ethnically Armenian population outside of Armenia. News stories after the fight outside the June 6 Glendale Board of Education meeting have framed the conflict between right wing extremists and GUSD as a battle between “Armenian parents” and “Antifa” or “activists.” 

But many community members don’t think that’s a fair characterization. Angie Givant, a parent organizer with GUSD Parents for Public Schools, told Knock LA that the media coverage of the conflict around GUSD’s Board of Education has, “been ‘Armenian parents’ vs. activists, instead of a small, reactionary group against the majority of families in the community.”

Arsenian, who was featured on one of the fliers, describes the fliers as essentially “a list of progressive Armenians in our community,” saying that right wing reactionaries in Glendale see her and other progressive Armenians as “fake Armenians.”

Edgar, the recent GUSD graduate who was assaulted by Shelton, is also Armenian, and he has also been frustrated by the media narrative surrounding the role played by the Armenian community in Glendale. 

“They’re pushing this narrative that Armenian parents fought against Antifa, or Antifa tried to fight Armenian parents and Armenian parents beat up leftist protesters. And that kind of pissed me off because I’m Armenian. . . . This had nothing to do with being Armenian. I don’t know why they were pushing this narrative, but it was really harmful because it makes the community look bad,” he said.

The Defamation of a Trans Artist

At the October 10, 2023, school board meeting, both Henry and Shelton wore t-shirts with a painting by Grey James, a trans artist who lives in Glendale. James’ painting, “Pink Jerk Off Boy,” was never exhibited in Glendale, and according to James, was sold in 2017 or 2018. The gallery that represents James, Bert Green Fine Art, is located in Chicago. All this notwithstanding, Henry attempted to link James with Pedro Tellez, a GUSD employee who had been arrested for possession of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and child molestation in October 2023.

“This is pedophilic art,” Henry said in reference to the painting on his shirt. “This is a boy, not a man. What actions have been taken to remove his affiliation from your district, given the context of Pedro Tellez? This is an absolute, non-negotiable. . . . How will you act? What actions will you take as responsible adults who care about children?”

In addition to statements from Henry and others at school board meetings, James has also been the target of social media harassment through GUSD Parents’ Voices. He has documented this harassment on his Instagram account, for which, leaning into the hysteria, he chose the name “pinkjerkoffboy.”

James’ supposed ties to GUSD struck many of our sources, including James himself, as tenuous at best. James moved to a live-work space in Glendale in 2019.  James and other residents of the building had a queer art show, which a few GUSD teachers happened to attend. The following year, James curated a student art exhibit for Pride Month. Building on this, he then arranged another show at Ace 121, a local community for artists that combines workspaces and living areas. This event showcased the best student artwork alongside pieces from adult artists in the community. This show did not feature any of James’ own paintings. 

After that, James returned to the Crescenta Valley High School campus only once for an “Ally Week” event. “We did this event. It was 45 minutes. I left campus. I never, ever, ever have set foot on campus again,” James said.

James also said that he only began titling his painting to make it easier for galleries to keep track of them and that the title of the painting, “Pink Jerk Off Boy,” is not to be taken literally — much like the use of the word “boys” in, for example, Bad Boys II, the name of this painting does not refer to a child. “They need to spin what they need to spin to get to hysteria,” James said. “It’s all about hysteria and creating hysteria.”

The Significance of the Upcoming School Board Elections

The Crescenta Valley High School’s Gender Sexuality Alliance (GSA) has also been the subject of harassment. Their Instagram account received hateful messages after they were attacked by Henry and others at school board meetings. According to Sarah, the GUSD parent who saw Henry filming and harassing a parent from her child’s school, the CVHS GSA reached out to a parent for help dealing with this harassment. The account receiving said harassment was run by high school students, who are minors.

Daniel says that Henry and Krpekyan losing the election by a significant margin would ease tensions in the school and be a relief for many of his students. “That would send a message that this kind of targeting and extremism is not welcome here in our city. I think it would also be a huge sigh of relief to students, whether they’re in the GSA and they’re hearing more micro aggression or threats, or they’re just regular students who are seeing this chaos unfold,” Daniel told Knock LA. “They don’t feel comfortable.”

Arsenian is also hoping for a decisive loss for both Henry and Krpekyan. “My hope is that they both lose the election by a great margin, so much so that they recognize that they don’t have a following here,” Arsenian said. “So that they actually leave our kids alone, particularly our queer kids and our marginalized kids, and that they actually allow educators to be able to do their jobs without feeling like they’re going to be attacked or lied about.”

Perhaps a sign of at least one candidate’s standing in the community is Henry’s disappearing campaign signs, for which he has publicly blamed his opponent, Telly Tse. 

“I totally believe he’s had many stolen, because I had so many people tell me, ‘I took this many.’ There’s apparently a group of high schoolers going around taking them,” Sarah said. “And I’m like, if I was in high school, I’d probably be doing it, too. You terrorize the community. What did you expect was going to happen? Nobody wants you here.”

*names changed at the request of the sources

**Correction: An earlier version of this article said Neda Farid is a school board member. Farid is currently a school board candidate.