Philadelphia Public Schools Host Prison Abolition Workshops With Convicted Felon Who Helped Torch Cop Car and Said Jews Control the Media

Somebody in the Philadelphia school district looked at Anthony Smith's résumé and decided he was the right guy to stand in front of hundreds of kids. Not despite the felony conviction, not despite the burned-out police car, not despite the antisemitic rants about Jews and the media. Somebody signed off on this. That's the part that should stop you cold, not the workshop title.

Call it "prison abolition" or "liberation education" or whatever euphemism made it through the approval process. What actually happened is a school system handed a microphone to a man who cheered Hamas after October 7 and let him frame cops-as-enemy and police cars as legitimate targets to children who don't have the life experience to push back on any of it. This isn't a debate about criminal justice reform, which is a real conversation adults can have. This is about who gets trusted with a classroom.

The reflexive defense will be that nobody vetted him closely, that it was an oversight, that the intent was noble even if the messenger was flawed. Fine. Then explain how a guy with a public record of Jew-hatred and a conviction for torching a squad car cleared whatever vetting exists in a major American school district. Either the vetting doesn't exist, or it exists and somebody decided his politics outweighed his record. Neither answer is comforting.

Parents in Philadelphia deserve a straight account of who approved this, why, and what exactly students were told in those sessions. Not a statement about "diverse perspectives." An actual answer.