So, it gets better and better. And by that we mean, much worse.

Current and former NDN Collective operatives who successfully engineered the ouster of Rapid City school superintendent, Nicole Swigart culminating Tuesday night (8/13/24) with Swigart’s official termination by the RCAS board, also spearheaded the gathering, injection and collation of ‘stories’ collected by the Department of Justice Office of Civil Rights that were then presented, bundled and offered as the “evidence” used to justify Swigart’s ouster, effectuated and foreshadowed by an election cycle filled with far leftist school board candidates, backed by campaign dollars donated by NDN Collective. What a tidy arrangement indeed. If it seems like a streamlined and preconceived plan perhaps there is a reason.

Despite Nicole Swigart’s strenuously and emotionally repeated denials of having ever used language denigrating to Native Americans, and specific denial of publicized examples of “racist speech,” against the Native student population, the Rapid City School Board voted 6-1 to terminate Swigart’s employment, appoint an interim superintendent for the coming school year and then begin a national candidate hiring search to identify Swigart’s permanent replacement.

“I have never used language that is degrading of Native American students,” Swigart said Tuesday, trying and often failing to hold back her tears.”The words that are attributed to me, I never said and never would say. Those words and the attitude represented do not live in my heart.” Swigart said. “This is a sad day. It is sad for Rapid City School District. Sad for students. Sad for the tremendous staff and tremendous faculty. Sad because this board is not being forthcoming with the public about the reasons they are terminating my employment.”

But no matter. The die had already been cast.

During Tuesday’s shameful charade of a public lynching masquerading as an official action and capped disingenuously by Swigart’s firing, NDN Collective members spoke openly about their respective roles in motivating, harnessing and steering the final product of that plan. The unceremonious removal of a school superintendent on what observers have called illegitimate and disingenuous grounds.

Amy Sazue, current CEO at NDN spinoff and presumed grant recipient, Remembering the Children, gushed openly about her pivotal role in shaping the OCR report against Swigart, first by including personal stories of district staff racially discriminating against her own 19-year old daughter, which according to Sazue, left the girl emotionally traumatized and scarred to this very day, requiring ongoing counseling and mental health intervention.

Sazue went on to describe how participating in community listening sessions for the benefit of the OCR report led to her actively visiting with other native community members, gathering stories and providing those secondhand accounts to the passel of OCR documentation used as evidence against Swigart’s fitness for continued leadership, a dismissal process many critics have identified as a hearsay campaign devoid of due process and certainly not rising to the standards of any civil or criminal proceeding.

“As I sat through those listening sessions, I also took stories from the community…I took stories back to the listening sessions, sharing experiences of real people in this community. And I shared them with the OCR team.”

Former NDN Collective staff member, Natalie Stites Means, herself a UCLA graduated lawyer, used her own testimony to scoff at such critique of the process, flexing legal bona fides and chastising less privileged critics who’ve suggested that a hearsay operation based purely on unsubstantiated stories, shared years after the fact, lacked sufficient substance and credibility to destroy Swigart’s public reputation, much less to justly deprive her of a 33-year educational career that supporters have praised as sacrificial, altruistic, heroic and beyond competent.

“Now, I have a lot of privileges your average parent doesn’t. I have a degree from UCLA. I have two degrees from UCLA. And one of them is a law degree,” Natalie Stites Means continued, ironically highlighting and reinforcing those very criticisms of the OCR report, undergirded by her own professional differentiation between sworn testimony and a collection of unverified stories subject to no burden of proof.

“And so I keep hearing a lot of legal concepts being thrown around in this meeting, like hearsay and proof and evidence, but the OCR report was not entered in a court of law. It was not a lawsuit,” Stites Means said, drawing quizzical smiles from Swigart supporters in the gallery who seemed amused by hearing their own arguments against the veracity of the OCR process being touted instead as a platform of credible accusation. Red Bear seemed oblivious to the irony as she continued the oddly chosen defense.

“It was an extensive information gathering visit that took place over the course of two years from my understanding and it took several years to get those authorities here, to look at the civil rights of Native Americans here in Rapid City.”

What emerges clearly in the conclusion of Nicole Swigart’s firing, undertaken by a political reversal of the Mom’s for Liberty, Loudon County energetics that had for a brief post-COVID moment, outflanked ubiquitous leftist domination of public education sphere, is that the most skillful practitioners of leftist racial politics have identified a loophole in the Office of Civil Rights that endows life altering, career ending, reputation and business destroying power to a process woefully lacking in the protective standards of jurisprudence and due process for every citizen.

Under an OCR “finding,” or a Department of Justice consent degree for “civil rights complaint,” allegations are all that are required. He said, she said defers automatically to the complainant. And under that standard, no one is safe. Presumption of guilt held high.

Whether a local business, political office holder, or even a 33-year educational professional with demonstrated record of outreach to minority communities and a proven policy history producing record graduation rates for the very population you’re accused of violating, a civil rights allegation, advanced and upheld by an ideologically averse governing board can ruin your life and reframe your legacy. Open and shut.

And after the goal is accomplished, monied activists who make handsome living off making examples of their political rivals will stand in open forum, celebrating your demise and congratulating themselves on identifying an unverified and socially sacrosanct expulsion process as their avenue to reshaping institutional power according to their own demands.

“One thing I’ve noticed from most of our speakers, is they do not care about the civil rights of Native American students. What they do care about is somebody’s job. Somebody’s pension, benefits,” Natalie Stites Means said, before mocking Swigart supporters and speaking dismissively of Swigart’s dismissal as an occasion unworthy of grief or regret.

“Give her a nice handshake. Throw (Swigart) a parade. But she needs to go. There needs to be consequences for violating the civil rights of Native American students. And they need to be found in personnel, policies and practices.” No evidence given. No evidence required. Only hearsay and innuendo.

And therein lies the true objective. The use of racial epithet and allegation as an unopposable political weapon in an arena devoid of sincere and meaningful opportunity for rebuttal. God help anyone who stands in the way of that quest for political control.