School Newspaper Tries to Take Down "Killing America"

Hi all,

What happens when you try to tell the truth in a world invested in ideological lies?

This morning, as I was driving my kids to school, I received an email from YouTube stating the following: “We received a copyright removal request for your video. Based on applicable copyright law, we removed your video from YouTube.”

The complainant was Menlo-Atherton High School’s newspaper, M-A Chronicle, and they objected to the inclusion of a two-second clip in the Killing America trailer. I checked the trailer’s YouTube page and, indeed, it had been removed.

This unwarranted and unjustified removal hurts our attempts to market this film and I have no doubt that this is their intention. The video that I used in the trailer and the film was published online and to YouTube and was filmed at a school board meeting, a public forum. I should also mention that Menlo-Atherton High School is a public high school and its paper likely receives public funding.

It would be an understatement to say that Menlo-Atherton High School does not come off looking good in our film. We went great lengths to explain in a factual and dispassionate manner how one of their teachers, Chloe Gentile-Montgomery, an ethnic studies teacher, used ideological lies to teach the Hamas-Israeli conflict. Among her lies were the statements that the United Nations declared that the existence of Israel was “illegal,” that Hamas were a people from Palestine (as opposed to terrorists) who targeted soldiers (when civilians were, in fact, the main target).

One of the slides used by Chloe Gentile-Montgomery, the ethnic studies teacher at Menlo-Atherton High School

We also exposed that the Sequoia Union High School District, home to Menlo-Atherton High School, had been removing honors classes for the past eight years behind the backs of parents. Many of the classes were also being tainted with the teachings of liberated ethnic studies, the radical version that divides students into the oppressors and the oppressed.

Killing America exposes all of this and it is no wonder they want to undermine the film in any way possible.

After all, remember how Karl Losekoot, the principal of Menlo-Atherton High School, in an earlier Substack post, called film a work of “sensational propaganda at its worst” and also said that it was “completely ridiculous.”

Here is Principal Losekoot’s comment in full:

Most are aware that this weekend there was a showing of a documentary titled, Killing America, at the Menlo-Park Guild Theater.  The previews of this documentary are disturbing as the short film takes images from recent board meetings and conflates them with images of violence that have nothing to do with M-A or our staff.  Its premise seems to assert that programs and discourse that have the goal of creating greater equity instead have the impact of creating more violence and hate.  The film presents an example of sensational propaganda at its worst, and it aims to paint M-A in a negative light.   The one saving grace is that the film appears as completely ridiculous.   Interestingly, I have only heard from families who wish to distance themselves from this documentary and who are clear in their support of M-A. 

The catch is that he had not seen the film despite being invited to the screening. His comments were based on a sensational trailer that clearly touched a nerve.

I should also mention that his last statement is not true. There are many families who have seen the film and are now questioning what is happening at the school. It is no wonder why the education authorities see my film as the enemy of what they are trying to accomplish at their school on ideological grounds.

Most of you on this Substack know how Amazon initially banned “What Killed Michale Brown?” so I’m no stranger to this kind of controversy. (If you are unfamiliar with that story, here is the link.)

This morning, I responded promptly to the YouTube complaint by citing Fair Use. YouTube describes it as “a legal doctrine that says use of copyright-protected material under certain circumstances is allowed without permission from the copyright holder.” YouTube provides four categories that a filmmaker must generally conform to in order to meet the standard of Fair Use and here is the link to the four categories.

I responded with:

The contested two-second clip in my Killing America trailer is protected by Fair Use.

I reviewed YouTube's four definitions re Fair Use and below is my response to each of the four points: 

1) The clip was transformed by framing it with the phrase "racial equity" before and after the two second clip. In addition, it was transformed by all the content around it which was from multiple sources. We did not rely on the contested clip as our sole source.

2) The video clip that we used is factual as opposed to fictional. It is the recording of a school board meeting which is a public setting. Shawneece Stevenson, listed in the complaint, is a public figure.

3) We borrowed the bare minimum. I do not remember how long the original video was -- I think it was over a minute. In any case, taking a two second clip is clearly the bare minimum.

4) Taking a two second video does not harm the complainant's ability to profit in any way. 

It is clear the complainant did not review YouTube's guidelines re Fair Use before submitting this gratuitous complaint. We want our video reinstated ASAP.

The unfortunate thing is that the burden is on me to prove that I acted legally, a process that can keep my trailer off Youtube for as long as ten days. Also, it is unfortunate that in submitting my counterclaim I had to list my personal information which the complainant now has.

I uploaded the trailer to Vimeo and you can see the two-second clip that was contested: 1:19 to 1:21.

Guess what, that is not all.

This past Tuesday as I sat down to eat dinner, I received a cease and desist email from, yep, you guess right, M-A Chronicle. They demanded that I remove their footage from my 38 minute film. I won’t go into details now but if anybody know a good lawyer to take on the folks who clearly want to stop us from exposing the truths about their school as well as the district? Because that is what this is: an attempt to bury the truth in favor of ideological lies.

I will send updates on this matter as it unfolds. As of now, we’re still pressing on with our screenings.

San Francisco is up next on April 7th and here is the ticket link.

Chicago is up on April 21 and will send link once available.

All my best,

Eli