Thanks to the subversive power of YouTube, you can now watch New Trier: Tip of the Spear—the documentary the North Shore radical right tried to shut down—on your computer. Director and narrator Paul Traynor gallops deep into the weeds in his hurriedly produced, rapid-fire account of how a battle over Seminar Day, a one-day program on racial civil rights at elite New Trier High School, opened a window on what he sees as a national conspiracy to destroy public schools and take control of local government.
Seminar Day went off as planned on February 28, with two National Book Award winners as keynote speakers and sessions on topics like “Disney and Racial Stereotypes” and “21st Century Voter Suppression.” The controversy raged on, however, its focus shifting to previously routine local elections, where for the first time in a century an upstart slate of candidates—supported by some of the same people who’d opposed the seminar—had arisen to contest those endorsed by the nonpartisan New Trier Township caucus.
The Policy Circle is “like a book club,” but one that only discusses economic policy, adheres to the principle that “the free-enterprise system works,” and bases its discussions on briefing papers from conservative think tanks, like the Illinois Policy Institute. According to its website, the Policy Circle now consists of 47 groups in 19 states and is growing rapidly.
