Most people have never heard of Chaya Raichik or her online account Libs of TikTok, but for many of those who have, her impact on their lives has been substantial. Raichik began posting as Libs of TikTok in 2020, focusing on right wing culture war issues such as Covid denialism, claims of 2020 election fraud, and Q-Anon conspiracy theories revolving around child sex trafficking.

More recently, she has spent more efforts in spreading anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theories, accusing queer people of being “groomers” (though she has more recently shied from the term) and fighting against trans rights, often by spreading false information and conspiracy theories under the guise of “protecting children.” In sharing content from largely queer creators, often edited and almost always without context, she seeks to foment anger towards queer people and communities and those who support them.

The Southern Poverty Law Center lists her as an “extremist” linked to threats of violence against LGBTQ+ people, doctors, hospitals, librarians, libraries, teachers, and schools.

“Claudia” is among those who have been targeted by Raichik, and has asked Scary Mommy not to identify her for this story.

“I’m still processing what happened, and it honestly impacted my students, and of course family, in ways that I’m not super ready to re-live at the moment,” she told me by email. Key elements of her story, however, including Raichik’s sharing her identity, have been confirmed.

Claudia teaches family consumer sciences ( “like home ec, but in 2024”) in Ohio. Her classroom bulletin board includes a prominently displayed pride flag. She gives pronoun surveys at the beginning of the year. She’s a mom of two — “one that I made from scratch” and an adult former student who has lived with her since last year. When I speak to her, the shirt she’s wearing reads “Will Trade Racists For Refugees.” Her vibe is a vibe, and a familiar one to any kid who’s ever had a teacher sign their yearbook.

“So you’re definitely the teacher where kids come with a lunch tray to your class on your breaks?” I ask, but not really asking.

Claudia smiles. “Yeah, I can’t get rid of them. And I like that. I was named Biggest Kid Magnet one year. And you just be nice to them. It’s crazy what happens when you’re just nice to everyone.”

But, as she notes later in our conversation, “It’s wild that being known for being nice makes you a target now.”

Earlier this year, Raichik posted several pictures of Claudia from her personal Instagram account — being sure to tag the school district where she worked — on Libs of TikTok’s platforms, highlighting her support of the LGBTQ+ community and Palestinian children and criticism of the police and book bans. She describes Claudia (and we’ll use synonyms here to avoid bringing attention to the post, which remains up as of press time) as a radical revolutionary who seeks to take ownership over her students (implied: away from their parents). Raichik ends the post asking her audience whether they’d be OK with Claudia working in their child’s school.

That audience’s response to the posts changed Claudia’s life in the ensuing months. Here’s her story in her words (lightly edited for length and clarity). Scary Mommy has reached out to Raichik for comment and, as of press time, has not heard back.

*****

I want kids to know that everyone is welcome in my classroom. It’s not uncommon for students who aren’t typically successful in other subjects to come to my room and be super successful. It’s super hands-on. You get to be exactly who you are, whatever that means to you. It’s not a class where you typically sit down and be quiet for 45 minutes and then you leave. It’s a lot of collaboration, a lot of projects. I do a lot of things very different and weird. But a lot of my most outspoken classroom activism started because Ohio passed a lot of anti-trans bills for students and I have students in my room who are actively transitioning. And so that’s when I started wearing the trans flag sticker every day. You’re in my room, I see you, I support you. The hate doesn’t happen here. Our superintendent, too, actually tweeted support for trans students the day after all of that legislation passed.

Before the last couple years, with a few minor exceptions, I’ve only ever received compliments for the inclusivity that is in my classroom. I remember maybe a couple years ago, I had one parent question talking about racism in one of my classes, and that was very easily shut down-able, but nothing. The biggest complaint that I had gotten before this last year was that I taught a cooking class and one very affluent mom was mad that her kid wanted to eat more vegetables at dinnertime. She was furious that now she had to learn how to cook vegetables. Beyond that, no complaints, and I think the student success kind of spoke to how well my methods work. Last year was the first year that I had ever really come up against anything negative.

Prior to having my life upended by Chaya Raichik, I knew about her and Libs of TikTok. I’d heard and seen the things that she and her followers are capable of, but I didn’t expect it would ever be directed toward me.

But last school year I was in third period and it was already the worst week of my life. I had just come back from being out for three days and my principal walks in my room with his cell phone and he says “Have you seen this?” And it’s a picture of the post. I was like, “No. Sure haven’t.” And then he just leaves.

So instantly I go to my phone and my Instagram account was blowing up, so I had to start locking that down very, very quickly because she tagged our district in the post. I have no idea how she even noticed me. I don’t have a large following and I’m only on Instagram. I guess somebody must have seen things from my room, seen pictures. Somebody must have seen it and submitted it to her via messages. I don’t know.

“I got death threats. People told me to kill myself. I was called a groomer. I was told ‘we’re coming for you,’ ‘you are going to be fired,’ ‘we’re going to come murder you and blow up your whole family.’”

The first thing they started to do was post comments under all my pictures. It’s very methodical, they know what to do when she says jump, her little army knows exactly what comes next. So they started trying to post things and it was all strangers. So as soon as I went private, all that stopped. I got rid of a ton of pictures — of my children, of other people’s children, of my family. I got rid of the ability to leave comments on everything. I purposefully only left the things that would make them the most angry before I went back on private.

Then the DMs started. They would say things like “We have screenshots, you can’t hide.” I’m like, “I don’t want to. I am very proud of what you see on here.”

During the last period of the day, which was my prep period, my principal called and asked me to come down to his office. I asked, half joking, “Do I need to bring a box? All my stuff? Am I going to turn in my key? What’s the convo here?”

But he was very supportive. He wanted me to know that he’d spoken to the superintendent and they wanted to let me know that I had their support, one hundred percent. And then the next day I got a text message from our superintendent personally. We have a pretty big district, so that’s kind of unheard of for us. So he sent me a really nice message encouraging me to hang in there and letting me know “We’re glad you’re here. Our kids are lucky you’re here.”

I am lucky: in a lot of other places, being put on blast by Libs Of TikTok would’ve been my last day, for sure. I’ve seen the horror stories of what Raichik and her people have done, and I mean terrible. I was ready for the bomb threats. There have been teachers who have been fired immediately. There have been students who have been outed and all bad things have happened since then. I was ready to pull up to school the next day and see people standing out front ready to scream at me. But there was no real stir in my community: most of the threats and things came from other states.

Both my principal and superintendent urged me not to read any of the comments under Raichik’s posts and to this day I have not. I refuse to participate in that. But I did put my brother on comment duty to let me know if there was anything that I needed to be especially worried about; their bomb threats have been shutting down schools elsewhere.

So I did get some reports from my brother about what was happening in the comments of various posts, but only told me the funny ones, like that I was a childless cat lady. The things that were the worst were the DMs. I got death threats. People told me to kill myself. I was called a groomer. I was told, “we’re coming for you,” “you are going to be fired,” “we’re going to come murder you and blow up your whole family.” Fortunately, on Instagram, all you have to do is see the little preview of the message and just delete it. But I got enough of the previews to know what kinds of things these people were saying. They would email my school board, urging the Board of Education to fire me. But the board and the superintendent were clear: “We’re not firing her. Stop emailing us.”

They just ignored, ignored, ignored. I ignored, ignored, ignored. I deleted every message: if it wasn’t even there, then I can act like it didn’t exist and it doesn’t have to have any power over me. I didn’t have to think about it. I can just keep focusing on doing what I know is best in my classroom.

“The people who take cues from Raichik are the minority, but when they’ve come after you, it feels like there’s a lot more of them than there is. I don’t know if I’ll ever, for the rest of my career, not have a little bit of worry when people are going to be coming in and I don’t know who it is.”

Eventually, I think they left me alone a lot faster than other people because I have a lot of privilege. At the end of the day, I am a straight white lady, and even though I was targeted, I don’t represent who they hate the most right now. So as bad as it was for me, honestly, I’m just grateful that over the course of a little over a month, they spent some time leaving other people alone.

Ultimately, these weird people, they have nothing better to do. Of course, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t casting extra looks around when I was leaving my house for a while, but most people in my community, and even in my school, didn’t even know this was happening. It was mostly other states that were very invested in this.

I found a lot of comfort and a sense of security in that time just doing what I had been doing – teaching – and my students offered me a lot of support. Kids see the same internet we do, so I had current and former students offering me lots of compliments and reassurances. The kids are going to save us all. And just being there and being, I mean when you’re teaching, you don’t have room for any other thought other than what’s happening in the moment. And so that was really helpful just doing the job that I know how to do.

I’m also in trauma counseling now, which has been fantastic, but I still have times when I get scared based on what happened to me and all the threats I received. We just had an open house, and I was really anxious. I’ve never had a problem in my building, but I messaged my principal to let him know that I was on edge and didn’t know if I could stay. Ultimately I did, and everything was fine, but there are still times where it kind of creeps back in. I don’t keep my schedule by the door anymore, which is common practice in my school. I don’t want people to know where I am and what I’m doing if I don’t want them to know where I am and what I’m doing. The people who take cues from Raichik are the minority, but when they’ve come after you, it feels like there’s a lot more of them than there is. I don’t know if I’ll ever, for the rest of my career, not have a little bit of worry when people are going to be coming in and I don’t know who it is.

A couple weeks ago, Chaya Raichik put out a tweet asking for parents to be “eyes and ears on the ground” in Ohio public schools. I was also confused: why? What are you doing? Why are you singling out Ohio? What are you planning? I know now that I feel fairly safe where I am, but I know that a lot of other teachers aren’t as lucky. And so I can foresee a lot of teachers who are doing the right thing and saying the right thing and being a safe space for all their kids, not coming out with the same outcome that I did. And that would be terrible to take that away from kids who need it.

I’ve had kids tell me that being able to be who they are in my room has saved their life. This is humbling particularly in light of the fact that The Trevor Project, a non-profit dedicated to ending suicide among LGBTQ+ young people, estimates that approximately 41% of LGBTQ+ young people seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, including roughly half of transgender and nonbinary youth. So when I saw Raichik’s tweet taking aim at Ohio, I immediately felt fear, not just for me, but for everyone. If you take affirming teachers out of buildings, what’s going to happen?

This apparent threat highlights the importance of creating safe, nurturing, loving spaces for these kids, as well as supporting organizations like The Trevor Project or a local non-profit, Star House, which combats youth homelessness, another issue that disproportionately affects queer kids. It’s really scary for the kids in our state who are ultimately the ones that suffer the most.