A high school teacher and city council member from California was secretly recorded as he delivered what can only be described as an anti-military tirade to students, prompted by one student wearing a U.S. Marine Corps sweatshirt to class.
Gregory Salcido, a teacher and city council member who earned his bachelor’s degree in history from Whittier College, also served as the mayor of Pico Rivera, California where he teaches, in 2002, 2010 and again in 2015. After noticing a student wearing a Marine Corps t-shirt enter his class, Salcido went on at length about America’s military.
“Your freakin’ stupid Uncle Louie or whatever. They’re dumb- – -ts. They’re not high-level bankers. They’re not academic people. They’re not intellectual people.” Salcido can be heard saying in one of three videos recorded and uploaded by the student.
“They’re the freaking lowest of our low.”
When one student stood up to Salcido, the politician and teacher reportedly compared military service to domestic violence.
“And I told him it was a family tradition,” one student recalled. “My dad’s done it, my two uncles have done it. And I just wanted to continue that tradition because it’s also something I wanted to do as a kid. And he said so if it was a family tradition to beat women, would you continue it too?”
Salcido goes on for six minutes in the video, explaining that “if you join the military, it’s because you have no other options, because you didn’t take care of business academically because your parents didn’t love you enough to push you, and you didn’t love yourself enough to push yourself.”
This is not the first time Salcido has come under fire for his actions. According to local news outlets, the teacher was placed on administrative leave for making comments toward a female student in 2010 that were called threatening and racial in nature, and again in 2012 after the Sheriff’s Department received a complaint that he struck a student.
“The incident has been grossly exaggerated,” Salcido said at the time. “I smacked him, but not with any intent to do harm. I just told him to wake up.”
On Saturday, the El Rancho Unified School District confirmed that the voice on the tape is indeed Salcido and that the incident did take place on school grounds.
“We acknowledge it is his voice based on the research of the incident so far and knowing it came from one of our classrooms,” district Superintendent Karling Aguilera-Fort told the press. “We have reached out to Mr. Salcido but have not been able to talk to him because he is out of town.”
While she would not divulge what sort of disciplinary action Salcido will face, she did reassure reporters that some sort of action would be taken.
Salcido himself responded to the flood of negative remarks he’s received over the internet in a fairly dismissive manner, posting this to Facebook on Friday:
“The Salcido 3 just got out of an excellent musical, “The Band’s Arrival”. I turned my phone back on to unexpectedly see a storm. I don’t think it’s wise for me to make any specific comments, but I want my friends, family, and students to know we are fine and we respect the rights of free expression for all individuals.”
You can hear all of Sacido’s remarks regarding the U.S. military in the video below:
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