Government-school graduates must resist the Trump administration’s policies and the supposed institutional racism of the United States by overthrowing “the system,” argued Santa Ana Unified School District President Hector Bustos in his 2025 graduation address. Critics, including fellow members of the SAUSD board, expressed shock.
The 24-year-old radical, who works for an extremist group funded by billionaire leftist George Soros and the globalist Rockefeller dynasty, issued a thinly veiled call to revolution. In clear terms, he urged the young graduates to bring down the American constitutional form of government in favor of hyper-racialized socialism.
“This country is still built on the quiet, calculated exclusion of people who look like us,” claimed Bustos as he alternated between Spanish and English. As such, the most important reason for his speech was “to activate you,” he declared, calling on students to “fight back” against “the system.”
“The young people of Santa Ana have a sacred responsibility,” he told the graduates, most of whom did not even rank proficient in any core academic subject on the government’s own tests. “That responsibility is not just to succeed; it is to interrupt — to interrupt systems that were never built to serve us.”
Soros-funded Community Organizer
Bustos, who publicly identifies as a “queer youth organizer of color” with “he/him” pronouns, ran unopposed in his election three years ago. Since then, he has publicly refused to pledge allegiance to the American flag due to alleged systemic racism. But he keeps an LGBT flag in front of him on the school board dais.
Unfortunately for the students and families of the district, Bustos is just one of several highly trained “community organizers” in their 20s funded by deep-pocketed elites who lead the failing district. One of the local puppet masters, Bolivian-born Orange County Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento, patted Bustos on the back after the speech.
Among other roles outside of the school board, Bustos serves as “communications director” for a fringe left-wing extremist group of “Latinx” activists called “Chispa.” The outfit is funded by the Tides Foundation, a powerhouse of funding for extremism bankrolled by Soros, Rockefeller, and other billionaires’ foundations.
Marxist Message
The Marxist tone of Bustos’ graduation speech was clear throughout. “This isn’t just a graduation, this is a rupture in the ordinary, a break in the system’s expectations of who makes it, who thrives, and who gets to be seen,” he said, reiterating the narrative of victimhood that is a key part of Marxist critical theory.
Claiming there are unspecified “people in power” across the country and even locally “telling us to keep our heads down, to not rock the boat, to not get too political,” Bustos told the students they must push back loudly and “demand” all sorts of things — mostly other people’s money but also a range of far-left policies.
Among other grievances, he recited the usual litany of talking points put forward by communist and socialist organizations. These included attacking U.S. immigration policy and the supposed racism of American police officers while seeking to redefine the concept of “rights” that America’s Founders fought and died for.
“Political” Complaints
“Is it too political to say that being undocumented is not a crime?” Bustos asked the graduates, without noting that illegally crossing the border is, in fact, a crime. “Is it too political to believe that the color of your skin should not determine whether you survive a traffic stop? Is it too political to say that housing is a human right?”
There were plenty of additional complaints, too. “Is it too political to say your zip code should not determine whether you have clean air to breathe, safe water to drink, or access to a park?” he asked in one of several calls for wealth redistribution and centralization of power.
For good measure, Bustos also attacked Israel. “Is it too political to ask that our tax dollars stop funding the killing of children in Gaza and instead start feeding and housing the children in our communities?” Why tax dollars should “feed” or “house” anyone was not made clear, either.
Free Markets & Prosperity
Of course, government-issued housing and food is a system that still prevails in countries ruled by murderous autocrats such as Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Zimbabwe, and other communist hellholes. That is a major reason people are fleeing from those places to America, not vice versa. Prisons, too, provide tax-funded “free” food, housing, and medical care.
But the freest and most prosperous nations with the lowest levels of hunger, homelessness, pollution, and poverty — Switzerland, Singapore, and the United States, for example — all have relatively free markets and limited government. Prosperity is inextricably linked to economic freedom, the data show.
Continuing the anti-capitalism theme, Bustos claimed “the system” was “telling us we should be grateful for scraps while billionaires decide who eats.” In reality, the only places “the system” and the elites decide who eats are the Utopian hellholes where government usurps responsibility for feeding, housing, and clothing people.
Social Agenda a “Moral Obligation”
But the noise and agitation will continue. “To those that want our silence I say this: You will not get it,” Bustos continued. “Because the class of 2025 did not survive a global pandemic, racial uprisings, racial hardships, and attacks on our very identities just to graduate into a world that refuses to hear our voices.”
“We must not stay silent,” the activist-turned-school-district-boss declared, telling students that acting on his billionaire-funded anti-American political and social agenda was their “call” and “moral obligation.” “I’m asking you to wake up because we cannot keep living like this; we cannot keep pretending that the status quo is acceptable.”
Failing Education
While there was plenty of revolutionary fervor against “the system,” no mention was made of the fact that just one in four victims of the government school “system” he oversees is even “proficient” in math or reading, according to U.S. Department of Education data. Among Hispanics in Santa Ana — those in Bustos’ care — the numbers are even worse.
Even on the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, just one in five Santa Ana Unified students met or exceeded the basic standards for math. Less than one in three met or exceeded the state’s basic standards for English language arts, the state’s data show. Perhaps that is the “system” that should be reexamined first?
Of course, those seeking to create revolutionaries have always known that uneducated but angry people make the best cannon fodder. Many victims of the Bustos-led Santa Ana “education” system, then, will be well suited for destroying the existing system so a new one can emerge.
Racial Overtones
“You are not just graduating; you are crossing through a threshold of power,” Bustos said, rejecting “assimilation.” Throughout the speech, the racial overtones were clear, too, with Bustos telling students they were surrounded by “your people,” a reference to the fact that the district is overwhelmingly Hispanic.
In closing his speech, he told students to respond with “viva” if they agreed with him. “Long live our parents who crossed borders for us,” he said in Spanish. “Long live the workers who sustain this country.… Long live the undocumented students who keep fighting.… Long live Santa Ana and its fighting people.”
While some looked bewildered, many students and family members roared in approval: “Viva! Viva! Viva!”
Bustos’ graduation speech was hardly an anomaly. In fact, he has repeatedly gone on wild anti-Trump rants from the dais. “Let me say this loud and clear: Donald Trump and his agenda are the problem,” he said last December, arguing that the president is a racist full of “hate” and afraid of a future that “doesn’t look like him or the people cheering for him at his rallies.”
“Land Acknowledgements”
Under his leadership, the district’s websites and other resources now frequently undermine the legitimacy of the United States and California — even their right to exist — with so-called land acknowledgements.
For instance, a “land acknowledgement” posted on a district school website purports to “recognize” that all of its schools, and indeed all of “this land we refer to as Orange County,” are occupying “the unceded and traditional lands of the Gabrieleno Tongva Nation, and the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians Acjachemen Nation.”
“These lands were taken through a process of colonization, physical, and cultural genocide,” the acknowledgement continues. “We pay respect to our elders, both past and present, as well as the Tongva and Acjachemen youth who have attended and are currently attending our school and neighboring schools.”
Ironically, despite his attempts to promote Hispanic racial consciousness and unrest while turning the youth against the United States that welcomed so many of them and their parents, Bustos has stirred massive controversy among Hispanic families in the district. Especially concerning to those socially conservative families is the district’s intense promotion of LGBTQ extremism and indoctrination in the classroom.
Targeting Enemies
SAUSD board member Brenda Lebsack, a Christian who has publicly resisted some of the extremism, has been viciously targeted by Bustos and other members of the school board for speaking out. They even approved a censure resolution against her at the last board meeting.
Her supposed crime? Raising awareness among parents and the community about sexual and “gender” indoctrination being imposed on Muslim, Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant students without their parents’ knowledge or consent.
Numerous supporters of various ethnic and religious backgrounds came out to publicly support Lebsack and her efforts in the face of attacks by Bustos and his allies. The video of the whole episode, which was conveniently removed until Lebsack complained enough, can be found here.
Lebsack expressed frustration with Bustos, and especially his effort to politicize the students’ graduation ceremony. But thankfully, despite his best efforts, Lebsack said, many students did not appear to be buying the agenda he was selling.
“Bustos’ speech did not match what I saw on students’ faces or graduation caps,” she said. “I saw many students’ caps expressing thanks to God and many that said, ‘My parents came from nothing, yet gave me everything’.”
The school board chief’s comments were highly inappropriate, too. “It disgusts me that Bustos stole this precious celebratory moment from these students for his own political posturing and to try to incite a revolt,” she added.
Bustos is just a minor cog in a much bigger machine, and the dangerous indoctrination of impressionable children in taxpayer-funded institutions seen in Santa Ana is just the tip of the iceberg. The goal is clear — create revolutionairies.
Americans who value their liberty, their nation, and their nation’s traditions must act before it is too late.
