The Central Oregon Diversity Project has demanded the resignation of Republican state representative Vikki Breese-Iverson in response to a photograph of her son delivering the Nazi salute while posing next to a World War II German aircraft.
KTVZ-TV reported that The Diversity Project demanded Breese-Iverson’s immediate resignation in a Facebook post on Saturday. The post was in response to a photo posted on social media. The son, whose name and age have not been disclosed, was captured in Madras, Oregon, during a school field excursion.
The group, which is dedicated to providing solidarity and opportunity to Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, and all people of color in central Oregon, also alleged Crook County school officials “avoided handing down discipline.” The group stated that they “have reason to believe that the student wasn’t disciplined because of his mother and ‘who’ she is.”
Breese-Iverson, who resides in Prineville and is the House minority leader, issued an apology on Facebook “to anyone impacted by this image” and criticized her son’s “extremely poor judgment.”
She reported that she and her husband had contacted school officials “about enforcing appropriate consequences for his actions at school and at home.”
Breese-Iverson’s post included a photo of her son’s handwritten apology, in which he acknowledged that posing for a photo that a friend took and posted online “was a stupid error. Now I fully understand. It can be harmful to act irresponsibly in the heat of the moment.
During the Holocaust of the 1940s, the Nazis and their collaborators murdered six million Jews and members of other groups.
Researchers said in an April report that antisemitism increased in the United States in 2022.
