A white Philadelphia teacher and activist has admitted to lying about her identity for years, falsely claiming Palestinian and Black heritage while working with Palestinian and racial justice organizations.Hannah Gann posted a statement to her Instagram page last week, admitting she has no Palestinian or Tunisian heritage and describing herself as a “white woman of significant privilege and wealth.” In a follow-up video, Gann said she was beginning to try to take accountability and asked that no one judge the groups she worked with based on her lies.
She said she deceived “everyone” in her life.“There is not a single person on this planet, no friend, no fellow organizer, no one in my family, no professional connection, no secret op or handler who knew what I was doing,” she said.“I hid my family’s background from everyone in Philly, and also hid from the people in my own family what I was doing.” Commenters on Gann’s original post dubbed her the “Palestinian Rachel Dolezal” and “Temu Rachel Dolezal,” a reference to the former NAACP chapter president who pretended to be Black.
Dolezal, who legally changed her name to Nkechi Diallo in 2016, was outed by her parents as being “Caucasian by birth.” “I still believe in every cause I ever supported, in the ongoing fight for justice, and in the righteousness of liberation for all oppressed peoples,” Gann said in the video.“I still believe that theirs is the real story, and mine is just a sick, deluded distraction.” Gann declined to comment further to NBC News on Wednesday, referring back to her video as her only public statement.Another Philadelphia teacher, Keziah Ridgeway posted her own video Saturday, saying Gann deceived her over their nearly decade-long friendship.
Ridgeway said that when the two of them met around 2018, she had no awareness of Gann’s actual background — only that Gann was “speaking up for the Black community, for the Palestinian community.”It was no...