Unfortunately, the Biden administration is fighting hard to stifle the free speech and rights of parents, especially when it comes to what their children are being taught. During the summer, parents at school boards around the country made clear to their school boards that they did not want what is known as Critical Race Theory or the historically false 1610 Project taught to their children. Many school boards listened to their complaints and withdrew the curriculum, as they should have. It behooves all school boards to remember that they are voted into office by the people, including parents and grandparents, in their communities with the idea that they will oversee the education of their area’s children, teaching to them the values and mores of the community. The school boards are, by definition, working on behalf of the parents and subject to the approval of the parents. Sadly, some school board members imagine themselves to assume the omnipotence and omniscience of God once they take office, forgetting who gave them their jobs.
In the midst of the debates and especially because of the national attention and the number of school boards who were rightly acceding to their parents’ desires, the president of The American Federation of Teachers, the second largest teachers’ union in the country with the National Education Association in first place, stated that her organization would do everything possible to stop parents from preventing school boards and school districts from teaching CRT and the 1619 Project. But how? Apparently, according to America First Legal, as discussed on the Mark Levin show, they needed a reason for the government to step in and intimidate parents from voicing their objections to everything from CRT to pornographic literature to kindergarten Cross-dresser story hours. But the unions didn’t want to do it themselves. Many NEA and AFT members are Republicans who have joined for the liability insurance and might be inclined to withdraw membership since at the moment they cannot be compelled to unionize.
So, the Biden administration, the AFT, and the NEA decided it had to be another group, an outside group, and they came up with the perfect solution. On September 29, the president of the National School Board Association sent a letter to Joe Biden hysterically complaining that parents’ questions and complaints about school curriculum are “equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes,” (parents?!) and says that the “NSBA specifically solicits the expertise and resources of the U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Secret Service, and its National Threat Assessment Center regarding the level of risk to public school children, educators, board members, and facilities/campuses.” Oh, yes, the parents who don’t like what the school boards are allowing the schools to teach their children are going to attack them physically, harm the teachers, and their own children? What a ridiculous idea!
Only a few days later, on October 4, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memorandum that directed the FBI and U.S. attorneys to meet with federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial leaders in every federal judicial district in the next 30 days to “address the rise of criminal conduct directed toward school personnel.”And what exactly is this immediate and dangerous threat to our nation’s school personnel? Only the parents who stand up in school board meetings in order to object to their children being taught left-wing, socialist curriculum in their classrooms. Why would Merrick Garland make such a move? Perhaps because, in part, his daughter is married to the co-founder of Panorama Education, and “education services” company which sells Critical Race Theory teaching materials to school districts nationwide.
What dastardly things have parents been doing? They have publicized some of most offensive content being taught to our children into public view. They have read sexually explicit content from class texts or lectures out loud at televised board meetings. They have called out the divisive and destructive nature of critical race theory. They have not physically assaulted the school board members, against whom in most places they could mount a campaign to remove from office. They have not mobbed their homes in the middle of the night, chanting and playing loud music. They haven’t shot up school board meetings, although a large number of them no doubt own guns. No, these “domestic terrorists” have simply voiced their objections, and grown angry as their objections were dismissed as baseless. Gubernatorial candidate Terry McCaullife (VA) summed up the view of the left when he announced, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
But the worst thing is that in its growing move towards totalitarian rule, the Biden administration, according to America First Legal, has colluded with the teachers unions and the NSBA to intimidate parents, removing their first amendment rights to speech and their long-held right as parents to govern the raising and thus the education of their children in America, and as AFL writes, to mitigate “political impact of parent mobilization [at school board meetings] and organization around school issues [like CRT and mask mandates] in the upcoming midterm elections.”
And what is AFL’s proof of this pre-collaboration? The argue that “The short time frame between the September 29 letter and the Attorney General’s Memorandum suggests that either the entire matter was precoordinated and the September 29 but pretext, or that the normal clearance process and standard order both within the department (including legal sufficiency review by the Office of Legal Policy, and other components), and between the department and the White House Counsel’s Office and the Office of Management and Budget, were bypassed or corrupted.” As they suggest, it was a set-up to intimidate and silence parents.
But there is more. “On October 5, there was a follow-up call involving, inter alia, the White House Counsel’s Office, [a Biden political appointee in the Civil Rights Division], and many other Biden administration political and career officials.” The call, AFL goes on to say was a briefing which “included how to talk about ‘equity’ initiative, avoid liability for violating discrimination laws, and hide ‘equity’ measures, initiatives, and action from Freedom of Information Act disclosure,” carefully teaching all officials how to subvert the constitutional rights of Americans without getting caught.
In Loudon County Virginia, the school board shuts off the mikes of parents who are talking about things they don’t want to hear, or often even locks parents out of school board meetings.
According to an article by Tom Tradup, “Kristen Waggoner, general counsel for Christian nonprofit legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom, has called on Merrick Garland to rescind his absurd (my word) memo, advising him in a letter that “parents want school boards to remove politics from the classroom and get back to academics.” She adds: “They have the right to express their concerns to elected officials…and shouldn’t live in fear of government for doing so. [And] former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett (who—unlike Garland—was confirmed three times by the U.S. Senate) has also launched a major new project for students and parents to fight politicization in school classrooms.”
As David Harsanyi points out, “But even if there is a spike in criminal behavior, even violence (which has not happened), it is the job of the local police to investigate, not the FBI.” He goes on to say that “parents, who have every right to confront board members at meetings, write them angry emails and call their offices, shouldn’t be treated like the Weather Underground. . . .” Concluding by saying that domestic terrorism involves violent criminal acts to achieve political goals and there is absolutely no suggestion of that from the affronted parents, he points out that on the other hand, the media and the Biden administration consider the harassment of a sitting senator while in the bathroom by an undocumented alien just “part of the process.”
Stand up for your children. What they are taught is your business and your choice! If your school board won’t listen to you, pull your kids out of school and home school them and then fight with all you have to elect a different school board as soon as possible. We have given up lots of freedoms during the pandemic because we were frightened that if we caught it, we would die. But the pandemic is no Bubonic Plague. It has a survival rate of over 98% among those who contract it, but you would never know that, because it is to the advantage of the Democrat Party to keep us frightened. Fear makes us give up our liberties. Don’t be afraid to stand up for your child’s future! Go to school board meetings, look at your child’s homework, read his/her textbooks, and if they teach CRT or socialism, round up like-minded parents and complain to your school board. If you are afraid to act, you will lose your children to Marxist ideas.