Combatting moms for liberty misinformation- 2022 midterm series #2/4
The Clean Slate, along with their campaign manager Brooke Chapel have broadened their concerns to range far beyond anything related to Critical Race Theory (CRT). LGBTQ+ issues, opposition to Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), school safety, and calls for removing books for a broad range of reasons have become part of the landscape, along with an assortment of state and local rules that are so broad and misdirected that in some cases they would arguably ban lots of things, but not critical race theory.
This is deeper than just the construct of CRT. The conversation appears to be mostly about parents and values and distrust of the school. But is that all there is to this? Overthrowing a school board is the agenda of many around our country. What is the agenda of the Clean Slate? It is the same agenda that is happening all over our country.
According to research that we've gotten through Ballotpedia, there have been more school board recall initiatives and petitions launched in 2021 than any previous year that they've tracked going back two decades. In many cases, they're not just trying to pick on a single school board member, where that is what researchers say often would happen in the past when they try to recall school board members.
They're goal is to oust the entire school board. This is happening in communities that lean blue, that lean red, that are solidly blue, solidly red. This is not something that's only a red-state phenomenon or something where conservatives outnumbered in a blue state are rising up. This is really happening across the nation. It allows people to feel ownership because it's local and it's their school board. They feel like they are the ones to make a difference.
Steve Bannon, former Trump advisor, explains this best, that if they can get people engaged at the local level, get them involved in the process, then they'll be energized to propel Republicans in midterm elections as well. Let me quote what Steve Bannon said on a podcast. He said, "the path to save the nation is very simple. It's going to go through the school boards." . .
Moms for Liberty (M4L) has a 34 page document called Combatting Critical Race Theory, An A to Z Guide On How To Stop Critical Race Theory And Reclaim Your Local School Board. It is broken down into 3 sections. Section one is knowing and identifying CRT. Moms for Liberty states on page 16 that, “the goal is to ensure that: The school board adopts a curriculum that is not taught through the lens of CRT and does not contain CRT as a required element. Indoctrination through CRT is removed (and the racism that comes with CRT) from all K-12 public school curricula. 2. Ensure that teachers are teaching the curriculum that has been put in place and not just choosing to continue to indoctrinate children into CRT, or using CRT as the lens through which they teach. If your local elected school board members are vocal supporters of CRT, document their support. Experience shows that elected officials that are wrong on issues like this are rarely salvageable. The rule here is that any school board member that refuses to implement a CRT-free curriculum that mandates teacher compliance needs to be replaced, and replaced as quickly as possible.”
Section two is Growing your Network. Moms for Liberty says on page 18, “At the end of the day, you are a human rights advocate; you want to protect children from abusive and harmful curriculum. Any identified anger or frustration detected in parents or members of your community about the general direction of cultural Marxism in schools should be cultivated into a desire to take action to stop CRT. The people in your personal network will often be those that you are able to most quickly convince and motivate.”
Moms for Liberty is manipulating parents and community members to act upon their frustrations by standing up against CRT and SEL. CRT and SEL are not the problem. M4L says, on page 22, to “stick with facts and avoid theories that cannot be demonstrated. People should look to you as an authoritative source.” The truth is there are no facts that back up that CRT is taught in schools. Every source they have used does not hold support for what they are claiming. Race and racism are two different things. One of the pillars for SEL is social awareness. This is about being aware of who you are. Part of this is knowing your race…not racism.
Section 3 is Winning Back Your School Board. On page 29, they specifically talk about how to fund the takeover in school boards with a new national PAC that has been formed, called the 1776 Project PAC, that is seeking to fund school board candidates that will oppose CRT. The 1776 Project PAC says that they “are a political action committee dedicated to electing school board members nationwide who want to reform our public education system by promoting patriotism and pride in American history. We are committed to abolishing critical race theory and ‘The 1619 Project’ from the public school curriculum.”
To clarify, the 1619 Project is not in our schools and it is NOT in the K-12 curriculum. It is a book for adults. It was published on November 16, 2021. The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story offers a profoundly revealing vision of the American past and present.
The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning “1619 Project” issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This new book substantially expands on that work, weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with thirty-six poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance.
The steps in this A-Z guide are exactly what is happening in Hartland and what has been happening in Hartland since the pandemic. On page 30, M4L says, “you will need to be able to articulate how you or your candidate will lead the way on removing CRT from the curriculum.” Clean Slate has not defined how they will help HCS at all, except to get rid of our superintendent and getting our kids back to schools. Our kids are in school. All that has come from the Clean Slate, and Brooke Chapel is lies, hate, and the lack of respect they have for teachers.
Campbell F. Scribner, assistant professor of education at the University of Maryland at College Park, called Moms for Liberty and The 1776 Project Political Action Committee, which has raised $3 million to advocate for conservative school board candidates nationally this year, “a weird combination of single-issue organizing,” in this case around the topic of education, “and a fairly diffuse set of goals, either focused on a hot-topic issue that will fade quickly, like CRT, or on goals that are too amorphous to actually be accomplished, like ‘patriotism.’’" The 1776 Project PAC has raised $3 million to advocate for conservative school board candidates nationally this year.
Moms for Liberty has endorsed 65 candidates in Florida with 43 either declared a winner or advancing to a runoff; 72 candidates statewide in New York, with 40 victorious; three school board candidates in Kenosha, Wisconsin, two of whom won; two candidates in Bedford County, Virginia, both of them successful and seven endorsed in North Carolina, with five winning seats. Most school board elections will be Nov. 8, she said, and the group is working to get endorsement tallies from its chapters.
Critical Race Theory is a made up problem. It is racism and exclusion wrapped up in a made up construct of CRT. Do not allow yourself to be gaslit by extremists. Do we want paid by outside groups to fund a school board election? Only one member of the Clean Slate has a child in Hartland Schools. Do we want this distorted, racist voice to represent our teachers, and our children?
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