Oh look. The media finally sends out an intrepid reporter to take the temperature of some Biden voters. They seem as exotic as rare birds:
Dozens of suburban moms from around the country dialed into an Ohio-based Zoom training session last month with the same goal — to learn how to combat the increasingly vitriolic rhetoric from parents whose protests over mask mandates and diversity education have turned school board meeting rooms into battlegrounds.
The lessons: Show up at meetings with fact-based speeches ready and create text groups for real-time strategizing. Wave “jazz hands” if told not to clap at meetings. Avoid using the divisive language of their opponents, such as “CRT” for critical race theory, and instead replace it with alternatives like “culturally responsive instruction.”
Katie Paris, the founder of Red Wine and Blue — a national network of like-minded, mostly Democratic suburban women — believes the only way to fight back is to present a calm face to counter the angry groups that have dominated and disrupted board meetings and in some cases threatened officials. Her network of more than 300,000 women recently broadened its focus to fight the rising number of book bans across the country, launching a case tracker on Jan. 31, and is running training sessions to help women testify and manage highly charged government meetings.
“We believe it’s time to get off defense,” Paris said. “Why should we be the ones explaining ourselves? This is not why we moved to the suburbs. We moved to the suburbs for high-quality schools.”
Their mission has taken on new urgency after the wave of Republican parents who began showing up at school board meetings last summer using scripts written by right-wing think tanks, denouncing the teaching of topics such as transgender rights and labeling anti-racism curriculum as critical race theory — a college-level academic framework that examines systemic racism. They then moved on to books, mostly those focused on race and racial history, including by some of the country’s most renowned authors — as well as books with LGBTQ content. They often were the same parents who protested mask mandates and school closures related to the coronavirus pandemic.
Paris argues that these parents — while vocal — don’t represent the views of most parents, and in some cases books have been removed and curriculums changed after complaints from just a few.
“I don’t think that they represent any kind of majority but they certainly are part of what I would say is a pretty massive orchestrated effort to undermine public education and teachers in the country, impose a political agenda and win back suburban voters,” Paris said.
Conservative parents in Tennessee, for example, were so well organized and aggressive that those trying to marshal opposition found themselves outmaneuvered, according to Revida Rahman, 48, a Brentwood, Tenn., mother of two and co-founder of racial equity group One WillCo. The parents had scoured the second-grade curriculum looking for what they considered inappropriate content. They packed raucous school board meetings and papered carpool lanes with fliers warning that school curriculums were promoting the ideas of “Bad Angry White People” and “cannibalism.”
“I get frustrated with the Democrats’ lack of movement, to be quite transparent,” said Rahman, who recently joined Red Wine and Blue. “I think the other side has an engine that is always moving. They have a playbook. They’re playing chess and we’re playing Go Fish or something.”
I get that. But this sort of grassroots action is much more effective anyway. Good for them.
That’s one story of parents fighting these people back. I’m sure it will spawn 57 competing stories of angry white people screaming at school boards. But it’s something.