ExclusiveVirginia Mom: Save Our Children and Our Schools

Hi Stacey, it's so great to have you with us today. Thank you for having me, Jenny. Can you introduce yourself a little bit? Tell our audience who you are and why you're here. Yeah, so I'm a mother of six. I'm a stay-at-home mom and I live in Fairfax, Virginia. And I have two kids in the public school system and my other four in private school. And I had heard some of the stories about pornography in the schools and books coming home in parents, you know, their backpacks like fourth graders finding a book in their backpack and the parents are like, oh my gosh, what is this? And, you know, after you see a couple of those stories you start to wonder if this is something that's pervasive. Is this going on everywhere? And it, you know, gave me a few titles to work from. And I thought, okay, let's see if this is in our high school. And sure enough, they were. We went and checked the books out and what I saw was horrifying. The images in one of the books, it's a graphic novel, so it's illustrated and it's, you know, it's completely X-rated. This isn't borderline or ambiguous at all. And so I felt like as a parent, I had a duty to let other parents know because if I didn't know, I figured there's a lot of people who don't know. And so I took it to the school board meeting. The famous one? The famous one last September. And, you know, when I read those passages aloud and showed the images, the school board was completely taken aback and it caused an uproar. And I think it became a national news story overnight because of the fact that nobody knew. It was almost like an expose on my part inadvertently. And, you know, I became, I guess you could say, in a sense, a whistleblower. But it's good because it has sparked that national conversation. And these materials shouldn't be in our schools. We have laws against this. How did it get there in the first place is a question I would love to have answered. But that's kind of, yeah, that's how I did what I did. When was the first time that you realized something wasn't right in school? It was in early September. So I saw a couple of- 2021 or 2021? Right, of 2021. I saw a couple of reports on Newsmax here in the U.S. And I saw a couple of other school board meetings in Texas that were, you know, like on YouTube. And that's kind of what alerted me to the situation and gave me the titles to go and look up. And since then, I joined social media. And that is a thing that enables other people to reach out to you and give you information. So I have parents from all over the country who are sending me books that they found in their school districts. And I think the list at this point is probably, there's probably around 100 books that are completely pornographic, that have no place in our school system. And it's a real fight to get these books removed. The school districts don't want to do it. They don't have any interest in doing the right thing to protect children. Why is that? Why did those books go into the children's library at the first place? Well, what I think is going on is that most of the books that I've seen so far, they tend to be a part of an agenda, okay? And it's a very politicized political agenda. You wouldn't think that pornography would be political, right? Who's in favor of porn in schools? Nobody wants that, right? Most people are of common decency and they don't want their children being exposed to pornography. But the problem with these particular books is they center on two other side subjects that are part of the leftist agenda. And I like to call it what it is. It's the communist agenda, okay? I use that word a lot. And there are not a lot of people who will use the word communism, but I don't like to tap dance around it and call it a softer term. I think it's important to call a thing what it is. I actually did that on January 27th was the last time I spoke before the school board. And I did, I called them communists, like to their faces. I saw that video and you said that let's stop calling it wokeness. Let's call it what it is, communism. Don't use euphemisms for communism because this is a very real present danger to society in America. And so these two side categories that the pornography is attached to are the gender queer movement. If you want to call it, they call it queer theology or not theology. What is the word I'm looking for? They call it queer theory. That's what it is. It's like critical race theory. It's queer theory. And then the other part of it is the racial component. So one of the books that I challenged is a book by an African-American homosexual man. And I don't know why it is that they're inserting so much pornography into those two subjects. But I think the purpose is for indoctrination. And I think it's essentially a form of grooming. I think it confuses children and I think it desensitizes them to certain things. And then you're making kids vulnerable to predators with the exposure of that type of material. So it has no place in the school system. And I'm just going to keep fighting that battle. On a larger scale, you think today's wokeness is actually part of communism. Yes. Tell us more about why you think so. Well, because I think it connects to what were the things that Lenin would talk about. There were many things where a big part of their breaking down of society and that cultural revolution has to do with breaking down of traditional mores and traditional norms, right? So when it comes to sex and this queer theory stuff, they don't want to have traditional relationships between a man and a woman within the context of the sacrament of marriage. They want to break down all barriers to sex so that it becomes normal or okay. So it breaks down the family. Exactly. It breaks down the roles of the family. But it's also to have sex at will, I think, with anyone at any time, right? So that's where we drift into the realm of pedophilia because then it's breaking down that taboo about sex between adults and children. And some of the imagery specifically in one of the books I challenged in Genderqueer is exactly that. There is a panel in the book that depicts a man having sex with a boy. And I mean, that's literally the worst crime, right? After murder, I think, would be pedophilia. So I don't know how our school board can defend that, but that's what they did. I challenged it and they refused my challenge and they put the books back on the shelves. So they're getting behind that. They're saying, no, we're in favor of porn and not just porn, but pedophilia for our children. Parents just can't stand for it. We can't stand for it. This is so bad on our children. Why do you think we get to where we are today? I think the overall breakdown in society has a lot to do with what comes out of the entertainment industry. So this is part of the publishing industry, right? They're in charge of printing books. But if you think about how far down we've come with music, television, even some television commercials nowadays are so pushing the envelope of common decency. And they depict things that are becoming things that you would have never dreamed of seeing on television even five years ago or much less 10 years ago. I think there was an ad recently from, I want to say Ikea and, you know, it's a furniture company, but they made an ad where it was like two men kissing under a Christmas tree. And one of the men was dressed as Santa Claus. And, you know, everyone was like, whoa, what is that? You know, this is airing on national television when your children could be watching. And I think all of that stuff is very confusing to children. And society is getting pushed very strongly in that direction. But this is happening at a corporate level because it's coming from the advertisers. So all of those corporations, they're signing off on this type of imagery, this type of ad campaign. And I think it's for a purpose. I think they are strongly pushing that agenda. So before September last year, did you realize there's something wrong with the education system or there's something wrong with this wokeness that's going on in the society? Well, I think we all can see it in a sense, right? Because there's so many things going on, especially like the critical race theory discussion had started kind of becoming public last summer. But I didn't see it up close because my children had just entered the public school system this year. So because we were private schooled K through eight, right? And so in ninth grade, then you go to the public high school because we don't have a private school nearby. So I wasn't as personally aware of how bad it really was until I enrolled in school. And for my son, that was the year that COVID hit. So we were only in school for a little while and then the schools got shut down and then they were shut down. It all went online for the next year. So it was just this year when I started seeing the curriculum materials. And it's incredibly shocking. And I just don't know how as a parent you couldn't say anything. I think that there's got to be more pushback coming from the parents. And if that keeps happening, I think maybe we'll have a good impact at changing the trajectory that things are on. And I'm really pleased to see that what I did last September has definitely started a movement. I think it's given a lot of parents courage because every day it seems like somebody sends me another story of parents in another school district in other states and they're challenging these books and making the objection public and strong. And that's the way we have to fight. This is gonna be a long fight and everybody's gonna have to get involved. Yeah, and just recently, I think the San Francisco school board, the three of the members got expelled by the parents because I think a lot of them are actually Asian parents. Right, and think of it, San Francisco, not a conservative town, right? So that's a city of mainly liberals, obviously. And to have all of those parents be fed up, they've had enough with the agenda, they've had enough with the school closings and the masking and all of these sort of like trampling of our freedoms that have been going on and it's progressing at too fast of a pace. And maybe the communists pushed a little too hard and got out over their skis and it woke everybody up. When you have Democrats voting out fellow liberal progressives, I mean, that's an amazing occurrence. I couldn't believe that happened and it's wonderful. It's a good sign. I think the election in November in this country is going to be amazing. I think there's going to be a big red wave, a lot of conservative victories all across the nation. Yeah. You know, Stacey, you're a mom of six, a mother of six. So that's a lot of work already. And this work that you're starting, you're helping, like you said, we have to keep fighting. This takes a lot of energy and time as well, I would think. How do you balance the two? Well, it's hard. I mean, I'm a stay-at-home mom. And so, yeah, I have a lot of responsibilities just for, you know, I have such a broad range of kids because I have kids in high school and then I have, you know, little ones in elementary school. But I'm just doing my best to make it work right now. And, you know, my activism, such as it is, has become almost like a part-time job in and of itself. But it's important. I mean, I have the ability right now, I think, to encourage other parents. That's what is the biggest impact I'm having, right? It's encouraging other parents to take that baton and run with it. And so that's why I keep doing it. You know, sometimes maybe, okay, we're having frozen pizza for dinner, but, you know, I'm doing my best. Or they can eat instant noodle. Yeah, hey, my kids love those too. Yeah, for sure. So, you know, a lot of people, like in the past, I heard a lot of people saying, like younger generations seems to like socialism, like in this country, like in recent years. And a lot of people also think that, oh, socialism is not bad or it's a democratic socialism. It's not the same as communism or not the same as the regular socialism. So do you feel there is a misconception about socialism and communism in this country? Yeah, and I think that's one of the reasons why I use the harder term, like I said, and call it what it is, because that idea that somehow socialism is a good thing, or it's not harmful, or it's not going to lead to communism. No, just call it what it is. And I think, unfortunately, the young generation isn't getting taught that history, right? They may not know that, you know, the biggest cause of death under socialism, under all of the socialist regimes is starvation, right? How many people have died of starvation if they weren't murdered for being a dissident, essentially? Yeah, starvation or violence. Exactly. It's either one. And so that's the thing. We just have to keep speaking those truths and making sure that our youth knows the real history so that we don't fall and go down that path, because it's a terrible thing to have them misled into thinking that there's something good to come of it, because there isn't. There isn't a, you know, what do they say about socialism? It's that experiment, and they just keep doing the experiment, and eventually it's going to work. It's not. It's never going to work. Yeah, the process is actually the end. So what do you think are, like, what would be your suggestions to help improve our education system? Is it school choice? Is it the, I mean, how can we do better? Yeah, I think that's a big piece of it, right, is that parents should have more control over how their money is used, right? Because we're all paying taxes. Everybody's paying for the public school system, but they don't have any say over how they use it as a consumer. So I think if, when you talk about school choice, if you could make it in every state in such a way that the money follows the student, follows the child, so that, you know, you could, like, I think they say in Virginia, they spend, like, $15,000 per student, right? So if you could designate that your money go to the school of your choosing, in other words, to follow your child, it would make things instantly more competitive. It would force the schools who are not doing as good of a job to improve what they're doing, because it would almost make it like a free marketplace, wouldn't it? If you could choose, because it's like saying, hey, I want to send my kid to this private school, but I don't have access to the funds. I want to control where those funds go. So I know that's going to be a longer battle. I think it actually, I heard one of our delegates in the state of Virginia say that that requires a change of the constitution in Virginia, that right now, our school boards in the Commonwealth have the ability to choose whether or not they will allow a charter school to be built, and that shouldn't be happening. So I hope that they can get that changed, and then maybe parents would have more control over their child's education. So what about public schools? Can we still make them better, or do we just give them up? No, I'm not a fan of, you know, there's some parent advocates that say, oh, you just have to pull out. You have to homeschool your kids. Well, not everybody can do that. That's a real problem, right? Not everybody has a parent at home who's a stay-at-home parent like me, and, you know, they have to work, or, I mean, honestly, even if I could homeschool, or I was able to homeschool, I don't think I would be necessarily good at it, right? And I know there's a lot of parents that feel that way. So I think that's why we have to fight to take the system back. We don't give up on it and just throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think we have to fight to reform the system, and there are a lot of people who need that resource, need the public school system. So we've maybe neglected it for too long and just sort of been asleep at the switch, and I think now parents are awake. That's the thing that happened in Virginia. Part of the reason why Governor Glenn Youngkin won the election was parents were awakened to all of these things that are going on. So I think there's an opportunity here where you could actually take the system back and reform it and correct some of these wrongs. Yeah, power to the parents. Exactly. So what's your next step plan, Stacey? What do you plan to do? Well, right now what I'm hoping to do is I started a website. It's called mamagrizzly.org, and I'm trying to get labeling for books. So, for example, we have labeling right now, on everything that kids consume when it's music industry related. So CD albums all have a parental advisory label on it, and that started in the 1980s from Tipper Gore. Tipper Gore was a Democrat. She was married to the vice president, Al Gore, at the time, and her fight was against pornography in the music industry, and she won that battle, and she was a liberal. So she was crucified in the media. They called her all sorts of bad things and said she was like the church lady, but she had a point, and she ultimately won that battle. And so we have a rating system for video games. We have a rating system for television programming on the networks. We have the MPAA has a rating system for films, and this is not a rating system, but what I would like to do is I'm calling it PAWPRINTS. So the acronym is PAW, P-A-W, which stands for Parental Advisory Warning. So I want to put PAWPRINTS on the books in our school libraries that have sexually explicit content, and at least it would be a temporary solution to labeling the books so that parents are aware what is inside the pages of this particular book are not appropriate for somebody who's under the age of 18, and then if it came home accidentally in her child's backpack, you could say, oh, whoops, not this one, and, you know, and take it away from them because changing the law is a longer battle. It may take years to close some of those loopholes that have allowed these radical librarians to put this kind of material into the library. So that's what I'm working on. You can go to my website mamagrizzly.org and check it out and see some mock-ups of the PAWPRINTS labels. Great, great. So for average parents who may not have as much time or energy to put a lot of work into, you know, helping to change the system, what would you advise to them? Well, I think everybody has to just sort of participate in whatever way they feel comfortable with. And, you know, that can be something as simple as sending emails to your friends, you know, when you see articles about things like this and this type of corruption, make your other fellow parents aware of it. Not everybody has to do something dramatic like get up and speak at a school board meeting, which is a very nerve-wracking thing to do, right? It's, you know, what I did was one of the more humiliating things I've ever done in my life. I mean, it was awful to stand in a room of, you know, a couple hundred strangers and say the things I had to say when I was reading aloud from that book. So, you know, that's not necessary, but you can do all sorts of things just at wherever you are at your station in life. And, you know, communicate. Or check out the books in your kid's backpack. Yeah, you know, everybody needs to be a lot more engaged and involved, right? If you didn't know, then now's your time. It's your wake-up call. Yeah, great. Well, thank you so much, Stacy, for sharing your experience and advice. Thanks for having me, Jenny.