The Daily Signal - 'Black Lives Matter at School' Week Is a Marxist Attack on the Family, Moms for Liberty Leader Warns

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

As students across the United States struggle to master basic reading and math skills coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, some schools are dedicating the first week of February to "Black Lives Matter at School" in a "Week of Action." Tina Descovich, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, urges parents to see whether their school district is engaging in that program and to speak out against it if it is. "I think most Americans are starting to tune in and understand that we are in a crisis in America in public education," Descovich tells Tyler O'Neil on "The Daily Signal Podcast." Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, February 2nd. I'm Tyler O'Neill. I sat down with Tina Descovic. She is the co-founder of Moms for Liberty. And she's raising the alarm about Black Lives Matter at school week of action. This is a national campaign that the Black Lives Matter at school organization pushes. And it explicitly says that it's targeting the traditional nuclear. family and saying that this is not a good family structure, particularly for black people. And Tina Descovic is raising the alarm about this because the traditional family structure is one of the things that helps people succeed of all races. And the fact that they're trying to undermine that in schools across the nation really will shock most American parents. But there's another angle to this. and she emphasized this a great deal.

Tina told me that the rates of literacy, you know, when you send children to school, the number one thing is that they can learn to read and write and do basic math. You know, we're talking elementary school students. And this project is taking kids away from that in order to push a divisive issue based on cultural Marxism. And this is the idea, again, back to critical race theory, that America is an inherently racist society and that we have to pretty much flip everything on its head in order to bring about what's called equity, which they differentiate from equality because they know that equality is all about enabling everyone to achieve what they can best achieve, whereas equity is about trying to force the result. down on people regardless of merit, regardless of what they've done. And so what we're seeing here is a national project that's pushing an ideology that's distracting away from basic education at a time when America's public schools and even private schools are struggling to achieve what basic education demands, to get students able to read and write

and do basic math. And so listen to my discussion about this with Tina Descovic right after this. For over 35 years, the Heritage Foundation Job Bank has been helping conservatives at all professional levels find employment in key positions in Washington, D.C., and across the country. We can help you connect with positions in the administration on Capitol Hill, in public policy organizations and in the private sector. To learn more about the Heritage Foundation Job Bank, go to heritage.org slash job dash bank. This is Tyler O'Neill, a managing editor at The Daily Signal.

I'm honored to be joined by Tina Descovic, who is co-founder of Moms for Liberty. Tina, it's great to have you with us. Hi, Tyler. It's my pleasure to be with you today. So, Tina, I want to jump right in. You're raising the alarm about Black Lives for, matter at school week. This is a national program that is at schools across the country. It explicitly says it opposes the nuclear family structure, especially in some sort of racialist push.

Can you break down why this is a threat and what America's parents should know about it? I think most Americans are starting to tune in and understand that we are in a crisis in America in public education. We have the lowest test scores since the 1980s in reading and the lowest ever math scores. Yet we have organizations like Black Lives Matter in schools that are setting aside a whole entire week, the first week of February 5th through the 9th to drive their ideology. And if you look at their 13 guiding principles and their four demands, one of them is to upset the nuclear family, to break down the nuclear family. They have other things like affirming transgenderism and focusing on globalism, many things that I don't agree with and don't

want my children learning, things that are divisive and will work to destroy our culture and our countries. Yeah, where do we get the idea that schools should be pushing ideologies like this that might be divisive as opposed to basic reading, writing, and arithmetic, which is what I grew up learning? Yeah, it's, you know, in some ways, it's a cover-up for public education failure. If you look, for example, Milwaukee Public Schools right now has, they're endorsing this week. They've put out information for their teachers on how to teach some of the 13 guiding principles that Black Lives Matter in schools are promoting. And yet, look at what's going on in Milwaukee Public Schools.

Tyler, 5% of Black students in Milwaukee Public Schools are reading on grade level in the fourth grade. That means 95% of the black children in Milwaukee cannot read. That is sentencing them to a life of real struggle. We know the school to prison pipeline is a real thing, but this is the reason why. They're not teaching kids to read or do math, and they're spending time on things that cause division and break down the things that we do know work in society like the nuclear family. So I think you and I would agree that black lives really do matter, but this slogan, you know, hides a bunch of very divisive ideologies. Would you break down? I mean,

you mentioned globalism. You mentioned attacks on the nuclear family. What is this rooted in and what sort of threat does it pose if it becomes the major focus of schools, as unfortunately it is across the country? Yeah. One of the 13 tenets is to affirm transgenderism. What does that have to do with public education. What does that have to do with being black and saying that black lives matter? All this is rooted in Marxism, to be honest. If you really look at what Marxism is, it divides societies into classes. It divides societies on all types of issues. And this Black Lives Matter in schools program, the lessons, the assignments, that all of the things you can, oh, Tyler, Milwaukee public schools, Boston public schools, L.A. public schools. 18 states have signed on so far. We still have a few more days before this week launches, but 18 states have signed on to make sure that the children in their states are learning these things. It's a real problem.

And, you know, when you say Marxism, we're talking cultural Marxism. You know, this isn't just this isn't just economic class. I think it's interesting the way that some on the left like to push back against the idea that this is Marxism. even though, you know, BLM co-founders said they're trained Marxists and the same goals of attaining power through division run through this kind of ideology. But, you know, this Marxism, yeah, would you talk a little bit more about what you've seen, you know, specifically in your own experience with the school board and what parents can do about this? Yeah, I served here in a county in Florida. It's a red county. People are pretty conservative. A lot of there's a military base here. NASA is here. And so you would never think that this type of ideology would be seeping into our school system here. It's historically been an A district, unfortunately, in the more recent years, it's dropped down to a B. But some of the reasons for that is, is these ideologies are starting to infiltrate into the public school system here. So I, you know, I lost my reelection to a radical liberal in 2020 in August of 2020. But I had this time period between August and November where I still had to serve before she took the seat that I was sitting in. And it was about a month. So I had already lost my election.

And it was about a month before I stepped down from the state. And the school district had moved forward with a training. It said it was, you know, training to help with racism. You know, we were coming off of the summer of George Floyd, et cetera, et cetera. And I could have not gone to the training because I was almost done with my term. But the training was for all the leaders in the district. It was all the principals, all of the staff that were in leadership roles. And I thought, I'm very curious on the approach they're taking as I'm on my way out.

It was an all-day training. I sat through about two hours of it. The guy that stood on stage, his very first sentence out of his mouth, was, I want to tell you a story that starts in 1619. And I just, you know, I just hung my head down and slumped my shoulders because I knew it was here. I knew what was happening. I knew that I no longer sat in a position to stop it on the school board. So, you know, some of this leads up to why Tiffany and I started Moms for Liberty is we saw it coming here to Florida and our red counties.

And then when we pulled the cover back around the country and got chapters active and moms active, they started exposing the things in all the communities. A teacher from L.A. Unified School District emailed us last week with all of the lesson plans and stuff that were being pushed out to teachers on Black Lives Matter in schools. So, you know, our organization on the front lines, obviously, were moms for liberty, but a lot of teachers rely on us that are afraid to speak out in their districts to get us the information so that we can see what's going on in public schools. Yeah, and I think there's an underappreciated aspect here.

one of the organizations that's gone very hard against you, the Southern Poverty Law Center, also has their education arm formerly called Teaching Tolerance. I think it's interesting. In 2021, they decided that teaching tolerance was too tolerant to name. So they pushed it to learning for justice. But, you know, your fellow co-founder, Tiffany Justice, shared on Twitter today. And I mean, I think she's probably spoken about this before, that her school district had been using materials from the Southern Poverty Law Center

from then teaching tolerance, and she called it out and got them removed. But do you see teaching tolerance and now learning for justice as an early sign of what we're seeing with Black Lives Matter at school now? Oh, 100%. So Tiffany just didn't get the lessons removed. The SPLC was actually coming to her district to train her teacher. And so, yeah, her alarm went off. Her red flag went off. And she said, this is not okay. But, you know, a lot of school board members don't know. You get elected to school board. You go off

to your state training. You get, you get indoctrinated by your state organization, which is deeply tied to the superintendent's organization and also is deeply tied to the teachers union. And so, you know, it's like this cabal. It's, you know, the K-12 cartel, we call it, because it just is all-encompassing. So Tiffany, I did not know her. You know, we did not know each other literally until we started Moms for Liberty. But obviously we were fighting the same fight, seeing the same things, alarm bells going off. I think both of us not exactly sure what was happening in 2018 and 2019, but having concerns and speaking out in our capacity where we could.

And we're just so grateful now to have a national platform and a connection of 130,000 moms. And like I said, teachers that are bringing this stuff forward because it has been going on for decades. small incremental ways. As 2020 happened, it was like the floodgates were opened and everybody got to see, you know, because of COVID and the lessons being streamed into the home, because they got so bold in so many of the things that they were doing, Black Lives Matter rising in popularity, everything came to the forefront and has been exposed. My concern, Tyler, is that people are sitting back on their laurels again. You know, we as parents and community members and taxpayers have pretty much ignored public education for decades. If we were involved, we baked cupcakes for the classroom,

we raised money for a playground. But we weren't paying attention to ed policy. We weren't paying attention to what really was happening and being taught in curriculum in the classroom. 2020 changed that. But here we are in 2024. And we have 18 states, like I said, supporting this curriculum for this week, this week of action, Black Lives Matter and school week of action, that is divisive. It doesn't help to teach reading or writing or any. of the basics. It just doesn't belong in schools. And so we want to take this opportunity to sound the alarm, to get parents to open their eyes. You know, more than anything, if out of this conversation, what I want is that parents contact their school, their teacher, their principal, their school district,

and ask, are we celebrating this BLM week of action here in our district? And if so, I want to see every assignment, every video, every paper, everything that is going to be handed to my child. And I think your point about sitting on Laurels is so important. Because a lot of school districts, a lot of parents across the country may think, oh, well, it's probably happening, like you said, in Milwaukee, in Chicago. But it can't be happening here, right? But you witnessed it in a red county in Florida. And we're seeing stories from even, you know, not even public schools alone, but also charter schools. and some of these alternate school choice options that people are availing themselves of after COVID,

even there we're seeing some of this rot come in. Even in private schools, private Christian schools, Catholic schools are notorious for having a lot of this stuff and embracing this social justice warrior curriculum that, you know, that's trying to train our children to be social justice warriors at a very young age. So what curriculum should parents be on the lookout for? for. I mean, obviously, the Black Lives Matter at school week of action, particularly, but there are other curriculum that maybe they're not as clued in on, maybe hadn't heard of. What should they be looking out for? It's everywhere. It is everywhere. You have to be diligent. You have to do the work.

You have to get partners to help you to do the work. I'll go back to a couple years ago when our chapter in Williamson County, Tennessee launched our chapter chair there, organized her chapter immediately because a mom came to her of a biracial child. And the child was in the back of the car. She picked him up from school. And he said something about hating his white part. And so of course, the mom wanted to explore what that was all about. It turned out, you know, after she contacted the chapter, they focused in on some of the lessons that were being taught in school. He's a second grade little boy. And a long story short, the curriculum is wit and wisdom. It's being used all over the country. But our chapter took the time. They spent a thousand hours. They picked every book that

set in the curriculum, every lesson plan. They even got a hold of the teacher's manual. And they read every sentence. And they mapped it out. And you really had to do that to see the problem. There was, you know, little things dropped in kindergarten, added on into first grade. And then in second grade, they actually had a nine-week social justice segment in their English language arts curriculum. And this is where that child was, was right in the middle of that nine weeks when he started to really hate half of his white side and tried, and, you know, what they were exposing them to. And so we've come under a lot of fire for the work that that chapter has done. And, you know, I want to take the opportunity right now to set the record straight on some of that because, you know, the curriculum included the book Ruby Bridges goes to school. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that book.

But there was a teacher's manual that went along with that, that spent time. with those second graders pointing out the N-word and how it was in one of the backgrounds of one of the pictures in the book. The teacher's manual taught it in a way that was divisive. It didn't teach it in a way. It didn't direct the teacher to teach it in a way that showed Ruby Bridges as a hero, as as brave as what she did is amazing and she had courage. It taught it in a way that was divisive. I didn't, you know, I have children. If anyone would have taught them the N-word in second grade, I would have been irate. And if I had a biracial child sitting in that classroom, learning that Ruby Bridges was more of a victim than a hero, that's very upsetting to me.

And it's so unfortunate that we as an organization get attacked for that. We want to lift up Ruby Bridges for what she did. You know, and what this curriculum, what this social justice movement is doing, what Black Lives Matter in schools is doing is not uplift. the black community. It's covering up the fact that 5% of black students in Milwaukee can read. It's covering up the fact that we are failing black students as a whole in this country. And so, you know, get that garbage out of our schools. Let's focus on teaching them to read. Yeah. So how do we stop failing black students? Because this is, you know, and I think you really hit the nail on the head, a lot of these people, and I think a lot of people who started

pushing this ideology, their hearts were in the, I want to help racial minorities. And if you look at most of those who support this ideology, it tends to be white people. It tends to be upper middle class white women. And this is a really interesting sort of gap because I think they're supporting this ideology because they think it helps black people. yet we're seeing here on the ground that it's not helping black students in particular. Yeah, it's not helping minority students at all. You know, the Hispanic students also struggle terribly.

Their reading rates are lower than white students in general, and then black students are even lower than that. And I agree with you. You know, I have worked with many wonderful people while I served on the school board, some that I disagreed with politically. Many of their hearts were in the right place. even the ones that were supporting some of the social justice things that I just don't agree with. But the fact of the matter is, you know, this isn't a complicated issue.

This isn't, you don't have to have a PhD to understand that if you go back to the basics, if you go back to phonics, if you go back to teaching skills of multiplication tables and the things that we were taught when we were children and focusing in on that and then building on that, that's the path to success. All of this other stuff is just cover up for the fact that there's been so much failure. And, you know, it's beyond just cover up for the failure. If you look at the Marxist roots of it, cultural Marxism, you said it, is exactly what it is. It has intent to divide.

Does the teacher on the front line that's teaching it understand that? No, I don't think so at all. It's being used on them because they have good hearts. And they're being told, you do this. this is what's really going to help them because they're going to feel a scene. They're going to feel heard. And then, then you'll be able to teach them to read and do math because then they'll feel seen and heard. It's complete nonsense.

It's failing miserably everywhere it's tried. And the alarms need to be sound and raised up in sound for parents because the only people that are going to stop this right now are parents. Yeah. So what parents can do? Parents can speak out at school board meetings. Parents can go directly to the principals at their children's schools. Parents can, what are some of the ways that you've found parents don't know that they have a voice when they actually do?

Yeah, that's the part, right, that we're so good at. But first, you know, there's just some easy steps you can take. First, go to your school or your school district's website. And just look, are they celebrating Black Lives Matter in School Week of Action February 5th through the 9th? If they are loud and proud, it will be out there and front and center. It may even have, the website might even have the lesson plans in some of the curriculum. Look at it. See what you're concerned about.

And then contact, start with the teacher, then go to the principal and then raise it to the level of the school board. If your whole district is endorsing it, it goes straight to the school board. If your classroom teacher is endorsing it, go straight to her or him and share your concerns. If your district is hiding it, which is very possible, you can do a FOIA request, a public records request. And if you want to know how to do that, you can go to our website, mom's for liberty.org, or you can, you know, you can Google how to do a public records request or a FOIA request. It's not hard to do. It's your school is a public entity. And they have to give you the information that you ask for. And so you do that. You ask to see everything in the last six months on

Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter in schools, you're going to find more than you bargain for. You might find some trainings. You might find lots of emails and phone calls, but most of all, you're going to find the curriculum and the things that are being used in your classroom with your child. And then you take it to the school board and see if they will address your concerns. And if they don't, you then gather with other parents. You send it to Moms for Liberty. Info at momsfor liberty.org. We will help expose what your children are being exposed to, Because when parents have to see it, when you put it in front of them, they get concerned and they get vocal. But I think it's important also for parents to know that, you know, Black Lives Matter was associated with the most destructive riots in American history in terms of property damage in 2020, the George Floyd riots where I believe the number is upwards of 20 people were killed.

These were not peaceful protests, contrary to a lot of the legacy media spin. And we're still seeing some of the actions occasionally inspired by this. You know, in Georgia last year, there was a Molotov, a riot involving Molotov cocktails where an SPLC attorney actually got arrested in charge for domestic terrorism. But, you know, this movement, I think. get, it gets, it doesn't get emphasized enough that, you know, we hear all about the capital riot and that was horrible in different ways too. But we don't tend to hear about these riots and you tend not to see when people are endorsing Black Lives Matter at school week. I mean,

not everybody who supports Black Lives Matter was a violent rioter. Of course not. It was a broad movement. But, you know, we have this albatross of January 6th that is used on one side of the political aisle. And on the other side, you get Black Lives Matter and they act as though the riots never happened. Yeah, you know, there's, there is so much that has happened in our country over the last few years that is destructive to our country. And at Monts for the Brady, we try not to get involved in stuff at the federal level as much as we can. I mean, we do fight at all levels of government. But, you know, when we started Moms for Liberty, it was because we knew these fights had to happen at the most local level. And so the nonsense going on in D.C., whether it be

Black Lives Matter riots or what happened on January 6th, we don't want any part of that. We want to protect our kids. We want to be there in front of the school boards. We want to watch those school boards. We want to know what our children are being taught. And so, you know, I get what you're saying about the narrative and how it's shaped in the media and how how that does impact people's perception, especially of this now Black Lives Matter in schools, it's probably okay because it says it's Black Lives Matter and we haven't seen all the horrible news tied to the movement. But I have no control over that. There's nothing me as mom can do about what the national media is doing in this situation. What I can do is find the assignment,

pick it up, scan it in, take a picture with my phone. I can share it with my friends. I can take my complaint to the school board meeting and I can impact change in my community today about this. And, you know, Tyler, that method works because when one does it, makes the paper, maybe, with any luck, or at least it goes viral on social media, and then the next community sees it. And a mom finds that in her kid's backpack. And she says, oh, no, it's here too. And then she speaks out. And that, you know, that's how a grassroots ground game movement works.

And that is the only way we are going to stop this from happening because it's so invasive. It's in all parts of everything. It's in our curriculum. It's in our schools. It's in our job trainings. It's everywhere. And so it's just going to take everybody being vigilant and doing their part in their little circle. Yeah.

I love that. Being focused on the specific messages that are being fed to our kids and calling it out where you see it. I mean, you already mentioned, where can people follow moms? for Liberty, stay in touch, where should they send these tips and how should, you know, if they're working on calling attention to this and the school board isn't listening, I think you mentioned info at Moms for Liberty, but where can they find you? And let's emphasize that again. Thank you. They can go to our website, Momsforliberty.org. Follow us on social. Our Twitter is very active. Tiffany runs that and stays engaged. And, you know, if you tag us on Twitter on something

something that you found in your school. We will see it. We will push it out from there. A lot of media follows us on Twitter and picks things up just naturally that way. Info at moms for liberty. org. If you've got something more lengthy, you would like to share with us and you don't want to be so public about it. We will keep your privacy. We will not tell anybody where it came from. So send it to us. We can do some of that work for you. But mostly, Tyler, if you're a parent, not a parent and you're just concerned. You're a taxpayer. You're a teacher. And you want to do something. You want to get involved. You need to join your local Moms for the Ritty chapter. We are in 300 counties now, 48 states. Our goal is to be in all 3,000 counties in all 50 states. So you can join a chapter. You can

start a chapter. We are the watchdogs over school boards. Our goal is to have a moms for the member at every school board meeting from now to the end of time because you cannot take your eye off what they're doing. You have to, you have to be plugged in, you have to watch. And they need to know that we are watching. Thank you so much, Tina. It's great to have you as always. Thanks, Tyler. I appreciate the time and the effort that you're putting in to highlighting this and exposing what's going on. That was Tina Descovic with mom's for Liberty. If you appreciated what you heard here, please share it with your friends and neighbors. And if you really liked it, please leave us a five-star rating and review. We read all of your

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