Parents are fighting to take back race-obsessed, ‘hypersexualized’ schools
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
159.09377
Summary
What is going on with the school system in North America today? Should parents be worried? And should they get in the game more? Our guest today is one of the parent activist voices who has been on the front lines of what's been called a "Mama Bear" movement. She's been labeled a hero by many, but has also taken heat from detractors.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Whether you own a bustling hair salon, or a hot new bakery, you need business insurance that can
00:00:06.980
keep up with your evolving needs. With flexible coverage options from TD Insurance, you only pay
00:00:11.800
for what you need. TD, ready for you. Hello, I'm Anthony Fury. Thanks so much for joining us for
00:00:22.600
the latest episode of Full Comment. If you haven't done so already, please consider subscribing.
00:00:26.700
What is going on with the school system in North America today? Should parents be worried? And
00:00:32.740
should they get in the game a bit more? Now, there are currently municipal elections underway right
00:00:37.220
now in Ontario, my home province, and a number of people have remarked to me that it almost seems
00:00:41.540
like school board trustee elections are garnering more attention than city council races, at least
00:00:46.840
in some neighborhoods. Could that be because the stakes for public education seem so much higher
00:00:52.180
right now and ripped straight from the news headlines? A transgender teacher wearing jumbo-sized
00:00:58.060
prosthetic breasts to class. I'm sure you saw that viral story. No longer requiring kids to take
00:01:03.400
exams throughout their whole high school experience that's happening here in Ontario. An increase in
00:01:08.220
politics in the classroom, and an obsession with divisive race and identity issues. That's what's
00:01:13.320
animating a lot of parents here right now. But while this seems to only just be flaring up in Canada
00:01:18.340
now, we are a good couple of years behind a parents rights movement that's been unfolding in the United
00:01:24.040
States. How'd that one get started? What were the issues that first got parents concerned? And what
00:01:29.860
could that experience perhaps teach us about what to expect here in Canada? Our guest today is one of
00:01:36.020
the parent activist voices who has been on the front lines of what's been called a mama bear movement.
00:01:41.020
She's been labeled a hero by many, but has also taken a lot of heat from detractors for it as well.
00:01:45.980
Azra Nomani was well known to many people for her work prior to speaking out on education issues.
00:01:51.640
She was a journalist for the Wall Street Journal for many years, as well as writing for the New York
00:01:55.140
Times. She later became an organizing voice for Muslim Americans who reject extremism and radical
00:02:00.340
Islam. Now she's a senior fellow at the Independent Women's Network and co-founder of a parent group
00:02:05.880
called the Coalition for TJ. We'll break down what that is in a minute. Azra Nomani joins us now.
00:02:12.980
Oh, wonderful. Thank you so much. And it is so great to have this mission to draw lessons from
00:02:20.180
our experience in America, in the United States of America, so that our fellow brethren and sisters
00:02:27.820
across the border can take back our schools. I love that. I love that mission.
00:02:33.260
And I want to get a sense of what that mission sort of really is, how it came about. And I guess I'll
00:02:38.700
start with you as I described your experiences, your activism, your writing prior to this movement.
00:02:44.720
What got you first interested in what's going on in schools and what got you concerned such that you
00:02:53.180
Yeah, you know, thank you so much for bringing up my backstory because it's really important to
00:02:58.520
understand it, I think, to know what motivates me today. There's really two principles.
00:03:03.940
I am a classic liberal, and I have always voted Democrat in the United States. Well, those were
00:03:12.740
for values that I believed were ones for equality, justice, and transparency. Well, unfortunately,
00:03:21.540
as you all know, in Canada also, a lot of those values have been lost among liberals. And we have
00:03:27.940
this new illiberal movement. I saw this very clearly as a Muslim feminist when we saw compromise.
00:03:35.780
These important values of human rights as, you know, special interest groups made sure that we
00:03:44.420
just stayed silent on issues of extremism within my Muslim community. Well, I do not believe in a
00:03:53.320
hierarchy of human value, you know, whether it's women who have to pray in the back of the mosque,
00:03:59.320
or race issues. And that enters into the debate about what's being taught at schools.
00:04:06.120
And then the second value that's really, really important to me is one of children's innocence.
00:04:15.000
You know, it is one that is sacred to all of us. And these two principles have guided me.
00:04:22.920
And to take your listeners and you back, June 7, 2020, it was my birthday. And I was a child born in
00:04:32.480
India to a Muslim family. I came to America at the age of four. An immigrant girl who knew not a word
00:04:39.440
of English. We lived in a roach infested student housing barracks, old army barracks on the campus
00:04:47.760
of Rutgers University. This girl detective named Nancy Drew became my best friend. And that's how I
00:04:54.320
learned English. And it was in America's public school system that I was able to really find my voice.
00:05:00.720
But there on June 7, 2020, the principal at my son's high school, Thomas Jefferson High School for
00:05:07.680
Science and Technology, sent our parents and students an email. And she wrote in it that we,
00:05:17.200
the parents and family of TJ students, needed to check our, quote, privileges. And it was the,
00:05:27.520
you know, virtue signaling of the moment after George Floyd's killing. But it was like a knife in our
00:05:34.480
hearts because we knew our stories. You know, we had parents who had survived the cultural revolution
00:05:42.960
in China, communism in Eastern Europe, my own family overcoming poverty. Well, our families were 70%
00:05:54.160
Asian at my son's school. And at that moment in the culture wars, we were the wrong side of brown.
00:06:03.040
We were the wrong kind of minority. And the school system started to put a target on our backs because
00:06:11.280
they wanted to increase the correct minority numbers at the school of black and Hispanic students. And so
00:06:19.520
that was my, that was my introduction to this new hierarchy of human value that has, you know,
00:06:27.840
plagued now the North American debate on race over the last two plus years.
00:06:35.360
And I understand that parents quickly organized. They were very frustrated with this idea that there
00:06:40.960
would need to be, I guess, entrance quotas based on the right, as you put it, minority groups of the
00:06:47.520
right skin colors. You got very organized and such that there's even court processes underway now.
00:06:52.400
Oh, yeah, it's just so beautiful. And I want to just inspire every parent because it was me, one mother who
00:07:00.480
received that email. Then it was another mother, Suparna Dutta, who also got that email. And she sent a
00:07:07.120
response to the principal the next morning. Another mom, Helen Miller, got the email. And she wrote an email back to
00:07:14.400
the principal that said, I'm hopping mad. She wrote it at three in the morning. I called us the hopping mad
00:07:21.840
parents for a while. But it was just half a dozen of us, you know, that's all it takes for a movement. And then
00:07:29.760
by September, we had created an organization, just like you said, called Coalition for TJ, just a Facebook
00:07:37.600
group. We used, you know, change.org for a petition against this new lottery system that they were
00:07:45.760
going to use to America's number one high school. They wanted to get rid of the merit-based admissions
00:07:52.400
tests and eliminate that test so that they would then be able to get the numbers that they wanted on
00:08:00.080
racial demographics. Well, guess what? We did organize exactly. We had a vigil for the death of TJ as we
00:08:08.640
knew it. And we were lucky enough to get these lawyers from this organization called Pacific Legal
00:08:13.840
Foundation to represent us in court. I just want parents to know that we didn't go to court and for
00:08:20.880
months until after we had been, you know, waging our battle in the court of public opinion. We have to win
00:08:29.920
in the court of public opinion in order to ever win in the court of law. And sure enough, in earlier this
00:08:37.280
year, in February 2022, we got a decision by the judge in this case that we had filed of discrimination
00:08:46.560
against Asians, and he ruled on our side. We, the parents, were correct. The school board had waged a campaign of
00:08:55.200
discrimination against the Asian families. The school board is now appealing because they're so stubborn. And
00:09:02.560
this case is very likely going to end up in the U.S. Supreme Court as a fundamental landmark case. Yeah, just like
00:09:10.640
Brown versus Board of Education in the 1950s integrated schools. That's the power. That is the power of a few
00:09:17.920
hopping mad moms. Well, here's something I don't understand, though. So we have this, I guess,
00:09:24.400
do-gooder principle, you know, good liberal intention saying, okay, I want to increase the
00:09:29.040
right kind of diversity or what have you. And then some parents who were of Asian heritage right back
00:09:34.560
and say, I'm unhappy with this. And I'm kind of confused why the principal didn't say, oh, okay,
00:09:39.280
okay, let's talk it out. And then, oh, whoops, I'm misguided. Fine, we'll figure it out. No,
00:09:44.240
instead, they dug in their heels. And like, how is it even going to court? I just find that kind of
00:09:48.400
remarkable that the administration would actually want to keep fighting on this. Yeah, that's where
00:09:53.120
our world has turned upside down, you know, and I'm carrying in my hands right now, the, you know,
00:10:00.240
manifesto for the ideology that has caused this upside down world called this book called the
00:10:07.040
critical race theory, the key writings that formed the movement. It's the big red book, I like to call it,
00:10:12.960
versus the little red book that Mao was pushing through the cultural revolution. Yeah.
00:10:19.920
And in this book is this new ideology of this upside down world. And what happened is that
00:10:28.080
you, you know, how language is exploited. So we, the Asians who had overcome, you know, tyranny,
00:10:36.560
poverty, poverty, and all of the, you know, elements of the oppression matrix, right, that's supposed to
00:10:43.280
grant you points. We were negated because we had dared to succeed in America academically. And so
00:10:54.400
a new term was assigned to us. And that is this term called being white adjacent.
00:10:59.360
What a term. What does that mean? When people say that, what do they mean by white adjacent?
00:11:05.840
I learned it in the summer of 2020. As I learned, you know, this, this, these three words, critical race
00:11:12.320
theory, it means that we have now the quote, privilege of, of education, jobs, perhaps employment,
00:11:25.680
that is part of the white society of oppressors. And then we have lost, you know, the elements of
00:11:36.400
oppression that would otherwise, you know, give us any kind of, you know, credibility among in the social
00:11:45.920
justice world. And, and so they even try to, you know, do this to Hispanics, right? Because they have
00:11:56.000
now differentiated with the white Hispanics versus the black Hispanics, which is the brown Hispanics.
00:12:03.360
Like there's this, this differentiation that's happening among people that is just convenient way to
00:12:09.920
erase the folks that are inconvenient in their narrative. And, and so we, we were termed white
00:12:18.720
adjacent. We were called resource hoarders. That's another slur used. We were called segregationists.
00:12:26.160
Can you imagine? Because our school had 70% Asians as if we had, you know, made this the rule.
00:12:35.360
All that had happened is I sat at the dining table every night with my son, you know, doing his homework
00:12:43.920
beside him, right? And that's how he passed these tests that got him into the school. But now we were
00:12:52.000
called the privileged class. And it was so disheartening to me, you know, I, I wanted to,
00:13:00.080
to be honest with your audience and you about, you know, being a classic liberal, because I think we have
00:13:05.840
to hear the voices and understand that this community has, uh, betraying those values of, um, you know,
00:13:15.920
fairness, just fundamental idea of fairness in society. When you start dehumanizing others, this is their
00:13:24.640
language, right? Like of, um, that I am just throwing back at them. Uh, they, they have,
00:13:31.040
they themselves have now created systemic racism. We'll be back with more with Azra Nomani in just a
00:13:37.600
moment. Did you lock the front door? Check. Close the garage door? Yep. Installed window sensors,
00:13:45.360
smoke sensors, and HD cameras with night vision? No. And you set up credit card transaction alerts,
00:13:50.400
a secure VPN for a private connection, and continuous monitoring for our personal info on the dark web?
00:13:55.280
Uh, I'm looking into it. Stress less about security. Choose security solutions from Telus
00:14:01.280
for peace of mind at home and online. Visit telus.com slash total security to learn more. Conditions apply.
00:14:08.160
When I found out my friend got a great deal on a wool coat from Winners, I started wondering,
00:14:13.680
is every fabulous item I see from Winners? Like that woman over there with the designer jeans.
00:14:19.120
Are those from Winners? Ooh, are those beautiful gold earrings? Did she pay full price? Or that
00:14:24.960
leather tote? Or that cashmere sweater? Or those knee-high boots? That dress? That jacket? Those shoes?
00:14:30.640
Is anyone paying full price for anything? Stop wondering. Start winning. Winners find fabulous for
00:14:37.760
less. Azra, I want to ask you about how this movement went from you doing activism at your son's
00:14:44.240
school to a much bigger conversation in different states, a national one that's unfolding right now.
00:14:49.840
I know you were on Dr. Phil recently talking about other concerns with parents' rights in the
00:14:54.480
classroom. Lots of debates. When you first started the coalition for TJ, I understand that parents
00:15:00.560
really from across America got in touch with you and different parent groups arose and you realized
00:15:05.520
they were different individuals with different connected but slightly different concerns about
00:15:11.200
what was going on in the classroom and that's led to the point where we now have almost a national
00:15:15.840
movement going on that's that's showed up just over the past couple years. Yeah, and really it is a
00:15:21.440
national movement and that's what's so remarkable and I'm gonna just borrow again from the progressive
00:15:27.840
world and tell you all about a lesson I learned from this woman Eleanor Schmiel, right? She was a feminist
00:15:34.480
leader in the United States and she came to my campus when I was an undergrad at West Virginia
00:15:39.520
University at West Virginia University and she said at that time back in the 80s you only need five
00:15:45.280
people for a movement one person to back then think about it pick up the phone and call folks to invite
00:15:53.280
them to your rally number two make a poster number three put tack it up on bulletin boards you know
00:16:01.840
number four staple all your little educational material and number five pick up the phone and call a
00:16:08.800
journalist. Hey, it's the same now. You know, I told you about Sobarnadatta, Helen Miller, Yu Yanzhou,
00:16:16.320
she is a Chinese-American who survived the Cultural Revolution, Harry Jackson. We started with a
00:16:23.680
handful of parents all coming from a place of authenticity and you know why, how do we grow? Well,
00:16:31.760
I learned it from Nancy Drew again. I'm a loud mouth, right? I'm a journalist and I got a
00:16:36.960
Substack started and started just writing our story and that's where take lessons from you know the
00:16:44.320
activist movements that you see around you. Get an account on Substack or Medium. Patch.com is a
00:16:52.480
platform in the U.S. Go on Nextdoor which is another platform. Start your Facebook groups. That's all it
00:17:00.720
takes in order to be real, you know, to let the world hear that tree falling in the forest. And yes, I
00:17:10.800
just started hearing stories from around the country, parents watching what was happening in their schools
00:17:18.240
and as we all know we all started speaking at our school boards and our one-minute and two-minute videos
00:17:26.080
we started sharing and one parent inspired another parent. I'll never forget the day that I watched
00:17:32.640
this dad, Ian Pryor, testify before his school board in Loudoun County, Virginia across the border
00:17:40.320
from where we were living and guess what? All he did is he stood there and he had not a note card in front
00:17:49.120
of him. He just looked each school board member in the eye and said his truth. And I thought to myself
00:17:57.440
that's all it takes, you know, we just have to speak from the heart, look them in the eye,
00:18:03.520
challenge them on these principles, simple principles of fairness, transparency, you know, and equality that
00:18:10.800
I had started talking to us about at the beginning. And that's that inspired me to go before my school
00:18:17.840
board at this time without my speech just written out in front of me reading from it and look them in
00:18:23.520
the eye. And what did they do at that turn? Cut off my mic, you know, because our power is so strong
00:18:30.880
because we and we took on this idea of the mama bears because, you know, Asian moms have been maligned
00:18:39.280
as, quote, tiger moms, right? Right, right. Yeah. And I said to myself, like, I want parents to have that
00:18:46.720
sense of honor, you know, that it is to be a parent. And are they maligning the idea of hard
00:18:54.720
work? Because I know I've heard the tiger mom idea is about, you know, make sure as you said,
00:18:59.200
sitting down at the table with your son, do your homework every day, we're going to make sure it's
00:19:02.480
there. And, you know, we're hearing more and more, I alluded to here in Ontario, you don't have to do any
00:19:08.320
exams, hypothetically, ever in high school to graduate, they still do it a little bit, but there's no,
00:19:13.120
it's not required at all. And it seems like very different than when I went to high school,
00:19:16.960
and just there's no standards anymore. So some kids, I guess, are just not going to adhere to
00:19:21.200
any standards. And then we're told that that is when, to your point, tiger moms, or whatever term
00:19:26.960
you want to use, do enforce standards in their own home. Oh, well, that's, that's not fair. That's not
00:19:31.600
fair, because it's not going on in other households. So we got to somehow, instead of celebrate that and
00:19:38.400
encourage it to be replicated, we got to drag that cohort down.
00:19:42.400
Yeah, you know, the New York Times just did this back to school issue on what school is for. And
00:19:49.680
I yeah, and so I got an email on a Thursday. And my experience is emblematic of, you know,
00:19:57.280
the crisis we're in today, because the editors realized, oh, darn, we don't have an argument that
00:20:02.640
school is for merit. Because exactly to your point, it's now an afterthought, you know,
00:20:07.760
the idea that we're actually supposed to excel and do our best. So can I write an op ed?
00:20:14.720
By Monday, I'm like, Okay, I can do it, you know, because we have to be involved in the debate,
00:20:20.720
right? Any opportunity we get. So I banged it out, we got it published by the next Thursday.
00:20:26.480
And I told our story, you know, my family story. And what did I get from this theology lecturer at
00:20:34.960
Harvard, I had lived with privilege of having had a father who became a professor in the university
00:20:41.920
system in America, and that I had, you know, educational social capital, or like some jargon
00:20:49.600
that I can't even understand. Well, we understand what it is. It's just, again, the privilege, you know,
00:20:54.640
used to negate us. And, and, and then I told the story in the op ed, I told the story about how as
00:21:02.560
a single mother, I chose to leave my job at the Wall Street Journal, so I could drop off my son,
00:21:07.920
pick him up, volunteer when I needed, read aloud at book cafe. And I was lectured and told, Oh,
00:21:15.120
that must have been nice to have had the privilege of leaving your job. Well, I didn't leave.
00:21:19.840
They have a problem with every choice you're making in life.
00:21:21.680
Exactly. I worked, I worked like every parent knows, every working parent knows. I worked to
00:21:29.600
raise him, put him to bed, and then start another shift, right? Till two, three in the morning to
00:21:35.840
earn the keep to keep a roof over our heads. So no matter what, if our argument is, is opposite theirs,
00:21:45.680
they will try to erase you. So that's why one important theme that we learned from the parents
00:21:50.960
in New York, who have fought this fight, they told us this dad, Chan Cook from the fight on the
00:21:59.360
merit schools in New York, he told me early on, it was Father's Day 2020, he said,
00:22:03.760
be unapologetic. Do not let them shame you. And that is the principle. Every time that we go before
00:22:15.520
the school board, we are unapologetic in the values, you know, that we believe the ones that you were
00:22:21.760
raised with, because that's what's going to uplift children, right? This race to the bottom by the
00:22:28.480
activists is devastating for not only society, but for our individual children. And that's what we
00:22:34.080
have to fight to protect. But they have attempted to shame you. I know in stories about you, I see
00:22:40.080
there's a profile in a long profile of you in Mother Jones, which is not particularly flattering,
00:22:45.120
tells your story, but lots of criticisms and talk about how quite remarkable that that you and the
00:22:51.040
people you do activism with have been labeled as white supremacists, you've been called QAnon moms,
00:22:56.480
I guess the idea that everything you're saying is just a conspiracy theory, to have concerns with
00:23:02.720
these things that are happening in schools, the admissions criteria, the critical race theory.
00:23:07.600
It is quite remarkable that the system, or at least some figures in the system,
00:23:12.160
in the entrenched establishment are very unhappy with you and other parents speaking out.
00:23:16.160
Yes. And, you know, it was my experience at the Wall Street Journal that always, you know,
00:23:21.760
taught me to follow the money. And it is money interests that want to shut us up. And who are
00:23:27.280
those interests, Anthony? Of course, it's the teachers unions. It's democratic party politics,
00:23:33.360
unfortunately, in the United States that the teachers union fund. And that is why it's just
00:23:39.840
was so exciting for me to hear what you said at the very beginning, that the school board race has
00:23:44.880
become the hottest ticket in town now, in Canada, because that's what's happening in the US. Because
00:23:50.880
we saw over these two plus years, that school boards are political, they are run by a machine,
00:24:00.400
and they shut you up, and they shut you out. And the only way you can prevail in crafting public
00:24:08.240
policy that fits your values is to get a seat on the board. But it's that simple. And parents have to
00:24:15.360
vote. We won the governor's election in Virginia, a year and a half into our battle. And who was one of the
00:24:26.000
moms that led that battle? It was the mom that I mentioned at the very beginning, Suparna Dutta, who received
00:24:33.920
that email from our principal, never involved in politics. And she ended up becoming the head of
00:24:40.400
the Educators for Youngkin coalition that ended up getting parents forward. And the governor Glenn
00:24:49.920
Youngkin was then elected after his opponent, Terry McAuliffe said, parents don't have a say in what's
00:24:58.160
taught in schools. You know, it's a remarkable line, but a remarkable tell, because we're increasingly
00:25:04.640
learning that that it is actually technically true. So people don't like that. And how they're pushing
00:25:08.720
back. Right, because this is a parents rights movement, really, you know, and the assumption that
00:25:17.440
we don't know what is best for our children is just so paternalistic, ironically, and patronizing. But
00:25:27.440
ultimately, we know it's ideological, you know, you divide the family, and you have more,
00:25:35.280
you know, persuasion than on the young mind. And this is, again, something I learned, you know,
00:25:41.200
fighting the extremists within my Muslim communities, like I knew that they were indoctrinating
00:25:48.240
our children in these madrasas or religious schools, and that we had to, you know, challenge that
00:25:56.160
interpretation of my religion that was being taught in those schools. Well, it's the same thing with
00:26:00.800
wokeism. It's a religion, and they are trying to go after children. They are going after children.
00:26:06.800
I have beside me, you know, book after book after critical race theory, the pronoun book. If you're
00:26:13.680
a drag queen, and you know it, the hips on the drag queen go swish, swish, swish.
00:26:19.040
Let's talk about it. The teen's guide to sex relationship and being human. And one of the lines
00:26:26.400
from it, I can't believe it, Anthony, is literally this one. It says to children, to teenagers,
00:26:33.280
a great place to research fantasies and kinks safely is on the internet.
00:26:39.600
I know. I know. So from race, they have now gone to gender and sexuality. But ultimately, it is about,
00:26:49.920
you know, winning the hearts and minds and bodies of our children. And it's our sacred duty as parents
00:26:56.800
And let me ask you about some things that are happening here in Canada, how it relates
00:27:01.520
to the issues that you've seen. To the point of the transgender issue, there is a teacher who's
00:27:06.400
gone viral around the whole world, pretty much. This teacher at Oakville High School, who has been
00:27:12.400
wearing these jumbo-sized fake breasts to class. It has not gone away. The person still shows up every
00:27:19.600
day, teaches shop class. I have some parent whistleblowers who tell me about it. And, you know,
00:27:25.280
I think what parents are mostly saying is just, this isn't appropriate attire. It's an odd situation.
00:27:29.920
It's distracting from work. And then there's other people who get hostile at it, who somehow think
00:27:35.840
it's like about transphobia or what have you. Nobody's talking about, I'm sure there are a number
00:27:40.320
of transgender teachers teaching in the Toronto area, and it's never been a news story. Nobody's
00:27:44.160
talking about them or vilifying them. It's this extreme scenario. And yet one thing that's been
00:27:49.120
remarkable for me as someone reporting on it is the school board and the administration just
00:27:53.760
constantly send back these antiseptic press releases or press statements just saying,
00:27:59.360
we support gender rights. We support inclusive environment. And you're asking them things like,
00:28:03.200
will the teacher be placed on leave? What's going to happen? We understand that some students have
00:28:07.360
been told they're not allowed to protest it. And you're asking these detailed questions and they
00:28:10.480
just give the same sort of automaton response to all of this for a scenario that's just out of control.
00:28:20.320
Yeah. And I think it goes back to this lesson that I learned, because it's just like what you
00:28:26.320
said at the very beginning. How do they justify this? And in our case, it was blatant racial
00:28:35.120
discrimination. In this case, this is blatant hypersexualization in the classroom that would
00:28:42.160
not be appropriate for a heterosexual or anybody, right? So what I learned is that we're up against
00:28:52.400
a machine, a political machine. And having any expectation of a reasonable resolution from them
00:29:08.480
is not realistic. Like we have to get our expectations in line with the reality of the
00:29:12.960
politics. We have to keep holding them accountable. But I'll tell you, like I sincerely, like as a
00:29:19.600
parent, like I sincerely, sincerely for six months thought I could persuade our school board to rational
00:29:26.880
thought on this. But what I didn't realize was, you know, the political contributions from the teachers'
00:29:32.960
unions, the fact that the Democratic Party had 12-0 on our school board in terms of seats.
00:29:40.640
And they had a lock, you know. And now I can see that the Virginia Democratic Party,
00:29:47.600
you know, is using the school issue to, you know, try to win back the governor's seat that they're lost
00:29:54.800
because of their own positions. But they're all doubling down. Like they don't
00:29:58.960
care about the sensible politics even to me. They're just going to keep losing because there's
00:30:05.280
more parents and sensible citizens on our side than theirs on these issues. But we're up against
00:30:13.120
a lot of money. That's really the challenge. But, you know, the great civil rights movements of
00:30:21.680
of history, we're up against a lot of moneyed interests. And I put us down as civil rights
00:30:29.840
Azra Namani, it's been a fascinating conversation to hear what's really unfolding on the ground
00:30:34.800
right now with the Parents' Rights Movement. Thank you so much for joining us today.
00:30:38.000
Thank you so much. And all the mama bears and papa bears, grandma and grandpa bears, neighbor bears,
00:30:44.080
stand up. You've got a sacred duty and have moral courage while you do this because you're not
00:30:49.360
alone. We're all in it together. Thanks so much for listening to today's show.
00:30:53.520
Before we go, I want to let you know that this is my last episode as host of Full Comet.
00:30:58.080
I'm moving on to pursue other opportunities, but it's been a privilege to be an editor,
00:31:02.240
columnist, and podcast host of Post Media all these years. I want to thank executive producer
00:31:07.120
Kevin Libin and technical producer Andre Pru for playing such key roles in making this show a success.
00:31:13.360
This podcast will continue with a different host, so stay tuned for more great episodes.
00:31:20.160
Full Comet is a Post Media podcast. I'm Anthony Fury. This episode was produced by Andre Pru with
00:31:25.920
theme music by Bryce Hall. Kevin Libin is the executive producer. You can subscribe to Full
00:31:31.040
Comet on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, and Amazon Music. You can listen through the app or your Alexa
00:31:36.720
enabled devices. You can help us by giving us a rating or a review and by telling your friends about us.