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The Influence of Dark Money in Education Politics: Insights from Rob Rogers
Get ready for a riveting exploration into the treacherous waters of school board politics as our guest, Rob Rogers, the first vice chair of El Paso County Democratic Party, sheds light on the recent elections and their implications. Discover how conservative extremists have seized control of the two largest school districts of El Paso County, D11 and D20, and what that means for public education.
We also delve into the significant role of information warfare in shaping our perceptions of education. From the ease of peddling fear and hate to the enduring influence of negative rhetoric, we underscore the urgent need to rebuild trust in public education and debunk outdated narratives. Recognizing the pivotal role of school boards as a launchpad for electable officials, this discussion is a call to arms for everyone to champion public education, because the fight for quality education is a fight for all, directly impacted or otherwise. Brace yourselves for a thought-provoking episode.
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Welcome to the All Things Military and Veteran Podcast, proudly sponsored by Native Roots. Thank you for joining me today. My name is Adam Gillard and this podcast is a product of the El Paso County, colorado Progressive Veterans Group. We're an organization that has nearly 1500 members and a mission of helping all of our brothers and sisters in arms who have served our country. We do a lot of consulting in regards to the VA bureaucracy, but we can also help veterans in needs of other services, such as getting established with food banks or housing services and just getting them to their appointments when they need. We're just here to help any vets that are in need. So this podcast is all about getting information out.
Speaker 1:Today I was fortunate enough to talk with Rob Rogers. He is a vice chair, first vice chair. We went over this for the El Paso County Democratic Party, very knowledgeable on the school board elections. So here we go. This is Rob Rogers and we're talking about the school board election. Joining me today is Rob Rogers, first vice chair of the El Paso County Democrat Party. Rob is putting on a meeting on 2 December at one o'clock. You can get information on that at the Epco Dem Party with Facebook page. Rob, thanks for joining me today.
Speaker 2:No problem, always a pleasure.
Speaker 1:So, Rob, this thing you have going on 2 December, it's about the school board elections and the outcomes of that. I know a lot of Democrats are disappointed in the school board elections, especially the 4090-20. Tell me a little bit about who won those races up front. Who actually came out on top on those big races?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So in the 40,. No, d49 actually was not in like too bad of a shape. It's D11 and D20 that were the biggest disappointments, because now the two largest school districts in El Paso County are now almost exclusively controlled by extremists. Juliet is the remaining reasonable person on the D11 school board, but all the rest of those seats, and indeed 20, it's now a 50 conservative extremist majority. So that has a lot of different implications for public education at large.
Speaker 2:But over in D20, that was an interesting race. The two incumbents that were there, both of which are very reasonable people care about kids, care about public education. They lost both of their races to someone who is kind of like an unknown. She kind of came out of nowhere whenever she won the straw poll that was put on by Church for All Nations, moms for Liberty and then another so-called parental rights organization called Advocates for D20 Kids. Amy Shandy kind of came out of nowhere with her win in those straw polls.
Speaker 2:But the other person in D20, he's fairly well known is Derek Wilburn. He got some notoriety, got his 15 minutes of fame a couple of years ago whenever the CRT outrage was the outrage du jour, yeah, and a speech in the D49 school board meeting, basically denouncing CRT that he as a black American is not oppressed, and he got his 15 minutes got on Dr Phil. As a result of that, he founded the Rocky Mountain Black Conservatives. He's done a lot of writing for the typical conservative right wing rags. He also got sued, along with Alex Jones, over an article that he wrote about the events in Charlottesville where the protester was ran over during that whole thing, and he got sued for some accusations that he made, deep state accusations, because there was a person who filmed a lot of that happened to work for the State Department. Oh, it was. Yeah, he's no indications at all that he has any interest in doing anything but damaging public education.
Speaker 1:Is he here from this area, or was he kind of planted here?
Speaker 2:I'm not sure how long he's lived here. He didn't grow up here. I mean, he grew up in Illinois and in California from what I understand. But the other really interesting thing about him and this is something that he never really discussed while he was running for the school board position is he's also an instructor at the School of Practical Government at Carus Bible College and one of his visits on the Truth and Liberty broadcast it was even mentioned that his wife was one of Andrew Womack's first employees. So he's been connected with Andrew Womack and Carus Truth and Liberty Coalition those types of activities, which is a Christian nationalist hub been connected with that for a really long time. But it is interesting that it never got mentioned that he was an instructor at Carus Bible College and now he's on my local school board, so wonderful yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, kind of. It blows my mind how somebody it's cool that he doesn't feel like he needs CRT. Well, once, crt's never taught below college level courses anyways. So having it at a K through 12 school board meeting, I think it's a scare tactic and a fear of mongering that is irrelevant. But even if you don't need CRT, there's still a lot of systemic things out there. And to turn your back on everybody else that does need some help or does need some recognition on their suffering and to turn your backs on everybody else, it seems like he's selling out just to get power to me Because, like you said, I don't think he has a real agenda to help people, but like he hasn't come out with anything like what he's going to do to actually help the children other than ban books. But what is his plans right now? Do you know what he's initially is going to try to do?
Speaker 2:I mean, obviously we won't know until they're sworn in, until they start actually taking actions as school board members, one of the things that everyone should be looking out for which I would expect to be happening very quickly. I mean, I think that everything is going to be happening very quickly because, essentially, they only have two years to do with unfettered access to a school district to do as much damage as they can. They've only got two years to do that and they can do a lot of damage in two years, so I think that everything is going to be happening very fast. I mean, it was just recently that the 11 they laid off a lot of their communication staff, which is a recommended action from organizations like the Leadership Institute and those types of places. They're already starting to take those kinds of actions in order to get more control over the communication for school districts, and I would expect to see things like that too.
Speaker 2:But D20 specifically, it's a little unique because a school board doesn't exercise direct control. They don't dictate things in D20. They use something called the Carver Model or Policy Governance Model, and what that means is that the governing body you see this used in a lot of nonprofit organizations but the governing body, the board. They set policy and they define what they want the ends to be. So they focus on outcomes and then they provide the means of getting to those outcomes to the operation staff, so they don't dictate things directly, like in D20, the school board currently doesn't go in and say I want to remove this specific book from libraries. They will set policy and then the superintendent uses that policy as the guardrails and the identified outcomes that the superintendent is supposed to be working towards. So the superintendent is the one who takes a lot of the direct action, with the help of their cabinet Now, so that obviously that has.
Speaker 2:The D20 board has been majority conservative extremists controlled for the last two years, since 2021. So I think that the Policy Governance Model has actually helped a lot there, because the board couldn't take these direct actions that they might otherwise would have taken. They have to work through policy and through the superintendent. So that's one of the things that I would expect to see first, and that's what and that's kind of an obscure thing that the public should be on the lookout for too is any kind of indication that looks like the board is going to start removing policy governance from the district and start to move to more traditional management methods, and that's going to allow them to move faster in very specific ways.
Speaker 1:The superintendents that you're talking about, like how are they? How do they get their positions? Are they? Are they elected, or are they placed in there by the board?
Speaker 2:They are hired by the school district. So the board that's the school board, at least in D20, that's, the school board's only employee is the superintendent Whenever Tom Gregory. He was the superintendent for D20 for several years. Whenever he resigned last year, they went. They then went through a superintendent search to end, and now they have Ginger Haberer that's how you say her last name. She was the person that they hired the D11 school board. It was. It was shortly after it was turned over in 2021. They also ended up coming to resignation terms with their existing superintendent Shortly after that board was flipped. And then they have. They have a new superintendent there, too that was hired shortly after that new board took over in early 2022.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Is there any indications that we're looking at new superintendents with these new boards? Are they going to do they already have the superintendents that they want in place?
Speaker 2:In D11, I haven't really seen any indications of that Superintendent. There seems to be the person that they want. He also has a much shorter contract than what superintendents normally do, so they could I guess they could always like not renew it or something. And D20, ms Haberer has only been there for a few months. She she has seemed to be very responsive to anything that the conservative side of things has been very responsive to their desires, to their questions, and has not really been all that responsive to anything from the from the more progressive or liberal side of things.
Speaker 1:I'll say that I know in the D11 race I voted for. You know that the teachers are running A lot of these folks don't have even education backgrounds. Should we be looking at trying to institute something that has people coming from a background with education in it, or should we just kind of keep it wide open the way it is right now?
Speaker 2:You know, I mean I don't, I don't know if that would, that would. I mean there's very, very few elected positions that have specific requirements like that. You know, district attorneys, you know, have law requirements, and I think, I think that might be a difficult thing to do, to put those kind of requirements in. I do think that it's something that voters should be considering more, though I it has to be. I mean, I think that school boards have to have some kind of rep, classroom representation, People who have some kind of understanding about what's actually going on in a classroom and how to best support teachers in order to do their jobs.
Speaker 2:And then you know the traditionally, you know, I mean you'd see a lot of that within school boards. Even the D20 board up until 2021 had a couple of career teachers, Long term, decades long teachers who were on the board, and that and that and that provides, you know, some good, good classroom representation for teachers. I mean there's, there's, I think that a, I think that a board, especially in its multiple seats, you know, and I think that it needs to have some well rounded experience. I think that having a some diverse viewpoints, you know, would always be a good thing, but I think that all of the members of the school board need to understand what their primary purpose is, and that's making sure that kids are getting a proper education, which means that they have all of the support systems in place that they need in order to be able to achieve academically too.
Speaker 1:So Making voters more aware of the information like relevant to the candidates. How do we go about doing that? How do we get information that's relevant in front of them? And then, conversely, you know how do you get them? How do you combat the disinformation that's out there?
Speaker 2:I think that's. I think the start of that is actually going to be on Saturday, at the event that we're having. It's difficult because a lot of the things that we were discovering in the wake of the 2021 school board elections. You know where $180,000 of dark money was dropped into school board races in El Paso County and all of the candidates this is indeed primarily in D49, d11, d20, all the candidates that were supported by that money won their races.
Speaker 1:And when you say dark money, you know getting dropped in and supporting them like, collaborate on that. Like how does $180,000 get dropped into these races? You know, you know, when you can't support candidates, like that, you know, with like mass amounts of checks, like like, how does that work?
Speaker 2:Dark money. The traditional definition of that just means that the sources of donors aren't revealed. So typically there's going to be some kind of a 501 organization. So in 2021, that the $180,000 was first basically contributed to a 501C6 organization called Colorado Springs Forward. And then that organization, colorado Springs Forward, then made a contribution to an independent expenditure committee, which is a type of campaign finance committee that can spend an unlimited amount of money, can take in an unlimited amount of contributions, but they can't coordinate with candidates, and so that's friction for an IEC. So back in 2021, colorado Springs Forward, which is a 501C6 organization, took in that initial $180,000, and then they gave it to another, to an IEC called the Springs Opportunity Fund, the Springs Opportunity Fund. Then they were the ones who were spending the money in support of those candidates Now 501C6 organizations.
Speaker 2:That's one of the 501 organizations that doesn't have to reveal that their source of funding. So it's dark. That's where that comes from. We don't know where. Now I know where that money came from, but that was only after a lot of digging. But you don't generally know where that money ultimately came from. So you have no idea of their motivations. You have no idea of why they want these specific people to be elected because you don't even know who they are, and in a nonpartisan school board race with volunteer positions. That's an interesting situation.
Speaker 2:Now, in 2023, the same thing happened, except it was at a larger scale. So it was half a million dollars of dark money was dropped into just two school board races. This time they only spent that money in D11 and D20. It was a 501C4, so that's more of a political organization. It's still a 501 called Colorado Dawn. That Colorado Dawn was the one who took in the initial half a million dollars and then they then gave that again to the Springs Opportunity Fund Independent Expenditure Committee just to spend the money on behalf of the candidates they were supporting. Once again, it's dark. Colorado Dawn doesn't have to reveal the source of its donations. In that case, I don't know where that money came from. I have suspicions, but I haven't confirmed any of those suspicions yet. But it's the same type of process.
Speaker 1:Right. So with all this dark money flowing in, they typically spend it on marketing, I'm guessing. And how to sell their message to folks? Is it primarily because I don't watch TV much anymore? Do they run in ads? They run Facebook campaigns. What are their tactics when they do this stuff?
Speaker 2:Most of the money that was spent was on mailers. So a lot of people in D11, they spent more of the money in D11 than they did in D20. But all the mailers that everyone was getting, that education is rotting in D20, all of this breathless nonsense, or some of it, was just trying to flip the script in the other direction. It was very interesting to see the same organization heavily, heavily criticizing the woke ideologies, fighting against the woke ideologies in these schools, but then at the same time, promoting specific candidates using language that's almost DEI sounding. It was very, very interesting.
Speaker 2:But that's where most of the money was going to mailers and the amount of mailers that I heard about and the people were telling me about that they'd gotten. They blanketed some areas with those mailers. And then it's digital ads, google and Facebook ads, texting, text messaging I didn't see any radio or because all of this stuff also has to be reported in Colorado's campaign finance management system, which is called Tracer, so all of this stuff is public. I didn't see any television or radio ads that were there. Those are typically pretty expensive.
Speaker 1:Really standard demand and revenue. Yeah, with half a million dollars, that's crazy that they can just flood litter everywhere you know like legally. So how do we combat this misinformation you started about? You know this Saturday is going to be a big thing. I'm just starting to get the information out there. What are things that people need to start being on the not on the lookout for, but what can they do to combat all this misinformation?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it was a couple of years ago, maybe even as recently as a year ago, whenever I was explaining the things that me and others you know that I work with I have a network of people that I work with kind of looking at the attacks on public education and the intersection with Christian nationalism. People, even my friends, would tell me Rob, you know that you sound crazy and it does sound nuts whenever you're first starting to dig into this and first starting to explain it. But I think that now, because there's been so many people that have reached out since the school board elections happened and you know, all the school board seats got flipped I've had so many people say Rob, you were right. You've been calling this for the last two years. You've been identifying everything that was going to happen for the last two years. So I think that the general public is now ready to hear it. They're ready to hear the types of stories that we're talking about right now with how this kind of thing has happened. And now we have to start getting into the why. Why is this happening? And you had mentioned CRT earlier when we were talking about CRT and Derek Wilburne had used that as part of his fear mongering. It's how he got some attention.
Speaker 2:The CRT outrage that was created out of whole cloth by a guy named Christopher Rufo, and Christopher Rufo was working for the Heritage Foundation. He was working for the Manhattan Institute. He's now down in Florida working with Ron DeSantis. He's also doing some work in Texas with another guy named Corey DeAngeles. There are two names that all of your listeners need to remember and they need to go up and do some research on Christopher Rufo and Corey DeAngeles.
Speaker 2:Those two guys are the ones who are basically responsible for the messaging for the outrage, all in an effort to erode trust in public education as an institution. They are deliberately trying to erode trust in public schools because the people they work for want public education privatized, and that's what everyone really needs to remember, and that's the first step of combating the misinformation is understanding what the real goal is. It's to privatize public education. They want more charter schools and they want vouchers. That's essentially what they want. Now you start to see the intersections between the people who have commercial interest in making profit off of public education and the Christian nationalists that are literally trying to implement theocracy in the United States. The Christian nationalist side of things have wanted vouchers for their private religious schools for a long time. So these two fronts they may not have the same exact goals, but they're close enough where they're working together.
Speaker 2:That's the first step is realizing that all of this is being done deliberately, because the school boards that are now going to continue these dangerous things, these anti-public education things you can't hold them accountable for that. In a traditional way, they're going to a school board meeting which, speaking at school board meetings, getting involved in the very hyper-local politics of school boards, that's important, yes. But going to a school board meeting, making public comment, telling them that they're doing something wrong and then expecting that the school board member is going to be like, oh yeah, we are screwing this up or the public is not happy with what I'm doing, that isn't going to work. Yeah, that self-reflection isn't there, right, it's not because they're trying to make the situation bad. This is the thing too.
Speaker 2:That's also interesting is that these school boards and the actions they're taking not just in Colorado but across I mean, you've seen this across the country this is happening everywhere all at the same time, which is also not a coincidence they're trying to make the environment bad. So people like me and you, who would normally be huge public education advocates. We will be the ones who are going and telling our elected representatives and our elected officials I want vouchers because my kids are not getting a good education in my community school. That's what they want. They want me and you to be on their side.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, it's a manipulation. They're trying to get the other side to fight. Gloria, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:I mean, they're even doing this and being very effective with the transgender student propaganda, this fear that they are creating. They're even taking advantage of the fear that would be naturally in a parent's mind, regardless of their political ideology. We want to take care of our kids. I said recently that the surefire way of getting somebody's attention is making them think that their kid is in danger. You know exactly what I'm talking about. You think that my kid is in danger. I'm going to find out what's going on. The general public has to think about that all the time. Now they are manipulating the minds of parents, make them think that things are going on that aren't actually going on, all in an effort to erode trust in public education. Now let's take that one step further.
Speaker 2:There were several mill levy override ballot questions in D20 and D49 specifically. None of them passed. D20 has never asked for a property tax increase, at least over the last 20 years, that the voters have never approved. Now they did. There's probably a lot of different reasons for that. One knows that property taxes are about to skyrocket, which the legislators just took care of that and some of that in their special session recently. But if they've already gotten their minds that I'm going to experience a property tax increase next year, then they probably didn't want to vote for something that was just going to add to that. But it's still very interesting, because if you don't trust in the institution, then why would you give them more tax dollars? You see what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:All of this stuff is working together, whether or not we realize it, and I can show clips. On Saturday I'm going to play some clips of Christopher Rufo saying these things out loud. They're not even hiding it. There's a clip of Christopher Rufo at Hillsdale College two years ago and he's speaking to this audience and he says and I think this is going to be a direct quote If you want to get to a place of universal school choice, you have to operate from the premise of universal public school distrust.
Speaker 2:He's telling people that if you want to get to which in Colorado we have pretty much have universal school choice, in Texas and other places they don't. But if you want to get there and you want to get to vouchers, you want to get to that type of an environment, then you have to make people distrust in public education as an institution. They're doing that very, very deliberately, just like he admitted he made up the CRT outrage he may. He admits it in articles. He admits it in on-camera interviews that he made it up because they that people. In order to get people Engaged, they had to Make them feel if they have something at stake. This is just. It's absolute manipulation and propaganda that we are now experiencing in our local school boards.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's interesting how we as people hold on to like negative Thoughts and influences so much longer than like positive ones. Yes, so like when we get bad information, that like with the inflation everybody you know he talks about inflation and it was bad. Last year they passed some bills, knocked it down, but it's still a big talking point, even though you know inflation recently is down to like point four percent or something like that. You know, I, you know I think they Confuse it with cost of living, which is still high, but that's more of the corporate greed side of the spectrum. But it's interesting how, you know, we just kind of cling on to this, the bad information. It's easy to sell fear, it's easy to sell hate. How do we, how do we break some of those ties and get people to let go of some of those things? Where it was, it might have been valid a Year, two ago, but it's just not like we've fixed some things and we've moved forward. How do we get people to see that?
Speaker 2:and Then then that's like like step two, I think you know first step being is understanding that this is, this is information warfare and we are being manipulated. They're doing it for very specific reasons. These are the people they're doing it, and why now if, if they, if we know that they are trying to erode trust in public education as an institution and we have to take actions that support and promote and build that trust. So those of us who understand what's going on and that value public education understand its place in our democracy. Even we have to start telling our friends, our Family members, the general public. We all have to start working together on a very, very deliberate Trust building kind of campaign. These are the things that public education does for us. This is what public education does as a society. This is what teachers are doing for us and how they are servicing not just our kids. We also have to stop. I mean, it's hard to do because they're there, are children, but public education is much more of a public service and a public good, and we have to start remembering that too. This is for the benefit of all of us.
Speaker 2:I've been using this phrase one team, one fight. I'm you know, I'm Stealing something from the army. Doesn't we have to start thinking about things from, like, a NATO perspective? And an attack on One community is an attack on all of us, all in support of public education as a public good. We have to start adopting that mentality. It doesn't matter if I have a gay kid or not, it doesn't matter if I have a trans kid or not, it doesn't matter if I have a Muslim kid or not. Any attack on those communities from a public education perspective is my problem, right, well, and we have to start adopting that mentality, all with helping the general public understand that our community schools are good, our public education system is good.
Speaker 2:Yes, there are some. It's not perfect. There are some things high stakes tech testing like, as an example. A lot of the things that came from no child left behind. Charter schools in general mean charter schools are not good. I mean, I know that people do Get a benefit from it, but ultimately they're not good because it's taking money away from public education and putting it into this little bucket, you know, yeah, and None of those things are good. So there are some things that aren't perfect, but in general, public education is a good thing for society and even, even, even people that don't have kids.
Speaker 2:The argument always used with like with those types of them, and there are a lot of childless. You know people, more and more people are deciding Not to have children, you know. But do you want to live in a society of idiots? I mean, there's a, there's a great motivation. I don't want to live in a society of idiots. You know I Mean. I have kids in the public school system too, but there are all kinds of reasons why everybody should care about this. We just have to tell them what they are. We have not been doing a good idea as Democrats, progressives, liberals, of Telling people why they should care and why this is a good thing. It's been the teachers unions. It's been, it's been our partners in the teachers unions and the public, ab, education, advocacy, advocacy spaces that have been trying to tell this message. There needs to be ordinary people that are also picking up that same messaging and pushing it, because we don't have a reason not to trust public schools. We have every reason in the world to trust them and value them.
Speaker 1:This information warfare, like I've heard a lot of our peer adversaries, doctrine and things like that and they all and our doctor and to, when it comes to warfare is we always attack info first and cypher first. But like it's from dropping leaflets out of the plane to, you know, blast and Facebook now, or whatever social media yeah, trying to get people to To speak up and not just turn the channel. Now, you know, like I think our apathy is kind of Destroying a lot of things for us, because we get overwhelmed with Information sometimes and they can't take action. We need to break that down and get people out there taking action and standing up and saying this isn't what I stand for. Like it may not be, like you said, it may not affect me, but it's not what I stand for, you you know. So you still got to go out there and play quite the good play.
Speaker 2:There's a the school boards to they. They also have a tendency to be like stepping stones. A lot of elected officials who got their start in school boards or somehow related education. I mean, you know, I think that Senator Bennett and that he was on them on school boards, you know, like in his past Jared Polis, I mean he came up. I think he was like see you region, you know, came up through.
Speaker 2:You know, like that past, these school board, local school boards, are like a, they're like a first attempt, they're a stepping stone, they're dipping your toe into the water being elected official and it's a whole lot easier to stop the bad politicians at that low level. Then it is once they are running for higher office. That's an excellent point and that's one of another one of the reasons why we should care, because you don't think, you don't think that Derek Wilburn has had CD 5 in his mind? Yeah, don't think that people like Aaron Salt, who's on the D20 board right now, you don't think that he's had some kind of our office in the back of his mind and would have been a whole lot easier To stop them and prevent them from getting elected at all, then it will be to combat that when they're running for higher office. So there's another compelling reason it's also easy for them to this is these off-year elections.
Speaker 2:I think that El Paso County is a little bit over 40% turnout right now, like People just aren't voting, and Then all you know the extremists have to do is get their churches involved, which I did, you know, in D20 and D11 and get Certain people to vote, like in certain ways, and a little bit higher numbers. The margins and in this past election Were a lot smaller than they were back in 2021, but it still makes the difference, right, we're giving up ground, we're giving up the battle space to people who Don't have good intentions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I Could definitely see people just using that as that stepping stone. And if you're using anything as a stepping stone, you're just chasing the title, you're not there to. You know, effective leader, you know you're just trying to move on, but, yeah, I could definitely see folks using that. So this has become like a you know, big passion of yours, big focus.
Speaker 2:Why? My why for all of all of these things that I've been doing is Most recently, it has been very strong intersections between the attacks on public education and the rise of white Christian nationalism. And ultimately, my why is very selfish. I guess I don't want to live in a theocracy. And all of these efforts at the local levels they are very deliberately focusing on local elections. Every time there's a school board flipped, every time there's a city council member who doesn't respect the separation in church and state, every time there's a mayor that wasn't very forthcoming with what his actual intentions were, every time that happens, we get closer and closer to things that we have a hard time seeing happening in the United States, which is decisions that are being made for society at large in accordance with whatever interpretation of the Christian Bible someone might be using. That isn't? It's kind of terrifying to think about that. It's kind of terrifying to me to see how close they're starting to get to realizing some of those goals. I mean, if you look at Project 2025, if you've read through the playbook from the Heritage Foundation, this is what they intend to do and they've been working at it for a really long time.
Speaker 2:But that's just in general. That's not good for society either. It's also not good for other Christians that don't subscribe to these things either In their worldview. You are either with us and you're a Christian nationalist, or you're the enemy. Christians are not immune from this either. That level of control over thought and action I mean. Obviously that's not democracy, but it also just isn't good. A productive, functioning society in our modern age needs to have a lot of freedom of thought, a lot of freedom of expression, the ingenuity and the types of things that are going to be required in order to continue to compete on the global stage. That comes from a lot of creativity. It comes from a lot of out-of-the-box thinking that is not aligned with either an outright or a de facto theocratic state.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a lot of that free thought can only happen when people are safe to relax and be them and be able to have that free thought. If you're in survival mode all the time, you just can't relax and you can't help us progress. We shouldn't still be in this survival state constantly. It's scary, like you said, how these Christian nationalists they attack Christians, also to excite some friends that had to leave their churches because they stood up for their daughter that was transitioning or not even transitioning, but was just asking questions. Really they got a lot of hate for it. They were like whoa, that is not how. That's not my relationship with Jesus right there. You know what I mean. They've had to leave their church because this message that they're sending their people are buying and they're becoming more aggressive with it, even amongst themselves. It's really scary.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a lot of people too. That's another whole side of thing too. That more people need to realize as well is that specifically the evangelical Christianity. So many people who are even involved now in the evangelical side of Christianity don't realize that their brand of religion really stopped being a religion in their early 1970s. They don't realize that evangelical Christianity was deliberately turned into just a political arm of the Republican Party, very deliberately. There's so many names, like I'd mentioned before, the Christopher Rufo and Cory D'Angelo. Those are two people that people need to know their names and need to understand what it is they're doing.
Speaker 2:All Wirik is another guy that I wish that more people knew. He was the person who created the Heritage Foundation and the legislative bill manufacturing organization Alec. He created those organizations in the early 70s. He was the one who was working with the Reagan administration and with people like Jerry Falwell and others to create abortion as the wedge issue. Abortion was never a political issue until the early 1970s. Paul Wirik was the one who realized that there wasn't really a lot of difference between Republicans and Democrats except for economic issues. He's the one who created the moral distinction and used abortion to do that, because evangelicals and Christians were not voting in large numbers. He needed a way to create a voting block out of them.
Speaker 2:And then you fast forward, you know, in 1972, 1973 is whenever all that started and Reagan got elected. You know, using a lot of that messaging, the evangelical Christian community was turned into a voting block, whether or not they realized it. And you get to. There's a when Pat Buchanan was running for or attempting to run for president in 1994, people should go and find his speech from the Republican National Convention in 1994. And you see what the modern Republican Party that has now been bolstered by the evangelicals. You see in his words what happened and because he's using the same words that are being used now, the same messaging back in 1994. It's kind of shocking. Listen to Adam. We got to figure out how to get people to get interested in history again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because like the whole Make America Great slogan that was Reagan's slogan they just keep recycling all these things. Like we've walked this path, we know this path. It leads to shit. Like, stop walking that path.
Speaker 2:And we can always get white people fired up. People can be manipulated like so easily. But I mean just starting to talk about like the things that an immigrant has that we don't.
Speaker 1:Or just say yeah, well, like, oh, they have to work harder than you. I worked hard my whole life. I didn't say you did it, you know. Like it's just different. But yeah, yeah, like you said, it's easy to get people around up and it's so easy to sell hate, getting people to focus on positive things and like movement things forward. I think your idea of like redefining or kind of restructuring how we think about the public school system as a service just like the postal service you know other services like that Like the government is not a revenue generating business. You know like we don't generate revenue. Like we spend it and we provide services to make your lives better. The fact that half of our government wants to sell us as government bad, that's terrifying. Like like you're a part of the problem. And if you think that government's bad, you're part of the problem. Like we need to be there to like solve problems.
Speaker 2:Government. Bad is the propaganda. The goal is a corporation being able to make money off of what has traditionally been provided to the public, and the postal system is a great point. You know you had people you know during the Trump administration that were deliberately trying to privatize the post office so the corporations and the billionaires can make more money. Right Now, our kids are just the next thing, right when our kids are now not any more than their ability to generate revenue in the eyes of some of these people and there's where the problem lies.
Speaker 1:Well, I think it's. You know, we've turned the prison system into such a revenue generating. They're looking like let's get to them before they even get there, and you know.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, all we are is dollar signs to even like linked up the education system in the prison system and you can see the connections, you know, the school to prison pipeline.
Speaker 1:I mean that's, that's not a myth, yeah no, yeah, there are studies out there on that, yet.
Speaker 2:Anything they can privatize and make money off of is a target Yep they will Well, rob.
Speaker 1:thanks for joining me Again. Give me a plug for your two December meeting.
Speaker 2:Yes, december 2nd. It will be both in person at the Passville County Democrats office and it will also be virtual. If you look at the Dems Facebook page, you can find the event. You can also find the link to register. If you can attend in person and we're going to we're going to start at the end of November 2021.
Speaker 2:And we're going to use that as our reference point and explaining how the events of November 7th 2023 happened, who was involved in that and what their motivations are, and then also start talking about some of these things, about what we can do now, like moving forward. And we also want people to start thinking about 2025, because we'll have school board elections again in 2025. And we're going to really be emphasizing that people should start to think about school board elections as political campaigns. They're no longer these, these, these things that you can knock on some your neighbors doors and hand out some pencils and and get elected. These are now million dollar races in El Paso County. So you have we have to start thinking about them as political races and we need candidates who are going to be good, candidates who are going to be good with that and who are going to be willing to run those kinds of races. We want people to start thinking about that now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I've definitely been pushing that out to a lot of folks, you know, trying to get more candidates for these local races because they're just so, so critical. Rob, thanks again. We'll be in touch and I would definitely be there on Saturday. I appreciate you coming here and doing this for me. Thanks, right Any time. Now a word from our sponsor.
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