By Annie Gowen, Photo: Maddie McGarvey/The Washington Post, The Washington Post, February 9, 2022
Dozens of suburban moms from around the country dialed into an Ohio-based Zoom training session last month with the same goal — to learn how to combat the increasingly vitriolic rhetoric from parents whose protests over mask mandates and diversity education have turned school board meeting rooms into battlegrounds.
The lessons: Show up at meetings with fact-based speeches ready and create text groups for real-time strategizing. Wave “jazz hands” if told not to clap at meetings. Avoid using the divisive language of their opponents, such as “CRT” for critical race theory, and instead replace it with alternatives like “culturally responsive instruction.”
Katie Paris, the founder of Red Wine and Blue — a national network of like-minded, mostly Democratic suburban women — believes the only way to fight back is to present a calm face to counter the angry groups that have dominated and disrupted board meetings and in some cases threatened officials. Her network of more than 300,000 women recently broadened its focus to fight the rising number of book bans across the country, launching a case tracker on Jan. 31, and is running training sessions to help women testify and manage highly charged government meetings.
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