On this episode of the Bespoke Parenting Hour, host Julie Gunlock interviews Loudoun county dad and former Justice Department official Ian Prior who has exposed massive corruption and a sophisticated campaign of intimidation and harassment targeting parents within his community’s school system. Julie and Ian discuss what parents need to do to fight this government-sanctioned bullying, why mockery is an important engagement tool, and why having a good grasp of the issues and a solid organizational structure is important to fighting back. Tune in to this lively conversation!
TRANSCRIPT
Julie Gunlock:
Hey everyone, I’m Julie Gunlock, your host for another episode of the Bespoke Parenting Hour. For those new to the program, this podcast is focused on how parents should custom tailor their parenting style to fit what’s best for their families, themselves, and most importantly, their kids. Today, I’m thrilled to have on Ian Prior as a guest. Ian is the Executive Director of Fight 4 Schools. He’s the Co-Founder of the humor website, Daily Malarkey, which everyone should check out, and he’s the CEO of Headwater Media. He previously served President Trump in the Department of Justice. Prior to working in the political arena, he was an attorney in New England.
Maybe my first question should be, why in the world did you leave that life? That sounds pretty sweet to me. Ian, thanks for chatting with me today.
Ian Prior:
Thanks for having. That is a good question. Actually, it’s kind of interesting because when I was a lawyer, the last four years that I was really practicing I was at the City of Austin, their Corporation Counsel’s Office. I literally took every case that I could to trial. I had worked at big firms before. It just was a lot of work, but it was also a bit slower-paced, and you didn’t get to go to trial, especially if you’re an associate. I wanted to actually be an Assistant US Attorney. I was out looking for an Assistant US Attorney gigs all over the country because there was a hiring freeze, and Boston is a tough place to do that.
That’s eventually when I got involved in a congressional race and thought to myself, maybe I could go down to DC and work in a congressional office as a counsel for a little while, and then transition over to a prosecutor. It just didn’t work out that way. I ended up being in the political arena instead of the legal arena.
Julie Gunlock:
Wow, I’ll tell you, I’m actually leaving for vacation tomorrow night. We go up to Maine every year. I love Maine, and I love New England. My whole maternal side of my family is from New England. It is a different pace up there. Now, you’re my neighbor essentially. We both live here in northern Virginia. I feel like northern Virginia in particular—but Virginia itself—has just got a little crazy over the last couple of years, particularly in the education front. I don’t know how long you’ve lived down here and if you can compare it. I know you obviously were in Trump’s Justice Department, so I know you’ve been down here for several years. Have you also noticed just a pretty quick precipitous change culturally around here? Also, I don’t know, I feel like the anger meter has gone through the roof.
Ian Prior:
Yeah, I think there’s a few things to that. First of all, I lived in Alexandria when I first came down, and it was right when my oldest daughter was born. So, there were not things that I was paying attention to up until three years ago when we ended up moving to Loudoun County, in part because Loudoun County Schools were reportedly some of the best schools in the country. I don’t think there was any issue that first year. That was I think 2018. Once we got into the pandemic, I think that’s when things really started to be more apparent to parents. With the school closing issue out here, you had a lot of dedicated parents that were organized and were going to School Board meetings pleading with the schools to reopen, pleading with the School Board.
They weren’t getting anywhere, and they felt extremely frustrated. They felt that many of the School Board members were just either not listening to them at best, or mocking them at worst. Then I started paying attention to some of the stuff that was going on with the curriculum, and how they were handling this equity push. I just did a little digging on my own and found out they’re paying $500,000.00 in 2019 to this company called The Equity Collaborative, and this group ran focus groups and excluded Asian families and Caucasian families from those focus groups. Anyone that knows Loudoun County knows that the Asian community is driving the diversification of this area. They’re at 24-25% of the population.
That just struck a chord in me. Then I look through the report that they did, and you had all these sort of anonymous statements by students and parents about disparate treatment of individuals, but there was nothing to sort of verify that. There was no exploration into well, is this is just an accusation, or is there more context to this? They took those anecdotal statements and they turned it into effectively data, which we’re only talking about 10-15 different statements that they then use to really create this push in Loudoun County Public Schools that is continued to this day.
Julie Gunlock:
You mentioned this slew of things. You’ve been really a leader. You’ve been really out front on these school-based issues. This is CRT. You mentioned CRT, the unwillingness, the absolute unwillingness to open these schools. You’ve commented on the masking issues, which is now sort of the big issue people are fighting now, masking of kids. You’ve also talked about corrupt teachers’ unions. You mentioned this earlier, the School Boards who now… The visuals of these School Board members treating parents with such disrespect, and some of the videos. Loudoun County really has been in the spotlight because of these videos of parents, like you said, pleading with these people.
There were also these videos of parents reading from some of the books that are assigned these kids, which embarrassed the School Board meeting. I loved this one father saying, “Look, if you’re embarrassed, if you’re uncomfortable sitting here reading this, why are you assigning this to a 14-year-old kid?” It was a great moment. I think honestly, your work also to highlight this has been so critical. But there’s something else. I obviously have been following you. You’re great on Twitter, and you’re on the news constantly talking about this stuff. I feel like as a northern Virginia parent, but also… You said this a million times, this is not just in northern Virginia. It’s happening everywhere.
I think just as a parent in general, I really thank you for the work that you’ve done. One of the things you’re most well-known for is exposing not just what’s happening in Loudoun, but specifically the actions of a group called The Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County, which you referred to hilariously. Honestly, I must have gotten a hundred texts from moms that were laughing hysterically saying, “Did you hear about the Chardonnay Antifa?” To people who don’t know, because I do have people who listen to this podcast from all over, tell us a little bit. I hope you’re not tired of talking about this, because it is the best story. Tell us a little bit about what happened. Again, I love that you sort of coined the phrase “Chardonnay Antifa.” It’s just beautiful. Tell us about that.
Ian Prior:
This is actually a very important intellection point, I think, in what is happening not just in Loudoun County, but as we’ve been in the news it’s really because of this private Facebook group. I guess at first it was just a bunch of parents that they call themselves “The Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County.” They had been talking in there, and they’re very nasty people that seem angry at just about everybody. We actually saw screenshots where they literally actually ran a minority individual out of their group because she wasn’t anti-racist enough. It really took hold when you started getting School Board members joining that group. In March, you had one School Board member in particular by the name of Beth Barts, who essentially put out a call to try and silence the people that were opposed to Critical Race Theory.
She really had one or two targets in mind, and you look at her screenshots and posts, and you can see that she was going after these two, an organization and an individual. What ultimately happened in this call to action was that all these individuals in this group started just listing names of parents, and they’re posting and they’re saying “We need to infiltrate their groups. We need to publicly expose them. We need to hack their websites and redirect them to pro-CRT websites.” That ultimately got out. It got out to a reporter, but even before the reporter had it, I think the night this stuff was going on the School Board and the superintendent were made aware of it by some of the people put on that list.
They did nothing. They absolutely nothing about it. When the story comes out a couple of days later, it just kicked off a community, as you would expect. First of all, you’ve got these neighbors against neighbors, but even more concerning is that you’ve got six School Board members that are part of this, and one of whom really lit the fire. That is really the inflection point of where you had parents that were organized speaking out, but then you created a bigger group of parents that said “Enough is enough.” It kind of reminds me, I don’t know if you remember the Batman movie with Michael Keaton when he’s got the Joker up on the top of the church and the Joke says, “You made me,” and Michael Keaton’s like, “I made you? You made me first.”
For these School Board members that are sitting there saying we’re the ones causing the problems. We made this situation. No, you made it first.
Julie Gunlock:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It’s interesting to me, and I think you’ve talked about this on other shows, Loudoun County is the richest county in the country. I think we’re starting to see some of the most radical actions taking place in wealthier areas. We’re sitting here kind of talking about public schools and public School Boards, but you heard about some of the private schools in New York City where tuition is $60,000.00+ a year. These schools are cranking out some Critical Race Theory like it’s the best thing ever, and there’s virtually no pushback in those communities too. So, it’s interesting that you see the most radical behavior in these wealthier communities. What do you think of that?
Ian Prior:
I think where it comes to Loudoun County, it’s the growth of Washington, DC is part of it, and people are moving out from Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax and moving into places like Loudoun County, but they’re bringing their politics with them. People used to say about Loudoun County, “Don’t Fairfax Loudoun County.” Now they’re in Fauquier saying “Don’t Loudoun Fauquier.” I think that’s one of the reasons. Then obviously the tech sector and the data centers out here are bringing in lots of people, increasing the population. It’s becoming more left-leaning in some respects than it had before as people are moving out here.
What you’re seeing here is that these far-left activists, and I don’t say Democrats because we have Democrats on our Board. We have lots of Democrats that have signed, recalled removal petitions. As much as the left tries to make it a Republican/Democrat thing, it’s not that. We have polls showing quite the opposite, not that the Democrats are overwhelmingly with us, they’re not, but it’s a good 25-28% are opposed to a lot of these things going on in the schools here in Loudoun County and in Fairfax County.
Julie Gunlock:
I totally agree. It’s really interesting because, during the Trump years, you had the “Never Trumpers” who were kind of constantly saying “I don’t have a home now. I’m politically homeless,” but I think the same thing is happening on the Democrat side where many people on the Democrat side… We have some very, very good friends who are Democrats, and they have said they’re uncomfortable because they are now agreeing much more with Republicans than Biden and the Pelosi Democrats, and sort the AOC contingent, “The Squad” if you will. I hate the word “squad,” but you get it. These are the leaders of the Democratic party, and I am so unsure of where to go because obviously they’re Democrats. They’ve been Democrats their whole life.
I think there is a sort of what I like to call the “Reasonable People,” the reasonable moderates who now… You mentioned that group kicking a woman out, a woman of color, because she was not… I don’t know if it was a woman, but a person of color getting kicked out of that group because they’re not anti-racist enough. You can never really please these people. I do think on the Democrat side we’re seeing the same kind of homelessness and confusion about where they belong. I think there’s an opportunity for Republicans really to convince people that… For instance, I know for sure that most people who are fighting against CRT certainly want a rigorous historical curriculum that teaches about slavery, that teaches about Jim Crow, that teaches about Civil Rights. We want all of this stuff taught, and rigorously.
We don’t want this stuff swept under… To be honest with you, I don’t think it has been. I think my children, before all this CRT stuff was deployed, I have children in middle school and their teachers, both African Americans, taught these exceptionally well and exceptionally fairly. It was soon after that, that we had to pull our kids out. Again, I think there are lot of very reasonable people out here that are very confused about the extremism and the radicalism that they’re seeing.
Ian Prior:
Yeah, and I’ve got two points for that. First, the “Straw Man” argument that if you’re opposed to Critical Race Theory then you’re against teaching accurate history. No. Here’s the deal, when our kids are in elementary school and when they’re in middle school, we want them focusing on reading, writing, math, science before they have the ability to critically think and fully understand these theories of looking at the world. As far as history goes, listen I read history for breakfast, okay? It’s one of the things that I have always done throughout my life. You don’t have to go farther back than the autobiography of Fredrick Douglas, and what he talks about in there is that the way he was able to essentially free himself from slavery was learning to read and write. That gave him the intelligence, the ability to understand what was going on in his life, and ultimately led him down the road to freedom. That’s number one.
Number two, I had a really interesting experience last week. I was at an event where we were gathering signatures. I had my Fight 4 Schools T-shirt on. I went into Barnes & Noble to get this underwater camera that my kids had been bugging me to get, and I’d been to five stores trying to get it. I probably should have just gone on Amazon. I walked in there and maybe a 60-year-old black gentleman came up to me and said, “Hey, are you the guy that’s been on TV talking about Critical Race Theory?” I was like, “Yeah.” He had a copy of White Fragility, and he said “Full disclosure, I’m actually pro-CRT, but I’m really trying to learn more about the different perspectives. Can I buy you a coffee?” I’m like, “Absolutely.”
We literally sat there for an hour and a half, and just had a fantastic discussion. I don’t know that he convinced me or I convinced him. Maybe we just got each other’s perspectives, but it was a great conversation. It was a great conversation about history, about different possibilities for maybe doing something a little less divisive in schools. I thought to myself after that, look we need more of that, where these are divisive things. Just because you’re for Critical Race Theory in schools doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, or against it. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It’s important that you’re able to sit there and have conversations and say, “Listen, here is why I think this doesn’t work. Here is why I think it does work,” and have those conversations.
Ultimately, what you’re seeing is at the School Board level and the school administration level, they don’t want to have those conversations.
Julie Gunlock:
They don’t.
Ian Prior:
They want to do what they want to do with your money, and you’re just going to have to deal with it because you know why, there may be more parents out there than there are School Board members in special interests, but they’re just not organized enough to really make an impact. That’s what we’re trying to change.
Julie Gunlock:
I do want to talk about your organization that you run, and I want to find out how people can get more information on it. Fight 4 Schools, I love the title. That’s what we need to be doing. I want to bring up one more area, and that is sort of the intimidation factor. You were on Tucker, I’m not sure exactly when, but recently you were on Tucker. I swear this, I loved what you said about there are three critical things to fight back against these “woke” people, these “woke” types. You said, one is fearlessness, two is substance, and three is mockery. I swear, I have never been able to say “You need to have those three things in order to fight back.” Then I heard you say that, and I was like, that is the exact formula that you need.
I could talk about this for an hour, but I want you to talk about why are those three things so important.
Ian Prior:
I’ve been, like I said, working in politics for about 10 years now. I always kind of come at it from just a sense of humor where look, there’re important things that you have to focus on, and that’s where the substance is. You need to make sure that the things that you’re saying are correct, that you can back them up with facts and evidence, and you need to be fearless because as it is now, I’m getting attacked.
There was a Vice story about me that called me a “Mad Dad,” which is going to be a T-shirt soon, so look out for that. We also have the “Army of Moms” T-shirts coming out too. You’ve got to be able to do it. I will say, through this exercise, I’ve developed a thick skin. I don’t really care what the media says about me. I don’t really care what people that don’t know me say about me. They don’t know what I’m thinking. They don’t know what I’m trying to do because they don’t really care to learn.
As far as the mockery piece, everybody wants to go on attack all the time where it’s just anger and hate, and social media. Listen, just brush it off with some humor. That’s kind of always… Go ahead.
Julie Gunlock:
I also think there’s something really important about the mockery, because it takes away their power. In Alexandria, Virginia, and this is something Ian I’m sure you understand, but people outside the city don’t understand this, Alexandria has its own school district. Alexandria City does not belong to a county. It’s funny, everyone thinks that my children are part of Fairfax County Schools. They’re no longer in public schools, but when they did go to the public schools they always assumed Alexandria is just part of Fairfax. Or, if you’re even further out and don’t know how Virginia is, they think we’re part of Loudoun. I had people text me and say “I saw those Loudoun viral videos. Is that your school district?” I’m like, “No, I live a day trip away. No, it’s not mine.”
But very quickly it became clear to me that the School Board in this town, and the Superintendent in particular, didn’t really have time for parents, didn’t care about parents. The smug attitude that these people had when parents would approach them with a problem was just unbearable. It was really hard for me to watch them treat parents so badly. One thing that I have consistently done is sort of made fun of them for this. Our School Board Chair, she sends both of her kids to a Catholic school, and then she tweeted one day during the height of the pandemic when the city schools…
When she refused to open the city school halls, she goes day drinking with her husband and actually says, “Oh, it’s so great the kids are back in school. My husband and I are celebrating.” This is the woman who is keeping the public schools closed, but she can day drink because her kids are in a private school. Our superintendent, he made national headlines when he put his daughter… He mocked parents. He actually told parents that if they considered a private school, after he had closed the school for over a year, if they considered a private school or educational pods, or alternatives, that they were contributing to the educational gaps in the country, which is essentially telling them they’re racist if they consider it.
Then he enrolls his daughter in a private school. Of course, I had a field day with that on Twitter making fun of him for that. I think in some ways it takes a little of their power away, if you can laugh at them and show how absurd they are. I try to explain that to people. It makes them so mad. First of all, they can’t stand the disrespect, but it reminds people-
Ian Prior:
So, I’ll give you-
Julie Gunlock:
Go ahead, I’m sorry.
Ian Prior:
I’ll give you an example of something that just happened yesterday, and it relates back to that whole Chardonnay Antifa group. The sheriff determined that the commonwealth wasn’t going to press charges, but if individuals wanted to press misdemeanor charges they were advised of those rights. For us, I’ll be honest, them closing that investigation was pretty helpful because now we can full air everything, and we did full air everything and it gives us a lot of fodder for the removal efforts.
The lawyer for this one person, Beth Barts, then got a press release. This thing might as well have been written in crayon. The margins are all over the place. Her name’s Barts, and then when he used Barts in the possessive he said B-A-R-T’-S. This is your client. Is her name Bart or Barts. I mean, come on.
Julie Gunlock:
Oh, God. Maybe she should hire you. [crosstalk 00:22:47]. Maybe she should hire you, like a media guy.
Ian Prior:
One case I had, it was an employment discrimination case. It was maybe 10 years ago. We were winning. It was a two-week trial. I was defending the second female lieutenant at the Boston Fire Department. It was just a ridiculous play in effort. He comes up to me before closing statements and he was like, “Maybe next time I’ll hire you.” No, you won’t, buddy. I can’t represent you.
Julie Gunlock:
That is so important. Just what you did, you took a group with a fairly serious-sounding… What were they called? “The Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County.”
Ian Prior:
Anti-Racist, yeah.
Julie Gunlock:
We don’t have time to get into how many people are confused that anti-racist is actually racist. Many people are like, “What’s wrong with anti-racism? Isn’t that good?” Then you have to spend 20 minutes to explain why it doesn’t mean what you think it means. But that is a fairly serious-sounding group, Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County. Then you turn it into Chardonnay Antifa, which I can’t tell you, that was so brilliant it turned them into a mockery, and it explained exactly what they were: bored women, probably drinking too much at night, and having this sort of fantasy life, and being bullies.
Drinking a little too much, and then turning into bullies and trying to scare people. You know what, that can be intimidating. I’ll just tell you, I sort of exist in his mom world. It can be intimidating. You do want to have friends. The other thing is, I will tell you, because it’s been very hard for me living in this city, you worry also it will affect your children. Will they not be… I’ll tell you, it has affected my children. We have been left off invitations. There have been groups of people who do not speak to us. My children have not been invited everywhere because mommy sometimes goes on Fox and defends the Second Amendment.
You get it. It is very powerful. I think that’s why your advice there, there’s fearlessness, and fearlessness also comes when you’re in company, when you can find people that will stand with you in substance and mockery. Tell us, that kind of is a good segue into talking about your organization, because that’s part of fearlessness, giving people support. Tell us what your group does.
Ian Prior:
We started Fight 4 Schools, and it’s at Fight4Schools.com, back in April. Actually, the idea was really created on somebody’s back deck in my neighborhood. There were about eight of us. It was Democrats and Republicans. That’s when we decided that enough is enough with this School Board, and we were going to announce the recall effort. We put together this Virginia Political Action Committee. We launched it in April. It’s really grown since then. We’ve got a Board, but more important than anything else is, as I said, we have this army of moms volunteering out there that have been gathering signatures for these recalls. They are at it all day every day, which is sort of our motto.
We started the process back in May. We’re pretty close to the point where we need to be with a few of these, so we could be ready to file in court in early September. One of the things, nobody’s getting paid. It’s funny you’re seeing all these stories come out about “Oh, this is all an election. It’s all some AstroTurf-” well yeah, we raised $134,000.00 in two and half months, but those were mostly small donors and even the big donors were actually in Loudoun County. So, they keep trying to find the narrative.
Now there was, like I told you, that story in Vice that I’m a “Mad Dad,” and you got one of the guys in the Lincoln Project calling me a racist. I wouldn’t understand somebody at the Lincoln Project to understand about fighting for kids, let’s just put it that way.
Julie Gunlock:
Yeah, it gives me the heebie jeebies whenever I heard “kids” and “Lincoln Project” in the same sentence.
Ian Prior:
Yeah.
Julie Gunlock:
Yeah, it makes me sweat a little as well.
Ian Prior:
It’s fantastic, the organization we built, and the team of people that are just… Everybody has their own sort of particular set of skills, as I say, whether it’s sending FOIAs, whether it’s organizing different parents, whether it’s creating these events where we can go out and gather hundreds of signatures. It’s really given people a mission to go out there and try to make a change. Look, it’s funny because Critical Race Theory is certainly one piece of our case against these School Board members, but it is that because the very people that were defending Critical Race Theory were attacking parents who were having a different point of view.
So the question is, do we want our kids to be brought up like that? No, of course not. We don’t want bullies and we certainly don’t want bullies that are publicly elected officials.
Julie Gunlock:
The thing is, is that in my town, I posted this on Facebook and I don’t know if you saw it, but it was a picture of the School Board and the superintendent showing up to a School Board meeting, really the first one where parents were allowed back in the building to make comments in person. All of them were wearing “I am on an Anti-Racist journey” T-shirts. They all were wearing the same. It was lockstep. All of them had the same T-shirt on, and apparently were asked to do so by the school administration. So, it was sort of a coordinated thing.
I just think about that message. I will tell you, in Alexandria, this little city is a little strange in that people generally do not speak up. If you look at the Open Alexandria Schools Twitter page, they haven’t tweeted in months. They sort of gave up several months ago. Nobody really speaks up. It’s much different than Loudoun County. I think that’s probably why I’ve watched you all so closely. I’ve sort of been jealous and wanting to move because it is great to see parents speaking up.
When my school board did that, it’s just such a message to the community. It’s not worth your time coming to complain. It’s not worth your time because we’ve already decided. We’re not interested in your opinion. To show up like that, it’s just such a terrible… It’s really an unwelcoming message that was sent. I obviously have been hoping that our entire school board and my city gets unelected, but I really think that that strong community pushback is critical. It’s not happening in my town. I’m really glad to see it happening in Loudoun County.
Ian Prior:
The school board meetings, as you talked about, those have become quite the thing. Obviously, the last one was national news, but I would say that it’s interesting that… If you go back and you look at the tape, you’ve got… Here’s the difference between the two sides in this battle at the parent level, there was an individual that got up at the school board meeting. She was one of the first people. She basically turned to insult all of the people in the audience saying, “You all love Jesus, but the guilt is dripping-” I don’t know, something along those lines. She got booed.
The other parent, they’re directing their ire at the school board. They’re elected officials. They work for us. When a former senator gets up there, gives a speech and gets applause, they have to shut it down. They don’t shut down, and they gave the woman back her time for insulting people in the crowd. But when somebody comes up and gives a speech directly at the school and there’s applause, then they’ve got to shut it down.
Julie Gunlock:
Oh, yeah.
Ian Prior:
When they were moving to shut it down, the entire crowd was quiet. They were respectful until they shut down the meeting, and then they booed, they stayed after, they sang The Star Spangled Banner, they read their own speeches. It didn’t get to the point where it got until the superintendent declared an unlawful assembly. That’s when there were problems. It’s interesting to see that the Chairwoman of the Loudoun County school board talk about decorum when her own school board, and one of her school board members, was in a group that was plotting against parents, and they still have done nothing about it.
They haven’t said anything about it. They haven’t disciplined the member that really lit the fire that created this entire chaos in Loudoun County. So, you want to talk about decorum, how about you show us some decorum and show a little bit respect for parents and stop saying that we’re engaged in dog whistle politics, or this is all to win elections, or parents are misrepresenting things. You’re the one, Chairwoman, that is showing a lack of decorum.
Julie Gunlock:
Yeah, it is really interesting though how these groups are all tied together. You mentioned this Chardonnay Antifa group, and that there’re members of the school board, members that… We have the same thing that happens here in Alexandria. We have this organization called Grassroots Alexandria. It sounds totally nice, right? That is the group that doxxed… We have the acting DHS secretary under Trump lived in my neighborhood, and he was doxxed. I don’t know if his children were home, but they did two big protests in front of this guy’s own house.
Guess who was participating in the protest? A City Council member. So you have a City Council member doxxing a DHS official. It’s insane. That’s why these groups are so bold, and why ultimately, at least in this town and obviously in Loudoun, government officials, school board officials, they don’t care because they get away with so much. The idea that you can have a City Council member dox a government official, that’s insane. It wouldn’t have happened, but I think it’s totally acceptable in this new weird word that we’re living in, at least in dark blue cities and dark blue areas of the country.
Ian, I am so thrilled to be talking to you. I am going to continue to follow what you’re doing. I think you’re doing great work, and I think you’re giving parents great advice. Where can they find you? What websites, Twitter accounts, Twitter handles, all that good stuff?
Ian Prior:
Website, Fight4Schools.com. My Twitter is just @Fight4Schools, and my individual Twitter is @IanDPrior. So, follow along as we move into the school year and as we get closer to our efforts to remove some of these school board members. Hopefully, we’re providing both a playbook, but also inspiration to other parents across the country. We talked about the three things that I said on that Tucker program, which was substance, fearlessness and mockery. But I think there’s three more things that parents should think about when they’re trying to organize, and that’s investigate, communicate and activate.
Doing those three things, sending FOIAs, talking to parents, talking to your kids, finding out what’s going on schools, that’s your investigation prong. Communication, build press lists, build relationships. Communicate these things to individuals that are dealing with the same things, and activate. Really try and organize and create a group that can sort of lead the charge and raise the money that’s going to be necessary, whether it’s to try a recall election or try a removal process, or even to engage in election.
Those are the kinds of things that you just got keep in mind and really focus your efforts on trying to do as you move forward.
Julie Gunlock:
Listen Ian, I am going to follow up with you on this. I think it’s something that you might be interested in too. I work for IWF, but there’s IWV, and now there’s the Independent Women’s Network. That is a private, members-only group for women, and we offer resources to do exactly what you talked about: investigate, communicate and activate, and also sort of some guidance, and being fearless and learning about issues so you have the substance.
We haven’t really started the lessons on mockery yet, but we might to do that. What I think would be great, and I’ll follow up with you is, if our two groups maybe partnered on some things. We would really like to highlight your group in the network and tell women about your group, but I think there’s some opportunity for some joint events because I think we have the same goals in mind.
Ian Prior:
Absolutely. We’d love to hear more. Definitely.
Julie Gunlock:
Thank you again, Ian, for coming on. Keep up the fight, and keep inspiring people. We’ll be watching. Thanks for coming on Bespoke.
Ian Prior:
Thanks for having me.
Julie Gunlock:
Thanks everyone for being here for another episode of the Bespoke Parenting Hour. If you enjoyed this episode or liked the podcast in general, please leave a rating or review on iTunes. This helps ensure that the podcast reaches as many listeners as possible. If you haven’t subscribed to the Bespoke Parenting Hour on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts, please do so, so you won’t miss an episode. Don’t forget to share this episode, and let your friends know they can get Bespoke episodes on their favorite podcast app.
From all of us here at the Independent Women’s Forum, thanks for listening.