On this episode of The Bespoke Parenting Hour Podcast, host Julie Gunlock talks to Nicole Solas, a Rhode Island mom turned activist fighting for the rights of parents all over the nation. Last year, Nicole found out she was being sued by the teachers’ union after a simple request for information from her local school. Julie and Nicole discuss how going from stay-at-home mom to nationally recognized activist mom changed her life and her mothering style, and how having a support system makes it all possible.
TRANSCRIPT
Julie Gunlock:
Hey, everyone. I’m Julie Gunlock, host 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 really excited to have on Nicole Solas. Nicole is a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum, and she writes for the Education Freedom Center. She’s also a stay-at-home mom who has two children, and she lives in Rhode Island. Nicole is well-known as a mom. She’s actually very famous, particularly in parent circles. She’s that mom who got sued by the teachers’ union and they sued her because she had the audacity of asking too many questions. That is something you’re not allowed to do until now.
But that teachers’ union was not smart, and Nicole is an attorney and she is not easily intimidated. So we’re going to talk to her a little bit about that case. If you are interested in more sort of a deep-down discussion on that case, check out IWF She Thinks podcast where Nicole was a guest, I think many, many months ago, but where she really goes into that case and gives details. And also on IW Network, the Independent Women’s Network, she had a great conversation with Ginny Gentles on the How to Escape Your Government Assigned School podcast that Ginny runs there. So there’s two other sources for you to find out more and we will touch on that here, but first I want to welcome Nicole. Nicole, thanks so much for coming on.
Nicole Solas:
Hi, thank you so much for having me.
Julie Gunlock:
It’s really exciting to talk to you, I have to say. I feel like you are like the alpha mom of parent activists. You are like, “This is how you do it.” You are a great example of the right way to fight back. So, before we get into some other topics of parenting in general, which I really wanted to switch over to, give us the elevator speech. Tell us what happened to you and how you decided to fight back against really this bullying intimidation on the part of the teachers’ unions.
Nicole Solas:
Yeah, well, this started about a year ago. I enrolled my daughter in kindergarten in my public school district and I wanted to know if they were teaching critical race theory and gender theory. And my school wouldn’t answer any of my questions without public records request. So I called them, I emailed them, and this is the only way that I could get my questions answered. And when I submitted those public records requests, which were hundreds, because it was the only way I could ask a question, my school district threatened to sue me in a public-school board meeting and made the entire school board meeting about me.
That was in itself an out-of-body experience, which I think I would need another hour just to talk about what they did to me, but then they decided not to sue me, and then two months later, the teachers’ union did sue me for submitting those public records request that, again, my school district told me to submit. And ever since then I’ve just been doing as much media as possible to talk about what happened to me and to encourage other parents to fight back against their school board when they bully them so egregiously in the way that they did to me.
Julie Gunlock:
Well, Nicole, we know now, thanks a lot to Luke Rosiak’s reporting on this, and frankly other reporting on this, that there’s no daylight between school boards and teachers’ unions. It is an incredibly incestuous group of people, I mean, the organizations, in that you’ll have a school board member up there and then you find out in their bio that actually they were the head of the teachers’ unions.
And this is also true for the PTA, by the way. The PTA often has people involved that are part of these other organizations. It’s really a cabal, and so it’s funny when you’re talking about, “Well, the teachers’ union, they ultimately sued me, but it was going to be the school board.” I’m sitting here listening, going, “No difference. There’s no difference between these organizations.” And that also loops in —
Nicole Solas:
That’s correct.
Julie Gunlock:
— that it also loops in public school administrations. And I say public school, and I’m always really careful when I talk about these things to say, private schools are just as bad when it comes to CRT, some of the environmental alarmism, the gender stuff that they’re teaching. But in this case, this kind of intimidation that we’re seeing and these very powerful organizations that can go against parents, that’s almost really just the public schools. And I think private schools are a little bit more reluctant to bully because, obviously, you pay tuition there. So it is an interesting thing to think about when you are being harassed by incredibly powerful institutions in America.
Nicole Solas:
Yeah. I mean, they have all the money in the world to bring lawsuits against parents. The teachers’ union, the NEA that’s suing me there, they’re a $360 million teachers’ union, so even if we do dismiss this lawsuit on the basis that they’re harassing me, which is our argument, they might pay me a nominal damages for being harassed. And then they’ll move on. The reason why I want to speak out so much is to say, “Well, look, I can’t defund you with this lawsuit. I mean, I wish I could, and maybe I’ll have a great judge who will make that happen. But at the end of the day, I can make this known what you did to me and have this not happen again,” because I think they thought they were going to win just by suing me and silence other parents and [inaudible 00:05:47] —
Julie Gunlock:
Well, and it works in many cases, and this does take money and it does take patience, my goodness, to get through this. But one thing I want to talk about, this Bespoke Parenting Hour, the whole point of being a Bespoke parent is tailoring your parenting to your family. And I think there’s way too much judgment on parents today and pressure to do it in a certain way. So I like to interview women who do it, or parents, I have interviewed some men who have kind of unusual parenting styles or find themselves in unusual circumstances that might impact the style of their parenting. You know, it’s interesting, I think of you… Upcoming, we have an emergency room doctor who’s going to talk about how she has really difficult hours.
We’ve interviewed truck drivers, people in law enforcement, that might have, again, strange hours or some unusual circumstances. And I think of being a parent activist, I feel that you were kind of… It happened suddenly, right? Because you were just enrolling your daughter and asking normal questions. So what I’d like to talk to you about is, what was your life like before all this happened? I know you’re a stay-at-home mom, but tell me about what your life was like before you generated all this and… Not you, you didn’t generate it. They did. But some of this national attention that you’ve gotten has got to have affected things in your life. So tell us a little bit about what it was like before.
Nicole Solas:
Yeah. My life was very private and peaceful. I mean, my family, we have a very harmonious household. My kids are healthy and happy. I have a wonderful marriage, and we really didn’t have any extraordinary stressors in our life. I mean, I was focusing on gardening. I was just going about my life, taking the right tool at bulbs and measuring the pH of my soil. I mean, I’ve always been engaged in what’s going on, but I’ve never participated publicly in the way that I am now. And I felt like I had to, because when I saw my name on that agenda of the school board meeting which said, “We are going to discuss bringing a lawsuit against Nicole Solas.” So it wasn’t just like lawsuit against a parent. They named me on their public agenda.
I had to have a public response because this was meant to destroy my life personally. This was meant to ostracize me from my community just as my children were going to participate in the community by going to school. And so for me, I felt like I had no choice but to respond publicly because it was either that, fight them publicly, or sort of like agree that, “Okay, fine, I’ll be quiet because I don’t want you to hold my kids hostage and bully my kid in school. I guess I’ll just be the outcast.” That was not an option for me. So then the question became, “Okay, well, what am I going to deal with if I do this?” And of course, I was concerned about my kids’ best interest and welfare at school.
And so after my school board meeting happened, the first thing I did was enroll them in a private school. And I found a school where I was very honest with them. I said, “This is why I’m coming here. This is what my school did to me, and I need to know if you teach critical race and gender theory. This is a Catholic school and I know not all Catholic schools are immune from this, but mine was very clear for me that they don’t do this, and they allowed me to see things. I had a tour, which I couldn’t have. But what I do now is, I keep my…. I have a six-year-old and a two-year-old. My six-year-old daughter is completely unaware of what is happening.
I don’t let her see any of my media that I do. I think one time it came on TV and I just said, “Oh, that was mommy’s meeting.” So I’m very protective of her. She doesn’t know how you get on TV. She saw it once and I was sort of like, “Oh, yeah, that’s cool, right?” And we never really talked about it and she didn’t ask any questions, because I don’t want my story to be her story. This is what I’m doing for her, so that way she can live her life and have a great education and do whatever she wants to do.
Julie Gunlock:
That’s right.
Nicole Solas:
As she gets older, of course, there’s [inaudible 00:10:16] that —
Julie Gunlock:
There’s also the idea, which, again, many schools around the country don’t seem to have this concept of, that some concepts are too much for young children. This is a lot to explain to a child. “Mommy’s fighting about this, that, and the other.” It is a subject that is very sophisticated. I don’t know about you, but I have sometimes trouble explaining CRT to people because it’s a complex subject. It is not one plus one. And so, while we fight as parents to keep these kinds of concepts out of school and we’re constantly gaslit and told, “Well, it’s not in school.”
And then you find out it’s integrated into the curriculum, into English class and math class, and in these completely wild ways, that’s also why it’s complicated trying to explain to people how these things can come into the classroom, but maybe not, like, “Okay, now we’re going to learn about CRT.” So, again, that’s, I think, one of the very important roles of parenting and what ultimately you are fighting for here is really having the control to determine what your daughter’s ready to see and what she isn’t. And so it’s interesting that your own personal story really kind of connects to ultimately what you are fighting for and that’s control over your daughter.
Nicole Solas:
Exactly. And I know that I’m not going to be able to control everything. I anticipate if this continues at this intense rate that it’s going that, as she gets older, maybe there will be parents on the playground that recognize me and don’t want their kids to play with my kid. I hope that doesn’t happen. I hope we can all just agree that we have different politics and our kids can play together. But if that ever happens — because I know that happened to another parent whose kids are older — I’m right now thinking of ways that I’m going to explain that to her. Is it going to be me saying, “Well, sometimes families have different beliefs and some families are okay with different beliefs and some families aren’t okay with different beliefs. We’re okay with people having different beliefs, but we have to respect other families if they just don’t want to be around people with different beliefs.” So —
Julie Gunlock:
Well, you know —
Nicole Solas:
… I’m turning that in my head and I’m like, “Oh, is that what I’m going to say? I don’t know.” Do I have to say this? I hope not.
Julie Gunlock:
I think you’re very, very smart to deal with this. You and I have touched on a little bit about my own experience, about when my children were in elementary school and the Parkland shooting happened in Florida and was just an incredibly tragic thing, which in our media, our media tends to immediately go for… The only narrative is gun control, gun control. And so I actually was asked to go on Fox News quite a bit to defend. I write a lot and advocate for the Second Amendment. And I live in a dark, dark blue town that is very strong. There’s several Moms Demand Action in every town, chapters in my community, and my kids had a very hard time.
Now they weren’t as young as yours. They were a little bit older, and there was terrible bullying and isolation and ostracization of my family. So it’s smart to start thinking about that. And hopefully, I don’t know about the politics of where you live, but I’ve heard you say one of the ways you’ve gotten through this, and this might have been on another podcast where I heard you say, because someone said, like, “How do you do all this?” You talked about setting up or having or at least creating your own support system. Tell me a little bit about the support system that you have in place to help your family deal with this sudden fame.
Nicole Solas:
Yeah. I was really lucky because I had already been admin-ing a private Facebook group about indoctrination in school, and it was just to raise awareness. So when my school board targeted me, I had already had hundreds of people that knew exactly what was going on, just by sheer luck of me doing this. And then they would tell other people and then other people would reach out to me on Facebook and on social media. And so over the course of the year, I have a whole network of people now across America and other states that I text, I have chat groups and Signal and Telegram and all these other platforms where parents can just ask each other a question, keep each other updated, give each other support. And for me, that has been invaluable because my town, like yours, is extremely liberal. I have a lot of allies here, but you would never know it based on the politics of the town.
Julie Gunlock:
Yes. Nicole, it’s so interesting that you say that. IWF — and you’re part of the IWF family, you’re a senior fellow there, but as you know…. Well, I should say, in the fall last year, we launched this new network called IWN and it’s to do exactly what you just described, is to help women set up these networks of support. Because it’s funny that you say, “I have support in my local town, but you’d never know it.” This is the exact situation I have because there’s such fear to speak out here if you are not a progressive liberal voter or a progressive liberal on social issues and on education issues. I mean, there’s an awful lot of people around here who support every single thing that my local public schools are doing in terms of the gender and CRT and the other issues that parents are dealing with right now, and they’re perfectly fine not being communicated with.
So it is really hard to find those networks and doing that, I mean, I think thank goodness you had that network already in place, but I think that IWF really saw that as a need, and so we’re trying to set that up for other people because that’s ultimately… I think in our day and age where you can be canceled, you can be harassed, you can be bullied, you can be doxed. There is this fear of not just speaking out, but even supporting causes that might not be politically advantageous to your particular location. So I think that’s great, and I think that, hopefully, if you are a woman who wants to speak out, you’ll check out IWN to start building that network for yourself.
Nicole Solas:
Yes. Yeah. I’ve looked at IWN, and it’s really great the way that you guys post your stories and then people can interact with comments. One of the things that I hope comes of platforms like that is that we learn that this fear is sort of fake news now. I hope we can demystify it and say, actually, they just convinced us that all this was scary and it’s really not. And look at all the people we have that are ready to speak out. And then we watch them fold like a house of cards because they don’t have a plan B. They’re just hedging on everyone remaining scared. What are they going to do once we stop being scared?
Julie Gunlock:
That is such a great point. That is such a great point. So, okay, so building on this story that you’re telling here, which I think is fascinating, what is your life like now? You’ve touched on that a little bit. Your daughter, sometimes your TV pops up, but this is essentially… It’s funny, in your bio I said, she’s a stay-at-home mom. You really aren’t. You’re like a professional activist at this point. And I don’t need to get into it, but you’re not paid to go to be angry in your own town. You’re not paid to do this. So, what has this been like in terms of… I mean, I doubt you’re doing a lot of tulip planting right now because I know for myself it is very hard for me sometimes. It’s just like, “Oh, God, I don’t want to go to the school board meeting. I don’t want to go. I’m tired.” So how has this really changed your life now? What is your day like?
Nicole Solas:
Yeah. So my day from morning to night is advocacy or activism or whatever you want to call it. I can tell you just today I was texting with a mom from Arizona. She said, “Okay, this is what happened. I requested this information. It didn’t work out.” And I said, “Okay, I think you might have a First Amendment claim. Let me contact this law firm and see if I can tell them that I know you and maybe they can talk with you.” And that takes time because I’m texting while I’m cooking breakfast. I can’t be on the phone with my two-year-old who’s waiting for his breakfast. I’m definitely multitasking more than I ever have in my life. And you’re right, all of this is not paid. This is because we’re all parents that know that the future of our kids hinges on this culture war. The other thing I did yesterday and the day before, I went out with a guy named Billboard Chris on Twitter. You can look him up [inaudible 00:19:06] —
Julie Gunlock:
Oh, fantastic.
Nicole Solas:
Yeah. Fantastic. We stood on street corners and had conversations with people about the medical abuse of children sucked into gender ideology.
Julie Gunlock:
Oh, that’s great.
Nicole Solas:
And then I posted all those on Twitter and tried to get more conversations going and helped to promote Chris because his work is amazing and brilliant. So, that’s been my life just the past three days, and I have to coordinate this with my husband who works full-time. We’re a single-income household. I wish I could be paid for this work, but at the same time, it’s always been very, very difficult to monetize this kind of activism. I’m going to be doing it anyway. I think that this is not what I plan on doing.
I’m really a full-time working mom now. I get to work from home, and I get to do what I believe is the most important thing I’ve really ever done in my life. So, yeah, it’s more stressful, but it’s worth it because I’m doing this for my kids, and all parents that are doing this for free. I’m not the only parent working for free here. This is really the new parenting, is this advocacy.
Julie Gunlock:
So I’m curious about one other thing. I talk to so many moms all the time who just are… I call them lurkers. They’re lurkers on different Facebook pages. They might lurk on Twitter, but they never engage and it’s just like, they cannot, they would never do that. And it’s interesting to me because I’m always like, “Why not?” Because I’ve been doing this. I’m like, “I will not say how old I am, but it has been many years that I have been doing this.” And so I’m like, “Come on, let’s fight. Let’s fight. Let’s fight.” That’s why I love Twitter. I love Twitter for that reason, right? And let’s get into this. But I know that I’m unusual. There is like a screw loose and I’m unusual, especially I think for women who generally don’t like this kind of stuff. And we’ve actually, we’ve done quite a lot of study.
IWF has actually looked into this, what women kind of go for, and there’s this sort of aggressive fighting, but I think that’s changing. I think that’s changing a bit. And I wanted to ask you why, because, man, you were like, “This is insane.” And the thing is, you weren’t crazy like grizzly bear on her hind legs, and you weren’t threatening. You just simply were asking questions. But then you started to get more refusals and then them actually discussing suing you on a school board… But it didn’t quiet you down. What was it? Is it your law degree?
Because, I mean, I do think that that could probably be somewhat significant. You understand a lot of what your rights are, probably in a more profound way than other women. Was it your support system? Was it the fact that you’d been monitoring these, or you’d been managing these Facebook groups, so you kind of knew the lay of the land? Maybe you don’t know, but discuss that with me. Why did you feel like, “I can fight this”?
Nicole Solas:
Oh, I think it’s just in your personality, which isn’t to say that I’m going to fight everything. But when it comes to really important things like my kids, I am a fighter and it’s very easy for me to tap into the fighter in me when it comes to my kids. Which isn’t to say that other parents that are scared to fight don’t want to fight for their kids. But for me, I just feel sick to my stomach if I were to let someone bully me in the way that my school and the teachers’ union is bullying me. But then I think there are people who feel sick to their stomach when they just think of the prospect of fighting back in a conflict. Like conflict is like, “Oh, my God.” It’s too much anxiety for them.
But you’re right that having a legal background made me not intimidated by a school board. I mean, if anything, I have so much contempt for these people that are just ordinary people who act like tyrants in a school cafeteria. It’s pathetic, in my opinion. I’m like, “I saw you at the grocery store the other day and now you’re going to talk about suing me in front of… Are you insane? Why do you…” So, that in itself, I mean, and also just being engaged politically is like knowing what’s going on will really put things into perspective when you see that something this absurd that’s happening to just a mom in the community happens, you’re going to have a more realistic perspective of how to respond.
And I don’t want people to be overly focused on my law degree because I don’t want people to think that, “Oh, she can do it because she’s a lawyer.” I didn’t practice law for a very long time before I decided to stay home with my kids, and this is really something that anyone can do if you just get over the fear of, say, a media interview, or get over the fear of just speaking in front of people, because I’ve talked to a lot of parents in my town that have contacted me, or another town, and they’re like, “Oh, I’m scared to speak at this meeting.” And I say, “Just give it a try the first time and I guarantee you, after that, you’re going to like it. You’re going to feel empowered.” You’re not going to do it once and go, “Oh, I’m so glad that’s over. I never want to do it again.” You’re going to want to keep doing it.
Julie Gunlock:
It’s interesting, I want to ask you about media training, because I will tell you, you are so composed after actually on this… I’m impressed by your composure even on this podcast. But I’ve done media for many, many years and it is intimidating. To this day, if I have to sit in the studio and it can be very intimidating. I host a morning radio show each week, and I’m not intimidated on that at all. I enjoy it. I love it. But sometimes we get guests where I have to interview pretty big names and it can be a little intimidating.
And so I think it’s comforting to hear even what I would say media pros or people who’ve done it for many years, or an intense… I mean, you’re on Tucker. You’re on Laura Ingraham. You’re on very high-profile shows. Say that, “Yeah, it could be nerve-wracking.” That humanizes I think the experience. But did you get media training before this? Because you are very good on screen.
Nicole Solas:
Thank you. I didn’t have media training, but I’m lucky because I was a theater major in college.
Julie Gunlock:
There you go.
Nicole Solas:
Yeah. I’ve never done TV. I did some stage acting in college and then I decided to go to law school, so I don’t even have that much acting experience, but I think it gave me enough experience to do public speaking. And one thing that I really credit my theater training to is that when you’re doing stuff like this, you just have to remember that you’re talking to a human being. We’re all just normal people and you got to zero in on the conversation you’re having with the person in front of you because ultimately what we’re going for is truth. You just got to relax and just focus on the person you’re talking to and be as honest as possible.
Julie Gunlock:
It’s so interesting, Nicole, because I’m the co-host on this radio show, and the main host and the guy really runs the show — I’m definitely a sidekick — is Larry O’Connor. And it’s interesting because he was a theater major and then went on to manage theaters, very big theaters, and worked with actors and actresses. And he’s so funny because he’s always like, his first wife was an actress and he’s always talking about drama and how traumatic act —.
He’s very fun to talk about the Johnny Depp, Amber Heard trial going on. He’s always saying it’s like touching too close to home. But the point is that…. It’s funny that you say that because he is so great, his presence is very big and very entertaining. And so, that makes a lot of sense.
But I think as I’m saying, “Oh, no, get out there,” then I’m talking about Nicole Solas having a theater background. You do not need a theater background to do the media. I will tell you, I certainly have no background in theater and that stuff and I manage to do it. It does help, though, and I think to some degree a theater background plus a law degree, goodness, that does really, I think, bump up the confidence points for you. But I think the great thing is is ultimately you are a mom, a stay-at-home mom who was encouraged to do this because of the passion for her own children and safety for her own children. And that, you don’t need a theater background to get… or a law degree to know what’s right and wrong and to get pretty pissed off, enough to stand in front of your school boards.
And it’s good advice what you said about, just go. Just do it once and then you’ll want to do it more. Because that’s true. Every time I’m nervous to go on a media hit, I’m like… And then afterwards I’m like, “Oh, I want to do this again. This was fun.” So you’re absolutely right about that. So I think the practice makes perfect and I’ve often told people, “Write it down. Nobody’s going to harass you at a school board meeting if you’re reading a statement. It’s fine.” But with that practice, you might get more natural at it. So, very interesting little bio there, Nicole. I totally get it now.
Well, listen, I’m so glad that you came on and I think that encouraging moms to do this is important, but I also do think it’s really interesting what you’ve said about the impact it’s had on your lives. We need to remember that the parents out there that are doing this, it’s taking away time from their normal lives and from your kids and family life and things like that, and it is a sacrifice. So, as a mom who’s trying to do this, trying to fight back a little bit in her community, I really admire what you’ve done here and I appreciate what you’ve done and know that you have a lot of supporters and fans out there, really hoping for a good outcome for you.
Nicole Solas:
Thank you. Thank you so much. I really hope everyone does something. You just have to find the right way that you can fight given your own family life situation.
Julie Gunlock:
Well, I know —
Nicole Solas:
[inaudible 00:29:10] all to say something, but we’ll win this fight.
Julie Gunlock:
We will. And we’re thrilled to have you at IWF as a fellow. It’s a huge get for us to have you there explaining what you’re doing every day to fight back and really as a model to parents on how to do it. So, with determination and grace and civility, but you’re no pushover. So I think, again, thank you for what you’re doing, and thanks for coming on Bespoke. I think this has been an interesting conversation, and come back and let us know how things turned out.
Nicole Solas:
Thank you so much, Julie.
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 Player, 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 that they can get Bespoke episodes on their favorite podcast app. From all of us here at the Independent Women’s Forum, thanks for listening.