Neighbors:
Jared Sullivan here.
Moms for Liberty, the far-right hate group, is preparing to take over the Williamson County School Board.
As you may have already read, on Tuesday, long-serving, long-suffering WCS superintendent Jason Golden resigned, days after the WCS board voted to extend his contract by a year. Why? Because, ever since Governor Bill Lee (to his everlasting disgrace) politicized school-board elections across Tennessee, the WCS board has become increasingly unserious (remember the textbook debacle?) and loaded with Moms for Liberty-aligned, book-banning, voucher-supporting, hard-right reactionaries who have undercut Golden’s efforts to provide top-quality, fact-based education to the children of Williamson County. And Golden couldn’t take it any longer.
What really gets me, as a person of (nuanced) faith, is that many of these hard-right school-board members brand themselves as God-fearing Christians who support “family values,” which, of course, is a farce. What they really intend to do is tear down public education on the local level as the Trump administration tries to gut it nationally. (This Jill Lepore piece in The New Yorker is an excellent primer on how dismantling public education has been part of the Southern conservative project since the days of the Scopes trial.)
As I’ve written before, our excellent public schools are the economic bedrock of our county, and if the rightoid nuts succeed in injecting their batty Christian nationalist views into our children’s curriculum at the expense of academic excellence — well, that’s good for none of us, since our property values are tied to our public schools (to say nothing of the potential harm to our children’s education).
Which is why it’s time to act. And by that I mean canvass.
There’s a WCS school-board election coming up on August 6, with early voting beginning on July 17.
The only way to keep the Moms for Liberty freakshows out of office is if we canvass for sane alternatives. I’ve already canvassed for Jennifer Parker Konyn (it was fun! And good exercise! And everyone I met was delightful!), and I plan to do it again this week.
Below are the non-M4L candidates that I think deserve your support. I’m sure they’d each be delighted if you spent just a single hour handing out fliers for them.
District 2: Spring Hill – Jason Greathouse
District 6: Brentwood – Kristi Bidinger
District 8: Brentwood/Grassland – Cory Martin
District 10: Franklin – Jennifer Parker Konyn
You can see all the upcoming canvass opportunities here for the two Democratic candidates, Greathouse and Konyn. You’ll have to reach out to Martin and Bidinger through their websites.
ALSO — There’s the county commission race!
I’m sure each of these Democratic candidates would appreciate your support and time canvassing. They all have links to donate and canvass on their websites.
District 3: Spring Hill — Christina Rosato
District 3: Spring Hill — Christine Vertucci
District 5: Nolensville — Aaron Smith
District 6: Brentwood — Mark Thompson
District 8: Brentwood/Grassland — Emily Paisley
District 8: Brentwood/Grassland — Bobbi Saltsman
District 9: Westhaven/Thompson’s Station — Christine Van Cleave
District 10: Franklin — David Steele
District 10: Franklin — Jody Todd
District 11: Also Franklin — Steve Atkinson
District 11: Also Franklin — John Haynes
This Sunday, June 28, there’s a meet and greet for County Commission District 11 (Elder John E. Haynes and Steve Atkinson), State House 65 (Julian Pierre-Griffin), and State Senate 27 (David Hardy). You can sign up here. I plan to be there.
These elections really matter. A major new study confirmed what we’ve long known: that Southern red states underperform blue states by most key metrics — child mortality, education, gun violence — and these disappointing results are directly downstream of disastrous GOP policies.
I’ll leave you with this: If you are anything like me and think our governor is a faux-Christian nitwit whose sole intent in public office is to promote his anti-intellectual brand of religion and further enrich members of the elite ruling class, you’ll appreciate this song, titled “Landlords, Bill Lee, etc.,” by the Nashville songwriter Nathan Evans Fox. It’s good to laugh a little when things are bleak.
