Parents Protest at the Board of Education

By Anita Mpambara Cox

A Liberal Circular Firing Squad took place at the Board of Education building on Tuesday June 6^th. Could it signal the start of a red wave?

For conservatives that had hoped for a local “red wave” in the November 2022 election, the demonstration that took place on June 6^th outside the Montgomery County Public School (MCPS) headquarters in Rockville may prove to be that long awaited turning point. I had been notified about an “Urgent Call to Action” by the Family and Religious Right (FRRF) group that organized the protest and I arrived at the headquarters building about one hour into the protest, during my lunch hour. What I witnessed was an incredible sight (politically speaking) - two constituencies of diehard liberal voters standing across from each other separated by a road and their opinion on what exactly freedom means. The issue: their kids and the newly approved MCPS “inclusive” curriculum that threatens to force-feed indoctrination through a selection of books such as Pride Puppy. In other words the woke-mob crossed the line in coming for their kids.

The shots exchanged between the two groups, one composed of about 35 rainbow-clad mostly women organized by Councilwoman Kristen Mink (D-Dist 5), arguably the most progressive member in the County Council, and the other a mixed group of about 600 Muslims and Ethiopian Orthodox Christians organized by the FRRF were nothing short of breath taking. The rainbow squad’s display of sheer arrogance - Lady Gaga music blaring, cocky talk through bullhorns (“have you never seen an atheist before”) and weird off-beat dancing - was outdone by the sheer energy and large numbers of the predominantly immigrant group who stood together unintimated. At one point, the two groups were chanting the exact same thing in unison saying “protect our kids” so much so that the whole thing caught Elon Musk’s eye. The Twitter CEO tweeted “They keep chanting “protect our children” but the children in question are not theirs.” A comment made in response to Musk’s tweet by AJ Delgado captured the nature of the circular firing squad stating how “awkward it is going to be for the Left to continue to try to cast these parental-rights-groups as “hate groups.” Why? A huge chunk are black, Latino, Asian and Muslim and more”.

Collectively, this was a group of traditional democrats that on any other day would have been standing on the same side of issues and opposite from conservatives.  But on a Tuesday morning, they had shown up to testify against each other at the final MCPS board meeting of the year. The disagreements started to pile on, arguing about the numbers allowed to enter the building! Each side was permitted just 30 people. The FRRF argued that the numbers admitted should be proportional to the numbers of present protestors which would have been funny because only like four rainbow-squad members to about 50 FRRF members would have been allowed inside to sit and watch the testimonies and proceedings. That in and of itself reflected the reality of the woke-mob on the LGBTQ+ issue. Just how many are there in the county that the MCPS sees a need to shift an entire curriculum and face such ire?

Once the total of 60 people were inside the rainbow-squad side of the road looked like a deserted battlefield with just a dozen rainbow flags placed in the ground and an upside down BLM sign leaning on a pole and two people left to stand there. Within minutes the two were gone. The Muslim and Christian side had over 300 people who stayed standing and chanting and formed a huddle to chant some more. Another almost 300 started to wander off to their cars (some left and some sat in their cars to listen to the testimonies). That was when I shot this video as the huddle formed around their leader, Wael Elkoshairi,  from FRRF telling them the importance of listening to their young members testifying inside the board of education building. He shouted out the instructions on how to follow the proceedings on their cell phones, “everybody get your phones out and go to www.frrfusa.org and click listen to our kids”. Everyone did so. It felt like watching a civics lesson in an outdoor political activism class.

With their ears and eyes trained to the phone, I walked through the crowd as they listened and I talked to them to learn what exactly had motivated them to come out and protest on a week day. It was then that I watched the liberal blows land hard, hitting below the belt. Councilwoman Mink, the Asian council member, insinuated that being on the side of the road where we stood was tantamount to being aligned with white supremacists, “this issue has unfortunately…put…some Muslim families on the same side of an issue as white supremacists and outright bigots”. She said that Muslim families did not have the religious right to opt their children out of the indoctrinating curriculum, because that would be the same as having kids opt out of “teachings about evolution”. Jaws dropped and Kareem Monib and I laughed out loud about that statement she had made. The councilmember’s statement was dismissed as nonsense by many listening outside.

But what had caused the biggest stir among this group of parents was the testimony of an African American boy, about nine years old, being raised by a gay couple, one of his parents, a Caucasian man seated to his right, who told the board that he was pansexual. He read from a crumpled piece of paper saying his parents were gay and other members of his extended family were some of version of queer that he was careful to list out. While he was speaking, the woman standing next to me opened her mouth in surprise and fired off a litany of questions in her Ethiopian accent, “he is kid, how does he know anything about sex, why is he saying those words” concluding “they have groomed him”. A friend of hers responded to her saying that she just couldn’t believe how intolerant they all are about respecting their religion and freedom to be influenced by it, “that’s what religion is, we follow its teachings do they know that” she asked. I in turn asked them if they knew that all the elected members of MCPS’s board were registered democrats who routinely use the word “equity” as a ruse to get immigrant votes. I asked if they thought that “equity” as used on the other side of the road made sense to them. Without uttering another word and almost on cue, the two women clicked out of the live stream and left the protest with their toddlers in tow.  They’d heard and had enough!

It wasn’t before I welcomed them to “the club”(read: MoCo GOP) where their deeply held views are aligned with our party that advocates for parental rights and school choice. Congressman Poser at the annual Montgomery County convention in March told attendees that in such deep blue places like Maryland democrats won’t resist the urge to overreach. The overreach has arrived for this set of voters, because what many of them did not realize was that at the exact time they stood protesting on June 6^th, Governor Moore in Annapolis was signing an executive order to protect access to gender-affirming health care throughout the state calling it “necessary” medical care. Knowing that in tandem with being denied parental rights is a huge blow.

So, now there is a court case to restore opt-out, and a request from the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Maryland that Councilmember Mink publicly apologize to those she offended in her remarks before the board.  The two-page letter dated June 7^th shows how deeply the Muslim community feel about this issue of LGBTQ+ books in schools. But the real casualty are children for whom division is real inside their schools, because these books won’t go away and the opt-out won’t be revoked for fear of a democrats lose-lose situation that all circular firing squads are. The resulting wounds can only be healed at the ballot box. As I left, I told one of their leaders, Kareem Monib, the founder of a new grassroots group called “Coalition of Virtue” that I would be in touch.

It’s the voter rolls, stupid! That’s how red waves start.

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Anita Mpambara Cox is Chair of the Gaithersburg Multicultural Affairs Committee, a former Member of the Montgomery County Charter Review Commission and the 2022 Republican State Senate nominee for LD19. Contact her at [email protected]