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‘We Have Never and Will Never Co-parent with the Government’
The MacIver Institute has published a story on an open letter titled “38 Wisconsin Parent Groups Reject Lockdowns and Forced Masking in Open Letter to President Biden and WI Governor Evers.”
An open letter, signed by 38 Wisconsin parent groups, was delivered on Friday to Governor Tony Evers and President Joe Biden. Their letter announces that the parents outright reject and will fight any future mask mandate or lockdown forced on their children. The groups represent over 20,000 families in Wisconsin. (Emphasis bolded.)
The letter itself is copied and pasted below, and is available here in PDF format.
President Biden and Governor Evers,
We represent over 20,000 Wisconsin families across 38 parent advocacy groups, and we are here to inform you that your uninvited reign of destruction over the children of Wisconsin is finished.
We have watched the last week unfold in abject horror – observing our government institutions and leaders failing our children at every turn, again. Your renewed calls for lockdowns, enforced mask mandates, and masking in schools is not rooted in science and is objectively cruel to the most vulnerable in our society, our children. We believe that you are in fact aware of this and continue to play political games with our children, despite our efforts to work with you over the last twelve months.
We are here to inform you that this ends today.
Effective immediately we will not:
1. Mask our children in schools
2. Allow you to use your private sector counterparts to enforce invasive mask mandates on our children in various stores or at community activities
3. Subject our children to any further local, regional, or national lockdowns or movement restrictionSimply put, these are not your children. They are ours and they too, are Americans with rights. They are our responsibility and our most beloved. They are not yours.
We applaud and support the school boards, businesses, and localities that have respected our parental choice. We anticipate and appreciate their continued support of our right to choose what is best for our children and individual families.
If you are a parent reading this, hear us clearly: you are not alone. We urge you to connect with other parents and make your voice heard.
We are strong. We are united. We are in control.
We have never and will never co-parent with the government.
Respectfully,
We The Parents
Wisconsin United for Freedom
No Left Turn in Education Wisconsin
New Berlin District Parents for Freedom
Parent Up KMSD
Parents for Education – Arrowhead
We The Parents – Hartford
We The Parents – Burlington
Recipes for Freedom Waukesha County
We The Parents of Jefferson County
We The Parents of Waukesha County
Mukwonago Parents for Normal Education
We The Parents – Muskego
We The Parents – Northland Pines
Pulaski Community School District Parents Advocating
EC In The Know
The Germantown Direction
We The Parents – Elmbrook
We The Parents – Greendale
MCPASD Focus on Education
We The Parents – Menomonee Falls
We The Parents – Franklin
Lodi Parents for a Better Tomorrow
Freedom Fighters of Central Wisconsin
Wilmot and Randall Parents Against Masks
Unmask Our Kids Kenosha County
Recipes for Freedom Fond Du Lac County
We The Parents Dane County
We The Parents – Cambridge
New Richmond Unmask Our Kids
We The Parents – Somerset
Outagamie County Liberators Recipes for Freedom
Wisconsin Rapids Freedom Fighters
Coulee Region Freedom Fighters
We The Parents – Hudson
VOICE for Howard Suamico
Families of LC
Liberty Leaders
Contact information for these groups is included in the PDF letter. It would be interesting to map the overlap between these groups and the parent groups fighting the imposition of CRT curricula in Wisconsin public schools. Here’s a McIver Institute video compilation of parent testimony at several school board meetings throughout the state of Wisconsin from this past school year:
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Published in Education
Our local health Kommissar was extremely unhappy when the city council (much to our surprise, given they are almost entirely leftists) lifted the mask mandate a few months ago, earlier than it was scheduled to expire. And she is itchin’ to get her power back. Even some of my left-leaning friends are done with her.
But am I correct in thinking that the state can’t impose mask mandates anyway, thanks to a judge’s ruling, that it all has to be done at the county level?
I believe so. Evers is now barred from declaring multiple, repeated statewide emergencies for the same original emergency. The fact that it’s on a county by county basis makes it easier for parent groups to confront local health and school district officials on their policies.
Good for them! I’ve been saying for a while that not everyone must protest, but if a significant number do fight back, we might just save our kids–and in the long run–our country. Thanks!
Madison-based talk show host Vicki McKenna is going to interview at least one of the parents involved in this open letter in the upcoming hour (i.e. this hour – 3pm CT) of her show:
https://wiba.iheart.com/
Edited to include this comment: click on the play button on that website to listen live.
Yes, only by banding together to make enough noise/enough of a ruckus will officials be forced to pay attention to them.
My question is whether they still see us as their constituents to whom they owe allegiance, or if we’re just barriers to the power grab.
As Bertolt Brecht wrote of the 1953 East German uprising: “Would it not be easier for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?”
I’ve been reading Abigail Shrier’s book, Irreversible Damage. Related to the topic of the book, when one parent complained about having parental rights when it came to what the school did to her daughter, a teacher or school administrator said back to her (in my own words), “When you enroll your daughter in public school, you lose all your parental rights.”
I wonder how many of you parents out there are in a school district where this is the prevailing attitude. Sadly, it’s also legal in some places, no thanks to leftist judges . . .
Ah, I just saw our county’s latest “guidance” and “expectations” which includes masks for all indoor spaces regardless of vaccination status. This includes all staff, teachers, and students at our schools.
Now, these are “expectations,” rather than a “mandate.”
Probably because there hasn’t yet been a county board meeting where they can vote for that mandate. But I’m sure they’ll try.
I remember a prominent politician once said, “it takes a village” to raise children. The indoctrination begins with the education departments of universities and colleges. There, along with the classes they take in anthropology, history, sociology, and african american/latinx/gender/lgbtq+ studies departments, future teachers are trained in teaching children how to be Marxist political activists, CRT (note the books the teacher is holding in the photo at the top of that article) aimed at various grade levels, teaching elementary and high school age children about explicit sexual activity/pornography/the gender spectrum/sexual orientations, and if there’s some extra time remaining how to teach math, science, etc. (just look at how the U.S. compares in math and science education to other developed countries, i.e. abysmal).
Sounds like it’s time to gather a group together and make your voices heard at the next county board meeting.
Here is WA, Gov. Dimslee has recommended, not mandated, we return to masking, etc, but as for schools, he says it is already state law (!!!!!) that the kids and teachers must be masked, [anti-]social distance at three feet at all times, and more. It is so insane.
Serendipitous, Stad. I just received my monthly Hillsdale Imprimis email, and whose recent speech is featured?
Abigail Shrier
This brief interview with a Georgia mother was posted on the FOX News YouTube channel today. She shares a lot of views with the Wisconsin parents who wrote that open letter, and hearing about her child that has had breathing issues and headaches makes my blood start to boil:
I her book, Shrier further talks about education, where instead of learning the fifty states and their capitals, children are taught the 47 “genders” and all the personal pronouns . . .
We attended that meeting and heard her speech.
This is why I’m flummoxed by anyone sending their kids to government schools. Even in our conservative mid-sized city, the school boards, the district offices, the teachers, and the administrators are leftists firmly in control of indoctrinating our kids. We had maybe one election cycle when some conservatives managed to get elected to the board of our district and by the next election they were shamed and slandered out of office.
I understand it’s a hardship for families with two working parents to homeschool, but your kids are only young and impressionable for a short time, and they’re being formed by the sick and malicious Left in public schools. You could purchase a solid, classical curriculum from Seton Homeschool for $200 to $300 dollars for the year back in 2013. I think most homeschooling organizations try to keep the costs down. If you don’t have access to a classical charter school with non-union teachers, it’s worth the sacrifice to choose homeschooling. We have to starve the beast of our children and our money. But, the kids come first.
I’m surprised the ideological indoctrination taking place in public schools is not brought up in the arguments against funding universal preK (part of the Everything Is Infrastructure bill). Does anyone seriously think public school preK teachers won’t be teaching CRT for tots or taking the kids to drag queen story hour? At the very least, Americans should be dissuaded from the antiquated notion that public school instruction is ideologically neutral.
I think what works for many middle class families is to collaborate and form pods. That way three up to seven families are paying one or two adults to supervise the kids’ education, plus it allow the kids the ability to socialize.
It is unrealistic to expect people who pay high rents, who don’t have a mortgage deduction and so pay high taxes, to all give up their jobs. Especially in this year’s financial climate, where small business owners are just now getting back on their feet.
I’m all for whatever works to get kids away from the sickos running our schools. Public education is an ideological wasteland and I can’t fathom sending my kids there (my kids went to classical charters and received some homeschooling). Maybe rural schools are little different, given that the teachers come from the community and are more accountable to parents. Otherwise, we’ve got to get them out of there!
Bought the book, reading it now. Trust me, the book is scarier than her speech . . .