Yesterday morning I turned on C-SPAN expecting to see a meaningful step taken towards accountability.
Like millions of Americans, I watched Dr. Anthony Fauci testify before Congress. I listened as he invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times rather than answer questions about the policies that reshaped and destroyed the lives of an entire generation of children.
At first, I was angry.
Angry that the man whose recommendations influenced school closures, masking policies, mandated vaccinations and many of the decisions that disrupted childhood for years appeared unlikely to answer for the consequences those policies had on so many families.
By the fifth or sixth time he refused to answer, the anger began to fade.
What settled in was grief.
Not just for my own family, but for millions of parents who are still living with the consequences.
We spent years fighting for our children while simultaneously trying to help them recover. We pulled them out of schools that refused to reopen. We searched for schools that would allow our children to attend without masking or vaccine requirements. We looked desperately for mental health resources for children struggling with anxiety, depression, isolation, obsessive behaviors, and the emotional effects of years of disruption.
We refused to let the poor decisions by our elected leaders and unelected bureaucrats impact our children. But anyone that has attempted to fight big government knows it is an uphill battle.
I don’t think of myself as a victim.
Most of the women who are involved with Moms for Liberty wouldn’t describe themselves that way either. Maybe that’s exactly why so many of us spoke up from the very beginning.
But the truth is this: our children were harmed by policies implemented during COVID, and many parents felt powerless as they watched it happen. We watched our children decline instead of thrive. We were told that our concerns were invalid and dangerous. And that we were selfish for asking questions. We were accused of not caring about science. We were mocked for wanting our children in school. We were gaslit when we shared legitimate concerns.
In October 2021 I appeared on the show “The Drs” with another mother, Sandy. We had been invited because the producers said they wanted to hear directly from parents whose children were struggling under school masking policies.
We prepared for a week for the interview. We gathered hundreds of stories from families. We collected medical documentation. We brought evidence of children suffering from skin infections, mouth sores, communication barriers, and developmental challenges.
Instead of having an honest conversation, we were ridiculed.
During a commercial break, one of the doctors referred to us as “two lunatics from Florida.”
Those words have stayed with me. Not because they hurt my feelings, but because they reflected how countless parents were treated whenever they questioned government policies.
While serving on my school board in 2020, I heard heartbreaking testimonies. One mother described her deaf daughter, who depended on reading lips to communicate. Despite her disability, she was denied an exemption from the district’s mask mandate. In the weeks of meetings and debate, parents shared photographs of children with severe skin irritation, MRSA infections, Impetigo and sores after wearing masks for extended periods. Families of children with special needs watched legally required services disappear. Occupational and Physical therapy stopped. Essential interventions that federal law requires simply weren’t available.
Months and in some cases years of closed school buildings and zero in-person learning. Important milestones were canceled: Proms, Graduations, Athletic seasons, Scholarship opportunities. These moments can never be recreated.
Our children lost so much.
But something unexpected happened during those difficult years.
Parents woke up.
For the first time, millions of moms and dads had a front-row seat to what was happening in their children’s classrooms.
They weren’t just watching Zoom lessons. They were seeing curriculum, hearing classroom discussions and they were shocked at what they found.
COVID didn’t create concerns about education.
It exposed a failing system.
The lockdowns unintentionally revealed deeper issues in our schools. From declining academic standards to ideological instruction, social-emotional learning practices they hadn’t consented to and a growing disconnect between schools and families.
Parents tried to speak up. They showed up to school board meetings and had microphones cut off and in some cases were thrown out, trespassed and event arrested.
That’s why Moms for Liberty grew so quickly.
Within weeks of launching in January of 2021, mothers across America were starting chapters because they had nowhere else to turn. It wasn’t because they wanted to become activists, most had never been politically active, some had never even voted.
Then something even more remarkable happened.
Instead of listening to concerned parents, our own government increasingly treated us as a problem.
Parents speaking at school board meetings became the subject of federal attention. The Department of Justice used The Patriot Act to issue guidance to the FBI to establish a tip line to turn frustrated parents into the FBI. And FBI agents investigated parents on these tips. Peaceful engaged moms and dads came under suspicion at a time when they were simply trying to advocate for their children.
RELATED: See timeline of SPLC attacks on M4L since 2021
Yet even that failed to stop our movement.
Today, I look around and see thousands of mothers who refuse to give up.
We have won 565 school board seats and even flipped entire school boards.
We have passed parental rights legislation in 22 states.
We have changed hundreds of policies in our communities.
We have built friendships and support systems that didn’t exist before.
Most importantly, we remind America of something we should never have forgotten:
Parents have the fundamental right to raise their children, not government bureaucrats. We Do NOT Co-Parent with the Government.
There is still much work to do.
Many children continue to struggle with the educational and emotional effects of those years. Only one third of 4th graders in America are reading proficiently. And 22% of high school seniors understand basic civics.
Many families still carry unanswered questions. We all deserve to understand where COVID was created, who funded it, how did it leak, who will be held accountable for the death and destruction that ensued? Who will be held accountable for the suffering of our children and our families?
We all deserve an apology from Dr. Anthony Fauci.
We will never get it.
So, we choose another path.
We choose to fight. Not because we’re angry but because we are parents. And no one loves their children as much as we do. We will work to replace every elected official that does not support parental rights. We will work to pass legislation in every state protecting a parents right to raise their child. We will work to make sure America’s children know the greatness of America. That they know civics so they can self govern and so our Republic will survive for another 250 years.
We also choose gratitude. Not for what happened to our children and our families but for the millions of parents that are now awake. Gratitude for exposing and shining a light on what is happening in our schools.
We choose to move forward and take action so that this never happens again in America.
