I've just downloaded the Red, Wine and Blue “Troublemaker's Guide”.
First, they invite you to leave your computer and go meet your neighbors. I welcome this invitation to escape from constant virtual news, and to walk out into where it’s being made. I admit this takes courage and some discomfort.
But when I open the door and see a crowd of friends already out there, it’s not so hard. Besides, like a Hobbit, I always know where to find my armchair, and tea and muffins.
I first heard of Red, Wine & Blue a few years ago, when Heather Cox Richardson on her Tuesday Politics Chat mentioned it, a group of women who were organized against extremists. At the time, another group, the extremist Moms for Liberty, was just gathering momentum, and Richardson saw it as a serious threat to our public schools and our political system.
Since then, Moms seems to have become a camp for programming extremist school board candidates. It’s an easy, local way for Republicans to gain political power over students, teachers, officials and librarians.
A case in point. We have here a local Moms for Liberty organizer who went to last summer’s Moms convention in Philadelphia, where a workshop was held on how to run for school board in your own home town. I would expect that power tactics were high on the agenda, and she might have learned some.
For example, to get full attention at a school board meeting, as she did recently, you could learn how to stand at the Public Comment microphone for a full half minute or more without saying anything. The School Board Chair won’t be able to start the 3-minute clock until you start talking.
So while you’re standing there at the mic staring at the Board, or fussing, or holding your baby, or whatever, tension builds in the audience and among the Board members. Everyone in the room is your anxious captive.
And in the end, it’s especially helpful that your words won’t be remembered as much as the power you displayed.
To oppose this kind of politics, in 2018 in Ohio Katie Paris became a founder of Red, Wine & Blue. By the next year it was widely organized. The goal was
to engage women at a grassroots level and drive media narratives to better reflect issues faced by the ‘everyday woman’.
Today the Red, Wine & Blue website says,
NOT POLITICAL? NO PROBLEM. IN FACT, IT’S PERFECT.
We are a sisterhood working to change the world together, one suburb at a time. Red Wine & Blue provides everything women need to successfully organize in their communities and beyond. Want to get stuff done and have fun along the way? Join us.
But behind the scenes, the leaders are very comfortable taking on political power. In 2021, for example, they lobbied a realtors group to stop financially backing Republican lawmakers who supported a ban on teaching “divisive concepts” in K-12 schools.
I think the strong social nature of Red, Wine and Blue is their way of bringing together women outside of politics, in order to successfully tackle local issues that in fact are based in politics. When I watched the video interview with Heather Cox Richardson last month, I was eager for more Richardson and less Katie Paris. But I know Paris was holding her group together with her brand. And a political historian like Richardson wasn’t surprised by how things get done.
So I’ve downloaded the Troublemaker’s Guide and will be ready to join their Zoom event this evening, Thursday, at 7:30. I won’t be drinking wine (maybe having tea and muffins). But I will try to learn how ordinary people like me can join others in a chorus of No’s that’s louder than all the aggressive silences of one Moms-trained public commentator at a local school board meeting.
Thanks for this!
The chair of the commissioners starts the 3 minute clock as the speaker approaches the podium. There is nothing that says that the school board chair can't do the same. Let's all email Kimsey Jackson, the new chair of the school board and tell him we're all tired of Jami "claiming the space" and always claiming the final spot in public comment as well.
This is EXCELLENT. Thanks for sharing, as I will do with this.