Rufo, Horse Racing, and Bullying

Christopher Rufo is on the dead bird app bragging that he took down the president of Harvard and announcing that he's going to start "plagiarism hunting," which sounds so much better than "going after liberal Black academics."

It is just the most recent demonstration of the Rufo technique, which is to announce the bad faith argument he's about to launch and how he plans to use it to pwn his chosen liberal target. And then various main stream media and other well-intentioned folks proceed to amplify and engage with that bad faith argument. Even now, social media features a bunch of folks arguing about the plagiarism piece of the Harvard take down ("Well, you know the president of Rufo's New College won't get caught plagiarizing because he's never published anything! Ha! Gotcha!!") as if the plagiarism is actually the point. And media outlets keep publishing their "Harvard president taken down by plagiarism" takes as if that's the real story here.

I do not particularly care what happens at Harvard, a school that is emblematic of very little of the vast bulk of higher education. But I am interested in how Ryfo pulls off this trick again and again, and I've come across a take that does a good job of explaining.

On his substack, Jamison Foser just put up "Christopoher Rufo & Elise Stefanik understand the New York Times" in which he offers a useful analysis of How Rufo Does It, quoting himself from earlier pieces, because Foser has been onto the game for a while.

From July:

The most perverse thing about all of this is that describing himself as a propagandist and announcing his intent to deceive didn’t hurt Christopher Rufo at all — to the contrary, news companies like The New York Times take him more seriously because of it. Describing himself as untrustworthy was a marketing ploy, and it worked on his intended audience: The nation’s leading journalists and editors. If Rufo was just some run-of-the-mill right-winger, the Times (probably) wouldn’t have published him. But because Rufo announced a grand strategy behind his lies, the Times views him as an important voice and hands him the world’s most valuable op-ed space.

In response to the amazement expressed by many (including me) that Rufo just tweets out his intent 

Those tweets are marketing tweets. They don’t endanger his success; they are central to it. Rufo uses them to brand himself a master strategist; the news media uses that brand to justify taking Rufo seriously and behaving the way he wants them to.

Foser attributes the NYT (and others) complicity to a desire to amplify right-wing talking points.

They want to inflate academic jaywalking by Harvard’s president into a massive scandal worthy of weeks of wall-to-wall coverage. But it obviously isn’t, and so they need an excuse, both for their readers and for themselves. Rufo and Stefanik provide that excuse: Influential conservatives are talking about this, so we have to cover it. And that’s where Rufo’s public announcements of his dishonest propaganda campaigns helps.

Maybe-- I'm not sure how far I go along with Foser on this. But what I believe may apply is that, by announcing his latest propaganda idea as an explicit strategy, Rufo is able to activate the press's horse race coverage mode,

We know this mode. A candidate or politician announces a particular idea, and rather than examine the idea's accuracy or merit, the media focuses on the question of whether or not that idea is helping the team win. Don't ask if it's a good idea; ask if it's a winning idea. What Rufo understands is that part of winning is getting the media to talk about it. 

So when Rufo announces that X is his new strategy, he's just cutting to the chase, signaling the media to gather around and watch to see how this lands (rather than, say, checking to see if Rufo is actually full of shit). "Remember that time I made got everyone to freak out over critical race theory? Come watch me do the same thing over DEI!"

Rufo has adapted classic bullying tactics, a simple process. 

First, pick a target. Second, pick a thing to bully them about. Yes, that's the order. Kids in school are rarely targeted because of the subject of their bullying. The bully picks a target for any number of reasons, and then they look for a point of vulnerability and go after it. You don't get the bully to leave you alone by getting contacts so that he won't call you "Four Eyes" any more; he will simply switch to some other point of attack. Nor do you get him to stop by mounting a considered rational explanation of why glasses are reasonable and by the way, doesn't his best friend wear glasses, too?

The bully has targeted you for reasons of his own, maybe as simple as feeling that he can raise his own standing and acquire more power and attention if he knocks you down. And when he announces on the playground, "Watch me make this kid lick the swings," the crowd that he draws to watch are not there because they have strong feelings or thoughts about swing-licking, but because they want to see how this attempt to overpower someone else works out. 

Because bullying also involves the principle of the First Follower. The idea of the First Follower is that leaders don't really become leaders until the first person falls in behind them, encouraging the rest of the crowd to join in. 

Bullies need an audience. "Watch this," is a critical part of bullying language; imagine your bully announces "I'm going to go make him lick the swing" and everyone on the playground shrugs and ignores him. He would be done.

Chris Rufo says, "Hey, watch this. I am going to use charges of plagiarism to make Harvard lick the swing," and everyone comes running because they've allowed themselves to become convinced that if Rufo can pull this off, that's an Important Story, a horse race worthy of attention. Worse, now that they've fallen for his "Hey, watch this" for crt and transparency and DEI et al, they have to believe this is an important horse race because they've covered all his other horse races. 

Rufo's no genius, but he is patient. If his plagiarism hunt doesn't draw a crowd, he'll just throw something else at the wall, because sooner or later the press will show up again. I wish his confidence were misplaced.

FL: New Puritanism vs. An Old Puritan

The Orlando Sentinel took on the arduous task of rooting through the list of Naughty Books that Orange County Schools pulled from both libraries and classroom collections, in order to comply with new Florida laws HB 1069 and 1467) that seek to eradicate all books with "sexual conduct" and the list of 673 works is something else. 

The law requires media specialists to check every book and holds them responsible for every naughty book that gets past them. The state did offer some training, in which they reminded these specialists that they could face criminal penalties and loss of license if they approve an "inappropriate book."

As Florida has well-established, vague law + severe penalties = super-chilling effect. It is unsurprising that media specialists went hard against books that depict sexual conduct in any way shape and form. It has been the pattern across the state, like the district that yanked "In The Night Kitchen" because it has a picture of a little boy's bare butt (great book, in which Maurice Sendak pays homage to Winsor McKay's classic Little Nemo comic strip). Or the district that didn't even wait for books to be challenged, but just pulled them if they'd heard other districts had pulled them.

One of Orange County's board members is Alicia Farrant, who ran for office as an advocate for "medical choice, parental rights and restoring morality & standards." She's also a Moms For Liberty and Florida Freedom Keepers member, and she was on stage with Ron DeSantis when he signed HB 1467. On that occasion she spoke out fiercely against "pornographic and sexually explicit" books.

The problem, of course, is that Florida (and other states) have gone way beyond "pornographic and sexually explicit." Not only have they gone way beyond that, but they've done it in broad and vague terms then thrown in large penalties to encourage schools to pull a huge number of questionable choices.

Farrant herself criticized a school district's choice to yank "No, David!" by David Shannon.

“We can’t be living in a state of fear and removing every single book,” Farrant said. “I don’t like the book,” she said of “No, David!,” by David Shannon, “but a book like that shouldn’t be removed because a kid is running down the street with his butt showing.”

But that's pretty much what the law demands a school do. What does the law actually say? In 2023-105 we find that it's a school board's duty to provide every "parent or resident" the opportunity to "proffer evidence" that a work violates one of several strictures, including that it 

Depicts or describes sexual conduct as defined in s. 847.001(19),

 And 847.001(19) defines sexual conduct:

“Sexual conduct” means actual or simulated sexual intercourse, deviate sexual intercourse, sexual bestiality, masturbation, or sadomasochistic abuse; actual or simulated lewd exhibition of the genitals; actual physical contact with a person’s clothed or unclothed genitals, pubic area, buttocks, or, if such person is a female, breast with the intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of either party; or any act or conduct which constitutes sexual battery or simulates that sexual battery is being or will be committed. 

You'd think that would rule out "No, David," but would you be willing to bet your career that no parent or resident will come after you over the book? 

The rule aims right at Gender Queer, the book conservatives want to get rid of with fire. And it aims at popular fiction like John Green and Stephen King books. But it also takes us into a dicey grey area. Yes, East of Eden by John Steinbeck and The World According to Garp by John Irving both definitely have some sex in them, but it exists in service of the characters and the story. Yes, Toni Morrison books include sex, but none of it is titillating and all of it serves the work of literature. 

Slaughterhouse Five keeps turning up on these lists, though all it includes is a crude drawing of breasts and some reference to sex without depiction. And then these lists just get nuts. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn? Jude the Obscure? Brave New World? Ayn Rand's decidedly unappealing opaque depictions of hate sex? All on the list.

The fear-fueled vagaries of Florida law have taken us from "pornography" to "any depiction of sexual conduct" to "any book that depicts a world in which we are somehow led to believe that sex sometimes occurs."

But no book on this list better captures just how far off the deep end they've gone than John Milton's Paradise Lost. Milton was born at the beginning of the 17th century (just as Shakespeare was shuffling off this mortal coil), which put him in the right place and time to be part of the great revolution, that moment in which conservative Protestants overthrew the monarchy and replaced it, eventually, with Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector. Milton was a big fan, and his religious writings were aimed at the newly purified protectorate.

Short form: John Milton was an actual Puritan. The modern fans of puritanical suppression have suppressed an actual Puritan.

Is there sexual conduct in Paradise Lost? Well, yes. Here are some hot Adam and Eve samples. First, before The Fall:

Handed they went; and eased the putting off
Those troublesome disguises which we wear,
Straight side by side were laid; nor turned, I ween,
Adam from his fair spouse, nor Eve the rites
Mysterious of connubial love refused

Then, after The Fall:

Carnal desire enflaming; he on Eve

Began to cast lascivious eyes, she him

As wantonly repaid; in lust they burn

Till Adam thus ‘gan Eve to dalliance move

Pretty hot stuff. There's some other stuff as well. Satan has sex with himself, giving birth to Sin, who is raped by her son, Death. All in prose nearly impenetrable to the average high school student and all with the intent of explaining the ways of God to humankind. And all contributing to a minor message in the work, which is that sex without God is Bad Stuff. 

We could argue the various merits of these works all day and then spend the night questioning the goals of these sorts of laws. But these growing lists, with their increasingly absurd reach, are a reminder of one important factor.

It's never enough.

There will never be a point where these modern puritans will say, "Yes, that's good enough. We can stop trying to root out Naughty Books because I think we've done enough." They will never stop on their own, never be satisfied, never stop searching for the next Most Dirty Book that might be out there. To expect that they will simply subside is a pipe dream. As long as nobody is standing up to them or stopping them, they will simply keep whittling away (or creating situations in which someone else is motivated to whittle for them) until there is nothing left. 

 

School Letter Grades And Staffing

A story dropped in Tuscon last week that is among the least surprising education stories of the year.

Arzona has school letter grades. The argument for this dumb idea is that it allows parents to get a quick yet clear idea of how the schools are doing. This is supposed to help with the problem of asymmetric information, a condition you get in a market where the people who are trying to sell something have way more information than the people trying to buy it. So in a school choice system, where education has been turned into a commodity, school grades are supposed to create pressure on the school to Do Better, and they are supposed to help families make choices.

You know who else makes choices? Teachers looking for jobs.

The story out of Tuscon is that five schools with a grade of D are having trouble filling staff positions.

Well, duh. 

What does a D grade tell a teacher who is considering a job at that school?

It tells her that the school is under-resourced, that it likely serves a poor community but does so without the extra support needed to succeed against the obstacles that come with such a school. It tells her that the school leaders have their backs against the wall, that they are focused on raising their grade which means raising test scores which means the Big Standardized Test and prepping for it are central to the school's mission. And, since in this case she's considering a job in classes directly related to testing, it tells her that she will be under the gun for test prep and test focus from day one. "I wanted to get into teaching so that I could get students ready to take one big standardized test," said no teacher ever.

It tells her that morale may well be rather low. It tells her she'll be associated with a school that's being held up as an example of how public schools are failing.

Does any of this add up to an attractive job?

Certainly there can still be some takers for a variety of reasons, from roots in that community to loving a good challenge to not being offered anything else.

Nor do Big Standardized Test scores and the grades that they generate reveal previously hidden secrets. But slapping that grade on the school, making it a defining piece of the school's identity just adds a whole other layer. 

It's not the only reason to ditch the letter grades for schools, but making "Come work at our failing school" as a recruiting pitch is certainly a lousy way to strengthen that school's future. 

ICYMI: New Year Already Please (12/31)

Well, this was not a vacation that unfolded as we would have hoped, between injury and illness and absent family, but sometimes that's just how it goes, and what we as humans get for pinning hopes on a particular date set for us instead of just making events fit our own timing. Hope your break has been a good one, and whatever it is you do tonight to celebrate the calendar rolling over, may it be fun and rewarding.

Here's a bit of reading from the week.

Meet Three Of The Neighbors Who United To Defend Public Education In Central Bucks School District

From the Bucks County Beacon, a profile of three folks who stood up in Bucks County, God bless 'em, taking on one very rich guy and a bunch of the Moms for Liberty crowd.

Judge blocks parts of Iowa law banning school library book, discussion of LGBTQ+ issues

The court serves a setback to Iowa's book banning Don't Say Gay law.

Ohio’s Republican governor vetoes trans care restriction and sports ban

Governor Mike DeWine takes the radical step of going to talk to parents and families and people who work in the hospitals before making one of his occasional decent human decisions. NBC news on the story.

Tired of Being Tired (Toward a Better 2024)

Here's the thing. Jose Luis Vilson isn't just back to the blogging thing--he's cranking out several posts a week. So go read this one about approaching the new year, and then click on the [subscribe] button, because you should be reading him regularly.

Public Christian schools? Leonard Leo’s allies advance a new cause

Heidi Przybyla at Politico dives deep into the conservative folks working hard to make taxpayer-funded religious public schools a thing, including the same people who brought us the end of Roe v. Wade.

Why Was It So Hard for Nikki Haley to Say ‘Slavery’? History Has the Answer

Joshua Zeitz at Politico uses Haley's boneheaded fumble to remind us of the story of the Lost Cause and the rewriting of Civil War history. Not directly about education, but this is what some folks want schools to teach.

Retired teachers forced to pay thousands

From New Mexico, a reminder that when retired teachers answer the call to come back and help out, they need to make sure they get the paperwork right.

Angry About Your Kid’s After-School Satan Club? Blame Clarence Thomas.

Adam Laats at The New Republic explains why after school Satan Clubs are just the religious liberty crowd getting just what they asked for.

The Long Lineage of Conservative Mother Movements

Adam Laats again, this time being interviewed at WNYC studios about the history of Moms for Liberty style movements. You can listen or read the transcript.

The Post reviewed 1,000 school book challenges. Here’s what we found.

Hannah Natanson at the Washington Post writes up their study of so very many book challenges and finds, among other things, that the majority came from just 11 people.

Right-Wing Activist Chris Rufo Calls for “Siege” of University at UT

The message, as reported by Brant Bingamon at the Daily News, was the usual Rufo riff. But when it came time for Q&A, things didn't go so well for him.

Making it a Job to be Happy

Anne Lutz Fernandez looks at happiness, the new year, and education. A good read to kick off the new year.

Sad news. Among the reporters taking the buyout offer at the Washington Post is education stalwart Valerie Strauss. At her space, the Answer Sheet, Strauss was always a voice of education reason at an otherwise reformster-friendly outfit. She boosted my work more than a few times and was always supportive and a lovely human being. I'm going to miss her work at WaPo.

Finally, this week I did the obligatory prediction piece for Forbes (I have no desire to look back at 2023, which was pretty rough all around). If I turn out to be wrong, we'll just pretend I never wrote my education stories to watch piece at all. 

If you want to have my stuff just conveniently pop up in your email, subscribe to my substack.

Virginia Lee Burton: An Appreciation

I grew up with Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne, and I have lots of company, including my own children. It's a book that encourages the reader to imagine an author as some aged, retiring, nostalgia-soaked children's book author, but Virginia Lee Burton is something else entirely. Today, I'm setting aside the usual eduranting to look at this extraordinary American author.

The author of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel was just thirty years old when it was published, in the midst of a life that was rich and adventurous and even a little unconventional. (For this next section, I depended mainly on Barbara Elleman's brief but illuminating biography of Burton)

Virginia Lee Burton was born in 1909 in Newton Center, Massachusetts. Her father was Alfred Burton, an engineer who was the first dean at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A widower with two sons from his first marriage (one ended up as a Supreme Court Justice, the other an architect), Alfred met the eccentric young Lena Yates on a walking trip in France; they soon married, though she was about 22 years younger. They had three children. In the late teens, citing health issues, Lena took the children to California, ending up in the bohemian art scene of Carmel-by-the-Sea.

After Alred retired from MIT in 1921, he joined the family out West, but in 1925 Lena ran off with Carl Cherry, a man 24 years her junior (and the eventual inventor of the Cherry rivet, leading to the founding of Cherry Aerospace, still kicking today). Virginia was 16; she involved herself in arts, especially dance. In 1928 she was prepared to follow her sister back East and even had a contract with a dance troupe when her father broke his leg. She went to take care of him instead, and her dancing career evaporated. 

In 1930, she took work as an illustrator for a newspaper, eventually signing up for a class with George Demetrios, a teacher of drawing and sculpture at the Boston Museum School. In 1931, she and Demetrios married. After a couple of years, the ended up in a small, turn-of-the-century home in Folly Cove, Gloucester, Mass. 

Burton's first attempt at a children's book was, she said, disastrous. But she learned an important lesson, and ever after she fine tuned her stories by telling them over and over to her own children; the parts where children's attention lagged were targeted for rewrites and tweaking.

Burton did illustrations for other peoples' work, but her signature works are her own. Burton was not so much an illustrator as a designer, working text and layout and art all together. Folly Cove itself became a vibrant center of art and design, energized constantly with music and dance and parties and gatherings and Burton's own work as a teacher of design. 

Burton's body of work is actually not that large. She illustrated (and in a couple of cases adapted) six books, and created seven works of her own. You probably already know a couple--you should know them all.

Written for her son Aris, Choo Choo (1937) tells the story of a little engine who runs away, then gets lost and stranded in a dark wood until her crew find her and bring her home. It is rough and chunky in the illustrations. 

That was followed by Mike Mulligan (1939), written for son Mike. She worked on it for a couple of years, slowly developing and tweaking the story, including the final plot solution offered by a young man at a friend's house. A steam shovel that is outdated finds one last big job.

Calico the Wonder Horse (1941) was conceived as a sort of comics format, but it's graphically very cool. It's a western adventure, with Calico up against some Bad Guys in an adventure that comes down to Christmas Eve.

The Little House (1942) won a Caldecott medal. It was based on their own home. Adapted as a Disney short, but you can skip that. The house starts in the country, and the city grows up around it.

Katy and the Big Snow (1943) is about a snowplough that must rescue the city of Geopolis (based on Gloucester) from a tremendous snow storm.

Maybelle the Cable Car (1952) reflects Burton's school days in San Francisco, and tells the story of the movement to rescue that cable cars of that city when they were threatened with replacement by modern buses.

Life Story (1962) is in many ways Burton's magnum opus. She spent eight years on it, and it tells nothing less than the history of the world, from the Big Bang through life in her country home, all presented as if a stage play. It challenges any sort of categorization. 

There are certain threads that run through the works (beyond the attention to graphic design). Curiously, in all books, human beings are secondary characters. And there is an obvious thread of constructs, like Mary Anne and Maybelle and the Little House, that are threatened with being left behind in a world racing forward into modernity. As Elleman does, I see these not as a romanticizing of the past, but as stories of adaption. Stuff happens, and you find a way to move forward; it's certainly not hard to hear that as an echo of Burton's own childhood and youth in which, faced with challenging events, she kept moving forward without bitterness or anger.

There is a gentleness in her stories. In the end, everyone is okay. Choo Choo decides that her work is not so bad. Stewy Stinker and his Bad Men decide to join in the Christmas celebration. Big Bill the bus decides to be a friend, not a rival, to Maybelle. And of course Henry B. Swap finally smiles in a way that is not so mean. 

When I read these books to the board of directors, I'm struck by one other theme which I think particular fits Burton's own life. It's not about past versus future, city versus country. It's about finding the place where you fit and making it your own. Burton and her family made Folly Cove their own, where they were able to pursue their passions and sing and dance and live the lives they wanted to, and in doing so, made it the center of a larger community as well as the foundation of a whole group of artists and designers. There were classes. There was food. There was a giant slab of an outdoor table, made of slightly irregular quarry stone, that could be a picnic table or a dance floor.

Every one of her characters does this, comes down in the place just right by being willing to move forward to become what they can be. Life Story may seem like it's hunting bigger game, but in the final pages it brings the focus from the entire existence of the world to the passing of the seasons and life in a small house in Gloucester. And here are the last two pages:

And now it is dawn--dawn of a new day, a day in spring. Minute by minute the light brightens in the east, turning from cold gray to deep blue to delicate pink. The birds are singing gaily as they await the return of the sun. Down in the green meadow there is a new baby lamb. Now I leave you and turn the story over to you. Look out of your window and in a few seconds you will see the sun rise.

And now it is your Life Story and it is you who play the leading role. The stage is set, the time is now, and the place wherever you are. Each passing second is a new link in the endless chain of Time. The drama of life is a continuous story--ever new, ever changing, and ever wondrous to behold.

You lose a little without her perfect design, but you get the idea. She has spent seventy-six pages rendering the vast spread of history and the world, and you have a place in that vast picture, you, right here, in this moment. 

Burton had worked forever on a book about design that she never finished. Her last years were dominated by her cancer. She passed away in October of 1968. Her husband created a sculpture to her memory, dancing, smiling, kicking joyfully at the sky. 

Like the best of those who create works for "children" she had made some big statements about life, about art. I'll read through the stack again in a few days and raise a glass to her in the new year when Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne celebrate their 85th birthday. 

Moms Launch Another Anti-Woke Group: Awake Americans

Moms for Liberty, which has done a fine job of networking anti-public school culture panic folks across the nation, has had some trouble with the brand in the last few months, what with misbehaving local leaders and reduced election prowess and founding guardians or morality failing to practice what they preach. 

So it's not surprising to find a few Moms looking to move their reactionary eggs to new baskets. One such operation is taking place in the Midwest. An Illinois-based group that has been around for a couple of years is trying to take its anti-woke massage national.

Which group is that?

Awake Illinois launched in May of 2021 and started forming chapters by counties in Illinois. They even had a cool launch video and a sort of slogan ("They can't cancel us"). The video hist the standard points-- schools didn't reopen fast enough, government is overreaching and oppressing businesses, schools are indoctrinating instead of educating. Amid the montage of stock footage is a shot of people celebrating as they cast away their masks. Who are they? "We are regular pro-human citizens." They make it a point to indicate they value humor ("Last year was gnarly" says the video at one point). Perhaps they noticed the general off-putting grimness of the M4L "joyful warriors." They want to defend education against critical race theory. All of this over the Glee cover version of David Bowie's "Heroes."

By February of 2022, they claimed 30,000 members over 32 counties. Their timeline also highlights fighting with the state union and the Tom DeVore-led lawsuits against the state over masking (DeVore was an attorney from American Freedom Society who, after a failed attempt to run for state Attorney General ran into legal troubles of his own). The timeline also notes the election of Glen Youngkin as governor of Virginia, one more reminder that some folks believed that Youngkin's election signaled a special political moment for the rights of (certain) parents. The site also touts Awake Illinois as bi-partisan, which only appears to be true if one considers right-wing and very right-wing as two flavors of partisans.

Who launched this venture?

Awake Illinois's founding president was Shannon Adcock. Adcock graduated from the University of Illinois in 2002 with a degree in BA in Communications, because a comms background seems to be the standard requirement for these groups. Adcock moved to Phoenix for a bit, did some sales and marketing work before starting her own photography studio, returning Naperville, Illinois in 2015. She's married with three kids, who attend a private Christian school. 

Adcock ran for a school board seat in March of 2021, and failed (the official Awake Illinois timeline starts with that election, noting a 12% voter turnout). From Chicago Tribune coverage of a petition calling for Candidate Adcock to step down:

Obed-Horton said she emailed Indian Prairie District 204 school board candidate Shannon Adcock in mid-March regarding the candidate’s objections to culturally responsive teaching and its intent to address implicit bias, racism, privilege and more in public schools. Adcock’s reply included a suggestion that Obed-Horton and other parents open a charter school with culturally responsive teaching in place, she said. In her Change.org petition, she said the email reply was “filled with racist rhetoric.”

Within a month the paperwork for Awake Illinois was under way. 

Awake Illinois quickly garnered a reputation for pivoting from anti-masking to anti-LGBTQ. They were "first and loudest voices" to oppose a family-friendly drag brunch and Drag Queen Bingo for teens. The latter event generated enough threats to result in a cancellation that AwakeIl celebrated on line. Then there was the time Adcock and crew managed to shut down a library.

Adcock became the chair of the DuPage chapter of Moms for Liberty. She went to a school board training session held by the Leadership Institute, the program that would have been run by Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler. A few days later, she announced another attempt at running for school board. Adcock has made a variety of appearances on right-wing media appearances on right-wing media. And she put up her own posts, like "The Perversion of K-12 Education," in which she proudly quotes Corey DeAngelis and argues about the evils of CRT and DEI. 

Adcock was also the center of controversy in 2022 when folks caught wind that she might be appointed to Naperville's Special Events and Cultural Amenities Commission. Once again a petition was launched. 

That appointment might have been a possibility because of Josh McBroom, the original vice-president of Awake Illinois. McBroom left the group to make a successful bid for a Naperville City Council seat. McBroom wasn't with the group long, but he had his moments, like the time he cosigned a demand that U.S. Congressman Sean Casten stop asking his opponent Keith Pekau to disavow Awake Illinois and the award they gave him for being an anti-mask, anti-vax guy. 

McBroom had previously gotten in trouble while serving on the Naperville Park Board Commission for making fun of pro-mask commissioners on social media. And he apparently wants to be a DeSantis delegate to the convention. McBroom's wife is an actual teacher. Once elected, McBroom seems to have vanished his AwakeIl leadership from his bio. 

Awake made many attempts to dabble in politics, like suckering Paul Vallas to appear on a panel while running for Chicago mayor. Only later did Vallas (never a big homework guy) discover that, among other things, AwakeIl had called Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker a groomer. But other GOP candidates signed on to the group's agenda.

Other members of the team.

McBroom was replaced by Helen Levinson, Levinson was the chair of the Cook County chapter of Moms For Liberty and at the center of battling lawsuits over racism in Skokie County schools, in which Levinson's legal team included Stephen Miller's America First Legal firm. Levinson is a sales, marketing and comms professional. 

Steve Lucie joined the leadership board in September 2021. Lucie had been a board candidate recommended by the Illinois Policy Institute until they were directed to some of his tweets on the subject of pandemic responses. In response to a post saying that the Biden administration might impose requirements to get vaccinated, Lucie tweeted "Fuck around and find out assholes!" followed by nine axes. Also, "People that choose not to be 'vaxed' will be the ones getting receipts. The vaxed will pay. Many I see with their own case numbers rising. They may even feel more pain if they continue to threaten the un vaxed." There's more in that vein. 

Lucie helped start "We Stand for Our Students" at the end of his 17-year school board career. The group drew some press, and Awale Illinois were fans. 

In May of 2021, parent John Blakey spoke before a school board about the dangers of CRT:

Watch how our teenagers interact around the neighborhoods and homes; they don't need to be split into identity groups based on skin color nor do they need to be taught how to be an anti-racist, about implicit bias, white supremacy, white privilege, etc. This will only create division.

By August, Blakey was the Director of Equality and Civil Rights for Awale Illinois, regularly speaking out against the Naperville district's equity plan.

In August, the group also signed on Dan Vosnos, who also turns up as a concerned parents, but who is also a well-connected activist and leader of One Chance Illinois-Action (joined up in 2022)-- a group connected to 50CAN (Derrell Bradford serves on its board of directors).

Expanding the brand

Awake Illinois has been busy in 2023, despite the occasional setback like the cancellation of an event about reforming sex ed, due to threats of violence.

Folks in the region have been tracking developments. Including the registration of domains for Awakes in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, and Florida. Those domains are "parked" except for Awake Wisconsin, which has the organizations web template in place and is "launching soon" as "a nonpartisan, issue-based grassroots advocacy movement that is partnered with national organizations such as Moms for Liberty and Courage Is A Habit."

But the real development has been the step of going national at Awake Americans. 

Awake Americans is Awake Illinois. They have the same address--2020 Calamos Ct., Suite 200, Naperville, IL 60563, which is actually a "virtual address." The building holds an investment company and also Alliance Virtual Offices, that offered (apparently they're not taking new customers) virtual office space for Naperville professionals, because a "prestigious company solidifies your reputation."

Awake Americans also has exactly the same "parents and patriots" board of directors as Awake Illinois, plus one more. Adcock, Lucie and Levinson are joined by Scarlett Johnson. Johnson is the Moms for Liberty chair for Ozaukee County in Wisconsin, and presumably the head to Awake Wi. Johnson seems particularly agitated about LGBTQ stuff (you can see her protesting with a Proud Boy here).

Awake Americans officially announced their launch in April.  They joined the Naperville Chamber of Commerce in May, raising a few eyebrows. They grabbed their domain in August of 2023 (Thanks to John Norcross and others who tracked this info down), but they had a "launch event" back in June at the Hotel Arista in Naperville. They hosted three speakers:

Noelle Mering, from the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a thinky tank and advocacy group devoted to making Judeo-Christian moral tradition influential in policy discussions. Rick Santorum was once a fellow there. 

Xi Van Fleet, a Virginia mom who left Mao's China and regularly compares critical race theory to the cultural revolution. She's done Hannity, and the far right Independent Women's Forum (the group that started as Women for Clarence Thomas) is a fan. She's popular on the "this is Marxism" circuit.

And James Lindsay, another anti-woke crusader who made "Okay, groomer" a thing. This infamous shitposter is allegedly on the Moms for Liberty advisory board these days.

One outcome if that gathering is a Woke 101 "webinar" to answer the question "Is Marxism in America?" They also offer a "Declaration of Independence from Woke." 

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for everyday people to distance themselves from anti-Americanism or Woke sentiment which purveys current culture and policy, and to assume we have awakened to said reality, we reaffirm and "hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among there are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. 

I, therefore, as a citizen of the United States of America, earnestly publish and declare, that I am absolved from any Allegiance to Woke, Marxism, Communism, and/or Anti-Americanism, and that any attempt by the latter to coerce me shall be respectfully rejected.

Awake America proudly says it helped sponsor last July's Family Leadership Summit in Iowa, a big-time political gathering of evangelicals.

And Adcock is no longer listed as the chapter leader for DuPage County Moms for Liberty. Levinson is no longer listed as Cook County chair for M4L. Neither chapter has a Facebook page. Johnson is still listed as the Ozaukee County chapter chair (and legislation chair). 

It's not clear yet what the future holds for this Not-Woke-But-Awake crew. They don't appear to have a lot of political juice just yet. They're over-invested in last year's conservative scary word "woke." And beyond people who watch this kind of stuff carefully, they haven't attracted a lot of attention. They have Facebook and Twitter accounts, both of which are rather sleepy. 

But they have leaders who already have all the Moms for Liberty training and connections, making them perfectly positioned to be a welcoming dinghy for M4L members who want to jump ship. This is a group poised to do some rebranding for the anti-woke, anti-LGBTQ, anti-all-sorts-of-stuff crowd for whom M4L no longer works. We'll see how they do. 

 

Christmas Music

For those who celebrate, may this be a lovely day. For those who don't celebrate, may this be a lovely day. Here's the annually updated list of music for the day that is probably not the stuff you've gotten sick of.