Get Involved Locally With Moms For Liberty – With Tina Descovich: Do you know a mom who is concerned about what’s happening in the schools across our country? Do you want to understand HOW to make a positive difference and protect future generations from evil ideologies? What are the steps to making an impact where it matters most? Tune in to hear this encouraging, educational interview with Founder of Moms for Liberty, Tina Descovich!

Air Date: 08/30/2022

Guest: Tina Descovich

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

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Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

Faith and the Culture

Rick:

It is a great day at WallBuilders Live. Hope it’s the same for you, despite all the negative that’s going on out there in the culture.

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. That’s where we get hope for the culture and hope for the future. That’s why we can have the attitude of John Quincy Adams, “Duty is ours, results are Gods.” We can be happy warriors, as Reagan said. We can do what James says, to count it all, Joy, when we experience various trials. Why? Because we know the truth. We know God’s word. And we know that when we go through these tough times, He can use them to make us stronger. And that includes not just us as individuals, it means the same for a nation.

So as we face the trials of dealing with the negative outcome of the negative inputs that we’ve had as a nation, the socialism and communism and despotism that’s been poured into our culture, the critical race theory, teaching our kids to hate each other, you know, all the different things that have happened to move America away from its founding principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and truth, as that has happened, we don’t have to despair. 

We can look at that and say, hey, there are answers to these problems, there’s a biblical perspective that can solve these issues, there’s a historical perspective from which we can learn, and then there’s, of course, the constitutional perspective that we want to use in our nation to apply this thing properly. So if you like that idea of biblical, historical, constitutional perspective on the tough issues of the day, if you want to have some joy in the fight and you want to be a happy warrior, you have come to the right place at WallBuilders Live.

Our Crew

My name is Rick Green. I’m a former Texas legislator and America’s Constitution coach. And it is my great honor to serve here with David and Tim Barton, two incredible guys. If you have not had them out to speak at your church or your community, you should. Check it out at wallbuilders.com.

But David, as America’s premier historian, I’m telling you that God has more in his head of the Founding Fathers writings and documents than anybody alive. I mean, you can sit down with him and ask just about any of these Founding Fathers and things that happened, and boom, right off the cuff he can tell you about, he’s just incredible. Anyway, he’s America’s premier historian. He’s our founder here at WallBuilders. 

And Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. And the same thing, I mean, Tim has all of this information about the founders, not just the founders, but things that happened before the founding era. And that’s why you should read their book, ‘The American Story’. It’s just unbelievable how much of the truth has been twisted and these guys are masters at bringing that truth back around. So check all that out today at wallbuilders.com. Let’s dive in.

Alright, David and Tim, we’ve got Tina Descovich with us, Moms for Liberty. We’ll be talking about what they’re doing across the country. You know, we’ve seen a lot of the clips of parents speaking at school board meetings over the last year or so. There really has been an awakening locally. 

And it’s important for us to talk about this and encourage people that they can make a difference. We’re always talking about getting off the sidelines, getting involved. But one of the best ways to get involved is influencing what’s happening right there in your own community.

Too Graphic

Tim:

And guys, right now we are all on the road. So we’re recording this, we see each other online as we’re doing this. But we’re on the road because we’re doing events right now challenging people to get involved in the process, to do things to make a difference. And the most practical, easiest first step is to get involved at the local level. 

Now, not only is it the most practical and the easiest, it’s also the one that can have the most significant impact for what we are dealing with in the nation where it is staggering right now some of the challenges we are having.

When you look at some of the sex Ed curriculum is coming in all the way from pre-K, all the way up through 12th grade, not to mention the 1619 project or critical race theory, there are crazy battles being fought. And then you have these school boards where people are actually approving pornographic material to be taught for elementary kids.

And I was at a place recently where I was talking with some individuals who are leading a fight against some of the sex Ed curriculum being used in these school districts and they showed me one of the books that’s being used in elementary school and I couldn’t even finish looking at the pictures in this textbook because it was so graphic, it was so spiritually offensive to me, I said whoa, I’ve seen enough, like, if this is what they’re teaching, I don’t need to see the rest of it. I get it.

And I cannot tell you on air what it was for lots of reasons, not the least of which is we would probably be censored, and I mean genuinely by the powers that be for radio airwaves, we would deal with all kinds of issues. That is how graphic this is. And these are the kind of books that when a parent gets up to read it, they’re told by the school board that you’re not allowed to read those things out loud, and the parent says, but this is what you are teaching my elementary kids. These are the things that we have seen across the nation.

We Must Stop the Indoctrination of Our Children

And this is where we’ve talked about literally for more than a year now. We think it’s one of the really positive outcomes from this COVID pandemic, where there was tyrannical overreach. When schools were closed down and parents were forced, many of them for the first time ever, to see the curriculum that their children were being taught from, they realized how bad and broken this system is. So we have seen parents getting more and more involved, which the more that parents get involved, it is only going to be healthier in the education arena. And to stay healthier doesn’t mean that public schools all of a sudden are going to be healthy again.

What parents are doing now getting involved in the school board is they are slowing down the amount of evil propaganda, the amount of evil ideology and philosophy that is being used to indoctrinate these kids. But it’s at least something that is very encouraging to see parents getting involved. And we’re seeing parents win all over the nation in these school boards where there is hope that we can kind of sway this needle a little bit, turn the ship just a little bit.

And, of course, we would, again, advocate. We think one of the best things to do is get your kids out of the public school system. If we know the public school agenda is to intentionally secularize our kids, to intentionally indoctrinate them with propaganda, that’s anti-almost everything we would believe, why would we want our kids to be there? So we need the best solution, if you can, is to get your kids out of public school. Nonetheless, for the time being, it’s great to see these parents getting involved in all these victories at the local level.

David:

And Tim, you mentioned that one of the things that’s happening is we’re seeing really a lot of impact and you have greater impact at the local level. And just to take folks through that real quickly.

It Makes a Difference

65% of eligible adults register to vote. So you start with 65%, but of that 65%, only 54% votes in a presidential election. So it’s only about 36% of adults vote in a presidential election. When you go to an off year election like this year, where we choose our governors and our senators and our congressmen and legislators, it drops to 38% of registered voters, which is 38% or 65%. S

o now you’re down to around 26% voting. But when you get to a local election like a mayor there in that vicinity, it goes to about 4-6%. And when you get down to school boards, it gets down into 1-2% range. And so it doesn’t take much to make a difference.

One of the examples we use is we know a lady in a town of 40,000 that ran for school board there and there were a total of 35 votes cast out of 40,000 people, and she won with a majority of 35, which could be simply 18. So we have those kind of examples that when you get involved, this is where parents can make a difference.

And I think one of the things that we have let get away from us. Our founding father, Benjamin Rush, in 1791, Benjamin Rush considered one of the three most notable Founding Fathers, according to John Adams. He said, it’s George Washington, Ben Franklin, Benjamin Rush. And Rush started five universities. 

He’s called the “Father of public schools” under the Constitution, etc. But he wrote this piece in 1791 that said, the purpose of public schools is threefold. He said the number one purpose of public schools is to teach students to love and serve God. He said the number two purpose is to teach students to love and serve their country. And the number three purpose is to love and serve their family.

Now, most Christians I know today would say, no, no, no, it should be God and then family and then country. But he said, no, it should be God, then country, then family. Because he pointed out, if you ever lose control of your country, your country will become the great enemy of your family. And that’s what we’re seeing right now and what’s going on with schools and school boards and city councils and mayors and so much else.

Christians Must Get Involved

We’ve been out of the country, we as Christians, I don’t want to get involved in that and I just spend time with the family. Well, we’re losing the family to the country.

And so there’s a friend of ours down in Georgia, he’s a pastor. And he said, God makes real clear in the Bible that God created the family, God created the church and God created government. He said, but I’ve only been a two-thirds Christian. I’ve been really involved in family and in church. I haven’t been involved in government. He said, I need to be a three-thirds Christian. 

He said, I’m now whole Christian and his church has gotten involved in the civic arena around them. And he doesn’t have a large church, maybe 300 people, but now they have the political leadership in all four counties that touch close to that church. The people in his church are the county political leaders in all those areas because they decided we need to get involved and the whole climate is different there.

So when you do get control of government, it is no longer the enemy to the family, which is a good reason for us to be involved in it. And that’s part of what we see happening with Moms for Liberty. They’re showing people, hey, here’s how you get involved in school boards, here’s how you can do a school board race and how you can have a great impact.

And literally, what we’ve seen in the last probably 24 months, I’ve never seen as many school board races being picked up as we are now in such a vast sweep in numbers by Christians and by churches and others starting to get involved. And that’s going to help turn the nation back in the right direction, if we can hold on everything else. We’re starting to get the right kind of people and to really training our kids, or at least having the right standards for our kids by having the right leadership on the boards.

Rick:

Yeah. David, they’re involved all over the country. In fact, they had tons of victories last week in school board elections across Florida. Just tremendous what they’re doing. So I’m excited to find out how people can get involved with them. Tina Descovich is one of the co-founders and she’ll be with us when we come back from the break. Stay with us, folks, you’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

THE AMERICAN STORY

Hey, guys. We want to let you know about a new resource we have here at WallBuilders called The American Story. For years people have been asking us to do a history book and we finally done it. We start with Christopher Columbus and go roughly through Abraham Lincoln. And one of the things that so often we hear today are about the imperfections of America or how so many people in America that used to be celebrated or honored really aren’t good or honorable people.

One of the things we acknowledge quickly in the book is that the entire world is full of people who are sinful and need a savior, because the Bible even tells us that all of sin and fallen short of the glory of God. And yet what we see through history, and certainly is even in America, is how a perfect God uses imperfect people and does great things through them. 

The story of America is not a story of perfect people, but you see time and time again how God got involved in the process and use these imperfect people to do great things that impacted the entire world from America. To find out more, go to wallbuilders.com and check out ‘The American Story’.

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. Today we got Tina discovered with us from Moms for Liberty. Listen up, folks, ways for you to get involved in your local community, they’re doing at school boards all over the country where good things are happening, where we’re actually stepping up and be in good citizens. Tina, thank you so much for your time today.

Welcome Tina Descovich

Tina:

Thanks for having me on.

Rick:

Alright. The website Momsforliberty.org will have a link today. What got you started? What caused you to get involved? Is this something you’ve done your whole life or was there kind of a pivotal, the switch flipped and you suddenly said, I got to get more involved in these things?

Tina:

I think it was a long progression. I have five children total with my husband, two that I raised in our home. And as the oldest one who’s now in college Reach Middle School, I started seeing a change in how Common Core was hitting heavy, things were happening with the curriculum. The state of Florida had passed some legislation that was requiring way too much testing, you know, high stakes mandate to testing on children and so I started getting more involved.

At that point, I was already a PTO president, volunteering, making cupcakes, doing all the things for the school locally, but started taking a look at it at a bigger level and realized really quick that it doesn’t take much to impact change when you use your voice, when you meet with the right people, when you try to build relationships. And I was able to be pretty make some really great changes early on. And that led me to run for school board in 2016, served from 2016 to 2020, and so did my co-founder, Tiffany Justice, but she served in another district in Florida.

As 2020 started closing out and our terms were coming to an end, COVID hit. We like to say we saw behind the education curtain in those four years we saw what was really going on in school districts and all of America saw in 2020. And so we got our heads together. We said, how can we help American parents stand up for their parental rights? And Moms for Liberty was born January 21st of 2021.

Testifying Before School Boards

Rick:

Wow. Alright. I think most people that had not paid attention at all, the Loudoun County thing in Virginia and some of the other examples where the social media went crazy with testimony at the school board meetings was a real wake up call. They had no idea that there was such an adversarial situation going on between parents and the boards. How do you guys deal with that? Like, what do you recommend parents to do?

Because we tell people when they go to the legislature to testify, don’t go in screaming at them, go in and try to be firm but you’re not going to move people if you’re just always negative. And so what about with school boards?

How do you handle that with the school boards where people are just frustrated but they need to be effective, right, they need to actually have testimony or win elections and all of those things? What’s your advice to parents that want to get involved and they’re got to channel that frustration effectively?

Tina:

Yeah, that’s an easy question because number one, I’m going to tell you to find your local Moms for Liberty chapter. You go to momsforliberty.org, if there isn’t a chapter in your county where organized by counties in the United States, you can apply right online to start one, and all you need is ten people that agree with you and will stand by you, a couple of people to serve on your executive board. And you need to be likeminded, liberty-minded and want to stand up for parental rights.

And I say that, but there’s other local organizations that have also formed into groups. You need to have other people with you. You need to be in a parent’s group.

Power in Numbers

I served on the school board long enough to know when a sole lonely parent comes in and stands in front of that school board and has concerns, they get ignored, they just gets lost in the shuffle. There’s so much going on. There’s so many complaints are the squeaky wheel really does get their oil. And so you have to organize in a group.

And you want to be with a group that, like you said, doesn’t just scream and yell. You want to work to build relationships. You want to set meetings up with your school board members and explain your concerns and your problems. Obviously, as you get shut down and shut out, some of these things escalate. But you definitely want to start in a place where you’re building the relationship.

Rick:

I’ll just give you one maybe silly example. Maybe it’s 100% my fault for not doing more homework. But when you are part of a group, the group knows the rules by which the game is played and so you don’t make silly mistakes like I did. I went to my school board to testify against this half billion dollar bond thing that they were about to put on the ballot. 

And I have friends on the school board, and I just had a few things to say from Thomas Jefferson about debt and that sort of thing. Little did I know they changed the rules and you got to sign up long before the meeting starts. And it’s very limited.

I was in the legislature a long time ago. So 20 years ago, when you had a committee hearing, you opened it up to the floor and said, anybody else want to speak? You really went out of your way to get public comment. And boy, in the last couple of years, that has changed big time, especially with school boards.

Find or Start Your Local Chapter

Anyway, had I known that, I would have got there early and done all that. But I didn’t know the basic rules. If there’s a group that you’re working with, they will know those rules and you’ll be able to plug in and not waste your time like I did go in and they’re not getting to be heard. That’s a silly example, but it’s one of many things that you learn if you have a group.

Tina:

It’s not a silly example at all. Moms and parents are very busy. These meetings sometimes are held during the day. You have to take off work to get there. Sometimes they’re at night and you’ve got sports and dinner and all these things to do and if you don’t know, you have to be there 30 minutes early to sign up and you go and you sit for 2 hours, it’s not a silly thing at all.

So my recommendation to you, sir, is to look up your local Moms for Liberty chapter, we take dads too, and get checked in with them. At a minimum, you’ll get their emails and they’ll tell you when all the meetings are, what’s coming up on the agenda? We meet monthly as chapters. We go over the school board agendas. We’ve taught them how to look at school board budgeting, which you just brought up, which is actually very challenging, very complex and a whole lot of taxpayer money that’s being spent.

So teach them how to do all that. We teach them where school boards hide stuff in the consent agenda and pass things in groups of 20, 30, 40, 100 items at once. And so, it’s great. You’ll get the emails. They’ll alert you to when there’s a real concern when you need to get your late night outfit on and get down to the school board and plan to sit there all night to speak. And so that was a great example.

MomsForLiberty.Org

Rick:

Yeah, well, I love it. I love it. Okay. momsforliberty.org and there’s a map you can it’s really easy to find if there’s a chapter in your county yet or not and how to get involved. Having been on both sides, if I can say it that way, having been on the elected school board side and had to deal with the budgets and sometimes it’s a no win situation, I mean, it’s not that we don’t want schools to spend any money.

You had to be on both sides of that and then also teaching people to hold them accountable, can you speak to the teacher union piece of this? And it seems like sometimes they have so much power at the legislative side of things. I don’t know if they do at the school board, I’m not familiar enough with that.

Tina:

Oh, my goodness. Even ours, how much time do we have here because I have a lot to say? The things Tiffany and I saw when we were on school board is how much power the unions have. Even here in Florida, where it’s a right-to-work state and people think the unions aren’t that powerful, they have been controlling the public education and school districts at the school district level for decades.

If you think about it, just take one second and think about it, they are negotiating with the school board for their salaries, but not only for their salaries. These contracts are massive, hundreds and hundreds of pages now, and they have everything from when school starts, when school stops, days off, early release, you name it, it’s all in those contracts. And the teachers union is negotiating with the school board. But guess who’s sitting on the school board? 

Taxpayers Have a Voice

They’ve invested millions every single year to get their people elected to the school board. They’re literally negotiating with themselves. Taxpayer money, there’s nobody there representing taxpayers.

There’s nobody there representing children. There’s nobody representing parents or community members. It’s just teachers unions negotiating with teachers. And that’s exactly why American public education is where it is today.

Rick:

I can’t imagine there being any corruption in all of that. Oh, wow!

Tina:

It’s horrible, horrible.

Rick:

And so the key is having a chapter locally where you can monitor this stuff but also begin to build political power. I know some people don’t like the word power, but I mean, that’s literally what it is. And when it’s exercised for good, it’s good. And it takes that to win. 

You have to be able to win elections, get good people on the board, have the influence when you do go testify that they know, whoa, that’s the Moms for Liberty group, we better pay attention because we know they’re organized and we know they’re going to show up in the next election. I mean, that’s when you really start seeing a change and see them actually listening to the people that are testifying, right?

“Children should be educated, instructed in the principles of freedom.”

Tina:

Bingo! And so we have, I think, six points of how we fight on our website. And the last one is we hold leaders accountable, and when they don’t do what parents want, we work to replace them. That’s the phase we’re in now. We’ve been around for, I think, about 20 months, and school board elections are starting to happen. In the state of New York, they had elections a couple of months ago and all their school board races, we have about nine chapters. We cover nine counties in New York.

Chapters endorsed about 70 school board seats total and we won over 40 seats, which for the state of New York, first time really no experience in what we were doing at this level. A lot of these moms have never been involved in politics in their life. Some of them ran themselves and won. And even in counties where we lost, like all we had three seats up, I think in Dutchess County and we lost all three seats, but voter turnout and the school board race was three times higher than it had ever been before.

And so to me, that’s a huge win. We’re getting eyes on the public education system. People are engaged and going to discuss these issues, and that’s huge. So here in Florida is a school board elections and we are all in.

We actually launched a Florida because that’s where Tiffany and I are located here, to our strongest status with 27 chapters, I think. We launched a Florida Moms for Liberty political committee and we’ve actually endorsed and gotten involved promoting some of our candidates. And so we’re really looking forward to seeing the results of that election.

Rick:

Oh, wow. That’s so encouraging. That’s so good to see. We want to see that growth across the country. I love the fact that on your website, on the homepage, John Adams “Children should be educated, instructed in the principles of freedom.” That’s why we’re in the mess we’re in because we don’t teach civics anymore. So thank you for doing that. Thank you for getting people involved.

PATRIOT ACADEMY

Momsforliberty.org is the website, folks. If you don’t want the unions controlling things in calling the shots, guess what, it’s up to us. We have to step up as citizens and be the counter to that. So appreciate your time. Appreciate what you all are doing. Tina, keep up the great work.

Tina:

Thank you, sir. I appreciate your time.

Rick:

Stay with us, folks. We’ll be right back with David and Tim Barton.

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Tremendous Impact

Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. Back with David and Tim. Thanks to Tina Descovich for joining us from Moms for Liberty. And guys, because we’re always introducing our audience to all kinds of organizations out there, we’re really big on energy and working with other groups and not reinventing the wheel. So we love sending people to these groups.

And man, they had a tremendous victory last week in Florida; all the, what was it, 25 out of 30 or something that they won and some of the biggest school districts in the country?

David:

Yeah, they won 25 out of 30. And they also picked up Miami-Dade County, which is now the largest school district in the nation being run by conservatives. And so this is just in one election, and they flipped several counties, several school boards. But that’s what can be done. And it’s really, really important to do that.

And, by the way, even in areas we think are conservative, like here in Texas, here we are, I thought what Tina said was really important. The teachers unions have massive influence, including in states that don’t have unions. And Texas is one of those and so is Florida. They’re not union states, but teachers unions still run so much education.

And that’s why parents have got to get involved. We got to get out of the hands of those elitists that really don’t care about the kids, that care about themselves and seen what they did in Florida. That’s great news.

Dads Too…

Tim:

Yeah. And guys, this is something that is so encouraging to see that hopefully the pendulum is starting to swing back in a good direction where there is accountability on some of these school boards. And hopefully, some of these people that have been elected to school boards are starting to pay attention across the country that parents are not supportive of this woke leftist ideology.

And even as we heard, maybe there is a group of moms somewhere or Rick, as you even helped us identify, even dads can be part of this moms group, but where there can be people somewhere and there might be a group that there’s 10 people in your area and there’s nobody running and organizing it.

Get Involved Locally With Moms For Liberty – With Tina Descovich

Well, maybe you’re the one that needs to start this group, Moms for Liberty in your town, in your community, in your school district, where you can get involved and you can be the one to help lead this this group of individuals who are in invested in, want to engage in, helping the next generation avoid some of this Marxist ideology, propaganda, wokeism, leftism ungodliness. So this is something that is certainly encouraging to see the growth and trend around the nation, and especially because we are seeing more and more people getting involved and we’re seeing these victories happen at the local level.

Rick:

And that’s it for our time today, folks. You can learn more at our website, wallbuilderslive.com. That’s the place to make your one-time or monthly contribution and get access to our archives. This is why we have to be engaged. We have to study. We have to learn. So we want to encourage you to be a force multiplier in your community. Make sure that you’re leading the way, that you’re inviting people over to your home, having discussions, kind of your own committees of correspondence, just like the Founding Fathers did.

Your home can be like the churches and taverns of that founding era where you bring people together and just exchange ideas, get a chance to talk about what’s going on. You can use one of our courses to kind of jumpstart the conversation, whether that’s biblical citizenship or the American Campfire Revival we’re doing, Kirk Cameron, lots of opportunities for you there. If you want to do that and you want to be one of our Constitution coaches.

You don’t have to know anything. You don’t have to have any background in this. You’re the lead learner. We’ll do the training, you just get the people in the room and hit play. You do the power play. Turn on the power hit play. Learn more today at constitutioncoach.com. Get signed up. Get started. Be the catalyst for a restoration of biblical values and constitutional principles in your community.

Thanks for listening today to WallBuilders Live.