The Suburban Women Problem

Extremism Is Back To School (with Dr. Carlee Simon, Amanda Pauley and Tamsen Culver)

August 10, 2022 Red Wine & Blue Season 2 Episode 32
The Suburban Women Problem
Extremism Is Back To School (with Dr. Carlee Simon, Amanda Pauley and Tamsen Culver)
Show Notes Transcript

It’s hard to believe, but the summer is winding down and kids are starting to go back to school. But extremism didn’t take a summer break - and as students return to classrooms, parents are having to fight again for safety, equity, reasonable class sizes, and so much more.

But first, our hosts celebrate all the legitimately good news out there: Congress passing the Inflation Reduction Act and PACT Act, Kansas voters standing up for reproductive freedom, and Alex Jones finally being held accountable for his lies about the tragedy at Sandy Hook.

Then we’re joined by Tamsen and Amanda, two moms in Pennsylvania who became friends last year when they realized they both wanted to fight for Covid safety in their kids’ school. Since then, they’ve attended school board meetings and advocated for LGBTQ+ kids and students of color in their school district. It’s easier to get involved when you’re fighting alongside your friends!

After that, the hosts chat with Dr. Carlee Simon, a mom in Florida who was fired from her job as superintendent when she dared to stand up to Governor DeSantis on masks in schools. Dr. Carlee chats with us about what happened to her, teacher shortages, how right-wing extremists are trying to destroy public education, and more. She’s currently running a PAC called Families Deserve Inclusive Schools - you can find out more here.

And finally, our hosts raise a glass to Kansas voters and to meeting listeners in this episode’s “Toast to Joy.”

The midterm elections are now only 13 weeks away! If you’re ready to join the Great Troublemaker Turnout, please sign up here. Suburban women are taking a stand - join us!

For a transcript of this episode, please email theswppod@redwine.blue.

For a transcript of this episode, please email theswppod@redwine.blue.

You can learn more about us at www.redwine.blue or follow us on social media!

Twitter: @TheSWPpod and @RedWineBlueUSA

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The Suburban Women Problem - Season 2, Episode 32

Amanda Weinstein: Hi, everyone. Thanks for listening. I'm Amanda Weinstein. 

Jasmine Clark: I'm Jasmine Clark. 

Rachel Vindman: I'm Rachel Vindman.

Amanda: And you're listening to The Suburban Women Problem. It's hard to believe, but summer is winding down and kids are starting to go back to school.

Oh, the summer has gone by so fast. 

Jasmine: I know! Jayda's actually in school right now. 

Rachel: Oh, wow. 

Jasmine: Yeah, she's already back. We go back to school in Georgia, like, super early. And there were some kids that were in at like the end of July. I was like, that's insane. But we went back like the first week of August.

Rachel: It's just so hot still. 

Jasmine: I know! We still have like a whole month of summer left.

Amanda: I will say, I am ready for these kids to be back in school. I had a fun summer, and now it's time. It's time for you to fly little birdies back to school. 

Jasmine: I think every mom can, you know, relate. We're like, “oh, I love having you around all the time. My grocery bill, my refrigerator, my snack cabinet… maybe not so much.”

Amanda: Haha, yes. 

Rachel: Well, my daughter hasn't finished her summer work, so I cannot have school start until she finishes her summer work. And all I can say is hashtag glad I'm not a homeschooler. And to you who are, I mean all the glory, but that is not something that I can do.

Amanda: No. My kids will tell everyone I'm their worst teacher and I'm like, “well, now you'll really appreciate your teachers at school.” So we'll be joined today by three incredible women, a mom in Florida who was fired from her job as superintendent for standing up to DeSantis on masks, and a couple of moms in Pennsylvania who formed a coalition of parents to speak up at school board meetings.

And just a reminder, we are now 13 weeks out from the midterms. Like we talked about last week with Julie Collins and Jess McIntosh, the stakes of this election are so high. And one thing you can do right now is sign up for our Great Troublemaker Turnout. Visit redwine.blue to learn more. 

So before we get into our back to school convo, welcome back, Jasmine! We missed you last week. How are you? 

Jasmine: I am great. I had a little vacation, um, and I'm using air quotes. Uh, it was a vacation, but, uh, it was fun except I got sick. I got food poisoning. So that part was not fun at all. 

Amanda: Oh, no. Oh, well that is bad news. But while you are out on your vacation, we've had a lot of actually really great news. I can't believe how much good news there is.

Jasmine: I know! I know.

Rachel:  Yeah. Can, can I just say that I was feeling a bit like a slacker when the bill passed–  

Amanda: Wait, which bill? There are so many bills! 

Rachel: Uh, I'm sorry. So the bill on Sunday. Because I was like, wow. When I was on COVID quarantine, I napped a lot and read some books, but I really didn't do anything good for anyone. I mean, I don't even know if I cooked for my family. I probably did, we all survived, but I'm really impressed because, uh, he really knocked out of the park during his COVID quarantine. 

Amanda: I know! We, like, take out the top, you know, terrorist person and Nancy Pelosi goes on and takes on China and Taiwan. And then we're gonna pass a bunch of bills that are great for Americans. They're like, oh, you know, just a day in the life here as a Democrat. Yeah. 

Jasmine: All while having like COVID! Or being on COVID quarantine. As Rachel said, like, you know, it's amazing to see a president just be presidential, even in times of adversity where he very well could have been like, look, I'm chilling. I don't have to do anything– 

Amanda: Or go on a joy ride with his security detachment!

Jasmine: Or, yeah, go on a joy ride and wave at people and get people to say how much they adore him. He could have done that, but instead he buckled down and he really continues to do the work for the people. And so I, again, I, I I'm with you, Rachel. I think it's kind of amazing to have a real president back in our White House, like doing just president stuff. 

Amanda: I mean, so the Inflation Reduction Act that they passed… I would like to say, first of all, I love the name. Of course I do, I love the name. But it did actually have 126 top economists who signed a letter stating that it actually will help lower inflation as we transition away from fossil fuels, reducing demand for fossil fuels, which will bring down energy prices, transitioning more to energy efficiency, cleaner energy. And also lowering healthcare costs by allowing things like allowing Medicare to negotiate lower costs, all of this will lower inflation. This is an amazing bill that we got done. And I think… wasn't Kamala the tiebreaking vote?

Jasmine: Yes. Because like everything else that helps Americans, every single Republican voted against it. And I'm like, “come on, y'all, like, this is good. Like, why are you mad that we're gonna like, not be dependent on fossil fuels and we're gonna lower prices and costs for people? And we're gonna lower healthcare costs for people? Like, why is this a bad thing? Not a single one of y'all could find, you know, an ounce of decency to vote yes on something that actually helps people?” I just don't… it's, it's really sad. 

Rachel: And then when they lost, like the things they were saying, when they lost it was so pathetic. It was like, just so sad. They had no idea what to say. They couldn't say anything on the merit so it was just ridiculous ad hominem attacks. And I saw what Senator McConnell, um, said, and it, it sounded again, just very much like a sore loser, but “Oh my gosh, you're ruining the plan. We don't wanna give people anything. Like we only wanna give tax breaks to the ultra wealthy, and now you're gonna give regular people things and they're gonna expect things. And that was never what we wanted to do.” 

Jasmine: Which is why, for all the great things that did happen in the Inflation Reduction Act, they were fist bumping and high fiving and patting each other on the back because they blocked the $35 copay cap for insulin. And I, as a person who works in healthcare, that really just grinds my gears. And that's me being PG today. I mean, I mean, it just really makes me angry. Because type one diabetes is an autoimmune disease. So this is not, has nothing to do with your diet. It has nothing to do with your body shape. It has nothing to do with how nutritious or how healthy you eat. It has 100% to do with the fact that there's something going on with your body and it cannot make insulin. So it is a life saving medication. Either you have the insulin or you die. That is literally what happens. 

And here we are, fighting about the fact that the same people who are like, “oh, inflation is bad” are the same people who are like, “yes, but you should have to spend hundreds or over a thousand dollars for your insulin in order to stay alive.” If you actually cared about inflation or you cared about costs for Americans, this would've been a no brainer, but that was like the only one “gotcha” that the Republicans could get. Like “oh, well, at least we didn't give them that insulin price cap.”

Amanda: That's a good point. You can't complain about $4 gas and then make it okay to pay hundreds of dollars for insulin. Like those two things should not be existing together in the same brain in the same political party, but they do.

Rachel: Well, I think you can, if you are continuing down the road of you think “this will never affect me.” This will never be, this will never be my problem or my family's problem.  

Amanda: That's exactly right, because it's… “hopefully I don't have the bad luck and my kid doesn't have the bad luck of having this autoimmune disease.” But guess what? It might be you. Because it's just simply bad luck that some people need this insulin. And the reason why we have prices so high is you have very few suppliers and people who absolutely need it who will pay those prices so that they can save their own lives. Right. 

Another thing that they fist bumped over is you had the PACT act, which would expand VA healthcare and allow veterans who've been exposed to burn pits and toxic substances, things like Agent Orange used in the Vietnam War, gave veterans access to healthcare for all of these terrible things. And you have 11 GOP Senators vote no for this and fist bump over the no, including Ted Cruz, who was like got all broey and like fist bump over, “Haha, we're not gonna give this healthcare to veterans.”

Jasmine: They're gonna pay for that.

Rachel: I hope so. 

Amanda: I hope they do pay for that. I am really sick of their patriotic “support veterans” and then fist bumping over not giving veterans healthcare. That's not okay.  

Jasmine: I think that that moment is a moment where there were veterans who I know are Republicans that were like, “Well, can someone please explain just why they voted no? Cause I'm really just trying to understand, cause I'm a vet and I, you know, both sides don't necessarily tell the truth. So can someone just give me a nonpartisan explanation?” I'm like, “I'm sorry. There is not a nonpartisan explanation. I know you want to believe that there is. I know you want to believe that Republicans care about you. They don't, and this is them showing you.” 

Amanda: Sometimes the truth is partisan. So sit with that. 

That no vote was ridiculous, voting no for against healthcare for veterans, the no vote for insulin was ridiculous. But there's another no vote that was awesome, done by Kansas! Go Kansas! 

Rachel: Yes! You guys, I was in London and they couldn't stop talking about it everywhere. Like people would find out we were American and they would be like, “Did you hear what happened in Kansas? It was awesome!” 

Amanda: Yeah, so like, to me, it's like, look at the turnout. The turnout was huge for our primary. So you go from a 15 percentage point advantage to Donald Trump, to the no vote winning by about 18 percentage points saying “No. We want to protect our abortion rights here in Kansas.”

Like that is a huge shift. And if you think about why, where does this come from? They had 33,000 people register to vote after the Dobbs decision. 70% of those people were women. Dun dun dun. Right? This is a story about women, a lot of women all over the state, especially suburban women.

Jasmine: The suburban women problem epitomized! 

Amanda: It's getting bigger!

Rachel:  It is, it is exactly our show last week. If you think it's not gonna be an issue, just wait. It's, it's just so exciting to see women show up and for them to see that showing up makes a difference.

Amanda: Exactly. This is what we have been trying to tell people, and it's so powerful in Kansas, and I love that Red Wine and Blue’s Katie Paris has been talking about this. She's done a great job talking about this like, “have you met any women?”

Jasmine: Yeah, I think we need more empowerment because a lot of people don't vote because they actually genuinely believe that voting doesn't matter. And I think this is a prime example. Voting matters. It matters immensely, but you have to participate. 

It's like me… I always get very, very angry when I don't win the lottery, but the truth is I've actually never played it. And so how upset can I really get that I am not a billionaire right now, when the fact is I've never actually played the lottery? You gotta participate in order to reap those benefits.

Amanda: And I think we've seen that in school boards across our nation, where we have seen with, you know, the whole CRT stuff and, you know, this push against diversity equity inclusion… we've seen a lot of moms step up, get engaged, become activists and vote.

So I think right now, is a great time, speaking of school boards, to bring on a couple more moms who formed a coalition of parents to speak up at school board meetings. Tamsen and Amanda, welcome to the podcast! 

Tamsen Culver/Amanda Pauley: Hi. Hi. Thanks for having us. 

Amanda W: So you two met last year when you realized you both wanted to fight for your kid's safety in school and now you’re friends! Could you tell us more about how you met and the work you've been doing together?  

Tamsen: Sure. It was, uh, August last year, the last school board meeting before school was preparing to open. Our school was planning on going full speed ahead, no mandatory masking, no hybrid option. And we wanted to fight for better safety measures.

Amanda P: So I saw Tamsen in our local Facebook groups, feeling just like me, and I reached out to her and a few other people that were feeling just like me. And we made a little messenger chat. We met up, we made a plan to go to the meetings. And we had one of the lowest vaccination rates in Pennsylvania and we had one of the highest transmission rates. And we were like, we're putting ourselves at risk. Like what we, we felt like our hands were tied.

Jasmine: Oh my gosh. You know, as someone who, you know, I guess considers myself to have a pretty healthy immune system, I still don't wanna get COVID. I can't imagine what these last few years have been like for individuals who are immunocompromised.

Tamsen: Yeah, my 15-year-old is immunocompromised. 

Jasmine: So what do you see as connections between standing up for kids like yours, who are immunocompromised, and standing up for other kids who might be marginalized because of their gender or because of their race? Like, do you see a connection to fighting for these? 

Tamsen: Oh, absolutely. It's what's kept me in the fight, even though COVID is now, you know, a more treatable condition, a little bit less scary. You can't help but run into folks… I mean, we are a predominantly white school district. I’ve found that if you talk to any family that has students of color, they've all heard slurs, they've all been mistreated. And pretty much all of them are going to say, it's just not worth going to the administration. It's not going to help. 

My other daughter, self-identifies as queer and with all the book ban stuff coming up, we started to see that kind of persecution rising. So I feel like I have a lot of skin in this game and it's all so interconnected. I mean, I've always had to fight for my daughter who is immune compromised, she is multiply disabled and I've always had to advocate for her acceptance, for her needs. And you run across so many other families who are having to do the exact same thing for other reasons. 

And what's the saying, “the rising tide lifts all ships”? I've come to truly believe that anything that I fight for for my kids is going to help all kids.

Rachel: You know, I, I mean, many people feel the same way as you do, but they might not have gone to the school board meetings. What gave you the courage to go to the school board meeting to stand up for your children? 

Tamsen: Largely it was Amanda.

Jasmine: Aw, cute. 

Amanda P: I saw the Red Wine and Blue article in the Washington Post, it was sent to us specifically, and me and Tamsen were like, “All right, let's take this tonight.” We were so motivated after our first Troublemaker call. The next morning we started our little Facebook group and it was about seven of us. And we were like, “just add friends, just add like-minded people.” We started to go to action meetings in our community, like different clubs that gathered, our local LGBTQ+ club and speak there and ask for help specifically. 

Even our kids didn't know about the book bans. My son went to the board meeting with me, and he was like, he's, he's a journalist for the school newspaper at the time, and he was texting his editor like, “you have to see what's going on here. This is so crazy.” And the next board meeting, we had a bunch of journalists, like high school journalists. And the candidates running for state rep. Everyone was just excited to see us filling the room. Now we felt like we had our voices back.

Tamsen: To find out that you weren't the only one who felt this way was yeah, super motivating. 

Rachel: It always is. 

Amanda W: Wow. So it sounds like that was a pretty big transition going from being outnumbered to then having so many people in the room. So how did you make that transition? How did you, was it just people seeing you at the school board? Was it just through Facebook? Like how did you get, you know, how did you get your community kind of to be on your side? 

Amanda P: I think it was going to the meetings. Going to our local, like our democratic meetings, our action group meetings, asking for time to speak or they were just giving us time if they had heard about it. And we would speak with them and let them know what was going on and– 

Tamsen: Begging almost, yeah. Specific calls to action on Facebook, like “We just need butts in seats at this meeting. Do we have anyone willing to speak on this issue?” And if you give people a clear goal, it's amazing how people wanna step up and fill that need for you. Especially when you are building that sense of community. Like we, a lot of us have all come to be friends outside of our advocacy, to genuinely enjoy each other's company. And when you feel like you're really fighting with friends, it makes the work so much easier. 

Rachel: Oh, I love that. Yes. 

Jasmine: Y'all were just two moms that didn't know each other even until you guys started fighting for this and now you're, you're advocates. But there's a lot of people out there that are probably listening to us right now that are like, “I don't know if I have the courage to show up to a school board meeting.” Or, “I don't know if I have the courage to start a Facebook group. No one's gonna join.” Or, you know, they're just sitting there and they're kind of doubting themselves right now. What advice would you give to that mom that wants to get involved, but is not quite sure how they can or not quite sure if they can? 

Tamsen: I can speak to that as a hardcore introvert. Uh, I've said often that my goal is to go through life completely unnoticed. So everything I've done over the last two years has taken me well outside my comfort zone. I still do have to psych myself up for things like this podcast, things like the school board meetings, when I know I'm gonna be speaking. But it's so important. Right now sitting back and watching is not an option, especially if you do have a student with disabilities, a student in the LGBT community, a student of color. You have to speak up now, before things go even further and the work is even harder.

Rachel: And I would take that one step further. I don't have a child in any of those communities. But we have to make this better for everyone. And it can't just be these moms fighting alone. We all have to work together to do it. 

Tamsen: We're fighting for children. How do you not wanna fight for children?

Amanda P: Something a good friend of ours tells us all the time, cause sometimes you get tired of hearing from extremists...

Rachel: Yeah. Sometimes, yeah.

Amanda P: She always says it and it sticks with me so much. If we all do a little, then no one has to do a lot. And that's what we will always say, like, “this week, we're writing letters to the editor. Do we have any ghost writers? These are the five people that are writing letters.” It's been amazing to work with people with the same goal in mind. 

Amanda W: Oh, Tamsen and Amanda, I love the partnership that you two have. Like it sounds like it is very like a Thelma and Louise situation– don't drive off a cliff!

All: Hahaha.

Amanda W: But I love it. And I love this energy. Thank you for being with us today. 

Tamsen/Amanda P: Thank you so much.

Amanda W: Now we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll be joined by Dr. Carlee Simon, a mom in Florida who was fired from her job as a superintendent when she dared to stand up to DeSantis on masks in school. Stay tuned for that conversation after the break.

BREAK

Amanda W: Welcome back everyone. Dr. Carlee Simon, thank you for joining us. 

Carlee: Thank you for having me. 

Amanda: So last year, as a superintendent in central Florida, you instituted a mandatory mask policy in your school district. As a result, you not only were insulted and threatened, you were eventually fired. Could you tell us about what happened?

Carlee: I'm from Alachua County. I actually was born and raised in the community, but I had been gone for a while and then I came back into the community, really as an advocate. At the end of the summer, right before school began, two of our custodians passed away from COVID. And so at that point, when I was the superintendent, we were dealing with the Delta variant. We were having a huge amount of contagion, people quarantining. And so I put in for all staff to be masked.

We had professionals who were on a team who would give us advice and tell us how to navigate the changing, um, you know, atmosphere of this disease. So they came, uh, the doctors came, the epidemiologists, Department of Health, and they discussed how Delta was so contagious. And at that point, the board voted unanimously that we needed to be masked. They voted for that. And we started off with just two weeks. 

The governor, prior to that, during the summer, had made it very clear that schools were not allowed to have any sort of mandatory masking. We ended up having a hearing, so at that point it was Broward County and myself, Alachua County, we were the two superintendents. We had to have a hearing with the Department of Education and both of us were, um, found as non-compliant. 

The very next day, at eight in the morning, Mildred Russell, who is the DeSantis appointee, was placed as my fifth board member by the governor. How I found out was actually through a press release. The governor sent no official notification to the district that this was going to happen. And Mildred Russell brought my evaluation onto the board and I was terminated in a three/two vote for no cause on March 1st. 

Jasmine: It sounds crazy to hear that basically you were advocating for the safety of every person in the school building, and that's what got you fired. But, you know, Florida is full of things that make you go, “Hmm.” Last month, DeSantis told Florida public schools that they should deny lunches to trans kids. Is this like just a crazy Florida thing? Or do you think that this is, is a part of a larger extremism that's happening all over the country?  

Carlee: So I think we are kind of the start of it, but I think we're seeing it across the country. I talked to a lot of people about my own situation and I will tell you, DeSantis came to me and he came after me. He's coming after our state right now. He is influencing board meetings. He is pumping in his own political money into our school board races. He says that he wants to turn our nonpartisan boards red.

And that's, I think probably the, the most frustrating aspect is that a lot of people do not understand what is being shared with them as something that they should be fighting for. And they just don't understand that they will literally be voting off their autonomy and that of their children. 

Rachel: So what we have right now are schools returning, but we're facing huge teacher shortages. And this is something we've talked about on the po. Many months ago, we said this was going to happen. We are not soothsayers, we just–

Amanda: Just women!

Rachel: Yeah. I mean, you know, just like logical people! And now it's coming to fruition and we have schools in Texas that are gonna be four days a week. 

Amanda: It's great for working parents.

Rachel: Yeah. Yeah. But, but what do you, what do you think about this, Carlee? What are you seeing in Florida?  

Carlee: So, the Florida Education Association actually just had a post, um, this week on Facebook that we thought we had a deficit of 9,000 teachers, but based on the growth of the population, it looks like we have more of a 14,000 teacher deficit. And I don't know how much you've watched with DeSantis on this as well. But one of the things that he has opened up is if you were in the military, You can teach without having your bachelor's degree.

Amanda: I can shoot a rifle, it does not mean I have been trained to handle 30 kindergartners in one room!

Carlee: The other thing that I'm trying to express to people, like the Moms for Liberty moms... your child's education is going to be impacted as far as quality. They will not graduate with the same skill sets that other states have who have invested in their teachers and provide a safe working environment. That means your child's not gonna be competitive when it comes to college applications. Taking, um, assessments that get you into colleges as well as get you scholarships and in the workforce. And so I don't think they understand that, you know, this is a long term hit for your family if you don't have access to high quality public education. And I think we're running into, you know, we do have these holes.

So the other thing that you can look at as well with our deficit is you're either gonna have larger classrooms because you have fewer teachers or we're gonna have more people who are just not qualified and it becomes a babysitting type of a situation. 

And then you run into, you know, we saw what happened in the pandemic when our schools closed. I mean, how many parents were praising educators and “oh, they need to be paid so much more”?

Amanda: Every mom who dealt with the pandemic is like, wow, those teachers do a lot that I can't do. 

Carlee: Right. But right now that narrative has flipped so much so that, you know, teachers are “groomers” in my state. I mean, they're, they're being accused of being pedophiles! And teachers love children. They want to support education! To be accused of these things... It's just gonna continue on. And then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? You have bad public education, you lose your workforce, and then the education grades go down and then you say, “look, public education's not working.” Well, it's not working because you wanted it to die.

Amanda: Exactly. I mean, this is all. This has all been part of their broader plan to attack public education. And this has been part of their plan for decades. And now you're just seeing it play out in Florida and in states all over the country. Right. 

Carlee: But there's no winners.

Amanda: No, there's no winners. There's only losers. Kids will lose. Parents will lose. Society will lose. Our economy will lose. We know, hands down, the number one thing we could do for any economy is have a well educated workforce. We cannot do that without public education. 

Carlee, thank you for your work and thank you for joining us.

Carlee: Thank you for having me. 

Amanda: That conversation with Carlee was so good. Our schools are so important for so many things. And I think this is something every mom knows, like we know our schools are important. We know they're important for our own kids, for our neighbor's kids. We know they're important for our communities. We cannot let people like DeSantis win in these areas and let them take our schools down. We just can't. 

Rachel: I mean exactly what Carlee said. We're not gonna be competitive. You are going to see kids that are going to school in places like Florida, in other places where there's, you know, huge class sizes, they're not gonna have a quality of education and we're gonna see results of this sooner rather than later.

Amanda: And for every local community, I think we talked about this on our “Mom-onomics” episode. Every local community is trying to figure out “How do I attract businesses? How do I attract people to my community?” And how you do that is to make your community nicer. And the number one thing you can do to make your community a nice place to live is have good schools. Why? Because when you're buying a house, that's the first thing you look at. When you think about a real estate agent who says “location, location, location,” what she means is “schools, schools, schools, and probably some other stuff in there too, but mostly schools.” So if you want higher test scores, if you want better quality, you need to pay for good people in those classrooms. Good, well-trained people in those classrooms.

Rachel:  It's no mystery to see why we are having a teacher shortage right now. I mean, we saw it with the healthcare profession during the pandemic. I mean, they were demonized for political gain. Not for any reason, they didn't do anything wrong. They just were continually demonized and it really wore on their mental health. They've told us this. I just, when I was packing to come back and I saw a thing on BBC and there was a physician, or a medical professional, and she was talking about the mental health crisis. And she deliberately said because of COVID, because people just continued to question everything they did.

And if you go to work and someone all day questions everything you're doing, all the decisions you're making, how you're doing everything you're doing, it's demoralizing. And if your job is making people better or trying to heal people or trying to help children and someone is questioning the fundamental reason that you chose your job in the first place…

Amanda: It's insulting. 

Rachel: Yeah. If someone in my life was in that situation, I would be like, “you have to get out because it's not tenable, it’s not healthy emotionally if you are being treated this way.” So I can see why people are leaving. But we have to correct the fundamental issue that's leading to this.

Amanda: It goes to, like, Alex Jones and Infowars and how he spread lie after lie about Sandy Hook and that it didn't happen, or these kids didn't really die and that, you know, these teachers right. He has now been order to pay like almost 50 million for those lies, but really? We're in 2022, how long ago was Sandy Hook?

Rachel: It was 10 years ago. Yeah. It was 2012. 

Amanda: That's many school shootings ago. He's allowed to lie about teachers and kids and schools and that's what a lot of what the GOP has done, is lie about our teachers and our schools and our kids and what's going on in our schools. They're lying about all of that and having to pay no price.

So I do appreciate he is actually having to pay at least some price for it now, and that they realize if you're gonna lie about our teachers, lie about our kids and our schools, you should have to pay that price. 

Rachel: Yeah, I do feel sorry for whoever has to read his two years worth of text messages that were just today turned over to the January 6th committee. Speaking of mental health, I hope they have the counseling available to them that they might need.

Amanda: They're gonna need a lot of Toasts to Joy. Like, every day. 

Rachel: Yes. I think it's a great time to do our Toast to Joy and end on a happy note as we do. 

Jasmine: So my Toast to Joy actually is to a person. As, uh, many of you know, I have been campaigning, knocking doors and trying to meet new people in my area. And so I was knocking in this one neighborhood and I knocked on the door and the lady answered the door and she pauses and she looks at me and she goes, “oh my gosh, are you Dr. Clark?” And I was like, “Yeah!” And she's like, “I was just listening to The Suburban Women Problem podcast, like 20 minutes ago.” She was like, “I always kind of hoped that you would knock on my door!” Shout out to our listeners out there, especially the ones who also happen to be my constituents! And so, that's my Toast to Joy, is meeting listeners in real life on the campaign trail.

Amanda: Oh, that is the best Toast to Joy. I always love hearing when I get to meet a listener, it's so fun.  

Jasmine: Yeah. It really, really is. All right. So Rachel, your turn, what is your Toast to Joy? 

Rachel: Well, my Toast to Joy is quite similar to yours actually. When we were in France, we were grabbing a pizza one night at a small town in Normandy and this woman turned around and she said, “Are you Alex Vindman? And are you Rachel Vindman?” And it was really nice. 

But she, um, she was so nice and we took a picture with her and her family. And it was just nice to connect with them. Actually I love that people would just wanna come up and say something nice, even though I think sometimes they get a little embarrassed or they don't really know what to say. I probably wouldn't have the courage to do that, but they, they feel compelled to do so. And it always means a lot. 

And I think it means a lot to our daughter who still doesn't fully understand everything, but I'm glad she gets to see those moments. You can do the right thing and, you know, it might not turn out perfectly, but sometimes people are appreciative and they do share it with you. So it was, it was really nice. 

Amanda: That's awesome. I feel like one nice person can take out like 10 trolls. Like you probably heard from 10 trolls that day. You didn't even remember anything they said. 

Rachel: It's true.

Amanda: Right? It's so amazing. 

Rachel: But I mean, I think, you know, like in Jasmine's Toast to Joy, I mean, that's the thing about in service, whether it's government service or military service or public service, it's not about being a hero. It's not about spotlighting. It's actually quite the opposite. I may or may not be thinking of a couple of generals that are in the news today. But it's, it's about… it's about doing the right thing, just because you want to. Because that's what service is. 

So Amanda, what's your Toast to Joy? 

Amanda: So last week, Jess McIntosh did her Toast to Joy for Olivia Julianna and all the amazing work she has done. And there is so much good news happening, it was hard to pick one thing, but I really have to do my Toast to Joy to just Kansas. Oh my gosh, Kansas. Thank you for being like, an “I told you so” for women who are like, “This matters, I promise you this will matter to the midterms!” So Kansas was an “I told you so,” but also I just love that red Kansas came out so strong to support women and to support women's rights and let them choose, you know, the right time for them to have a child and to start their family. I just had to give my Toast to Joy to Kansas. So Kansas, I am definitely drinking a glass of wine to you tonight.

Jasmine: Yes! Cheers. 

Amanda: Thanks so much to everyone for joining us today. If you're enjoying the show, please share it with someone you know. We'll see you again next week on another episode of The Suburban Women Problem.