The Suburban Women Problem - Kitchen Table Conversations, Philadelphia Suburbs

Rachel: Hi everyone. This is Rachel Vindman and I am on the final stop of my Troublemaker Tour. I am sitting at a kitchen table in a suburb of Philadelphia, and I'm joined by two women who know all too well how bad things have gotten here in Bucks County. So Tracy and Jamie, could you introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about you?

Tracy: Hi, Rachel. I am a former school board member and school board president in the Central Box School district. I ran in 2017 and served a four year term until 2021. I did not seek reelection, but governed through the pandemic, um, after three kids who were in the Central Bucks school district when I was on the board there. And have been, you know, kind of running the age range through all of the schools. And fighting through… the things we fight through. 

Jaime: Hello. I am a 35 year old Black queen raising a Black son. I recently ran for school board last year. Currently I'm working from home, my son is 11. I'm just running around being a mom. 

Rachel: I love it. Shout out to moms of 11 year olds. The tween life is real. 

So, we're just gonna jump into it here. Bucks County is unfortunately a bit infamous for having extremists on the school boards. I won't hold it against you personally. I know you've, you've both done a lot to work on that and to counterbalance it. We actually interviewed a mom on the podcast a few weeks ago who told us about Paul Martino. I am very curious about that. He's a venture capitalist, as I understand, who poured half a million dollars into getting extremists on school boards across Pennsylvania. Tracy, you were a school board president until 2021, so could you tell us a little bit more about Paul and the influence of what he's doing? 

Tracy: Yeah. I actually had never heard of Paul Martino, even though I had been on the school board and he has children in the district. I'd never heard of him at all until late in 2020 when he started a series of town halls in Central Bucks specifically to talk about pandemic response.

And his platform was basically candidates who want schools to be– even though our schools were open, our schools were 100% open– his platform was, “I will give money to any candidates who agree and want schools to be open.” That happened to align mostly with Republican candidates, and he offered $10,000 to any candidate who would run under that assumption.

That attracted a lot of more extreme and what I would say even radicalized candidates throughout the county and that offer of $10,000 per candidate was across the state, which is where that half million dollars comes from. 

Rachel: That's just so disturbing that one person could skew, take things completely out of context, but have so much influence.

Jamie, you ran for school board in Palisade School District, which is also here in Bucks County. What made you decide to run and what was your experience like when you did run? 

Jaime: So I decided to run in 2020. It was after George Floyd was killed. And I had done a Black Lives Matter unity march in our small conservative town. Even starting with that, I received hate and that was the first time that I saw who people truly were in our area. So I decided to do the march, and it turned out awesome. It was in the newspapers, about 300 people showed up. It was beautiful. 

So then after that I was like, screw this. I wanna do something else. I was told about the school board, I was asked to run for the school board. So my race was a lot of ups and downs. There were pros and cons to it. The pros was that I formed this fabulous team that we called The Good Trouble, and they helped me with my race. 

The negative side to it… I think that there was more negativity in my race. I couldn't really enjoy it. And um, there was just a lot of racism, a lot of attacking me, a lot of threats. Police were involved and it showed me a completely different side to a lot of close friends that I had. It started hitting me probably after the primaries that this race is gonna be hard, and it opened up my eyes to the area that we're in. And the area that we're in is very conservative. It was just a lot of racism.

Rachel: It hadn't been so overt before you wanted to organize a Black Lives Matter march or run for school board. Is that correct? 

Jamie: Yes. 

Rachel: So what do you hear from other women, especially moms in your community? Do they support the extremist ideas or do they not know about it? Do they not care? How do we get to this point and how are they reacting to it now? 

Tracy:I think we got to this point a little more quickly and suddenly than anyone would've expected. We were very focused on pandemic response. Trump's presidency was definitely a catalyst for people showing true colors and feeling empowered to say things they would not have said before. Adding onto that pandemic response and people's feeling of lack of control in their lives because of having to live their lives differently for the greater good, which many, many people embraced, but some did not. And they felt like that was, you know, a large infringement on their freedoms. 

And I think that there was a lot of fear stoking. “If this happens, then what next?” And that ran quickly into the Critical Race Theory conversations, the Social Emotional Wellness conversations in terms of education, in terms of what was happening in the school board. So many more people kind of moved away from talking about pandemic response and started talking about other things that they feared and those things that they feared tended to center around minorities. CRT was all about, you know, “don't teach my kids about race” and SEL, “don't teach my kids about their feelings or that they should feel bad, ever.” And then we got into book banning and a lot of things very focused on LGBTQ youth. 

It just has snowballed from there to the point that we now have people saying white male Christians are the ones who are marginalized in the schools. Like someone literally said that recently in a meeting. If you believe that, you have given into the fear, and I think that I can't describe it in any better way than that. Like fear of someone taking over, someone getting something that you feel you deserve and making you feel uncomfortable or question who you are. 

Rachel: But your friends and the women in your community, are they aware this is happening? Do they care? 

Jaime: I have a few mom friends who speak up, who go to school board meetings, things like that. And then I have a handful of mom friends who don't want to say anything at all. I've had a couple of friends that have said, “Oh, I don't want my name out there. I don't want to show my face cuz I don't want to be targeted.”

And as a Black woman that pisses me off because, it’s like, “Okay. So I’ll take the hit. I don't mind taking the hit. That's fine. I'll go show my face at a school board meeting.” But then when I go over there for dinner, they talk about all the issues. So in the back of my mind, I'm like, “Why aren't you doing anything about it? What is, what are you so afraid of? Like, what are these people actually gonna do? Nothing. Yes, your name will be out there. Your name will be out there saying that you backed this up at a school board meeting, and then what? Nothing else happens.”

Rachel: If you're known for being the person that stands up, I think that's a pretty damn good thing for being known for. That is absolutely infuriating. I completely understand, believe me. I have had to walk away from many conversations when people come up to my husband and will quietly tell him they think he did the right thing and say they're a Republican, and I have to walk away cause I can't do it. This is the moment when we all have to stand up or we will never have the chance to do it again. I feel very passionately about this, Jamie. So thank you for what you do. I mean, I don't know if anyone tells you thank you, but when you stand up, you're standing up for their children too. Not just yours and your community and the community that they say they want, but they only will say it behind closed doors and that's not good enough anymore.

Whew. So Tracy, can you tell us a little bit about the extremism that you have faced and how that has personally affected you? 

Tracy: The extremism is the reason that I chose not to run again. I wanted to fight my fight differently. While I was on the school board during the pandemic response, people that I had previously been friendly with, people who live in my neighborhood, um, became extremely aggressive with me to the point that, you know, I had to turn off my phone because of the text messages, social media. I was getting messaged at 1, 2, 3 o'clock in the morning. Neighbors put signs in their yard directed at my house to send me messages. People would, you know, just come constantly to meetings and just target all of their comments directly toward me. Take snapshots of our kids and pass it around because our kids were doing something that they thought I wouldn't let their kids do. So they were, you know, trying to use our kids against us. 

These are people who I'd been friendly with before. People who'd been to my house, been to, you know, social events at my house. I'd been to their house, to birthday parties at their house, my kids' birthday parties. It was really disheartening because I had other friends who disagreed with me, but would have a conversation with me who would say to me, “Tracy, I disagree with you. Can you explain your reasoning to me?” And we would have a conversation and we would walk away and they would still disagree with me, but they would say, “I'm glad I'm not in your shoes. I'm glad I'm not the person who has to make those decisions, but I still disagree with you.” And that's fine. That's fine. We're not all going to agree. I get that. 

But to bring so much hate to it, to act like you don't know my character, when you've known me for seven or eight years prior to any of this happening, I think was the, the most disheartening and frustrating. And the way that I've dealt with that is to just find ways to block those people out of my life. My friends know I don't really want to know what antics those people are up to in other ways because it's just better for me to not invite that negativity. But it goes back to that comment about like, you know, it's the fear. It's “who can I blame for the situation I'm in currently?” And I was the convenient person to blame.

That was hard. That was really, really hard, but it was so worth it because I feel good about what I accomplished. I feel good about the things that I fought for, the people I spoke up for, the things that I put my heart and soul into. And so if people are listening and thinking like these crazy stories that they hear about how hard it is, yeah, it's hard. Like I won't sugarcoat that in the least. But it is worth it and it is necessary. Because if we are not doing it, then those voices are that we're fighting against, we'll have no opposition. And the people that we are friends with who are afraid to put their voices out there don't have a role model, don't have a person who will fight for them.

Rachel: What do you wish more parents knew about what's happening in schools right now? 

Jaime: It's not what I wish that they knew. I feel like what I wish I would see, what I wanna see more parents do is more action. Come to the school board meetings. I've had numerous parents who are like, “well, why is the school doing this? Why are they doing that?” And I'll mention to them, like, “go to the school board meeting.” 

Rachel: Just show up. So what about, what about you, Tracy? What do you wish that more parents knew about what's going on in the schools? 

Tracy: Right. I wish parents knew or would wake up to realize how this extremism is impacting the teachers, how it's going to impact us in public education long term. Our teachers were already beat down and demoralized through the pandemic. They worked their butts off. Teachers always worked their butts off, but they worked their butts off even more during the pandemic trying to make sure that children's needs were met, even though the world was kind of upside down around us.

And now we've come to this place where we have such extremism that everything is targeting teachers. “Teachers are indoctrinating our kids,” “teachers are trying to groom our kids by giving them books with implied nudity,” whatever the hell that is. Nobody knows, but it's in our policy. Teachers are not trying to do any of that. Teachers are not trying to change your child's political spectrum, their gender, none of it. They're there to try to teach your kid and love them. That's it. It really is. And if parents are unsure about that, then talk to your kids' teachers and you will hear that answer. Show them that you care about them because we are losing teachers. It's a crisis. It is a crisis. We had teachers not hired when school started this year because people don't wanna come to this profession because the extremism is driving them away. 

And one of the things that I was always passionate about in Central Bucks is that we have very few teachers of color… and who thinks that people of color are gonna wanna come teach in Central Bucks now? They didn't want to before. Why would they want to now? And the children in our district, not just students who are of color, all of the students need to see role models and people of authority who look different than them. Or if they're a minority child, who look the same as them. It's really, really important. And it is a crisis, and the extremism is making the crisis worse.

Rachel: What connections do you see– cause you don't have school board elections this year, but we're going into the midterms– so what connections do you see from what happened with your school board elections in the last cycle and, you know, what's going into the midterms? Because Pennsylvania does have some very important races. You have Dr. Oz, who lives in New Jersey and is trying to run here, and he shops at my favorite grocery store, Wegner’s… so how do you see what happened last year kind of affecting that, any connection between what happened last year with the school board races and what's going on with the midterms this year?

Jaime: One of the things that I'm noticing is a special little man called Mastriano. His name is everywhere in our town and on the TV, I see he's saying that women who get an abortion at six weeks or are gonna be charged with murder, things like that. I've had a friend that said, “oh, well if my IUD doesn't work here in Pennsylvania, I'll just go over to Jersey.” And it blows my mind cause I’m like, “Why don't you wanna fight that? Why don't you wanna get the word out and all these lies and bullshit that this guy is saying?” But yeah, so Mastriano is something that's in the, always in the back of my mind. And it's about how he feels about abortion. 

Rachel: What is your response when someone is essentially saying, “oh, well, I mean, if Target doesn't have what I want, I can try to order online with Amazon or go over to Walmart to get what I want.” I mean, we were talking about healthcare access. How is that okay? And what do you say to your friend when she says that? 

Tracy: A lot of things that I hear, you know, when we're talking about like people who don't speak up, my, a lot of my friends have older kids, so they're almost done.

And so they're, and their phrase is, “I'm almost done. Oh, I'm so glad, I'm almost out of Central Bucks.” And I wanna say, “Well, first of all, I don't have that luxury. I have a second grader.” But secondly, I wanna say, “What about all the other kids? Like it's not just about your kids. The school district is not just about your kids. There are 18,000 students in this district.”

Rachel: When did we stop caring so much about other people? I mean, it manifested itself with masks, but it didn't start there. This is something that I think about all the time. We just stopped wanting to do what's best for others. I often go back to my grandmother during the pandemic, talking to her, and she talked about how they survived as poor, poor sharecroppers in Oklahoma. They survived the Depression, she always says, by helping each other. “If we had something, we helped others. When they had something, they helped us.” 

I just wish that people could be here with us in some of these conversations. They're so relatable. I mean, it's like anyone, my neighbor's kitchen table, my friend's kitchen table. As a military spouse, I've sat at a lot of kitchen tables in a lot of different places and they're all the same. And I think the interconnectivity of this, if it's not hitting you now and it's not something that you feel personally, you will. And that's kind of what we're the theme of what we're trying to say is that this is, this is going to affect you. And it's better, you know, to get ahead of it and get involved.

So I thank you both for what you've done to get involved, and thank you for joining me for this today.

Tracy: You’re welcome. Thank you. 

Jaime: Thank you, Rachel.