Part 2 of 3
‘Courage Is Contagious’
The Loudoun parents’ fight has taken them to places far from the school board meeting room. Cooper and Van Fleet have both spoken on national television broadcasts to millions.
Cooper recalled being “scared” before her appearance on Fox’s “Hannity” program.
“I don’t have that confidence in speaking in front of a million people. I am just a mother. I can only teach my kids how to be successful, to learn to think for themselves, learn from their mistakes, and learn right from wrong.”
But she overcame her fear through meditation.
“I would just sit back and look at my husband and children. I would let everything pause for the moment, just take it all in how much I love them.
“It really all came down to … that our children trust in our decision to send them to school. Teachers become role models, as our kids learn to trust them in our absence, teachers play a major role in building our kids’ self-esteem, especially during their most impressionable years.”
Cooper says that some teachers who think they are doing good are actually “causing harm interfering with the parents’ morals and beliefs pertaining to family, political opinions, nationality, health, religion, ethnicity, sex, and personal characteristics.”
As for Van Fleet, who also got an invitation to Hannity the day after she spoke at the June 8 school board meeting, she also had to work to overcome her apprehension. Immediately, anecdotes of conservatives being doxxed and persecution episodes during the Cultural Revolution flashed in her mind.
At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1967, children in Van Fleet’s neighborhood in China wanted to organize their own “little red guards.” Red Guards were radicalized high school and university students who roved around the country persecuting those deemed by Chairman Mao Zedong as “counter-revolutionaries” or “class enemies.”
Van Fleet, who was 8 at the time, told the leader, who was also her friend, that she wanted to join too. However, upon finding out that Van Fleet’s grandmother was a landowner—a class enemy—the friend immediately announced that to all the children in the neighborhood. They treated her like she was evil.
David and Jessica Mendez with daughters Deanna and Shelby at their residence in Aldie, Va., on Nov. 21, 2021. (Graeme Jennings for The Epoch Times)
“And I felt evil,” Van Fleet recalled.
This demonization was being felt by school children across the country, Van Fleet told The Epoch Times, pointing to an anecdote shared by a mother at Oct. 26 Loudoun school board meeting.
“It was in the early spring of 2020 when my 6-year-old somberly came to me and asked me if she was born evil because she was a white person, something she learned in a history lesson at school.”
Still, the naturalized American worried that if she spoke out, she’d become a target all over again, even after having long escaped the suppressive environment in communist China. But, in the end, Van Fleet thought, “It’s a calling. I have to take on this. It’s not even my decision to make.”
The fear didn’t subside, though, even after her appearance on “Hannity.” She recalled that a local club invited her to an anti-CRT meeting and told her they would send a car for her. As she was waiting for the ride, her thoughts were racing—in her imagination, a black car came and took her to nowhere, and she would never see her family again.
But reading online feedback of her interview on Hannity helped Van Fleet conquer her demons.
“I cried.”
Two early comments stood out for her. One person said it was a blessing to have Van Fleet as a fellow American.
“China sent us a gift to save America, and that is Xi Van Fleet,” said another.'
“I just felt so empowered and encouraged,” she said. Over the months, she identified precisely that as her mission: to help save American values by giving back.
“As an immigrant, I have been enjoying the freedom fought for by America’s forefathers and generations of the patriots. Now it’s my turn to fight the fight,” she said during her speech at the Heritage Action Sentinel Summit 2021 in Orlando, Florida, on Nov. 13.
But this fight hasn’t been without cost. Van Fleet has lost friends, people she thought were good friends but distanced themselves from her due to her advocacy. Meanwhile, she has also gained new friends, like Cooper, who she has become close to.
“Courage is contagious because we encourage each other,” said Van Fleet.
The mother considers herself a soldier in the Loudoun “army.” While she had seen so many “heroes” speaking up at school board meetings in other counties, they weren’t able to find traction. Yet, for some reason, the momentum carried forward in Loudoun.
What made Loudoun different was teamwork, Van Fleet says. And it’s turned Loudoun into ground zero in the fight for children’s education and America’s future.
Escalated Tensions and Arrests
It was at a heated school board meeting on June 22 that tensions between Loudoun parents and the school board escalated to a new level. It also was the first meeting that pro-CRT and anti-CRT sides both organized attendance.
By June 22, the CRT and pro-transgender policies in Loudoun had attracted national attention, following a series of interviews with parents on television. The agenda for that meeting included discussion of the transgender policy that would require teachers and staff to call students by their preferred pronouns and allow students to use the bathroom of their self-identified gender.
Before the meeting, a campaign on ActBlue.com, a fundraising platform for Democratic candidates and progressive organizations, called for donations to bus supporters of the policy to a “Loudoun for All” rally to “stand up against hate and intolerance in our school system.”
Some parents were concerned that the board might adopt the transgender-friendly policy, even though it wasn’t on the agenda for a vote. Many were concerned that the policy might jeopardize the safety of students as it would allow biological males to self-identify as girls to use girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms.
Eventually, 289 people signed up to speak in person at the meeting. The board room was packed with parents against CRT and the transgender policy. About a dozen supporters of the transgender policy sat on one side of the front row.
The audience burst into louder and louder cheers as former Virginia state Sen. Richard Black, the 50th speaker, began his comments.
“This board has a dark history of suppressing free speech. They caught you red-handed with an enemies list to punish opponents of critical race theory. You’re teaching children to hate others because of their skin color. And you’re forcing them to lie about other kids’ gender,” Black said. “. I am disgusted by your bigotry.”
The crowd cheered more, and many stood up to express their agreement.
The school board members quickly voted to end the public comment period and retreated from the dais, making Black the last speaker allowed out of the total 289 registered.
After chanting “shame on you” to the empty stage and singing the national anthem, the crowd decided to press on with their speeches. Jon Tigges, a local agritourism business owner, took the lead in organizing the speakers. after about a half-hour, Superintendent Ziegler declared the meeting an “unlawful assembly,” and called for everyone to leave the premises.
Jon Tigges at Zion Springs, his wedding and bed-and-breakfast venue, in Hamilton, Va. (Caleb Spencer for The Epoch Times)
Tigges refused to leave the room and was arrested for trespassing. Another Loudoun father, Scott Smith, was arrested for disorderly conduct and obstruction of justice after getting into an argument with a woman who supported the transgender policy. The school board later resumed the meeting with other items on the agenda.
Smith was at the meeting because his ninth-grade daughter was sexually assaulted by a male student in the girls’ school bathroom a month earlier. He told local media that he had never been to a school board meeting before, and wanted to see “what all the nonsense was about.”
“I wanted to see it in real life because my family has unfortunately been pulled into this nightmare,” Smith
told 7news on Oct. 28.
Smith said he was talking to a woman, an acquaintance of his wife, who insisted that his daughter wasn’t assaulted.
“[The woman’s] husband put his hands on me first and the next thing I knew, I was wrestled to the ground by the sheriffs’ department,” Scott told The Epoch Times, pointing to
video footage of the incident.
Scott added that the woman had also threatened to ruin his plumbing business via social media.
During the meeting, board member Beth Barts had asked if there were assaults happening regularly in bathrooms or locker rooms—a key concern for opponents of the policy.
“To my knowledge, we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms,” Ziegler responded, adding later that “the predator transgender student or person simply does not exist.”
But emails made public in October showed that Ziegler knew about the sexual assault of Smith’s daughter on May 28, and informed the school board on the same day. Ziegler also knew about the 15-year-old’s arrest on July 9, but decided to
send him to another high school, where another girl became his victim on Oct. 6.
After the disclosure of the emails, Ziegler acknowledged on Oct. 15 that his June statement before the school board meeting was false, but explained that he had misunderstood the question. On Nov. 5, Ziegler announced that an external law firm would be investigating Loudoun County Public Schools’ handling of the two sexual assault cases.
Ziegler’s handling of the assaults has sparked calls for his resignation.
The teenage boy in October was
found guilty on one count of forcible sodomy and one count of forcible fellatio, both felonies, in relation to the May incident. And in November, he
pleaded no contest—that is, he wouldn’t challenge the charges—related to the October assault. The Loudoun County Juvenile Court will announce sentencing in both cases in mid-December.
Ziegler, at an Oct. 15 press conference,
said the school system handled the sexual assaults in compliance with Title IX federal laws. He also admitted that the schools had “inadvertently” failed to properly report incidents in the past due to a “lack of oversight.” The Superintendent’s office did not respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.
Smith’s family is currently in the process of filing a Title IX civil case in federal court against the Loudoun County School Board over its handling of his daughter’s sexual assault case.
Declining Trust
After the events of June 22, “trust”, or rather the lack of, became a major theme to emerge from parents’ remarks.
“The parents of Loudoun trusted that the members of the board would have our children’s best interests in mind when making decisions; that trust is lost,” said one parent at the next school board meeting on Aug. 10. Another, at a rally before the meeting, suggested that he wanted his children to start wearing a body cam to school.
The June 22 board meeting was the last of the 2020-2021 school year. As of the next meeting on Aug. 10, the first of the 2021-2022 school year, Loudoun County, citing the events of June 22, changed the public comment rules: public viewing during the public comment period was no longer allowed.
Speakers were allowed into the Loudoun County Public Schools administration building in groups of 10 and allowed into the board room one by one. Speakers also were told to take shelter in their cars when a severe thunderstorm hit during the August meeting. Still, more than 170 people signed up to speak in person.
“Thank you for letting us in after three and a half hours of damp and heat, and humidity and storms. It’s nice to be finally let into the building that my tax dollars paid for,” one parent said at the Aug. 10 meeting.
The meeting also saw tightened security, including the use of handheld metal detectors. Before the meeting, Ziegler requested the sheriff’s office to provide a K-9 explosive sweep, undercover officers, and a five-person onsite quick reaction force.
Sheriff Michael Chapman responded, “Your request is extraordinary and would likely constitute LCSO’s [Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office] commitment of a minimum of approximately 65 sworn deputies. Despite this, you fail to provide any justification for such a manpower-intensive request.”
An Aug. 6
memo by Loudoun County Public Schools’ chief operations officer noted a complaint from the sheriff, that the “School board is firing people up and calling LCSO to clean it up.”
Even though most of the in-person speakers and written comments voiced objections to the transgender policy, the school board adopted it on Aug. 11. Parents’ concerns that the pro-transgender approach would lead to sexual assaults in the school restrooms were brushed off by some board members as groundless.
“The fears of nefarious activity happening in bathrooms and any sort of scale due to policies that protect transgender students is simply not what occurs in reality,” school board member Ian Serotkin said during a discussion before the adoption of the policy on Aug. 11.
Parents were angry. The call for the resignations of the superintendent and school board members grew louder and louder at subsequent school board meetings.
Into the new school year, the number of registered in-person speakers consistently hovered at above 50. Other than the June 22 meeting, at which about a dozen pro-transgender speakers spoke, very few supported the school board during public comment in school board meetings since August. Parents also held rallies before almost every school board meeting; no crowd supporting CRT or transgender-friendly policies was seen.
By late November, Loudoun had reinstated public viewing during the public comment section of school board meetings. Restrictions on using the restrooms and access to the building have also been lifted, Loudoun County Public Schools Public Information Officer Wayde Byard told The Epoch Times. Security measures, including hand-held metal detectors, remain in place.
On Sept. 28, the school board started requiring speakers to show proof of residency in the county, a move meant to prevent “out-of-town agitators,” School Board Chair Brenda Sheridan said at the time.
justthenews.com
READ MORE: California unveils new woke math program, encouraging teachers to punish good students by holding them back
