Open Letter to Washington State Legislators from Parents
I sat down with a Democrat Representative to Discuss Parents Rights—Here’s What I Learned
Guess what Utah has that Washington does not?
Utah has a beautifully written statute protecting and upholding parenthood and parents rights.
It’s so pretty you need to read a few lines.
Utah Code: 80-2a-201. Rights of parents -- Children's rights -- Interest and responsibility of state.
The state recognizes that a parent has the right, obligation, responsibility, and authority to raise, manage, train, educate, provide and care for, and reasonably discipline the parent's child; and the state's role is secondary and supportive to the primary role of a parent.
It is the public policy of this state that a parent retains the fundamental right and duty to exercise primary control over the care, supervision, upbringing, and education of the parent's child.
Surely Washington state has something similar to this law, right?
Nope.
There is a not a single line in our codified law that acknowledges parenthood, parents’ authority in decision-making, or parents’ rights.
Nothing.
If you’ve followed my work from the beginning, you already know why. You understand how this lack of legal standing for parents has created an open door for the state to take more control over our children. Did we open that door or did the government build the door? Since we are the government (in theory) it doesn’t matter anymore.
We’re the only ones who will close the door.
Here is the good news
This legislative session Representative Jim Walsh has agreed to add language to a bill on school choice that will acknowledge parental authority. He is also willing to submit a resolution stating that parents are the primary stakeholder in their children’s upbringing, if he can have a Democrat cosponsor.
This is where we need your help.
..and many of you will stop reading at this point
Did you just say to yourself “Jim Walsh doesn’t have a shot in hell at finding a Democrat who cares about parents’ rights….and I’m too busy to get involved in this fight…so, good luck Eryn, I’ll catch you after the apocalypse/Communist take-over/end of the world /rapture.”?
If so then you’re not apprised of the long game, or you’re looking for an excuse to let yourself off the hook from helping out.
I apologize if I’m a little punchy. I just binge-watched three episodes of Joe Rogan and I’m coming off a high from watching the Freedom Caucus negotiate an elegant win over McCarthy. I’m hyped to protect my kid, and your kids, too.
Ready to Rumble? Then let’s get a well-crafted and educated conversation about the sanctity of parenthood into public discourse, and into the email inboxes of our legislators while they’re in Olympia this Winter. Better yet, let’s call our legislators and buy them a cup of coffee to sit down and talk about this. If that means you have to drive to Olympia to meet them, consider it your honor to participate in the art of self-governance. It’s easier than you think—they’re actually eager to meet with people who come with solutions rather than complaints. And don’t fret, I’ve already written you a script (see below) so you’re not going in cold.
How to Talk to a Democrat about Parents Rights
A few weeks ago I sat down with a Democrat representative for an hour to ask her to submit a resolution on parenthood. I’m not giving her name because I’m not interested in hurting the relationship I built with her. The resolution is simple. It states:
“Parents are the primary stakeholders in their children’s upbringing,” along with a whole lot of “whereas” statements to prove the point. Email me at eryn@eryndefoort.com for a copy of the complete resolution, which is one page in length.
Resolutions have no legal teeth. They’re easy to pass and they don’t intimidate anyone. But they’re also like a tiny unassuming seed that can grow into a massive oak tree by the next year’s legislative session. Once they’re on the books, they can be converted into a law. They also set a standard for government organizations to adhere to.
Carefully notice the language chosen. Parents are the primary stakeholders in their children’s upbringing. Years of training have gone into the wordsmithing of that statement. It didn’t come from my brain. It came from a group of engaged individuals who’s profession includes monitoring the spread of communist and globalist ideologies across the globe.
A stakeholder is defined as “anyone who has a vested interest in the success of an enterprise”.
Also note that a child’s upbringing encompasses everything we invest into our children—medical care, nutrition, education, discipline, emotional conversations around the dinner table about homework, friends, sex, borrowing the keys to dad’s car. It’s EVERYTHING, and it doesn’t stop after a child reaches the age of 18.
Why is this important to clarify? Because every area of our child’s lives where the government can step in—from medical care to education—needs to be something we have the power to stop if need be.
My discussion with the Democrat legislator was very helpful in understanding how to shift the discourse so that it crosses the aisle and appeals to all parents, regardless of politics.
The first response I got from her was typical from people who are unaware of this issue.
“Isn’t it assumed that parents are the final authority in their children’s welfare? Why is this necessary?” she asked. Most Democrats assume that parental rights are so basic that they’re built into Washington law. They simply do not understand why we need to go through the work of spelling it out and codifying it when it seems to be a no-brainer.
This is where you need to gently share that Utah has Code: 80-2a-201, and Washington has NOTHING. Then, diplomatically give examples of how parental authority was subverted or ignored in the last few years in Washington, and how parents were vilified as “domestic terrorists,” which is an example of government colluding with media to weaponize labels.
Understand that the media created a Berlin Wall between liberal and conservative parents during the pandemic.
If you were standing up for medical freedom for your children and were digging through uncensored media, you lived on one side of the wall. Your liberal friends who were “trusting the science” and listening to mainstream censored media heard an entirely different story. They have no clue that parenthood as an institution was trampled on everywhere from Vancouver to Spokane. What little they did hear was twisted and weaponized against parents. We were labeled extremists, far right-wing, anti-science, white supremacists, bigots, racists and stupid.
Those were the weaponized labels that Washington DC instructed the media to use, over and over, ad nauseam.
The legislator I spoke to was legitimately shocked to hear of what happened to parents who were cited and trespassed for being on school property in the last two years. She wholeheartedly agreed that children with disabilities who were denied accommodation from wearing the mask might have legitimate lawsuits against the schools. She even agreed that State Superintendent Chris Reykdal overstepped the boundaries of his role. When I brought up the roadblocks that OSPI (The Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction) has erected to make it impossible to adopt sexual education curriculums other than the pornographic FLASH curriculum, she understood and agreed that we need to reduce OSPI’s overreach.
It was surprisingly easy to find common ground. She was a reasonable person and I could tell that even if she didn’t agree with my viewpoints she knew that if a group of parents in my school district opposed certain ideologies taught in our schools, we had a right to help influence our children’s curriculums.
The challenging part of the conversation was in conveying the need to sanctify the role of parents into codified law. She wanted to work at the outskirts of the topic by addressing OSPI and WSSDA’s (Washington State School Directors Association) policies, rather than going straight to the heart of the matter—which is a resolution and eventually a law that acknowledges parental authority in ALL areas of a child’s upbringing.
I failed in my mission to help her understand. She was talking about schools as a corporation of stakeholders and I was hinting at a larger issue—preventing the government from dismantling families. As a mother, she hadn’t felt threatened in the way we have so she didn’t get it.
Later, I had an opportunity to write an email to outline the issue from a broader scope. Below is an adaptation of that letter that you can use to communicate to your own legislators. I would recommend sending this to Republicans and Democrats. The ultimate goal is to find Rep. Jim Walsh a cosponsor. But he’ll need other Republicans to back him up. Walsh has this letter (below). Drop him a line here and tell him you are adding your voice to the message. Use my name if you want to. We need to let him know we’re connected and talking to each other. This is a not a complaint, it’s a movement.
*Sidenote: Avoid the Thought Police
Remember, to build a ladder to the other side of the Berlin Wall, wipe your language clean of any reference to ideas that trigger the Thought Police. Don’t bring religion or red/blue politics anywhere near the conversation. Parenthood is still a universally treasured institution by all cultures and ideologies, except those who jive with Plato’s “Republic” or transhumanism. Religion and politics are not universally agreed upon, so keep your language neutral.
Open Letter to Washington State Legislators from Parents
Dear Representative (Fill in the Blank),
Thank you for your work representing us in the (insert district). Myself and a large group of parents across the state (you can include this if you were part of the parents network that served as the foundation for this Substack), have an urgent concern about the lack of legal standing for parents in our current state law.
Representative Jim Walsh of the 19th district has agreed to submit a resolution to plant the seeds to rectify this void in the law. He is looking for support from other legislators and is hoping to reach across the aisle to find a Democrat to stand with him. The language is simple and its primary goal is to recognize that parents are the primary stakeholder in their children’s upbringing. This language is chosen carefully because it stands outside of education as a concept more all-encompassing. It includes education, medical care, etc.
Why is this important?
Washington policy has been trending toward taking an increasing amount of responsibility and authority away from parents and local authorities and granting it to the state government. (Examples cited below.)
States like Utah devote whole sections of law to protecting parents’ rights and stakeholdership in all areas of a child’s life, including education. Washington has nothing like this on the books—not even a brief acknowledgement of parents’ rights. To ask you to sponsor a bill similar to Utah’s would be far too difficult at this stage. All we’re asking for is a brief resolution to simply acknowledge that parents are more than just the progenitors of offspring that are assets in the business of the school system. To see the Utah law click here.
Recent Examples of Loss of Local Representation or Power Taken From Parents
1. We thoroughly combed through the law that governs a “state of emergency” and it clearly states that in the event of an emergency the local health authority of each county and the school districts would work together to decide the best safety measures for their local jurisdiction. In the case of the recent pandemic, the State disregarded all local authority and made broad sweeping mandates and closures that applied to all districts, regardless of any local input from superintendents, school boards, county health authorities or parents. There are many who question whether the pandemic actually qualified as a “state of emergency” according to the lawful definition.
2. What occurred during Covid is a said to be an extreme example, however it has set a precedent that government bureaucrats have more legal authority over what goes on in our schools or who is allowed in, than parents. In the example of curriculum committees, of which parents can participate, OSPI has erected so many roadblocks to the adoption of any curriculum it hasn’t pre-selected that it makes any input from parents futile.
Last year thousands of parents submitted complaints about the sexual education curriculums taught by health teachers. Many submitted different curriculums for review by these committees—curriculums that had been written by board certified professionals and already adopted in other states such as California. But OSPI erected so many costly and time-consuming hoops to jump through that curriculum committees concluded they had not the money or enough time to review something different from the limited choices offered by OSPI. Currently, the new version of the FLASH curriculum used by the majority of schools in WA literally teaches elementary children how to pleasure themselves. Many parents who reviewed the new curriculum have reported it to be uncomfortably pornographic and age inappropriate.
More than a handful of parents were cited and trespassed for being on school grounds in the last two years in WA, for “offenses” such as insisting that they be able to walk their scared kindergartener into class on the first day of school. Tragically, some children were taken off of school grounds and vaccinated without parental permission by nurses who took it upon themselves to usurp parents wishes. School nurses are also now administering drugs to children over the age of 13 without parental permission or knowledge. In Seattle, we’re learning that children are being encouraged by school staff to refer to themselves as a different gender and name in school, while withholding that information from their parents. School staff are taught how to create a “safe space” for kids to hide their identities from their families.
4. In the past 2 years the Biden Administration and the National Education Assosciation have collaborated to include angry parents at school board meetings under the language of “domestic terrorists”. This is a dangerous example of weaponizing labels. Given that the very definition of “domestic terrorist” (as stated under U.S. Code 18 USC ch 2331) must include anyone who has ties to an international terrorist organization, this seems like an attempt to scare parents from attending school board meetings and deter them from participating in school governance. Classifying parents under this language gives future power to the FBI to throw parents in jail for congregating at school board meetings, if those parents are not in agreement with state-sanctioned ideologies. This may sound far-fetched but it’s already reality. Many parents were arrested all over the nation in the last two years for very minor offenses, like raising their voices or getting angry.
For that reason, groups of parents across 60 different school districts in WA who chose to be vocal about the mandates had to reach out to the local police and sheriff before attending the meetings, to first declare their peaceful intentions and ask for protection from being mis-labeled terrorists.
5. OSPI Superintendent Chris Reykdal threatened districts with loss of funding if they didn’t mask every child during the pandemic. This may be a gross violation of ADA accommodation for all children with disabilities who had a difficult time with the mask. In the letter Reykdal sent to Superintendents in August of 2021 before schools re-opened, he said “masking is non-negotiable” and there would be “no exceptions”. With threats like this, no wonder principals and superintendents were so draconian with the mask mandate.
As you research the law…
1. There is no reference to parents anywhere in RCW 28A, except a note about parent access to the school premises in 28A.605.
2. We noticed our legislature has given primary authority of our school system to unelected centralized agencies like WSSDA and OSPI, and the trend seems to be growing significantly in that direction. Recent legislation has given WSSDA the power to elect the State Board of Education.
Please find attached a draft of the resolution we’re requesting, revised from a similar resolution passed in North Dakota last year. Please note that this resolution has been passed in several school districts and one city council in Washington. It’s also being heard by Highline School district just South of Seattle, and another in Bellingham.
Thank you for your time and feedback considering this important issue that we’d love to see addressed in the 2023 legislative session.
Dear Readers, if you want help making that connection to your legislator, drop me a line at eryn@eryndefoort.com. We can talk strategy.
Also, I’m training in a new career as a paralegal—I have an opportunity to do a clerkship, and sit for the Bar Exam by the time my son is 15 years old. But a paralegal’s salary doesn’t keep pace with the increases in rent and the cost of living in the Pacific Northwest. As always, I appreciate you becoming a paid subscriber. Any contribution you make to my Substack will get me further toward the goal of finding substantial ways to stand for the Constitution in our legal system. Thank you.