The Runback: The P Isn't for Politics
I decided to run for PTA President. The Left got mad. Chaos ensued.
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News and Politics
Time to Begin Contesting Maryland’s Sixth Congressional District: Conservative Investigative Journalist Matthew Foldi Targets David Trone.
May 2022 Presidential Power Rankings: Has the race entered stasis until December?
Did Dan Cox Endorse Two Candidates for the Same Office? Both Cathey Allison and Kate Maerten claim support from Cox
The Worst Offender: Dan Cox interfered in the scientific process by promoting quack cures.
Journalism
A Banner Prediction Comes True: Concerns about The Baltimore Banner becoming just another pro-Democrat media outlet are all coming true
The Monday Thought
I’ve been in politics for a long time, almost twenty-five years. I thought I had seen petty during my time. As my colleague Greg Kline always used to say “the fights are so big because the consequences are so little.”
Little did I know that I had not seen petty politics until I decided to run for President of my kid’s PTA.
Our PTA at my kid’s school has been coasting along pretty much the entire year. Our PTA had not yet returned to in-person meetings as of yet. Today will be the first one all year. So most months, we just had a 7 PM Zoom call with at most fifteen people participating. The meetings were a disorganized mess where the same things were repeated month after month. The same complaints about the lack of help and the lack of volunteers were heard despite the fact that the sitting board never asked for volunteers and hardly, if ever, communicated with the parents.
This all came to a head for me a few meetings back when the sitting President complained about the lack of volunteers for a purse bingo and bemoaned the fact that she had to call former PTA volunteers to get them to volunteer for the event instead. This is despite the fact that parents were never asked once to help with the event.
I immediately saw what was happening; a small clique of parents had been in power for a while and wanted to hang out with their friends instead of leading the group and growing the organization.
And that’s when I decided to run for President. I have led many non-profit organizations and have reorganized them, grown them, and made them more successful. This PTA was in need of such a turnaround.
And me deciding to run is where things get whacky.
Since I had no other convenient way to communicate with my fellow parents, ten days ago I wrote the following note to the Facebook wall of our local PTA:
My name is Brian Griffiths. I'm a lifelong resident of Pasadena, a graduate of Chesapeake, and my daughter {redacted} is a kindergartner at Lake Shore. And I am one of the candidates for PTA President for the 2022-2024 term.
With PTA elections coming up on Monday, I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself and answer any questions that you may have about who I am and why I'm running.
As far as my background goes, I have many years of experience running non-profit and volunteer organizations. I will bring the executive experience to hit the ground running before day one. That expertise and experience in growing organizations will be used to further the growth of the PTA and to maximize what we can do together for our students.
There are a number of strategies and tools picked up from my experience that can be used to focus on two areas for immediate improvement: communication and outreach. As a PTA member this year, I have been disappointed in the lines of communication between PTA leadership and staff, particularly when it comes to asking for volunteers. With improvement in those two areas, what we can do for our students will be limitless.
Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions or concerns you may have.
My kids will be attending Lake Shore for the next ten years. Let’s move forward together to grow this PTA into the organization it can.
I ask you for your vote and hope I can earn your support.
Of course, nobody saw it. The Facebook wall is tightly controlled so only the admins of the group can approve what gets posted. And the admins, one of which includes my opponent for PTA President, refused to approve it. “The group isn’t for promoting yourself” I was told by the incumbent President.
Knowing that so few parents were members of the PTA, I got to work trying to grow the organization and maximize participation in the PTA in advance of the meeting. I posted it in various school and community groups that the meeting was coming up. In most of them, I mentioned nothing about even running for PTA President. I’m just trying to get participation and awareness up since the current board seemed uninterested in doing it.
And that’s went everything really went to hell in a handbasket.
PTA’s are not meant to be political of course. Everybody knows that. Except, apparently, the One Pasadena crowd.
First, we had a public school teacher conflating my run for Central Committee with me running for PTA President.
Anybody should be able to figure out that those two things are completely unrelated. But, apparently, not some people.
And then there’s this guy….
If that name looks familiar to you it’s because John Jasen is the husband, presumably an emasculated one at that, of Debi Jasen. You may remember that ray of sunshine.
John Jasen is a real peach too.
Apparently, in this goof’s mind, this is “an alt-right blog screed”. That will be news to a lot of the Trump and Cox fans in the audience for sure. He has invented this entire image of me in his mind that is completely devoid of reality and concocts this bogus idea that I have “carefully avoided attacking” him like he was somebody important that I should have heard of.
A very left-wing friend of mine saw his screed and told me “Other than the fact that The Duckpin is one of your accomplishments, that doesn’t even sound like you.”
Then, later that night, he tries to play coy in a local Facebook group trying to suss out information as if he doesn’t already know exactly what he’s talking about.
Again, Jasen has invented this entire thing out of whole cloth. Hell, I had to look up what “Project Blitz” was because I had never even heard of it.
The bottom line is that Jasen et al are angry that I called out One Pasadena for being a left-wing political group and for pointing out that left-wing political groups like One Pasadena have no business being involved in our schools. So to that end, John Jasen seems like he’s little more than a radical bigot with a loose grip on reality. But that hasn’t stopped him from trying to gin up his radical buddies to storm the PTA in a school district in which they don’t live and have no children in order to stop me from being PTA President.
I’m almost flattered if it wasn’t for the sheer absurdity of it all. Think about how much of a loser you have to be to try to infiltrate and influence a PTA election because of somebody’s politics.
But, of course, the ruling clique has put this to their advantage. The time of the election has now been moved twice already. Because of the “heightened interest” in the election, it was decided that voting would now be from 4 PM-8 PM tonight. With the candidates speaking at 7 PM.
Yes, they wanted the voting to go on for three hours before the candidates spoke.
That turned out to violate their bylaws that allow candidates to be nominated from the floor. So now, the election will start at 4:30 with candidate speeches and nominations from the floor, then the meeting, and elections closing at 6. Yes, a PTA meeting with candidate elections is going to start before a lot of parents even leave work for the day.
The absurdity of it all is again just laughable. All this over who gets to be PTA President. All of this because I challenged a ruling clique. All of this is because I have opinions about what should be taught in public schools.
But realistically, this is about the fact that I am a conservative, pro-life, pro-family Republican. Some activists, and some teachers, don’t think I should be allowed a say in public education. And to that end, they will stop at nothing to shout me down and shut me out. Even if it’s only a position where I’m organizing bake sales and fundraisers.
Public schools should not be politicized like this. A PTA sure as hell should not. The P in PTA doesn’t stand for politics. But the fact that some think it should says far more about the left than they want to admit.
One Pasadena should’ve been a core part of your campaign from the beginning, they’re your best marketing tool.