It seems the legacy media is deliberately ignoring these grassroots protests by parents who are concerned, angered, and extremely tired of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), local school boards, and local teachers unions using their children as pawns. Parents have been rising up in great numbers, but if you watched any legacy media, you would barely know it.

On February 2, 2021, Los Angeles parents and children organized a Zoom Blackout day One LAUSD student talked about her reasons for standing up.

“At first it was kind of great because we didn’t have to go out at all and just do everything from home,” explained “Cicily,” a Los Angeles student in an interview with the Globe, granted with permission from her parents. “But then we all started noticing that it wasn’t really sticking as much. And then some people’s wi-fi cut out. And, you know, it’s super obvious that people are just looking at their phones most of the time. It’s not working for us, no matter what you hear.”

“And I’m just a kid here, but I think LA failed us, and I think the teachers are failing us for putting themselves over everyone else. I don’t want my voice to be, like, the voice of everyone else in my grade or something, but we all feel this way. We’re arguing with them more about this point too. My sister’s teacher cut off early without taking any more questions because a lot of students kept asking why she wanted a vaccine over all of our futures. It’s not pretty.”

On April 27, 2021, Vail, AZ parents stormed a School Board meeting to protest the board’s intention to extend the mask mandate for their children. The Board canceled the meeting and then called the police! As I reported,

How many of those parents are going to 1) work to change the election of school board members, and 2) run themselves?

If this pandemic has shown us anything, it is that teachers’ unions, school districts, and school boards have little regard for children, and even less for their parents. All of these reports are a clear indication that parents are waking up to activism and engagement, in order to protect their children and have a say in their education.

On May 20, 2021, parents in Palm Beach County, FL flooded a school board meeting to protest mask infractions being used as a cudgel to penalize their children.

After hours of testimony from angry parents, the Palm Beach County school board pressed Superintendent Donald Fennoy to immediately get the message to principals and teachers that students aren’t to be punished for face mask missteps.

The move was a reaction to reports that kids are getting referrals and suspensions, and are basically being bullied when they don’t maintain proper masking etiquette.

They also cleared the way for any children and staff to unmask — regardless of distance — when outdoors.

On May 21, 2021, Orange County, California parents held a “No More Masks Rally” which was extremely well attended.

However, in California, the battle over masks is only one aspect of parents’ frustrations; particularly in Los Angeles County. The inconsistent messages given by the school boards and teachers’ unions on whether Summer and Fall learning for their children will indeed happen, and the attempts to remove parents from this process, has been particularly egregious.

Yesterday, more L.A. parents banded together to say, “Enough.”

Parents seeking a firm commitment from the Los Angeles Unified School District that schools will fully reopen in the fall — meaning full time, five days a week for all grade levels — rallied on Sunday, May 23, to demand a seat at the table as officials decide what the following school year will look like.

More than 100 parents and students rallied outside LAUSD’s headquarters before marching to the teachers union’s office about 2.5 miles away to make their demands known. Dubbed the “Total Recall Rally,” the event was a warning shot to all seven school board members that they could face a recall effort if schools do not fully reopen, one parent organizer said.

“It’s putting them on notice that we’re done,” said organizer Danna Rosenthal. “What they’ve done for the entire year-and-a-half now of giving into the demands of the teachers union is not acceptable. These kids have suffered tremendously.”

The shifting standards by AFT President Randi Weingarten have only added fuel to this fire, as my colleague Nick Arama reported. It seems the legacy media has no problem carrying Weingarten’s — and their sister teachers unions’ — water when it comes to forcing children into masks.

"What we see is that any time we raise these issues, then people perceive it as we are trying to create obstacles to reopening but it seemed pretty clear that this meant that if you had a vaccine you could take off your mask. What does that mean in terms of schools" @rweingarten

— AFT (@AFTunion) May 21, 2021

The tweet above is the beginning of an incredibly tone-deaf tweet thread, that sorely needed to be spell-checked. Weingarten goes on to, among other things, blame states that have lifted mask mandates of endangering teachers, and claiming that the CDC is forcing them to be mask police.

“In elementrary [sic] schools, until we have the vaccines, it seems like unfortuantely [sic] we still going to have to keep wearing our masks and keep social distancing because we don’t want outbreaks.”

Despite consistent evidence that children 10 and under, are 13 percent of COVID cases or less. As the Mayo Clinic reinforces, young children rarely catch or transmit the virus.

Yet, Weingarten continues to feed the deception that an outbreak among schools is just around the corner. Red states like Florida, Texas, and Iowa have disproved this by having in-person learning since Fall 2020, but Weingarten and her cohorts continue to put out false information as established fact.

Weingarten then had the nerve to say,

“I say we because we have to be all in. It’s not time to do the blame game.”

After the 2020 shenanigans of Weingarten and her state cohorts, I think parents can, and are, clearly placing blame where it belongs.

I really appreciate that you are engaging in this dialogue, but I hope everybody understands that the AFT is not negotiating in good faith.

This is a hostage situation, and a way to extort additional funds and protections at the expense of our children.

It's not about safety.

— NYC Angry Mom (@angrybklynmom) May 22, 2021

A parent himself, my colleague Scott Hounsell articulated this beautifully:

The government requires your children to be enrolled in some form of school but simultaneously demands that your children be subject to abuse at their hands. And that’s exactly what it is: Child Abuse. Part of childhood, of course, deals with learning to comply with restrictions and prohibitions, but those restrictions exclusively deal with guaranteed harm or lack of maturity and are usually instituted by their parents. While as adults we look back at childhood as a time of less responsibility and more playtime, that’s not all childhood is. Part of childhood is scraped knees and broken bones. Childhood is disappointments and letdowns. Childhood is stitches and knocked-out teeth and yes, even getting sick with some pretty nasty things. Yet, despite these issues, we have allowed our children to be children.  Childhood is also high-fives and hugs.  It is four square and basketball and tag.  It is smiles and funny faces.  Until now, the discussion has been about the damage that COVID-19 could have done in our schools.  The evidence available now shows that worry was overblown. We need to start talking about the next crisis we will face: The mental health crisis from the abuse school officials continue to enforce on our kids.

Enough is enough.

AFT, Weingarten, and local boards have hit bottom, yet they keep digging.