Meeting Minutes – May 2021

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Sun Lakes Republican Club Minutes
When: May 11, 2021 6:30pm-8:30pm
Where: Tri City Baptist Church (Heritage Chapel)
Who: about 70 attendees

AGENDA

  1. Chairman Michael Tennant greeted the guests and led us in the Invocation and the Pledge of Allegiance.
  2. Michael introduced Douglas James. He is a retired USAF Fighter pilot (Col) and now fly for a major airline and have a consulting business on the side. After flying the A-10 and F-15, he spent over ten years working in the DC for the USAF and liaising with Congress. Basically, he is a concerned American and believe in the ‘rule of law’. He is very passionate about his ‘rule of law’ belief. He was a the President of a non-profit for three years helping falsely accused service members. While in that position he helped over 300 military members who he believed were falsely accused. His wife and he are so passionate, she went to ASU’s law school, graduated at 50 and is now one of the leading military defense attorneys in the country. According to Doug, our military’s judicial system has become very politically influenced and as a result we have a number of innocent members in jail. He sees the same thing starting to happen within the civilian judicial system, especially with the change of Administration. The justice system will be used as a political weapon, which, it is easily argued, is happening now. Impeachment was only the beginning! He believes we have to stop this now or our country will be in the history books. Here is his email address djames@houndstrategic.com in case you want to learn more about him. He is also on LinkedIn. He’ll make himself available if you want to talk more in person, or via Zoom. During his 10 minute talk he told us what he has organized outside the Holiday Inn Express in Ahwatukee. If you want to protest the influx and dispersing of illegal aliens into our state, you can attend his protests in front of the Holiday Inn Express. Park in the Cracker Barrel parking lot and walk to the hotel. These people are not to his knowledge being vaccinated or tested for Covid but they are given money and an ID card and sent to bus stations and airports. Some may be being released into the community right there.
  3. The next speaker was Matthew Beienburg who is the Director of Education Policy and the Director of the Van Sittert Center for Constitutional Advocacy at the Goldwater Institute. He also serves as director of the institute’s Van Sittert Center for Constitutional Advocacy. Published in local and national outlets, Matt’s work focuses on promoting educational freedom, parental rights, and greater civic appreciation of America’s founding principles. Prior to joining Goldwater, Matt served as a senior analyst at the Arizona Joint Legislative Budget Committee (JLBC), where he regularly drafted fiscal estimates and briefed members of the state legislature on major policy initiatives in K-12 and higher education. Matt previously worked in human capital consulting for Mercer, where his projects included surveying teacher engagement and analyzing the competitiveness of staff salaries at low-income area charter schools in Los Angeles. He has also worked in Washington, D.C. with Imagine Schools and the Center for Education Reform. Matt earned a bachelor’s in economics from Claremont McKenna College, where he graduated summa cum laude, and a master’s in public affairs from Princeton. A native of Phoenix, he lives with his wife, Cassie, in south Scottsdale. Some of
    the things he shared with the attendees this evening were: The NEA (National Teachers Association/union), and the “Education Week” Journal have combined forces to become the leading proponents for “politics” in the classrooms. The 1619 Project, although derailed by critics and even by the original creators because of its lack of veracity, is still being pushed in our schools by the extreme left teacher’s unions and school boards. The curriculum’s goal is to rewrite history according to the view that the US does not exist because of the effort of men of character that fled England looking to establish a place in which to dwell without the crushing dominating government or state
    church keeping them in political, religious and economic bondage. The 1619 project does not establish 1776 (the date of the Declaration of Independence) as the beginning of “America”. It instead claims that America started in 1619 with the arrival of slavery onto the mainland. They depict the men whom we call our “Founding Fathers” as white, evil slave owners only interested in making their own fortunes off the backs of their slaves. Slavery, not freedom, is the base on which all American history is based, according to the 1619 Project. Even though the curriculum has not been passed by all school boards, teachers are still being required and/or allowed to teach the 1619 history in their classrooms. What can be done? 1) Lawmakers, particularly Republican ones, do not like “meddling in the affairs of local school boards or anything to do with education”. 2) So it is mostly up to PARENTS to make a difference and demand that this perverted, anti-American view of history NOT be taught to their children in their schools. 3) It is next to impossible to mandate that a particular curriculum not be taught, because teachers and schools can teach this “on the sly” when there is no active oversight. 4) The best solution is to work through the school boards by voting for conservative leadership therein and through the state legislatures demanding that the legislators require school districts to post the things they are teaching openly and transparently, on line so parents can see what books and articles are being recommended for use in the classroom.
    Parents need to take an active roll when it comes to the” indoctrination” of their children. It is their legal right to do so. If you want to know more about this you can contact Matthew Beienburg
    here: info@goldwaterinstitute.org There are 2 bills currently in the AZ State legislature that may make a difference in this issue of “Critical Race Theory” ( related to the 1619 Project). One is SB1532 which is intended to mandate that the teaching of “Critical Race Theory” be banned in the public schools. Another is SB1452 which is an ESA program allowing parents to “vote with their feet” by taking their children & the funding for them out of schools where these kinds of things are being taught and putting them in other schools where the curriculum is more acceptable, even if it means their children be home schooled. If public schools start losing funding because of their position they have taken on these issues, then there is a good possibility they will stop enforcing its use in the education of our children. Contact your State Senators to encourage them to vote YES on both of these bills.
  4. The last speaker of the night was Kurt Rohrs. Besides for being an actively involved parent of children in the Chandler School District, he is also a full time local financial advisor. He has been involved in
    attending the local school board meetings the last few years to advocate for traditional values and parental rights. He gave a handout to the attendees on ways to get involved in turning the trend in
    education away from the direction the extreme left is taking it. 1) Talk to parents and kids about what is “good” and what is “bad” in what is going on in the schools. Read the website where your child attends school to see what they are teaching. 2) Monitor what is going on by attending local school board meetings. CUSD (Chandler Unified School District) next meets June 9 & 23 at 1525 W Frye Rd from approximately 6-8PM . Email public comments to the board from home or watch from home on youtube.com on the cus80 channel. Keep in touch with LouAnn Sedgwick at LSEDGWICK@YAHOO.COM or Karen Lambourne at KSLAMBOURNE@MSN.COM if you need more information. 4) President Biden is wanting to interpret the sex of a child as not that which was assigned physically at birth, but that which is in context with “sexual orientation” and “gender identity”. It is important that we NOT allow “Deep Equity” curriculum or “group think” back into our
    schools. It is the lawful right of parents to decide what curriculums will and will not be taught to their children in the public schools. His parting words of wisdom came from Martin Luther King: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter”.
  5. More about electing conservative people for school boards can/will be found on the following website closer to election time (2022)
  6. The winner of the 50/50% Raffle won $65 this evening!
  7. Our club, SLRC, takes June, July and August off due to summer vacations and reconvenes in September. Our main speaker in September will be Congressman Andy Biggs. We will find out in June if Sun Lakes Country Club will be opening their AZ Room again for club meetings. It has been closed for several months due to Covid restrictions followed by HOA restrictions. We have been very blessed to have been able to have our meetings at Tri City Baptist Church in the interim. We will announce —by email—where our next meeting will be (either at SLCC or Try City) later in the summer. Be sure you are signed up to receive the club emails or follow us on our website:
    https://slgop.org

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