How Southlake rebelled against CRT

 National Review:

It was the weekend that changed politics in Southlake, Texas, forever.

At the end of July last year, word began to spread of a quiet effort by the school board to pass a so-called Cultural Competence Action Plan, a critical race theory-inspired effort to ingrain woke racial politics in the town’s schools.

The outrage was instant and, as it turns out, highly consequential. Opponents of the plan eventually swept the school-board races last month, garnering national attention and giving opponents of critical race theory a signature victory at the local level.

Tim O’Hare, a former chairman of the Tarrant County Republican Party who would be at the center of opposition to the plan, together with his friend and long-time political organizer and activist Leigh Wambsganss, remembers being in Montana when he heard of the impending vote.

“It was the perfect time to pass it with as few people in town as possible,” O’Hare says. But the 72-hour notice that the school board had to give for its scheduled meeting on Monday, August 3 was enough time for opponents to begin to mobilize.

An affluent suburb of Dallas-Fort Worth in Tarrant County that votes Republican and is known for its excellent schools, Southlake wouldn’t seem a natural front in a fight over critical race theory — it’d seem one of the last places activists would target, rather than one of the first.

Yet, so it was. Opponents were motivated by a belief the stakes couldn’t get higher. “It’s the primo district,” O’Hare says of Southlake, called the Carroll Independent School District. “And our concern was we knew everybody was watching us and, if it passed here, it was going to take off in the public schools like wildfire.”

Cam Bryan, who ended up running for school board on the conservative slate, says everyone realized “if they can take Southlake, they can take any place.”

Of course, they didn’t. It’s worth delving in detail into Southlake’s successful pushback because it should be a model for conservative parents confronted by the similar situations around the country. (The organizers can be reached at info@southlakefamilies.org.)

The Southlake opposition was spontaneous and genuinely grassroots, but not the least bit amateurish. While there’s no substitute for having inflamed public opinion on your side, it has to be appropriately channeled. The Southlake opposition was unified, was carefully organized, and never took its eye off the ball.

It was also fearless, remaining outspoken and resolute despite harassment and efforts to get its supporters fired by their employers.

In short, its stupendous victory wasn’t something that just happened. As Leigh Wambsganss puts it, “The one who works the hardest wins, and we had an army.”
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The uprising was almost instantaneous.
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The stars aligned in Southlake — the side pushing a radical “anti-racist” agenda had written it down in extensive detail so there was no mistaking what they were about, local public opinion swung hard against the plan, and skilled organizers in the opposition executed flawlessly.
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There is much more.  Those facing similar agendas from the left should take note.  It is one of those issues that stir passions and this time the conservatives won. 

See, also:

'We need to stop CRT, period': Black father and daughter go viral slamming critical race theory