We can defeat the ‘Education Mafia,’ says author, former teacher, and reform advocate Rebecca Friedrichs.
By Eileen Griffin
Former teacher Rebecca Friedrichs filed a lawsuit, Friedrichs v. California Teachers’ Association, aimed at eliminating the forced unionization of teachers. The case was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016, and the justices affirmed a lower-court decision against Friedrichs because the court was deadlocked after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
The goal of Friedrichs’ suit was accomplished two years later when the United States Supreme Court ruled in Janus v. AFSCME that public-sector workers could no longer be required to pay union dues and fees. Despite this favorable ruling, many teachers are still told they are required to pay union dues, and some don’t know they have the right to withdraw from the union, as Heartland Daily News previously reported
Friedrichs remains committed to freeing teachers from the corrupt teacher unions and helping parents find better options to educate and protect their children. Heartland Daily News asked Friedrichs about her ongoing efforts in this regard.
Heartland Daily News: This “education mafia” has its claws pretty deep in the system, and you have advocated that governments get the unions out of the schools. That would be a huge undertaking from a political standpoint. The unions are not just going to give up power. What is your plan for how to combat the teachers unions’ power?
Friedrichs: On our website, For Kids and Country.org, we have a plan. If you go to the slider that says, “Join the Movement,” this is our plan for helping people. We know that this mafia is massive, but we also know that this education mafia is part of a very small group of elites, less than 1 percent of the country. They have been working very hard to undermine the freedom of all of us and take us over. They’re connected with the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and the World Economic Forum, all these things that George Soros backs in the world. They are dangerous, and we have let them in our schools.
Heartland Daily News: How would you advise parents to deal with this? What is are the short-term and long-term solutions?
Friedrichs: Teachers were always kicking and screaming. They never wanted to be unionized, not the mass number of teachers. It was all forced, which is why when we took our case and eventually got a win, the Supreme Court agreed that it was unconstitutional to force people to join this organization and use taxpayer dollars to fund it.
A lot of people don’t understand America because the education mafia removed history from our schools, but if you understand the American Free Republic, we are not a top-down government. We are a bottom-up government. We are by the people, for the people, with rights of the people, so we the people are sovereign. We, the people, are king. We, the people, are the boss, and we have a representative government.
It drives me crazy when people say we’re a democracy. We’re not a democracy. We have a representative government, and these representatives are supposed to represent “we the people.” For the most part they don’t.
This education mafia is a good picture of how they don’t represent us, because they give so much power and authority to this organization, this education mafia that shouldn’t have any power or authority at all. They are in our schools we have to chase them out.
Heartland Daily News: How do we do that?
Friedrichs: [Explains the links on ForKidsandCountry.org.] The first button [on the website] is called, “Adopt a Teacher”, and we give homework. You have to adopt every teacher you know, and educate them. These are people you already know, people you already care about. We teach them how to do that. It takes three minutes.
We educate them on how they’re funding a mafia and that’s why things are going so poorly. They don’t have to fund them anymore. Then when they’re ready, they click on the “Union Exit” button and we help them opt out. We show them how to get liability insurance, because they have all been told they need it. We answer their questions. We have a three-step process, but it’s very simple.
We also have other empowerments, like “School Options.” We partner with another organization where we literally, free of charge, give people a free consultation on all the different options they have. It’s not true that you only have private school, public school, homeschool, charter school. There are so many other options that people can use, and we help them to learn that.
Our goal is to get our schools back to what they used to be and how they used to be: one-room schoolhouse, co-op, homeschool. They were outstanding, run by parents and teachers who didn’t even have college degrees. We didn’t require a college degree to teach. The reason why the mafia requires it is so that they can indoctrinate people through their teacher colleges.
Heartland Daily News: Your website provides a great deal of information. It looks like there is information for both parents and teachers.
Friedrichs: Yes, we are teachers, and this is our way of fighting back. The “Connect with Allies” button leads to an interactive map of organizations around the country. People can start going to school board meetings and fighting back beside other people in their neighborhood.
The “Evidence” button takes teachers through four years’ worth of how the unions have really spent their money. They’ll see that when good teachers like myself try to bring forth—they have annual meetings where they pass new business items—some good, honest teacher will bring up a new business item like, let’s make it so teachers have to be excellent in their subject area. Well, 100 percent of the time the education mafia votes those down—”No, we’re not going to do that”—but they vote for open borders, defund the police, abolish ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]—you name the problem in this country, and this union mafia is behind it. It shows that under that “Evidence” button.
The “Toolkits” just empower people in different topics like Critical Race Theory or sex ed so they can understand what these things really are and fight back.
Heartland Daily News: These are all tools on your website, forkidsandcountry.org?
Friedrichs: Our opinion is if we don’t start fighting back and getting to one teacher at a time and getting them to stop funding this mafia, if we don’t stop it we’re going to be a communist country, and it’ll happen quicker than people could possibly imagine, but if we can start fighting back and getting not only teachers but other government employees; every government employee that’s in a union is paying toward this wicked agenda.
By the way, they don’t have to be teachers to use “Union Exit.” They get an interactive map and click on their state. All the unions in their state pop up. They pick their union, and they are walked through how to opt out.
We did the hard part, which was bringing the lawsuit and getting the Supreme Court to agree with us that it was unconstitutional to force us to be in unions and fund them. Now people have been freed. It’s just a matter of getting the word to them, because I don’t know one single government employee out there or teacher out there who wants to become a communist country. Who wants to lose their freedoms? Who wants to be working in a corrupt environment? Just those few that the mafia raises up, and they are there to be activists.
It’s just a matter of getting the message to people.
Heartland Daily News: Your website includes a ton of information. It’s great that you have made all this available.
Friedrichs: We’ve worked really hard on this, and we understand the fight teachers are in, because we are teachers. Teachers have been lied to on such a massive level, and they literally believe if they stop paying the unions they are going to lose their job. We answer those questions so that the mafia can’t control them anymore, but they really need people to stand with them and literally put their arm around them.
They’re scared. I don’t know one single, solitary person who’s taken on the mafia by themselves. They need support, so that’s why we have the “Adopt-a-Teacher” program.
Heartland Daily News: It’s terrific to have those resources for parents too because there seem to be an awful lot of parents who just don’t really know what’s going on or have a hard time believing it to be real.
Friedrichs: All of our resources are for teachers and parents alike. As long as the education mafia is out there, schools are going to be corrupt and horrible, and our kids are going to be abused, so the more parents and pastors and others can get to teachers and convince them to stop funding these unions, the better. We need to cut off the supply of money.
Heartland Daily News: So, again, it goes back to that: the mafia and the money?
Friedrichs: Yes, teachers and other government employees have always had the right to decertify these unions. But it takes 50 percent plus one in a bargaining unit to do that, and the unions make it so impossible for people to communicate to be able to do that. Our hope is that now that unions are being exposed, more folks will decertify.
Our bigger hope is to make the government unions illegal. We need brave legislators who will stand up and say that these are not unions, they are mafias.
When our legislators really get brave and start representing “we the people” like they’re supposed to, they should chase these unions out of town. It should be illegal. They used to be illegal. You weren’t supposed to have them in the government sector because it’s a conflict of interest. They use tax dollars to fund an organization that puts people in office and then bargains against the government.
It’s unbelievably corrupt, so we need legislators to really find the courage to stand up against this. I’m a five-foot-four woman who will be happy to come and testify at any state-level or national-level [venue] against these wicked unions. If I can find the courage to do that, I think our legislators can.
In our final segment with Rebecca Friedrichs, we discuss what effect the massive influx of additional children coming through the southern border, many of whom do not speak English, is having on teacher shortages and school resources.
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