July 8, 2026 • 44 mins
What can you do to help save America? To find the answer, we tell the story of a few patriots that became sick and tired of watching the destruction of perhaps the most important institution in America…and they did something about it.
Episode powered by: The Licorice Guy ...the delicious gourmet licorice made in America. Usepromo code "RPA15" for 15% off.
Join the FamBam by becoming a Red Pilled America backstage subscriber. Visit https://www.RedPilledAmerica.com and click join in the top menu!
Support the show: https://redpilledamerica.com/support/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is Red Pilled America. To celebrate America's two hundred
and fiftieth birthday, RPA is giving its biggest discount ever
for a limited time. Get fifty percent off of Backstage Subscription,
where you get ad free access to our entire back
catalog of episodes. Just go to Redpilled America dot com
and click the link on the homepage. Then enter America
(00:25):
two fifty at checkout. That's America and the number is
two five zero All one word at checkout support what
you lover, it goes away. Happy Birthday, America. This episode
was originally broadcast on August fourth, twenty twenty three. Woodland
(00:46):
Park is about a thirty minute drive northwest of Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Nestled in the Rocky Mountains, It's home to about eight
thousand people. It's a small town in every sense of
the word.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
They're just deer everywhere. It's safe. There's just no crime,
and that's quiet. Everywhere you go, you're running into people
you know and everything.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
It's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
It's one of those small towns that the national media
typically ignores. So when NBC News came to Woodland Park,
some began to raise an Eyebrow.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Woodland Park, Colorado, a tight knit conservative mountain community has
grown so divided. High school junior Jacob D. Smith says
he no longer recognizes his hometown.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Why are the national media descending on this small town.
I'm Patrick Carelci and.
Speaker 5 (01:34):
I'm Adriana Cortes.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
And this is Red Pilled America, a storytelling show.
Speaker 5 (01:40):
This is not another talk show covering the day's news.
We're all about telling stories.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Stories. Hollywood doesn't want you to hear stories.
Speaker 5 (01:48):
The media mocks stories about everyday Americans at the Globalist Ignore.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
You can think of Red Pilled America as audio documentaries,
and we promise only one thing, the truth. Welcome to
Red Pilled America.
Speaker 5 (02:15):
People often ask us, in one form or another, what
can I do to help fix America? It's probably the
most common question we get since launching Red Pilled America.
In response, we've often encouraged people to get involved in storytelling. Filmmaking, novels, music, art,
and storytelling. Podcasts like ours are the things that drive
(02:35):
and establish American culture. And it's the kind of thing
that a single individual can do on their own. And
if that isn't your cup of tea, as We've often
said you can support like folk who are on the
storytelling frontlines, but that advice doesn't work for many adults
who want to get hands on in fixing America but
(02:55):
may not find the arts to be in their wheelhouse.
For those people, which route should they take? What can
folks do to help save America? To find the answer,
We're going to tell the story of a few people
that became sick and tired of watching the destruction of
perhaps the most important institution in America, and they decided
to do something about it. If Americans all across the
(03:18):
nation followed their lead, this country would be on the
road to recovery in no time.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Dave Illingworth is a Texas transplant to Woodland Park, Colorado.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
I moved here five years ago.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
That's Dave.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
This town Patrick, if you come visit it, you're probably
gonna move here. I mean, it's so beautiful. I mean
what the park is really? I mean I shouldn't tell anybody.
It's a truly hidden gem.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
But Dave learned that this small town was lacking in
one crucial area.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Most people do move to small towns for two things,
as the schools in the safety. But nobody I met ever,
moved here for the.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Schools, and like with most good parents, education was important
to Dave and his wife Katie. They're both veterans and lawyers,
so by default, academics is something they value. Woodland Park
was a bit challenged in that department, but Dave and
Katy made the best of it. They enrolled their school
aged kids in a local school. But, like so many
(04:23):
other parents all across the country, an unexpected crisis hit
Woodland Park in early twenty twenty that would eventually expose
a serious problem.
Speaker 6 (04:32):
Colorado goes on lockdown in nine hours time.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Governor Jared Polus has ordered all Colorado's to stay home
starting at six am tomorrow to slow the spread of
COVID nineteen.
Speaker 6 (04:42):
Governor Jared Polus didn't mince words, stay at home or
thousands of people could die.
Speaker 7 (04:48):
When we're talking about saving lives, we're not talking about
one or two lives. We're talking about thousands of Colorado's lives,
perhaps tens of thousands.
Speaker 6 (04:58):
The governor says that when this all goes into effect
tomorrow morning, the only reasons that you should be outside
of your house is if you work for a critical
business or conducting essential activities. He says that we're at
a point where this is necessary.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
And of course included in that long list of non
essential activities was the education of our children.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
The schools up here, you know, they shut down in
spring and twenty twenty, like everywhere.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Else, two weeks turned to four, then ten. By the
time the twenty twenty twenty twenty one school year came around,
they remained closed. So school district after school district began
an entirely new experiment.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
The remote learning stuff was extremely frustrating.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
David Katie have four kids, two boys and two girls.
Their school age children all shifted to remote learning where
they had to log into their classroom from their homes
through a computer.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
And what became a great concern to us was that
the Wooden Park School District, which they were all on,
this sort of screen based learning program called Summit Lar Learning,
and it goes by different names in different places and
things like that, but it's essentially a curriculum that emphasizes
using your Chrome books and getting lessons from YouTube and
(06:16):
things like that. It just was all but impossible for
my oldest one, and so my wife is like, hey,
I think we're going to need to move because all
the schools up here do this, and we could go,
you know, twenty minutes down the mountain to the springs,
and there's tons and tons of choices.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
There, those choices being charter schools. Colorado has one of
the highest concentrations of public charter schools in America.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
I gotta be honest with you, Patrick, I did not
know what a charter school was at the time, right
you hear about them? You know, I and my kids
were young enough that I was new to the whole
schooling experience.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Really.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
I mean, my oldest was like in second or third
grade at that time.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
So Dave and Katie did some research and in the
process they learned about a promising new project in Woodland.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Park, aware through the paper that there is a group
of parents up here that are trying to start a
charter school called Merit Academy, and it's going to be
a classical based curriculum and they're going to emphasize you know,
textbooks and writing and writing cursive and things like that.
And so we thought that was a really great idea
and something that we were going to be interested in
for our oldest.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Now, charter schools in their neck of the Woods need
to apply for authorization from the school district.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
My wife is a lawyer to she's known over at
the elementary school where the kids are going. So the
elementary school principle invites my wife to be part of
reviewing this charter application. There's a committee, it's called the
District Accountability Committee, and it's made up of parents and teachers, administrators,
and you got like a business owner, right, you know,
it's supposed to be this cross section of the community.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
It's actually in Colorado state law.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
You've got to have this, and the law requires that
this committee review the application first and they make a
recommendation to the school board.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
However, the school board is not legally bound by this recommendation,
but typically if the application meets all of the necessary
criteria and the parents want the charter school to happen,
it becomes hard for a school board, which is beholden
to the community, to deny the charter. Dave's wife, Katie,
eventually took up the offer and got involved in the committee.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
So Katie gets on there and goes to the first meeting,
and I think it's all remoted this time, right, And
you got somebody who's there letting everybody know, Hey.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
This is what we're gonna be doing, is we're gonna
be looking as the goal here.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
And there's one lady who, after being explained what's going on,
raised her hand and says, well, can we just say
no now? And they're like, no, we're gonna have to,
you know, go through this.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Non charter public school administrations are usually adversarial to charter schools.
For every student a charter school siphons off, the school
district receives less money from the government from the outset.
It appeared that some of the committee members shared this
of version to charter schools.
Speaker 5 (09:05):
As merrit Academy's charter approval process progressed, a few other
red flags began to surface.
Speaker 8 (09:10):
Normally, charter applications will take maybe three to four months.
Speaker 5 (09:15):
That's Cassie Kimberl, a Woodland Park resident at the time.
Speaker 8 (09:19):
This one took over five months and they had over
twenty just meetings, whether it was a public meeting, a
town hall, a special board meeting.
Speaker 5 (09:29):
It appeared that the committee had their thumb on the scale. Again,
Dave Illingworth.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
It became apparent to Katie in the whole process that
you know, they were there to make it look okay,
like yeah, we've checked the boxes, but the decision was
already baked.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Into the cake.
Speaker 5 (09:46):
Eventually, the committee issued its recommendation.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
The Accountability Committee says, don't charter them. They don't have buses,
they don't have hot meals and everything. And the parents
behind the charter application are like, what are you talking about.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
You can't penalize this for that.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
In Colorado law, you can't penalize a charter school because
they don't have like a school bussing system where they
don't have like a cafeteria system to provide meals to everybody.
Because the law understands a lot of them are startups.
They don't come with infrastructure you're going to.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Right out of the gate.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
And so the next step is it goes to the
school board, and the school board hires an independent expert
to tell them whether or not this thing passes Mustard right.
The expert comebacks and says, yeah, you should charter them.
They're meeting all the factors under law for charter and
number one is public demand. And you've got families from
your own community who are wanting to do this, and
(10:40):
the plan they've got is pretty good you guys should
charter them. And in fact, if you don't charter them,
they have the right to appeal to the state board,
and from what we're seeing, if they were do so,
they're going to win the appeal. So you guys are
gonna spend money, You're gonna spend time.
Speaker 5 (10:56):
But the school board went against the independent expert anyway
and unanimously voted to deny Merit academies charter.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
And you know, you take that, you take my wife's
experience with the committee, and you're like, yeah, this was rigged,
And that really became kind of a last straw for
a lot of people.
Speaker 5 (11:24):
Parents felt the school board were ignoring their concerns, and
there were other signs that the school board was failing
kids and parents.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Enrollment numbers have been on a more than ten year slide.
Back in the two thousands, they had like three thousand
kids enrolled here.
Speaker 5 (11:40):
By the twenty twenty one twenty twenty two school year,
there were only around eighteen hundred.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Every one of our school buildings was fifty percent empty.
And when I got into it, I'm like, how much
longer can we go on like this before we have
basically a catastrophic decision to make, what do we have
another year or two where this continues this way, that
we'd have to close the school, probably one of our
elementary schools, and people are going to end up being
(12:06):
laid off. And this school district is the biggest employer
in Teller County.
Speaker 5 (12:11):
Teller County is the county Woodland Park resides in again,
Cassie Kimberl.
Speaker 8 (12:16):
And then around twenty twenty one, there was this newspaper
article from the Colorado side.
Speaker 5 (12:22):
The March twenty twenty one article was written by a
teacher from Teller County. She boasted about how she brought
Black Lives Matter lessons into her kindergarten classroom and painted
Teller County residents as Confederate flag waving rednecks. The article
angered many Woodland Park parents, Like Cassie, it.
Speaker 8 (12:40):
Is sixty percent more Republican. Here's sixty thirty. So for Colorado,
they're very proud. It's a mountainous town and they're very
proud to be read. So when you have teachers writing
articles depicting that of you know, the parents that live
here and she's teaching kids, there's going to be some conflict.
Speaker 5 (13:01):
The school board's charter school denial, the COVID policies that
made mass mandatory on students, schools being shut down for
just a few cases of COVID, and now this teacher
bringing BLM lessons into a kindergarten class. Woodland Park residents
felt like the school board was not representing them. Parents
had had enough. They decided to put a slate of
candidates together to take over the Woodland Park school Board.
Speaker 8 (13:24):
So that really started reaching out, getting a slate advocating
for that. Seems, we can get some people to come
to the table and work together to try to see
what we can do about fixing your schools.
Speaker 5 (13:37):
And that's when they learned a closely held secret.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Woodland Park had not had an election of any kind
for school board in more than ten years.
Speaker 5 (13:46):
What was happening was the teachers' unions and the school
administration quietly took advantage of a loophole in the school
board election process and used that loophole to install people
that aligned with them rather than with the parents. Dave
would eventually figure out the process for how most people
were getting placed on the school board.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
You'd have to like get yourself on the ballot, but
that takes like seventy five signatures. That's easy to do
when you have somebody pass it around at the school, right,
and then if nobody else filed to be on the ballot,
you know it's canceled, right, And that's that's what had
been happening.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
And so state law in Colorado.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Is, if you have a vacancy on the school board,
the board has to appoint somebody within sixty days.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
And whoever they appoint, that's it.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
There's no subject to confirmation on that right, And most
of our school boards are like five members.
Speaker 5 (14:34):
Through this process, slowly, over a decade plus, people who
were aligned with the teachers in the school administration were
appointed to the school board.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
What had happened over the more than ten year period
was that the school board had become largely ceremonial and
had become completely owned by the teachers and the administration.
They did not see themselves at all at all as
representing parents, not at all. They completely saw themselves as
(15:03):
representatives of like the school district itself.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
I e. The administration and the teachers.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
They had delegated all responsibility and authority to the superintendent
and they basically would have a meeting maybe once a
month that nobody went to and they were largely there
to take a report from the superintendent and rubber stamp
whatever the superintendent recommended. I mean, I think they had
a pretty good system worked out between the administration and
(15:32):
the teachers' union to kind of keep it all quiet,
keep it under the table, have nobody really realize what
was happening, and basically make sure everybody lost interest in
the school board. And I mean that's not unique to
the Woodland Park School District. That happens in governments all
across the country.
Speaker 5 (15:48):
So Dave Illingworth, Cassie Kimberl and others decided they were
going to do something about it, and when they did,
they inadvertently ignited a firestorm in Woodland Park.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
There's nothing that makes me happier than putting on a fire,
propping up my feet, popping on a movie, and curling
up next to the love of my life. That being
licorice from the Licorice Guy. If you've been listening to
RPA for some time, then you know that licorice is
my jam and that it does not get any better
than the gourmet licorice made by the Licorice Guy. They
(16:28):
have a great selection of flavors to choose from, like
red blue, raspberry, black, and green apple, just to name
a few. The freshness of a licorice will blow your mind. Seriously,
if you haven't tried licorice from the Licorice Guy, then
do yourself a favor and give it a try. Trust me,
you will not regret it. And if you're looking for
new ways to expand your horizons in twenty twenty three,
(16:49):
then consider joining the Licorice Guy's team by signing up
for their Resellers program. They'll train you and provide you
with all the tools you need to succeed. It's a
great opportunity for anyone looking to start a new business
or make some extra cab Visit Licoriceguide dot com to
get more information on how you can become a licorice
Guy or to shop their delicious array of licorice, and
(17:10):
don't forget to enter RPA fifteen at checkout for a discount.
That's Licoriceguide dot com and enter RPA fifteen at checkout
for a discount.
Speaker 5 (17:23):
Welcome back to red Pilled America. So Dave Illingworth, Cassie Kimbrel,
and others learned that the Woodland Park school Board had
become a puppet of the teacher's union and school administration
for over ten years. They'd quietly taken control of the
school board through a bit of a loophole in the
election process that allowed them to appoint whomever they wanted.
(17:43):
And once they got control of the school board, they
ignored the wants and needs of the parents. So in
twenty twenty one, Dave Illingworth, Cassie Kimbrel and others decided
they were going to do something about it again.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Dave Illingworth, so I ran to change that, and I
ran on growing the district. I ran on getting rid
of masking and lockdowns because at that time the schools
were still doing that.
Speaker 9 (18:10):
Cassie Kimbrel, I helped campaign and did a lot of
this stuff behind the scenes. I helped them with anything
they need, graphics or just a lot of like roundtable discussions,
signature collecting when they had to get on the ballot.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
And so it turns out, Patrick, that when one side
is saying vote for us because we'd like to represent
you and we'd like to do what you want done,
and the other side is saying vote for me, because
I will not represent you, and I have no power
to do anything you'd want me to do anyway, Well,
it turns out that actually trying to represent somebody is
the more popular political position.
Speaker 5 (18:48):
Dave and his like minded colleagues challenged all four of
the school board seats that were on the twenty twenty
one ballot, and the.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Results we all want in a landslide.
Speaker 5 (18:57):
Cassie Kimbrel would later be appointed to an open seat
on the school board as well. And like that, a
few people in the small town of Woodland Park decided
to do something, and they successfully took back their schools.
And Woodland Park wasn't alone. A small group of people
(19:19):
in a deep red county in Wisconsin decided to do
the same thing on an even larger scale.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
In twenty nineteen, Terry Dietrich took the reins of the
Republican Party of Waukeshaw County, Wisconsin. In the early days
of his chairmanship, he began studying the issues in his county.
Speaker 10 (19:37):
We had worked really hard in twenty nineteen and twenty
knocking on over one hundred and seventy five thousand doors
in our county and interviewing what we would have considered
to be swing voters or middle of the road voters,
a kind of former Union Democrat type voters that we
had very clearly discovered that they were very much oriented
(20:01):
towards Trump and a more conservative line versus the typical
Republican line.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
The voters in the area expressed frustrations with the Republican
Party with their failures in statewide elections. If the state
and national GOP Party didn't make some changes, they'd either
sit out the elections or start looking for other political options.
Terry and his colleagues figured that they had to come
up with something to keep these people engaged in the
political process.
Speaker 10 (20:28):
And my idea, along with one of my other colleagues,
was local elections. And so we said, everybody cares about
local elections. Everybody clears about what's going on in the
local school boards and their local budgets and their local taxes.
We need to focus on this. So then you had
COVID that came along. And I'm not going to go
into it a lot, because you've heard this a thousand times,
I'm sure across the country. The moms got mad, the
(20:50):
people started paying attention, especially the school boards.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
So Terry and his colleagues came up with a plan.
Speaker 10 (20:55):
Just following the twenty twenty election, actually in November, we
started a local county initiative underneath the umbrella of the
Republican Party of Waukeshaw County.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
They called it wis READ short for Wisconsin Read.
Speaker 10 (21:10):
We believed a trickle up theory, meaning winning at the
local level will ultimately build the bench and allow us
to win up ticket. So wis read initiative was set
up specifically at the local level to win municipal school
(21:34):
boards and in some cases judicial races at the local
level here in Waukeshaw County. We got to work, scoured
the county, analyzed all of the different races, what was
in the majority, what was in the minority, what seats
were open, what Democrats or Liberals were in, what opportunities
we might have. We found that our county effectively was
(21:56):
about forty percent at the municipal and local level in
the hands of liberals. Probably nearly half of the school
boards and municipal boards were majority controlled by liberals in
the biggest red county in the state. And that was
effectively because we as a county party were following the
(22:17):
longtime mantra of the state party and the RNC saying
that we don't participate in non partisan elections. So we decided,
we're a new sheriff in town, We're going to participate
in these. We went after it, and we recruited effectively
one hundred and ten candidates. Ran in the spring with
those candidates, recruited them, vetted them, supported them, ran those candidates,
(22:40):
and then ended up winning one hundred out of one
hundred and ten races, and for the last two years
have followed on with that same pattern and winning a
total of three hundred and eighty six out of four
hundred and twenty races in this county and have taken
effectively all of the majorities back in the municipal and
school boards.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
And one of the primary things that helped in their
effort was something rather simple.
Speaker 11 (23:01):
One of the greatest things that we did.
Speaker 12 (23:03):
We put a voter guide together starting in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
That's Kathy Pape, the executive director of the Republican Party
of Waukeshak County.
Speaker 12 (23:10):
We sent it out by email and it went viral
and everybody said to us continually that they don't pay
attention if you don't have kids in school, to school boards,
and other things, but they would absolutely go out and
vote if they know who to vote for. So this
voter guide gave them that opportunity.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Kathy explained that the approach that they were taking was
best described by author Matthew Truella, who's been pitching an
idea to any Republicans who will listen, and that idea
is county before country.
Speaker 12 (23:43):
And he helps people see your power is in your
county government. And he used illustrations during COVID. There was
a county outside of Saint Louis on the Illinois side,
and when Governor Pritchker shut down the state during COVID,
the county came back and said, no, we're not shutting down.
And he came back and he said, well then you're
(24:03):
not going to get your money. And they came back
and said, we don't care, we're not shutting it down.
And then other counties saw what they were doing. They
chimed in did the same thing, and pritch kerk was
basically going, uncle, uncle, uncle, uncle, uncle. We're trying to
help everyone in this county. Sea that we read is
so important because this is where our power is in
(24:26):
the county system.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Again, Terry Dietrich.
Speaker 10 (24:30):
Interestingly enough, in the last year or so, the state
Party started talking local elections where they never had for
twenty years previous. So I think this trend will continue.
You saw what happened in Virginia and Governor DeSantis was
talking about winning two or three big school board elections
down in Florida. I had to laugh because we've won
three hundred and eighty two out of four hundred and twenty.
(24:51):
So we'd like to take this not only statewide, but
nationally because we think we have a formula that can
definitely win.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Parents are beginning to see that the best way for
them to make an impact is to think local, focus
on their immediate environment. They see that they can retake
the K to twelve schools through the school boards. But
it's not just parents that are taking action. Young adults
are finding new ways to impact the American institution of
education as well, including a young college student that has
(25:21):
been so successful that even the legacy media has set
their sights on it.
Speaker 5 (25:29):
Do you want to hear red Pilled America stories ad free?
Then become a backstage subscriber. Just log onto Redpilled America
dot com and click join in the top menu. Join
today and help us save America one story at a time.
Welcome back to red Pilled America. Daniel Schmidt does not
(25:49):
look like the threatening type. He's a brown haired, fair
skinned young man whose default face practically smiles. He gives
off a buttoned up, straight a student vibe that wouldn't
or couldn't ruffle anyone's feather. But as the saying goes,
don't judge a book by its cover, because this young
man has done more to impact the institution of education
(26:11):
than most adults three times his age.
Speaker 11 (26:13):
I almost have like an obligation to speak up, that's Daniel,
because if I don't, you know, these coastal elite people
are just going to keep running the show.
Speaker 5 (26:21):
Daniel was born in Los Angeles, California, but moved to
a small town in the middle of Tennessee when he
was around eight years old.
Speaker 11 (26:28):
And I want to say that was sort of my
transformative experience. I saw how like normal middle Americans live.
I saw how they thought. I saw, you know, they
went to church every Sunday. They cared about family and
tradition and the nation. And that was sort of what
led me to just see how normal Americans live.
Speaker 5 (26:47):
Daniel grew up in a single parent home with his mother.
He attended a run of the mill high school, nothing fancy,
but he put his nose down and got the kind
of grades and had the type of family income that
earned him a full ride scholarship.
Speaker 11 (26:59):
I applied the twenty schools. I got into quite a few,
but I ended up picking you Chicago, primarily because the
school is known for its protection of free speech. It's
known as sort of the free speech school.
Speaker 5 (27:11):
He chose economics as his course of study, and even
before he entered the University of Chicago in the twenty
twenty one to twenty two school year, he began pushing
the boundaries. As a Christian, Daniel got a religious exemption
from the campus vaccine mandate. It was something few students
were doing at the time. Then, in his first month
on campus, he took a stand on an issue that
(27:32):
most white guys try to avoid.
Speaker 11 (27:34):
My first month in college, I couldn't participate in a
debate tournament because I was white. They straight up told
me to my face, this tournament's only open to non
white people, and I legitimately couldn't believe it. I thought
at first it was like a praying but then I
looked around the room, and everyone was nodding, everyone was
agreeing with it, and I was the only one who
seemed to even have a problem with it. It was unreal.
And the funniest part about it was I come from
(27:56):
a single mother household, went to a pretty average public
high school, and then I get to the school and
these kids who went to like super top boarding schools,
are really rich. They're telling me I'm privileged because I'm white.
They're telling me I can't do it debate tournament because
I'm white. I can't believe it. You know, I'm going
to full right scholarship because I'm like low income.
Speaker 5 (28:22):
So he decided to expose the racist debate tournament.
Speaker 11 (28:25):
And then the next year the tournament didn't happen. I
don't know if it was completely because of me, but
I have to imagine there was some scrutiny and that
maybe the students were a little scared.
Speaker 5 (28:42):
It was only his first month of college and Daniel
was just getting started.
Speaker 11 (28:47):
I'm unvaccinated. I'm probably one of the only students on
my college who's unvaccinated.
Speaker 5 (28:51):
And when Daniel entered U Chicago in twenty twenty one,
the COVID protocols of mass testing and social distancing were
still in full swing.
Speaker 11 (28:59):
The school was constantly sending me emails. They were making
me tests every week. It was just a total mess.
And then I did this email one day saying we
have this new policy. Unvaccinated students can go to dining halls.
They're basically saying you have to eat in your room,
you can't eat with anybody else. Just total persecution. And
I looked into it. I found out that the policy
(29:21):
isn't even legal in the city of Chicago. If you
have an exemption, which I did. I had a religious exemption.
You're allowed to eat in places even if you're not vaccinated.
So my college was completely breaking the law. And I
was like, Okay, this is insane. So I pressed my administration.
I sent like twenty emails to all the various administrators.
I wrote in an article for the newspaper I was
(29:42):
writing for at the time, and a few days later
the policy was reversed. Quietly, they sent me an email
and they said, yeah, the policy doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 5 (29:50):
Just by being a squeaky wheel, he got the policy
thrown out. It was around this time that Daniel's questioning
the system landed him on the national news Prestigious universities
like U Chicago often invite profile people to speak on campus.
April twenty twenty two was one of those times. Elite
left wing media outfit The Atlantic hosted a conference on
(30:12):
the campus entitled Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy.
Speaker 11 (30:17):
You know, the sort of mainstream media has this big
battle against this information or calling anything they don't like disinformation.
So my school invited Barack Obama, they invited Brian Stelter
from CNN, and they invited this one woman called an Applebaum,
who's this Atlantic journalist, super uptight, super you know, just
total liberal basically, and she was speaking about, you know, oh,
(30:38):
we need to fight disinformation. The conservatives are spreading all
this stuff. And I was in the audience and I
didn't know I was going to ask her a question.
It was kind of just impromptu. At the end, they said, hey,
does anyone want ask a question? I rollse my hand,
I got the MinC. I was like, okay, thank you
for doing that. Was really appreciated. I'm Daniel Schmidt. I'm
a freshman at the University of Chicago. My question is
for miss Applebaum. And I quickly like looked into her,
(30:59):
and I saw she was totally going after concerntives for
talking about the Hunter Biden laptop story. She was like, oh,
this is Russian disinformation. If you believe in this, you're
a conspiracy theorist. And this was still when people were
unsure if it was real or not. Now it's confirmed,
And so I asked her. So in twenty twenty, you wrote,
those who live outside the Fox News bubble do not,
(31:20):
of course need to learn any of the stuff about
Hunter Biden, referring to his laptop of curse. A poll
later after that found that if voters knew about the
content of the laptop, sixteen percent of Joe Biden voters
would have acted differently. Now, of course, we know a
few weeks ago the New York Times confirmed that the
content is real. Do you think the media acted inappropriately
when they instantly dismissed Hunter Biden's laptop as Russian disinformation?
(31:43):
And what can we learn from that and ensuring that
what we label is disinformation is truly disinformation and not reality.
Speaker 5 (31:50):
And Applebaum responded, My problem with Hunter Biden's laptop is
I think totally irrelevant.
Speaker 13 (31:55):
I mean, it's not whether it's disinformation or I mean,
I didn't think the Hunter Biden's business rel relationships have
anything to do with who should be president of the
United States. So I didn't find I don't find it
to be interesting. I mean, that would be my problem
with that as a major news story.
Speaker 5 (32:13):
The hypocrisy was jarring. Here was a woman whose newspaper
was hosting a conference on disinformation. She was caught in
a profound moment of disinformation about the Hunter Biden laptop
story right before an election, and she basically stated that
Hunter Biden's laptop was unimportant.
Speaker 11 (32:47):
So I asked her that question, and then I posted
it to my Twitter and literally overnight it blew up.
I think got a million views. It was a big deal.
That was my sort of big viral moment. And again
at that moment, I realized, listen, I'm just a single
college kid. But if I can ask these powerful liberal
elites these questions, then I'm going to do it.
Speaker 5 (33:08):
And he did. Later in twenty twenty two, Daniel got
another opportunity when lame duck Congresswoman Liz Cheney came to
the University of Chicago. Miss Cheney was the Vice Chair
of the House January sixth Committee that looked a brand
former President Trump as an insurrectionist and forced the prosecution
of those involved in the January sixth events.
Speaker 11 (33:28):
When I found out she was coming, I kind of
knew right away I have to ask her about ray Epps.
Speaker 5 (33:33):
Ray Epps, of course, was famously caught on camera encouraging
people to enter the Capitol in Washington, d C. Around
January sixth, twenty twenty one, yet was never prosecuted like
so many others, for inciting a so called insurrection. Some
suggested ray Epps was working with the FBI. Liz Cheney
had long been calling the entire ray Epps issue a
conspiracy theory, so Daniel thought he'd question her on the subject.
Speaker 11 (33:57):
Thank you so much. My name is Daniel Schmidt. So
I've been following this January sixth committee really closely, and
I just wanted to ask you about some of the
facts here. So on June ninth, you cited the Department
of Justice and their prosecution of the Proud Boy some
of the members, and the Department of Justice said these
members directed, mobilized and led members of the crowd onto
the Capitol grounds and into the Capitol. So obviously that's
(34:18):
a crime. That's insurrection. And you know, I guess you
made the right call there. The fact of the matter
is we have another person on camera doing exactly that.
His name is Ray Epps, and it's not a conspiracy theory.
The New York Times shows him saying, quote, we need
to go into the capitol. I'm going to pick it
out there. I'm going to put it out there. I'm
probably gonna go to jail tomorrow. We need to go
into the capitol. That's not a conspiracy theorist. We have
(34:39):
an actual insurrectionist on tape, and yet he's escaped prosecution.
So let me just ask you right here, do you
demand the prosecution of Ray Epps. He's an actual insurrectionist
on tape.
Speaker 14 (34:49):
You know, let me let me let me answer the question,
because I think there's some confusion about confusion about the
role of Congress.
Speaker 11 (35:15):
And her answer was basically, oh no, that's a conspiracy theory.
Speaker 14 (35:18):
I think we all ought to be able to agree
on those basic things as Americans and set aside conspiracy theories.
Speaker 11 (35:24):
And she literally was like condescending me. She was like,
you know nothing about government. Kids, Sit down, And at
the very end, after I asked this question another student
who was next up in line. He apologized to her
for my culte behavior. Hi, Liz, I appreciate your.
Speaker 15 (35:44):
I appreciate your handling of and apologize for Daniel Schmidt's behavior.
He's the worst star campus house opera.
Speaker 11 (35:52):
And it's it's the most insane thing ever, because you know,
Liz Cheney is like the epitome of an establishment politician.
It's total Neo Cohn. You know, Dad is Dick Cheney.
And this student is like apologizing to her, and everyone's
booing at me. I mean, and you know, the question
is like, what happened to kids being rebellious? You know,
what happened to kids protesting in college campuses? You would
(36:13):
think people like this Channing would be booed out of existence,
and now the kids are bowing down. I mean, it's
the most insane dynamic ever. I couldn't believe my eyes.
Speaker 5 (36:22):
But it was in late twenty twenty two when he
took a stand against an upcoming U Chicago class that
put him in the crosshairs of the legacy media.
Speaker 11 (36:29):
It all started when I was looking for classes to
register and I found this one class and it was
called the problem of whiteness, and I mean it just
endsley stood out to me, like what is this class
saying that there's a problem with whiteness and whiteness as
white people and that therefore there's a solution. And then
I went into the course description and it's saying like
whiteness is a world making and raising problem. I mean,
(36:52):
it was just it was egregious. I don't know what
other word to use, and I don't know how anyone
could defend such a thing. So I saw this class
and I was like, listen, people need to know, like
this class is being taught out of such a an
I lead school. So I went on Twitter and I
made a little bit of a thread. I posted the
class title, I posted the course description. I posted a
picture of the woman teaching the class, because I mean,
people should know the face of this stuff.
Speaker 5 (37:14):
The professor's name was Rebecca Journey.
Speaker 11 (37:16):
And pretty quickly the thread blow up. I think it
got over a million impressions. And that's when this professor
went full speed against me. She was calling me a
cyber terrorist. She's saying I'm going to encourage an armed
school shooter. And then she filed two separate complaints to
get me expelled and I have to show appreciation of
my school. My school denied both of those.
Speaker 5 (37:37):
This all went down in November and December twenty twenty two.
But then seven months later, after the issue appeared to
be forgotten, the legacy media set their sights on Daniel.
Speaker 11 (37:47):
Schmidt, and then out of nowhere, The New York Times
dropped an article about me the basically attacking my school,
saying they should have done more about it, they should
have punished me. And then CNN dropped and articles calling
me a bully, saying I bully people into.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Silence, and this is what happens when you're over the target,
especially when a concerned citizen tries to break the monopoly
the radical left has on education. Right after Dave Illingworth
and his team took over the Woodland Park School Board,
teachers and a few vocal liberal parents and activists began
their attack on Dave and his colleagues. Again, Dave Illingworth,
(38:26):
some of these people Patrick.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
They called the Teller County Clerk the day after the
election and said we would like the recall petitions. We're
ready to start gathering signatures to recall these guys, and
they were told actually the law says, you have to
wait six months, can't start gathering signatures until they've been
off for six months. Well, they waited until six months,
and they went back that day and got the recall petitions.
Speaker 13 (38:48):
Recall efforts are underway in Woodland Park tonight after a
petition was just filed against two school board members.
Speaker 15 (38:55):
School Board Vice president David Illingworth and board director Suzanne
Patterson will face a recall vote in November if there
are enough valid signatures on both of those petitions.
Speaker 16 (39:07):
Well, the forses behind it are fairly easy to identify.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
That's Ken Witt, the school superintendent that was hired by
Dave Ellingworth and the rest of the Woodland Park school Board.
Speaker 16 (39:15):
And for the most part its organized union resistance to
change a common theme.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
The recall failed tonight too.
Speaker 16 (39:22):
Woodland Park school Board members are speaking out after months
of efforts to remove them from office failed.
Speaker 8 (39:28):
Election official say petitioners came up short to trigger recall
elections against Woodland Park school Board members David Illingworth and
Suzanne Patterson.
Speaker 15 (39:38):
Wooland Park's school board vice president David Illingworth says he
is pleased, calling the push to remove him a wasteful
effort by a group committed to a radical agenda.
Speaker 16 (39:49):
Not only did it fail, they didn't give enough signatures
to get there by a long shot. So this board
has twice won support from the community.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
Ken Witt and the school board began making reforms immediately,
bringing part of the school's curriculum back to America's first principles.
Speaker 16 (40:07):
We adopted the American birth Right Curriculum standard quite honestly,
within a few days of me joining the school district.
So that certainly underscored the board's commitment to return focus
to a quality academic focus and to lose some of
the divisive politics and perspectives that are going on in
public education.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
So that certainly met with some resistance.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
And so the American birth Right standards are about making
sure that every kid is getting a curriculum that is
always designed to give the full and complete history of
this country, with an understanding that people who are learning
history are students, should be valuing the American system, that
it's a good system. In the end, it's not a
(40:52):
perfect system, but it's probably the best that we've managed
to come up with so far in human history.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Historically, the national media have largely ignored this small town
that is until words spread that the new sheriff in
town began to change the curriculum.
Speaker 4 (41:08):
The district also became the first in the country to
implement a social studies program called American Birthright, developed by
conservative activists and rejected by educators around the country, including
Colorado's state Board of Education. It emphasizes patriotism and discourages
civic engagement.
Speaker 14 (41:25):
It's terrifying.
Speaker 4 (41:26):
When Sarah Lee, a Woodland Park teacher for almost two decades,
learn what was inside the new program, she started to panic.
Speaker 8 (41:34):
Anything that is not the way that the leader says
it should be is wrong and evil and should be destroyed.
And that's how I feel about that American Birthright curriculum.
Speaker 4 (41:42):
This November, three seats on the school board are up
for election. Parents like Matt Galowski worry about how much
could change between now and then.
Speaker 15 (41:50):
Wake up, don't don't rest, don't think that your district
is safe. I never saw this coming.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
They always seem to scream the loudest when you're over
the target, which leads us back to the question, what
(42:19):
can the folks do to help save America? Well, one
answer is take back the schools. Our educational system is
perhaps the most important cultural institution in America. Almost every
child is legally required to run this gauntlet for at
least thirteen years, and the overwhelming majority do so through
(42:41):
the public school system. This is something that the radical
left understood going back to at least the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 11 (42:47):
We must educate our people.
Speaker 7 (42:50):
In order to educate our people, it means that we
must take over the schools, nothing less, take them over
by any means necessary.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Education is what feeds our youth in their most formative
and vulnerable hearth years. So we must rid our system
of the poisonous ideology that the radicals are pumping into
our kids bloodstream by taking over the schools, and as
Woodland Park and wish Reds shown it can be done.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
Parents and teachers can take back their schools and make
sure that their kids are getting the education they deserve.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
They don't have to be.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Controlled and forced into the big darkness that's coming from
the power centers in DC and the special interests with
all their billions of dollars.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
So you can do it.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
And it's not just the K through twelve education system
that needs to be taken back. We must not abandon
higher education.
Speaker 11 (43:42):
These elite schools are still the best gateway to power.
You know, if we just abandon these institutions, the Left's
just going to dominate them, and that's just a way
for us to lose even more power. So I just
want to inspire other students to show Listen. I didn't
come from any fancy backgrounds, I don't have any fancy connections.
I just started calling out what I think is wrong,
defending what I think is true. I want to show
(44:03):
them listen, you can do this too, like it's possible.
Speaker 5 (44:06):
Red Pilled America is an iHeartRadio original podcast. It's owned
and produced by Patrick Carrelci and me Adrianna Cortez of
Informed Ventures. Now. You can get ad free access to
our entire archive of episodes by becoming a backstage subscriber.
To subscribe, visit Redpilled America dot com and click join
in the top menu. Thanks for listening.
This is Red Pilled America. To celebrate America's two hundred
and fiftieth birthday, RPA is giving its biggest discount ever
for a limited time. Get fifty percent off of Backstage Subscription,
where you get ad free access to our entire back
catalog of episodes. Just go to Redpilled America dot com
and click the link on the homepage. Then enter America
(00:25):
two fifty at checkout. That's America and the number is
two five zero All one word at checkout support what
you lover, it goes away. Happy Birthday, America. This episode
was originally broadcast on August fourth, twenty twenty three. Woodland
(00:46):
Park is about a thirty minute drive northwest of Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Nestled in the Rocky Mountains, It's home to about eight
thousand people. It's a small town in every sense of
the word.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
They're just deer everywhere. It's safe. There's just no crime,
and that's quiet. Everywhere you go, you're running into people
you know and everything.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
It's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
It's one of those small towns that the national media
typically ignores. So when NBC News came to Woodland Park,
some began to raise an Eyebrow.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Woodland Park, Colorado, a tight knit conservative mountain community has
grown so divided. High school junior Jacob D. Smith says
he no longer recognizes his hometown.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Why are the national media descending on this small town.
I'm Patrick Carelci and.
Speaker 5 (01:34):
I'm Adriana Cortes.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
And this is Red Pilled America, a storytelling show.
Speaker 5 (01:40):
This is not another talk show covering the day's news.
We're all about telling stories.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Stories. Hollywood doesn't want you to hear stories.
Speaker 5 (01:48):
The media mocks stories about everyday Americans at the Globalist Ignore.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
You can think of Red Pilled America as audio documentaries,
and we promise only one thing, the truth. Welcome to
Red Pilled America.
Speaker 5 (02:15):
People often ask us, in one form or another, what
can I do to help fix America? It's probably the
most common question we get since launching Red Pilled America.
In response, we've often encouraged people to get involved in storytelling. Filmmaking, novels, music, art,
and storytelling. Podcasts like ours are the things that drive
(02:35):
and establish American culture. And it's the kind of thing
that a single individual can do on their own. And
if that isn't your cup of tea, as We've often
said you can support like folk who are on the
storytelling frontlines, but that advice doesn't work for many adults
who want to get hands on in fixing America but
(02:55):
may not find the arts to be in their wheelhouse.
For those people, which route should they take? What can
folks do to help save America? To find the answer,
We're going to tell the story of a few people
that became sick and tired of watching the destruction of
perhaps the most important institution in America, and they decided
to do something about it. If Americans all across the
(03:18):
nation followed their lead, this country would be on the
road to recovery in no time.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Dave Illingworth is a Texas transplant to Woodland Park, Colorado.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
I moved here five years ago.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
That's Dave.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
This town Patrick, if you come visit it, you're probably
gonna move here. I mean, it's so beautiful. I mean
what the park is really? I mean I shouldn't tell anybody.
It's a truly hidden gem.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
But Dave learned that this small town was lacking in
one crucial area.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Most people do move to small towns for two things,
as the schools in the safety. But nobody I met ever,
moved here for the.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Schools, and like with most good parents, education was important
to Dave and his wife Katie. They're both veterans and lawyers,
so by default, academics is something they value. Woodland Park
was a bit challenged in that department, but Dave and
Katy made the best of it. They enrolled their school
aged kids in a local school. But, like so many
(04:23):
other parents all across the country, an unexpected crisis hit
Woodland Park in early twenty twenty that would eventually expose
a serious problem.
Speaker 6 (04:32):
Colorado goes on lockdown in nine hours time.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Governor Jared Polus has ordered all Colorado's to stay home
starting at six am tomorrow to slow the spread of
COVID nineteen.
Speaker 6 (04:42):
Governor Jared Polus didn't mince words, stay at home or
thousands of people could die.
Speaker 7 (04:48):
When we're talking about saving lives, we're not talking about
one or two lives. We're talking about thousands of Colorado's lives,
perhaps tens of thousands.
Speaker 6 (04:58):
The governor says that when this all goes into effect
tomorrow morning, the only reasons that you should be outside
of your house is if you work for a critical
business or conducting essential activities. He says that we're at
a point where this is necessary.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
And of course included in that long list of non
essential activities was the education of our children.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
The schools up here, you know, they shut down in
spring and twenty twenty, like everywhere.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Else, two weeks turned to four, then ten. By the
time the twenty twenty twenty twenty one school year came around,
they remained closed. So school district after school district began
an entirely new experiment.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
The remote learning stuff was extremely frustrating.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
David Katie have four kids, two boys and two girls.
Their school age children all shifted to remote learning where
they had to log into their classroom from their homes
through a computer.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
And what became a great concern to us was that
the Wooden Park School District, which they were all on,
this sort of screen based learning program called Summit Lar Learning,
and it goes by different names in different places and
things like that, but it's essentially a curriculum that emphasizes
using your Chrome books and getting lessons from YouTube and
(06:16):
things like that. It just was all but impossible for
my oldest one, and so my wife is like, hey,
I think we're going to need to move because all
the schools up here do this, and we could go,
you know, twenty minutes down the mountain to the springs,
and there's tons and tons of choices.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
There, those choices being charter schools. Colorado has one of
the highest concentrations of public charter schools in America.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
I gotta be honest with you, Patrick, I did not
know what a charter school was at the time, right
you hear about them? You know, I and my kids
were young enough that I was new to the whole
schooling experience.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Really.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
I mean, my oldest was like in second or third
grade at that time.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
So Dave and Katie did some research and in the
process they learned about a promising new project in Woodland.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Park, aware through the paper that there is a group
of parents up here that are trying to start a
charter school called Merit Academy, and it's going to be
a classical based curriculum and they're going to emphasize you know,
textbooks and writing and writing cursive and things like that.
And so we thought that was a really great idea
and something that we were going to be interested in
for our oldest.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Now, charter schools in their neck of the Woods need
to apply for authorization from the school district.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
My wife is a lawyer to she's known over at
the elementary school where the kids are going. So the
elementary school principle invites my wife to be part of
reviewing this charter application. There's a committee, it's called the
District Accountability Committee, and it's made up of parents and teachers, administrators,
and you got like a business owner, right, you know,
it's supposed to be this cross section of the community.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
It's actually in Colorado state law.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
You've got to have this, and the law requires that
this committee review the application first and they make a
recommendation to the school board.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
However, the school board is not legally bound by this recommendation,
but typically if the application meets all of the necessary
criteria and the parents want the charter school to happen,
it becomes hard for a school board, which is beholden
to the community, to deny the charter. Dave's wife, Katie,
eventually took up the offer and got involved in the committee.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
So Katie gets on there and goes to the first meeting,
and I think it's all remoted this time, right, And
you got somebody who's there letting everybody know, Hey.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
This is what we're gonna be doing, is we're gonna
be looking as the goal here.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
And there's one lady who, after being explained what's going on,
raised her hand and says, well, can we just say
no now? And they're like, no, we're gonna have to,
you know, go through this.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Non charter public school administrations are usually adversarial to charter schools.
For every student a charter school siphons off, the school
district receives less money from the government from the outset.
It appeared that some of the committee members shared this
of version to charter schools.
Speaker 5 (09:05):
As merrit Academy's charter approval process progressed, a few other
red flags began to surface.
Speaker 8 (09:10):
Normally, charter applications will take maybe three to four months.
Speaker 5 (09:15):
That's Cassie Kimberl, a Woodland Park resident at the time.
Speaker 8 (09:19):
This one took over five months and they had over
twenty just meetings, whether it was a public meeting, a
town hall, a special board meeting.
Speaker 5 (09:29):
It appeared that the committee had their thumb on the scale. Again,
Dave Illingworth.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
It became apparent to Katie in the whole process that
you know, they were there to make it look okay,
like yeah, we've checked the boxes, but the decision was
already baked.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Into the cake.
Speaker 5 (09:46):
Eventually, the committee issued its recommendation.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
The Accountability Committee says, don't charter them. They don't have buses,
they don't have hot meals and everything. And the parents
behind the charter application are like, what are you talking about.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
You can't penalize this for that.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
In Colorado law, you can't penalize a charter school because
they don't have like a school bussing system where they
don't have like a cafeteria system to provide meals to everybody.
Because the law understands a lot of them are startups.
They don't come with infrastructure you're going to.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Right out of the gate.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
And so the next step is it goes to the
school board, and the school board hires an independent expert
to tell them whether or not this thing passes Mustard right.
The expert comebacks and says, yeah, you should charter them.
They're meeting all the factors under law for charter and
number one is public demand. And you've got families from
your own community who are wanting to do this, and
(10:40):
the plan they've got is pretty good you guys should
charter them. And in fact, if you don't charter them,
they have the right to appeal to the state board,
and from what we're seeing, if they were do so,
they're going to win the appeal. So you guys are
gonna spend money, You're gonna spend time.
Speaker 5 (10:56):
But the school board went against the independent expert anyway
and unanimously voted to deny Merit academies charter.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
And you know, you take that, you take my wife's
experience with the committee, and you're like, yeah, this was rigged,
And that really became kind of a last straw for
a lot of people.
Speaker 5 (11:24):
Parents felt the school board were ignoring their concerns, and
there were other signs that the school board was failing
kids and parents.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Enrollment numbers have been on a more than ten year slide.
Back in the two thousands, they had like three thousand
kids enrolled here.
Speaker 5 (11:40):
By the twenty twenty one twenty twenty two school year,
there were only around eighteen hundred.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Every one of our school buildings was fifty percent empty.
And when I got into it, I'm like, how much
longer can we go on like this before we have
basically a catastrophic decision to make, what do we have
another year or two where this continues this way, that
we'd have to close the school, probably one of our
elementary schools, and people are going to end up being
(12:06):
laid off. And this school district is the biggest employer
in Teller County.
Speaker 5 (12:11):
Teller County is the county Woodland Park resides in again,
Cassie Kimberl.
Speaker 8 (12:16):
And then around twenty twenty one, there was this newspaper
article from the Colorado side.
Speaker 5 (12:22):
The March twenty twenty one article was written by a
teacher from Teller County. She boasted about how she brought
Black Lives Matter lessons into her kindergarten classroom and painted
Teller County residents as Confederate flag waving rednecks. The article
angered many Woodland Park parents, Like Cassie, it.
Speaker 8 (12:40):
Is sixty percent more Republican. Here's sixty thirty. So for Colorado,
they're very proud. It's a mountainous town and they're very
proud to be read. So when you have teachers writing
articles depicting that of you know, the parents that live
here and she's teaching kids, there's going to be some conflict.
Speaker 5 (13:01):
The school board's charter school denial, the COVID policies that
made mass mandatory on students, schools being shut down for
just a few cases of COVID, and now this teacher
bringing BLM lessons into a kindergarten class. Woodland Park residents
felt like the school board was not representing them. Parents
had had enough. They decided to put a slate of
candidates together to take over the Woodland Park school Board.
Speaker 8 (13:24):
So that really started reaching out, getting a slate advocating
for that. Seems, we can get some people to come
to the table and work together to try to see
what we can do about fixing your schools.
Speaker 5 (13:37):
And that's when they learned a closely held secret.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Woodland Park had not had an election of any kind
for school board in more than ten years.
Speaker 5 (13:46):
What was happening was the teachers' unions and the school
administration quietly took advantage of a loophole in the school
board election process and used that loophole to install people
that aligned with them rather than with the parents. Dave
would eventually figure out the process for how most people
were getting placed on the school board.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
You'd have to like get yourself on the ballot, but
that takes like seventy five signatures. That's easy to do
when you have somebody pass it around at the school, right,
and then if nobody else filed to be on the ballot,
you know it's canceled, right, And that's that's what had
been happening.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
And so state law in Colorado.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Is, if you have a vacancy on the school board,
the board has to appoint somebody within sixty days.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
And whoever they appoint, that's it.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
There's no subject to confirmation on that right, And most
of our school boards are like five members.
Speaker 5 (14:34):
Through this process, slowly, over a decade plus, people who
were aligned with the teachers in the school administration were
appointed to the school board.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
What had happened over the more than ten year period
was that the school board had become largely ceremonial and
had become completely owned by the teachers and the administration.
They did not see themselves at all at all as
representing parents, not at all. They completely saw themselves as
(15:03):
representatives of like the school district itself.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
I e. The administration and the teachers.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
They had delegated all responsibility and authority to the superintendent
and they basically would have a meeting maybe once a
month that nobody went to and they were largely there
to take a report from the superintendent and rubber stamp
whatever the superintendent recommended. I mean, I think they had
a pretty good system worked out between the administration and
(15:32):
the teachers' union to kind of keep it all quiet,
keep it under the table, have nobody really realize what
was happening, and basically make sure everybody lost interest in
the school board. And I mean that's not unique to
the Woodland Park School District. That happens in governments all
across the country.
Speaker 5 (15:48):
So Dave Illingworth, Cassie Kimberl and others decided they were
going to do something about it, and when they did,
they inadvertently ignited a firestorm in Woodland Park.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
There's nothing that makes me happier than putting on a fire,
propping up my feet, popping on a movie, and curling
up next to the love of my life. That being
licorice from the Licorice Guy. If you've been listening to
RPA for some time, then you know that licorice is
my jam and that it does not get any better
than the gourmet licorice made by the Licorice Guy. They
(16:28):
have a great selection of flavors to choose from, like
red blue, raspberry, black, and green apple, just to name
a few. The freshness of a licorice will blow your mind. Seriously,
if you haven't tried licorice from the Licorice Guy, then
do yourself a favor and give it a try. Trust me,
you will not regret it. And if you're looking for
new ways to expand your horizons in twenty twenty three,
(16:49):
then consider joining the Licorice Guy's team by signing up
for their Resellers program. They'll train you and provide you
with all the tools you need to succeed. It's a
great opportunity for anyone looking to start a new business
or make some extra cab Visit Licoriceguide dot com to
get more information on how you can become a licorice
Guy or to shop their delicious array of licorice, and
(17:10):
don't forget to enter RPA fifteen at checkout for a discount.
That's Licoriceguide dot com and enter RPA fifteen at checkout
for a discount.
Speaker 5 (17:23):
Welcome back to red Pilled America. So Dave Illingworth, Cassie Kimbrel,
and others learned that the Woodland Park school Board had
become a puppet of the teacher's union and school administration
for over ten years. They'd quietly taken control of the
school board through a bit of a loophole in the
election process that allowed them to appoint whomever they wanted.
(17:43):
And once they got control of the school board, they
ignored the wants and needs of the parents. So in
twenty twenty one, Dave Illingworth, Cassie Kimbrel and others decided
they were going to do something about it again.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Dave Illingworth, so I ran to change that, and I
ran on growing the district. I ran on getting rid
of masking and lockdowns because at that time the schools
were still doing that.
Speaker 9 (18:10):
Cassie Kimbrel, I helped campaign and did a lot of
this stuff behind the scenes. I helped them with anything
they need, graphics or just a lot of like roundtable discussions,
signature collecting when they had to get on the ballot.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
And so it turns out, Patrick, that when one side
is saying vote for us because we'd like to represent
you and we'd like to do what you want done,
and the other side is saying vote for me, because
I will not represent you, and I have no power
to do anything you'd want me to do anyway, Well,
it turns out that actually trying to represent somebody is
the more popular political position.
Speaker 5 (18:48):
Dave and his like minded colleagues challenged all four of
the school board seats that were on the twenty twenty
one ballot, and the.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Results we all want in a landslide.
Speaker 5 (18:57):
Cassie Kimbrel would later be appointed to an open seat
on the school board as well. And like that, a
few people in the small town of Woodland Park decided
to do something, and they successfully took back their schools.
And Woodland Park wasn't alone. A small group of people
(19:19):
in a deep red county in Wisconsin decided to do
the same thing on an even larger scale.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
In twenty nineteen, Terry Dietrich took the reins of the
Republican Party of Waukeshaw County, Wisconsin. In the early days
of his chairmanship, he began studying the issues in his county.
Speaker 10 (19:37):
We had worked really hard in twenty nineteen and twenty
knocking on over one hundred and seventy five thousand doors
in our county and interviewing what we would have considered
to be swing voters or middle of the road voters,
a kind of former Union Democrat type voters that we
had very clearly discovered that they were very much oriented
(20:01):
towards Trump and a more conservative line versus the typical
Republican line.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
The voters in the area expressed frustrations with the Republican
Party with their failures in statewide elections. If the state
and national GOP Party didn't make some changes, they'd either
sit out the elections or start looking for other political options.
Terry and his colleagues figured that they had to come
up with something to keep these people engaged in the
political process.
Speaker 10 (20:28):
And my idea, along with one of my other colleagues,
was local elections. And so we said, everybody cares about
local elections. Everybody clears about what's going on in the
local school boards and their local budgets and their local taxes.
We need to focus on this. So then you had
COVID that came along. And I'm not going to go
into it a lot, because you've heard this a thousand times,
I'm sure across the country. The moms got mad, the
(20:50):
people started paying attention, especially the school boards.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
So Terry and his colleagues came up with a plan.
Speaker 10 (20:55):
Just following the twenty twenty election, actually in November, we
started a local county initiative underneath the umbrella of the
Republican Party of Waukeshaw County.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
They called it wis READ short for Wisconsin Read.
Speaker 10 (21:10):
We believed a trickle up theory, meaning winning at the
local level will ultimately build the bench and allow us
to win up ticket. So wis read initiative was set
up specifically at the local level to win municipal school
(21:34):
boards and in some cases judicial races at the local
level here in Waukeshaw County. We got to work, scoured
the county, analyzed all of the different races, what was
in the majority, what was in the minority, what seats
were open, what Democrats or Liberals were in, what opportunities
we might have. We found that our county effectively was
(21:56):
about forty percent at the municipal and local level in
the hands of liberals. Probably nearly half of the school
boards and municipal boards were majority controlled by liberals in
the biggest red county in the state. And that was
effectively because we as a county party were following the
(22:17):
longtime mantra of the state party and the RNC saying
that we don't participate in non partisan elections. So we decided,
we're a new sheriff in town, We're going to participate
in these. We went after it, and we recruited effectively
one hundred and ten candidates. Ran in the spring with
those candidates, recruited them, vetted them, supported them, ran those candidates,
(22:40):
and then ended up winning one hundred out of one
hundred and ten races, and for the last two years
have followed on with that same pattern and winning a
total of three hundred and eighty six out of four
hundred and twenty races in this county and have taken
effectively all of the majorities back in the municipal and
school boards.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
And one of the primary things that helped in their
effort was something rather simple.
Speaker 11 (23:01):
One of the greatest things that we did.
Speaker 12 (23:03):
We put a voter guide together starting in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
That's Kathy Pape, the executive director of the Republican Party
of Waukeshak County.
Speaker 12 (23:10):
We sent it out by email and it went viral
and everybody said to us continually that they don't pay
attention if you don't have kids in school, to school boards,
and other things, but they would absolutely go out and
vote if they know who to vote for. So this
voter guide gave them that opportunity.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Kathy explained that the approach that they were taking was
best described by author Matthew Truella, who's been pitching an
idea to any Republicans who will listen, and that idea
is county before country.
Speaker 12 (23:43):
And he helps people see your power is in your
county government. And he used illustrations during COVID. There was
a county outside of Saint Louis on the Illinois side,
and when Governor Pritchker shut down the state during COVID,
the county came back and said, no, we're not shutting down.
And he came back and he said, well then you're
(24:03):
not going to get your money. And they came back
and said, we don't care, we're not shutting it down.
And then other counties saw what they were doing. They
chimed in did the same thing, and pritch kerk was
basically going, uncle, uncle, uncle, uncle, uncle. We're trying to
help everyone in this county. Sea that we read is
so important because this is where our power is in
(24:26):
the county system.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Again, Terry Dietrich.
Speaker 10 (24:30):
Interestingly enough, in the last year or so, the state
Party started talking local elections where they never had for
twenty years previous. So I think this trend will continue.
You saw what happened in Virginia and Governor DeSantis was
talking about winning two or three big school board elections
down in Florida. I had to laugh because we've won
three hundred and eighty two out of four hundred and twenty.
(24:51):
So we'd like to take this not only statewide, but
nationally because we think we have a formula that can
definitely win.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Parents are beginning to see that the best way for
them to make an impact is to think local, focus
on their immediate environment. They see that they can retake
the K to twelve schools through the school boards. But
it's not just parents that are taking action. Young adults
are finding new ways to impact the American institution of
education as well, including a young college student that has
(25:21):
been so successful that even the legacy media has set
their sights on it.
Speaker 5 (25:29):
Do you want to hear red Pilled America stories ad free?
Then become a backstage subscriber. Just log onto Redpilled America
dot com and click join in the top menu. Join
today and help us save America one story at a time.
Welcome back to red Pilled America. Daniel Schmidt does not
(25:49):
look like the threatening type. He's a brown haired, fair
skinned young man whose default face practically smiles. He gives
off a buttoned up, straight a student vibe that wouldn't
or couldn't ruffle anyone's feather. But as the saying goes,
don't judge a book by its cover, because this young
man has done more to impact the institution of education
(26:11):
than most adults three times his age.
Speaker 11 (26:13):
I almost have like an obligation to speak up, that's Daniel,
because if I don't, you know, these coastal elite people
are just going to keep running the show.
Speaker 5 (26:21):
Daniel was born in Los Angeles, California, but moved to
a small town in the middle of Tennessee when he
was around eight years old.
Speaker 11 (26:28):
And I want to say that was sort of my
transformative experience. I saw how like normal middle Americans live.
I saw how they thought. I saw, you know, they
went to church every Sunday. They cared about family and
tradition and the nation. And that was sort of what
led me to just see how normal Americans live.
Speaker 5 (26:47):
Daniel grew up in a single parent home with his mother.
He attended a run of the mill high school, nothing fancy,
but he put his nose down and got the kind
of grades and had the type of family income that
earned him a full ride scholarship.
Speaker 11 (26:59):
I applied the twenty schools. I got into quite a few,
but I ended up picking you Chicago, primarily because the
school is known for its protection of free speech. It's
known as sort of the free speech school.
Speaker 5 (27:11):
He chose economics as his course of study, and even
before he entered the University of Chicago in the twenty
twenty one to twenty two school year, he began pushing
the boundaries. As a Christian, Daniel got a religious exemption
from the campus vaccine mandate. It was something few students
were doing at the time. Then, in his first month
on campus, he took a stand on an issue that
(27:32):
most white guys try to avoid.
Speaker 11 (27:34):
My first month in college, I couldn't participate in a
debate tournament because I was white. They straight up told
me to my face, this tournament's only open to non
white people, and I legitimately couldn't believe it. I thought
at first it was like a praying but then I
looked around the room, and everyone was nodding, everyone was
agreeing with it, and I was the only one who
seemed to even have a problem with it. It was unreal.
And the funniest part about it was I come from
(27:56):
a single mother household, went to a pretty average public
high school, and then I get to the school and
these kids who went to like super top boarding schools,
are really rich. They're telling me I'm privileged because I'm white.
They're telling me I can't do it debate tournament because
I'm white. I can't believe it. You know, I'm going
to full right scholarship because I'm like low income.
Speaker 5 (28:22):
So he decided to expose the racist debate tournament.
Speaker 11 (28:25):
And then the next year the tournament didn't happen. I
don't know if it was completely because of me, but
I have to imagine there was some scrutiny and that
maybe the students were a little scared.
Speaker 5 (28:42):
It was only his first month of college and Daniel
was just getting started.
Speaker 11 (28:47):
I'm unvaccinated. I'm probably one of the only students on
my college who's unvaccinated.
Speaker 5 (28:51):
And when Daniel entered U Chicago in twenty twenty one,
the COVID protocols of mass testing and social distancing were
still in full swing.
Speaker 11 (28:59):
The school was constantly sending me emails. They were making
me tests every week. It was just a total mess.
And then I did this email one day saying we
have this new policy. Unvaccinated students can go to dining halls.
They're basically saying you have to eat in your room,
you can't eat with anybody else. Just total persecution. And
I looked into it. I found out that the policy
(29:21):
isn't even legal in the city of Chicago. If you
have an exemption, which I did. I had a religious exemption.
You're allowed to eat in places even if you're not vaccinated.
So my college was completely breaking the law. And I
was like, Okay, this is insane. So I pressed my administration.
I sent like twenty emails to all the various administrators.
I wrote in an article for the newspaper I was
(29:42):
writing for at the time, and a few days later
the policy was reversed. Quietly, they sent me an email
and they said, yeah, the policy doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 5 (29:50):
Just by being a squeaky wheel, he got the policy
thrown out. It was around this time that Daniel's questioning
the system landed him on the national news Prestigious universities
like U Chicago often invite profile people to speak on campus.
April twenty twenty two was one of those times. Elite
left wing media outfit The Atlantic hosted a conference on
(30:12):
the campus entitled Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy.
Speaker 11 (30:17):
You know, the sort of mainstream media has this big
battle against this information or calling anything they don't like disinformation.
So my school invited Barack Obama, they invited Brian Stelter
from CNN, and they invited this one woman called an Applebaum,
who's this Atlantic journalist, super uptight, super you know, just
total liberal basically, and she was speaking about, you know, oh,
(30:38):
we need to fight disinformation. The conservatives are spreading all
this stuff. And I was in the audience and I
didn't know I was going to ask her a question.
It was kind of just impromptu. At the end, they said, hey,
does anyone want ask a question? I rollse my hand,
I got the MinC. I was like, okay, thank you
for doing that. Was really appreciated. I'm Daniel Schmidt. I'm
a freshman at the University of Chicago. My question is
for miss Applebaum. And I quickly like looked into her,
(30:59):
and I saw she was totally going after concerntives for
talking about the Hunter Biden laptop story. She was like, oh,
this is Russian disinformation. If you believe in this, you're
a conspiracy theorist. And this was still when people were
unsure if it was real or not. Now it's confirmed,
And so I asked her. So in twenty twenty, you wrote,
those who live outside the Fox News bubble do not,
(31:20):
of course need to learn any of the stuff about
Hunter Biden, referring to his laptop of curse. A poll
later after that found that if voters knew about the
content of the laptop, sixteen percent of Joe Biden voters
would have acted differently. Now, of course, we know a
few weeks ago the New York Times confirmed that the
content is real. Do you think the media acted inappropriately
when they instantly dismissed Hunter Biden's laptop as Russian disinformation?
(31:43):
And what can we learn from that and ensuring that
what we label is disinformation is truly disinformation and not reality.
Speaker 5 (31:50):
And Applebaum responded, My problem with Hunter Biden's laptop is
I think totally irrelevant.
Speaker 13 (31:55):
I mean, it's not whether it's disinformation or I mean,
I didn't think the Hunter Biden's business rel relationships have
anything to do with who should be president of the
United States. So I didn't find I don't find it
to be interesting. I mean, that would be my problem
with that as a major news story.
Speaker 5 (32:13):
The hypocrisy was jarring. Here was a woman whose newspaper
was hosting a conference on disinformation. She was caught in
a profound moment of disinformation about the Hunter Biden laptop
story right before an election, and she basically stated that
Hunter Biden's laptop was unimportant.
Speaker 11 (32:47):
So I asked her that question, and then I posted
it to my Twitter and literally overnight it blew up.
I think got a million views. It was a big deal.
That was my sort of big viral moment. And again
at that moment, I realized, listen, I'm just a single
college kid. But if I can ask these powerful liberal
elites these questions, then I'm going to do it.
Speaker 5 (33:08):
And he did. Later in twenty twenty two, Daniel got
another opportunity when lame duck Congresswoman Liz Cheney came to
the University of Chicago. Miss Cheney was the Vice Chair
of the House January sixth Committee that looked a brand
former President Trump as an insurrectionist and forced the prosecution
of those involved in the January sixth events.
Speaker 11 (33:28):
When I found out she was coming, I kind of
knew right away I have to ask her about ray Epps.
Speaker 5 (33:33):
Ray Epps, of course, was famously caught on camera encouraging
people to enter the Capitol in Washington, d C. Around
January sixth, twenty twenty one, yet was never prosecuted like
so many others, for inciting a so called insurrection. Some
suggested ray Epps was working with the FBI. Liz Cheney
had long been calling the entire ray Epps issue a
conspiracy theory, so Daniel thought he'd question her on the subject.
Speaker 11 (33:57):
Thank you so much. My name is Daniel Schmidt. So
I've been following this January sixth committee really closely, and
I just wanted to ask you about some of the
facts here. So on June ninth, you cited the Department
of Justice and their prosecution of the Proud Boy some
of the members, and the Department of Justice said these
members directed, mobilized and led members of the crowd onto
the Capitol grounds and into the Capitol. So obviously that's
(34:18):
a crime. That's insurrection. And you know, I guess you
made the right call there. The fact of the matter
is we have another person on camera doing exactly that.
His name is Ray Epps, and it's not a conspiracy theory.
The New York Times shows him saying, quote, we need
to go into the capitol. I'm going to pick it
out there. I'm going to put it out there. I'm
probably gonna go to jail tomorrow. We need to go
into the capitol. That's not a conspiracy theorist. We have
(34:39):
an actual insurrectionist on tape, and yet he's escaped prosecution.
So let me just ask you right here, do you
demand the prosecution of Ray Epps. He's an actual insurrectionist
on tape.
Speaker 14 (34:49):
You know, let me let me let me answer the question,
because I think there's some confusion about confusion about the
role of Congress.
Speaker 11 (35:15):
And her answer was basically, oh no, that's a conspiracy theory.
Speaker 14 (35:18):
I think we all ought to be able to agree
on those basic things as Americans and set aside conspiracy theories.
Speaker 11 (35:24):
And she literally was like condescending me. She was like,
you know nothing about government. Kids, Sit down, And at
the very end, after I asked this question another student
who was next up in line. He apologized to her
for my culte behavior. Hi, Liz, I appreciate your.
Speaker 15 (35:44):
I appreciate your handling of and apologize for Daniel Schmidt's behavior.
He's the worst star campus house opera.
Speaker 11 (35:52):
And it's it's the most insane thing ever, because you know,
Liz Cheney is like the epitome of an establishment politician.
It's total Neo Cohn. You know, Dad is Dick Cheney.
And this student is like apologizing to her, and everyone's
booing at me. I mean, and you know, the question
is like, what happened to kids being rebellious? You know,
what happened to kids protesting in college campuses? You would
(36:13):
think people like this Channing would be booed out of existence,
and now the kids are bowing down. I mean, it's
the most insane dynamic ever. I couldn't believe my eyes.
Speaker 5 (36:22):
But it was in late twenty twenty two when he
took a stand against an upcoming U Chicago class that
put him in the crosshairs of the legacy media.
Speaker 11 (36:29):
It all started when I was looking for classes to
register and I found this one class and it was
called the problem of whiteness, and I mean it just
endsley stood out to me, like what is this class
saying that there's a problem with whiteness and whiteness as
white people and that therefore there's a solution. And then
I went into the course description and it's saying like
whiteness is a world making and raising problem. I mean,
(36:52):
it was just it was egregious. I don't know what
other word to use, and I don't know how anyone
could defend such a thing. So I saw this class
and I was like, listen, people need to know, like
this class is being taught out of such a an
I lead school. So I went on Twitter and I
made a little bit of a thread. I posted the
class title, I posted the course description. I posted a
picture of the woman teaching the class, because I mean,
people should know the face of this stuff.
Speaker 5 (37:14):
The professor's name was Rebecca Journey.
Speaker 11 (37:16):
And pretty quickly the thread blow up. I think it
got over a million impressions. And that's when this professor
went full speed against me. She was calling me a
cyber terrorist. She's saying I'm going to encourage an armed
school shooter. And then she filed two separate complaints to
get me expelled and I have to show appreciation of
my school. My school denied both of those.
Speaker 5 (37:37):
This all went down in November and December twenty twenty two.
But then seven months later, after the issue appeared to
be forgotten, the legacy media set their sights on Daniel.
Speaker 11 (37:47):
Schmidt, and then out of nowhere, The New York Times
dropped an article about me the basically attacking my school,
saying they should have done more about it, they should
have punished me. And then CNN dropped and articles calling
me a bully, saying I bully people into.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Silence, and this is what happens when you're over the target,
especially when a concerned citizen tries to break the monopoly
the radical left has on education. Right after Dave Illingworth
and his team took over the Woodland Park School Board,
teachers and a few vocal liberal parents and activists began
their attack on Dave and his colleagues. Again, Dave Illingworth,
(38:26):
some of these people Patrick.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
They called the Teller County Clerk the day after the
election and said we would like the recall petitions. We're
ready to start gathering signatures to recall these guys, and
they were told actually the law says, you have to
wait six months, can't start gathering signatures until they've been
off for six months. Well, they waited until six months,
and they went back that day and got the recall petitions.
Speaker 13 (38:48):
Recall efforts are underway in Woodland Park tonight after a
petition was just filed against two school board members.
Speaker 15 (38:55):
School Board Vice president David Illingworth and board director Suzanne
Patterson will face a recall vote in November if there
are enough valid signatures on both of those petitions.
Speaker 16 (39:07):
Well, the forses behind it are fairly easy to identify.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
That's Ken Witt, the school superintendent that was hired by
Dave Ellingworth and the rest of the Woodland Park school Board.
Speaker 16 (39:15):
And for the most part its organized union resistance to
change a common theme.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
The recall failed tonight too.
Speaker 16 (39:22):
Woodland Park school Board members are speaking out after months
of efforts to remove them from office failed.
Speaker 8 (39:28):
Election official say petitioners came up short to trigger recall
elections against Woodland Park school Board members David Illingworth and
Suzanne Patterson.
Speaker 15 (39:38):
Wooland Park's school board vice president David Illingworth says he
is pleased, calling the push to remove him a wasteful
effort by a group committed to a radical agenda.
Speaker 16 (39:49):
Not only did it fail, they didn't give enough signatures
to get there by a long shot. So this board
has twice won support from the community.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
Ken Witt and the school board began making reforms immediately,
bringing part of the school's curriculum back to America's first principles.
Speaker 16 (40:07):
We adopted the American birth Right Curriculum standard quite honestly,
within a few days of me joining the school district.
So that certainly underscored the board's commitment to return focus
to a quality academic focus and to lose some of
the divisive politics and perspectives that are going on in
public education.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
So that certainly met with some resistance.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
And so the American birth Right standards are about making
sure that every kid is getting a curriculum that is
always designed to give the full and complete history of
this country, with an understanding that people who are learning
history are students, should be valuing the American system, that
it's a good system. In the end, it's not a
(40:52):
perfect system, but it's probably the best that we've managed
to come up with so far in human history.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Historically, the national media have largely ignored this small town
that is until words spread that the new sheriff in
town began to change the curriculum.
Speaker 4 (41:08):
The district also became the first in the country to
implement a social studies program called American Birthright, developed by
conservative activists and rejected by educators around the country, including
Colorado's state Board of Education. It emphasizes patriotism and discourages
civic engagement.
Speaker 14 (41:25):
It's terrifying.
Speaker 4 (41:26):
When Sarah Lee, a Woodland Park teacher for almost two decades,
learn what was inside the new program, she started to panic.
Speaker 8 (41:34):
Anything that is not the way that the leader says
it should be is wrong and evil and should be destroyed.
And that's how I feel about that American Birthright curriculum.
Speaker 4 (41:42):
This November, three seats on the school board are up
for election. Parents like Matt Galowski worry about how much
could change between now and then.
Speaker 15 (41:50):
Wake up, don't don't rest, don't think that your district
is safe. I never saw this coming.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
They always seem to scream the loudest when you're over
the target, which leads us back to the question, what
(42:19):
can the folks do to help save America? Well, one
answer is take back the schools. Our educational system is
perhaps the most important cultural institution in America. Almost every
child is legally required to run this gauntlet for at
least thirteen years, and the overwhelming majority do so through
(42:41):
the public school system. This is something that the radical
left understood going back to at least the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 11 (42:47):
We must educate our people.
Speaker 7 (42:50):
In order to educate our people, it means that we
must take over the schools, nothing less, take them over
by any means necessary.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Education is what feeds our youth in their most formative
and vulnerable hearth years. So we must rid our system
of the poisonous ideology that the radicals are pumping into
our kids bloodstream by taking over the schools, and as
Woodland Park and wish Reds shown it can be done.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
Parents and teachers can take back their schools and make
sure that their kids are getting the education they deserve.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
They don't have to be.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Controlled and forced into the big darkness that's coming from
the power centers in DC and the special interests with
all their billions of dollars.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
So you can do it.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
And it's not just the K through twelve education system
that needs to be taken back. We must not abandon
higher education.
Speaker 11 (43:42):
These elite schools are still the best gateway to power.
You know, if we just abandon these institutions, the Left's
just going to dominate them, and that's just a way
for us to lose even more power. So I just
want to inspire other students to show Listen. I didn't
come from any fancy backgrounds, I don't have any fancy connections.
I just started calling out what I think is wrong,
defending what I think is true. I want to show
(44:03):
them listen, you can do this too, like it's possible.
Speaker 5 (44:06):
Red Pilled America is an iHeartRadio original podcast. It's owned
and produced by Patrick Carrelci and me Adrianna Cortez of
Informed Ventures. Now. You can get ad free access to
our entire archive of episodes by becoming a backstage subscriber.
To subscribe, visit Redpilled America dot com and click join
in the top menu. Thanks for listening.
Hosts And Creators
Adryana Cortez
Patrick Courrielche
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Betrayal Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. If you would like to share your story, you can reach out to the Betrayal Team by emailing them at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com