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Amanda Litman, the co-founder of Run For Something, announced this week that the group would pump $10 million into local school board races that are being hijacked by the conservative Moms for Liberty group.
Litman tells The New Abnormal co-host Danielle Moodie she is determined to see progressive voices on school boards, adding that there is a very short list of qualities that potential candidates need in order to be supported by her organization.
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“I’m not fucking around here. We’re gonna make sure that the school boards are good and that these people leading them are compassionate and empathetic and not Nazis and all of that is really important,” she says. “If you are not crazy and you wanna do this, your community probably needs you.”
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Litman said you don’t need to have a child in the school district to run for a school board, and that her organization does much of the heavy lifting involved in establishing a campaign.
“What Run For Something does is help you figure out how to go from person who cares, to person who runs, to person who leads. So we’ll help you figure out how to get on the ballot. We’ve got guides on how to do so in all 50 states. We will help you decide how to write a campaign plan, how to write a budget, how to identify your win number, how to get access to the voter file and what to do with the voter file once you have it. You can apply for our endorsement where our staff will work closely with you to make sure you have every possible resource you need,” she said.
Litman said despite the conservative push on school boards to ban books, and restrict education on issues like race, gender and sexuality, she is optimistic.
“I think the thing that gives me a lot of hope is that over the last seven years, 140,000 young people all across the country have raised their hands and said, I want to run for office,” she said. “If you control how kids are learning and the kinds of communities they’re learning in, you can control the kinds of grown-ups they grow up to be, the kind of citizens they grow up to be, and the kind of voters they grow up to be.”
Listen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.
