Our recent mailings in Connecticut have hit a nerve with the state’s largest teacher’s union, prompting Greenwich Education Association President Lil Perrone to warn her members about the dangers of the Freedom Foundation and its “trickery.”
Perrone sent out an email to members last month with images likening the Freedom Foundation to the Poltergeist and accusing its brochures a “switch & bait.” Riddled with the sort of spelling and grammatical errors we always love to see from those educating the next generation, Perrone’s message was a thinly veiled plea for Connecticut teachers to continue blindly paying dues to a union that delivers little in return.
According to the leaked email, Perrone declared, “They fear us because we will fight them and protect the rights they want to take away from you by eliminating union protections. We must be doing something right if we are on the radar of the Freedom Foundation, causing them to enact such desperate trickery and spread lies about our teacher-run union. There are those that wish to divide us and all that we have achieved together.”
She’s right about one thing – the GEA’s actions certainly have the union on our radar. As an affiliate of the National Education Association, Perone’s local has sent millions of dollars from Connecticut teachers’ paychecks to push LGBTQ ideology in schools. Earlier this year, in fact, GEA encouraged and celebrated Connecticut Attorney General William Tong’s signing an amicus brief promising to hide student gender transitions from their parents throughout the state.
The union also continues to promote pornographic books in school libraries, demand Critical Race Theory and other extreme social justice curriculums and champion biological boys playing in girls’ sports.
When it comes to bait and switch, you’d be hard pressed to find a better example than a union that collects millions of dollars in dues from its members and uses it to line the pockets of its leaders while subsidizing a whole range of failed leftist ideas that do nothing whatsoever to address the legitimate workplace concerns of the rank and file.
The great news is that many Connecticut teachers are smart enough to see which side is actually guilty of “trickery” and have used the very mailing Perrone is so exercised about to opt out and break free from GEA.