Dear Mr. Russell - You’re About to Catch These Hands

Part Two: Ten days in and I sent my first parent email to one of my kids teachers. By day twenty, I’m on the phone with the administrator.

Well, Mr. Russell is back on his bullshit.

I haven't even finished part two of my first Mr. Russell story, and I'm already slammed with another thing to deal with. Except this one's even worse.

And before you continue, if you haven’t already read it, I think it’s important to read the following so you know who Mr. “Good=God” Russell is.

School has been in session for twenty-one days now here in Texas and this morning, eleven days after the above email communications with Mr. Russell, I found myself on the phone with the school administrator’s secretary, Mrs. Trout.

Yesterday, when I picked up my two high school daughters from school, my oldest daughter, who’s a senior, said, “Mom, Mr. Russell…” I stopped her before she could finish. “Jesus Christopher Christ, what did he do now?” and stared at her already exhausted, before pulling out of the carpool line.

She went on to tell me, “Mr. Russell told us to imagine ourselves driving a car and we see a homeless person on the side of the road.”

I cut my eyes at her and carefully responded, “Ooh-kay?”

“Then he said, with his whole chest, ‘A liberal would just keep driving passed the homeless person because the government will take care of them. A conservative would stop the car, offer them food, water and a bring them somewhere they could sleep for the night.’”

Then she went on to say,

“He also told us that you can’t be on the right AND be a Nazi.”

I burst out laughing and exclaimed, “Mr. Russell is a fucking moron.”

We spent the rest of the car ride home talking about it. She laid out what she’d come to believe was true. “Hitler was right-wing, right? AND he was a Nazi?”

“Yes, Hitler was a right-wing fascist Nazi,” I said, validating her thinking as she continued.

“And you and Dad are liberals?”

I stopped at the light and looked at her. “Well, not exactly — we lean liberal, but we’re Independent Progressives, which means we don’t really belong to a party line. We follow a moral ideology. One that takes care of people no matter their gender, color, creed, or sexual orientation. We believe all people deserve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — not just fuckin’ white people, or straight people, or people who weren’t born in a body different from what their hearts and minds reflect. People are people and when we take care of each other, society thrives.

She paused a moment, looking out the window as the passing cars and trees blurred by, then pressed further. “Well… then… what’s a liberal?”

“Umm… I think it’s very similar to what your Dad and I stand for — people who stand up for personal freedoms, individual rights, equality, and social and political reform. But the word itself has been turned into a political weapon, and it always has been, as far as I can remember. I’ve learned that when people vote on identity instead of policy, it can hurt the thing that actually matters — the people. That’s why your Dad and I don’t want to be associated with the label. Because caring about people shouldn’t be weaponized. You just do it. Weaponizing political identity is also how that pedophile puke ended up sitting in the White House.”

We talked a bit more until we got home. I dropped her and her sister off, then headed to the elementary school to pick up their brother. On the drive over, I was burning with anger. How dare this guy. "You can't be right-wing and a Nazi"? What the actual fuck. I knew I had to make a phone call — an email wasn't going to cut it this time. I was pissed.

Not to mention, my daughter also told me he said, “I’ll probably get a nasty email from parents about this, but I don’t care,” while — she felt — he was staring directly at her when he said it.

So this morning, I spoke to the school administrator's secretary and told her everything my daughter relayed to me. She assured me she'd pass it along to the administrator and that I'd get a call within 24 hours. I plan to set up a parent-teacher meeting as soon as possible.

In the meantime, I told my daughter to start voice recording his lessons. She has a laptop with that capability, and Texas is a one-party consent state, so I told her to use it. If you don't know me by now, I like receipts. It's not that I don't believe my daughter — it's that receipts are always necessary when you're gearing up for a fight.

Twenty-one days in. Mr. Russell’s about to catch these hands soon…

Political identity can turn policy disagreements into existential conflicts and what Mr. Russell is indoctrinating into his classroom isn't just blatantly false — it's the kind of thing that's going to follow him out to his car in the parking lot after school some day.

Framing liberals as heartless, government-dependent jerks and conservatives as the good, caring, well-meaning opposition isn't just wrong — there are countless examples that prove otherwise — it's genuinely harmful, because his students are seniors who are about to vote for the first time, and they're going to walk into the world misinformed. This rhetoric is dangerous, because once voters start seeing the opposing political group as a threat to their identity, they prioritize defeating that group over evaluating any actual policy or quality in their own candidate. And this is how marginalized people get harmed. The fight becomes red vs. blue all over again, instead of addressing the real divide: rich vs. poor, empathy vs. apathy, power vs. accountability, transparency vs. opacity and solidarity vs. division-as-strategy.

If you're a parent in Texas, or a parent anywhere, don't let shit like this slide. Fight for your children's futures. Be the example — show them how to stand up for themselves. Otherwise, all we're doing is raising a generation of controllable assets for the rich.

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Thank you for being here. Seriously. You make this worth doing.

~Eevie