Hi there! Welcome to Easy A–Your go-to source for quick and easy actions you can take in five minutes or less about the issues you care about.
Are you a busy mom? Or maybe your work is so hectic you can’t think about anything else during the day? A lot of us are also taking care of parents or other loved ones too, leaving little time for anything else.
The good news is that these are things you can do while you’re waiting in the school pick up line, on your lunch break, or even at your kid’s soccer practice – anywhere you happen to be! And you can easily share Easy A with your friends so they can be in the know, too! We’ll send you a new action to take every week–just one, we promise –and it will always be something you can do in five minutes or less. Ready to get started? Let’s go!
Read This: More Hidden Figures in Black History
You may be familiar with the movie, “Hidden Figures,” based on Margot Lee Shetterly’s book of the same name. It told the true story of Black women mathematicians for NASA who were critical to the success of the U.S. space program, but who had been overlooked by history books.
Shetterly brought the names of Christine Darden, Barbara Holley, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, Kathryn Peddrew, Eunice Smith, Sue Wilder, and Dorothy Vaughan to popular culture, teaching many of us Black history that we never learned in school. But countless other figures have been hidden or overshadowed in history, so let’s shine a light on a few more!
Dr. Gladys West
Dr. Gladys West was also a mathematician. She was one of only four Black professionals working at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division in Virginia when she was hired in 1956. Dr. West conducted research on satellite orbits and modeling the surface of the Earth. The mathematical model she created paved the way for Global Positioning System (GPS) technology.
While her career with the U.S. Navy spanned 42 years and her contributions to the creation of GPS are widely agreed upon, Dr. West didn’t receive public recognition until after “Hidden Figures” was released in 2016. In 2018, the military honored her as a Space Pioneer, and the Virginia General Assembly passed a joint resolution commending her work. In 2021 she was the first woman to receive the Prince Philip Medal from Britain’s Royal Academy of Engineering. In 2023 she was honored by the U.S. Navy with the first Freedom of the Seas Exploration and Innovation Award.
Dr. West died on January 17, 2026 at 95 years old. You can think of her with gratitude the next time you plug an address into your GPS!
Claudette Colvin
In January, we also lost an often overshadowed figure of the civil rights movement. Claudette Colvin passed away at the age of 86. While most of us learned in school about Rosa Parks’ bravery, Claudette Colvin was arrested for displaying the same bravery in March 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks.
Fifteen year-old Claudette was riding home from school on a segregated bus in Montgomery, AL. While she was seated in the back of the bus, it filled and the driver ordered Black passengers to give up their seats for white riders. Claudette refused and was arrested. Months later in October, Mary Louise Smith was arrested for the same thing, followed by Rosa Parks in December. Rosa Parks’ arrest sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, so her name earned a rightful place in history, but Colvin and Smith were two of the four plaintiffs in the landmark case that ended racial segregation on Montgomery’s buses.
Colvin laid the groundwork for progress when she refused to give up her seat in 1955, and again in 2021 when she filed to have her record expunged, having never technically been cleared of her charges. She said it was important to show the next generation that “…progress is possible, and things do get better. It will inspire them to make the world better.”
The Bennett Belles
Many of us learned about strategic nonviolence and sit-ins as methods of protest during the Civil Rights Movement. While it was not the first, the sit-in led by the Greensboro Four at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, NC on February 1, 1960 gained national attention and is credited with launching a nationwide movement.
The Greensboro Four were male students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University – Ezell Blair, Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan), Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil and David Richmond, but have you ever learned about the women behind the movement? Female students like Linda Brown and Emma Washington from Bennett College played a huge role. In fact, hundreds of students known as the Bennett Belles helped plan and execute the Greensboro sit-ins.
These female students had been organizing since Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke at Bennett College in 1958. In the fall of 1959, NC A&T students joined NAACP student chapter meetings at Bennett College where the sit-ins were planned. 40% of Bennett College students participated in demonstrations between 1960 and 1963, and 250 of them were arrested during the months of the lunch counter sit-ins.
Perhaps the ultimate Bennett Belle was the college’s President, Dr. Willa Beatrice Player who first brought King to campus and who supported her students throughout the entire movement. She even brought them personal items and school assignments while they were in jail! The sit-ins eventually lead to the desegregation of the lunch counters in July 1960, and we have the Bennett Belles to thank for that!
During Black History Month, and all year long, it’s important to keep uncovering these hidden, unsung, and overshadowed heroes of the past so that we can all learn the full story of American history.
Listen to This: Decoding Parents’ Rights
Mainstream parents have had enough of the “parents’ rights” crowd telling them how to parent their children. We all want to be able to make parenting decisions that are right for our family. Listen to a short clip of our conversation with Red Wine & Blue founder, Katie Paris on The Suburban Women Problem podcast. Katie declares that we all have the freedom to parent our 21st century kids and we couldn’t agree more. Our kids need to be ready for the modern world.
If you want to hear more of our conversation with Katie Paris, you can listen to the full interview on The Suburban Women Problem podcast, season 3, episode 13 – Mainstream Parents are Calling BS with Chastain Buttigieg and Katie Paris. Also available anywhere you get your podcasts.
Read This: Decoding ‘Parents’ Rights’
Have you noticed everyone seems to be talking about “parents’ rights”? Lately, it’s been all over the news and even in our local chat groups. On the surface, it sounds like a good thing, right? I mean, we probably all agree that parents should have certain rights when it comes to parenting our kids. But don’t we already? What exactly are they talking about?
Here’s the thing. Extremists are using the term “parents’ rights” to confuse and mislead us. They want to control how ALL parents raise their kids and they want to pass laws to do it. According to them,there’s only one “right” way to raise kids, and it’s their way.
So what are these extremists really after? They are trying to destroy public education by taking out our trust in our public school teachers, administrators, and librarians. Public education is the great equalizer. Access to free public education is key to our democracy. But these folks don’t want every American kid to be prepared for living in the 21st century – they just want that for a select few.
Parents should be free to make their own parenting decisions – about their own kids. For example, if a parent doesn’t want their kid reading a certain book, they can make that decision and let the teacher know, and the teacher can give that student a different book. But that one parent shouldn’t get to decide whether all the other kids in that class can read that book. That is NOT their right as a parent. But that’s exactly what this very loud, but very tiny group is trying to do.
And even scarier, here are some other things they are trying to sneak in under the guise of the “parents’ rights” agenda:
- Tracking kids’ periods
- Requiring genital inspections for kids to participate in school sports
- Suing teachers who wear “I’m here” badges in support of LGBTQ+ students
- Banning books about the Holocaust, civil rights, climate change, and accurate American history, even books about historical figures like Anne Frank, Ruby Bridges, MLK Jr., or that contain LGBTQ+ characters.
- Erasing history of racism from textbooks
- Completely defunding public schools in a move to privatize education
None of these restrictions actually protect individual freedom. Instead, they’re about controlling what students and families believe, do, read, and learn. These bans and laws take away our rights and the rights of our kids.
It’s important to understand that his whole “parents’ rights” campaign isn’t even a real movement. It’s driven by national extremist groups with big outside funding. In many cases, the people yelling at school board meetings don’t even have kids in the school district. Even worse, they’ve become known for using harassment and intimidation to silence librarians, teachers, parents, students and community leaders. Moms for Liberty members have threatened people with gun violence, accused parents of child abuse and grooming, and even tried to have children removed from healthy family homes.
The chaos is causing real harm in our communities, and it’s getting expensive. One school district has racked up $1 million in PR and legal fees as a result of its discriminatory policies. Those are taxpayer dollars that could have gone to improving our public schools. And that’s really the whole point. The extremists causing this chaos are intentionally undermining our public schools, which eight in ten children in America rely on for their education.
Mainstream parents like you and me don’t want to be told how to raise our kids. Parenting is hard enough – we’re done letting extremists who want to ban books, censor school curriculums, whitewash history, and target families of transgender children control the conversation. We want the freedom to raise our kids and prepare them for the real world.
Take it One Step Further: Book Bans
Still feeling curious about book bans and want to learn more? Are you a bookworm who just loves reading books? We’ve got just the thing!
Join our Banned Book Club Every 6 weeks or so, we pick a new book to read, then we get together online, learn a little from a guest speaker, and then break up into small groups for the discussion questions. It’s a really wonderful way to make friends and stand up to book banners at the same time! We’d love to see you there.
Do This: Help Warn Your Friends about the Dangers of Book Bans
Did you know that one of the most effective things you can do is talk to your friends and family about issues affecting our communities? That’s because people trust their friends and family and are more open to learning from them than from strangers. For this week’s action, take a minute to share this post on social. We’ve made it super easy – just click!
Watch This: Author Jodi Picoult Talks about the Problem with Book Bans.
Some of our favorite authors are getting banned, and it’s usually for very questionable reasons. Check out our conversation with best selling author, Jodi Picoult as she shares how one parent had 20 of her books banned in one county.
If you want to hear more of our conversation with Jodi, listen to her full interview on our podcast, The Suburban Women Problem. You can also listen anywhere you get your podcasts.
Read This: What’s Up With All The Book Bans?
These days it might feel like everyone is talking about book bans, from the U.S. president to the PTA. That’s because these bans are happening all over our country, and affecting every community. Whether it’s a ban in a school, a bookstore, or a public library, these bans affect us all, so it’s important to learn about these book bans and why they are happening.
Ok, so what exactly are these book bans all about? Despite the fact that 80% of Americans oppose banning books, in the last few years extremists have become laser focused on trying to control what our kids can read. It’s not enough to just tell their child to not read a book – under the guise of “parents’ rights,” they want to stop all kids from reading certain books. And it’s not because these books are actually dangerous or harmful. It’s because they are written by or about people of color or the LGBTQ+ community or they discuss things extremists don’t want kids to learn about, like accurate American history, sexual education, mental health, even climate change!
Who is banning books? Are you ready for a really crazy statistic? It turns out that just 11 people are behind nearly all banned or challenged books in the US! In many cases, just one person can get dozens of books banned, simply by filing a complaint – even if they haven’t read the literature. They don’t even have to be a local parent or member of the community to do it. This is why the same books tend to get banned across several communities – well-funded, national groups posing as grassroots organizations are targeting these books.
How are our kids impacted by book bans? First, we want to make sure it’s clear these books are being banned and challenged under false pretenses. Age-appropriate books are being pulled from shelves every day for misleading reasons with really harmful consequences. Not having access to these books prevents kids from better understanding the world around them and better understanding themselves, making them less prepared for the real world. We are not helping our kids by banning teaching accurate American history, by erasing LGBTQ people from our schools, or by eliminating comprehensive sex education curriculum.
Want more info? Check out the map below from American Library Association or click here to see a map from Pen America of where books are being banned and why.