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!
Watch This: Why We’re Going Local in 2025
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the chaotic, 24-hour national news cycle and our emotionally charged social media feeds. Everything can feel so big; so distant; so daunting. So isn’t it comforting to know that the best way out of the chaos is to keep our focus close to home?
Last week we gave you five reasons why we “go local.” This week, take one minute to listen to our favorite historian, Heather Cox Richardson, as she explains why focusing on the 52,000+ local races on our ballots this November is the best way to change the direction of our country right now.
Heather shared this wisdom and historical context with us during our recent event, Our Best Chance to Save Democracy. We don’t have to wait until 2028, or even 2026. We can make a difference this year in local elections. Starting in our own communities, we can begin to regain control over the chaos. Next week, we’ll take another easy action together to get started.
Read This: Preventing Gun Violence
Our hearts are breaking with the families of Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia today as they grieve in the aftermath of a tragic mass shooting. Every day, more than 120 Americans are killed with guns and more than 200 are shot and wounded.1 Yesterday, at least four of those killed and nine of those injured were at Apalachee High School. We can’t stop thinking about them.
Guns are the leading cause of death for American children and teens.2 It’s a shocking statistic and a uniquely American problem. How much of this can our hearts take? Most of us agree, we can’t let this stand.
The term “gun violence” quickly brings to mind the horrors of mass shootings in our communities and schools like Apalachee, but it also includes other violent crime, domestic violence, suicide, and unintentional shootings. Gun violence can impact any of us anywhere at any time.
That’s why the majority of Americans, regardless of political party or whether they own a gun or not, support policies that help reduce gun violence.3 We all want to keep our families and our communities safe.
To do so, we need a wide range of solutions to tackle every cause of gun violence. To that end, the Biden-Harris administration has invested $30 billion in gun violence prevention efforts and have already:
- Passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA), the most significant gun violence prevention legislation in 30 years.
- Signed dozens of executive orders that address both the supply of guns and the behavioral causes of gun violence.
- Created the first ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention (OGVP), overseen by Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Suburban Women Problem podcast recently spoke with the OGVP’s director, Stefanie Feldman, and deputy director, Greg Jackson, who told us just some of the things these historic efforts are accomplishing so far:
- Promoting and incentivizing secure gun storage. Secure storage is vital to protecting our families because:
- 30 million children live in homes with firearms in the U.S. – nearly 5 million of those in homes where guns are loaded and unlocked.4
- 76% of school shootings are committed with guns from the shooter’s home.5
- 80% of youth suicides by gun are committed using guns from the home.5
- 76% of unintentional shootings of children are committed using unsecured guns found in homes.5
- Providing resources and funding to schools for youth mental health initiatives through the Stop School Violence Act, the American Rescue Plan and the BSCA.
- Expanding the federal definition of who is a gun dealer. Now, previously unlicensed private sellers (online and at gun shows) have to get licensed like traditional gun stores and conduct background checks on gun buyers. This is the largest expansion of the background check system in 30 years and is keeping guns out of the hands of youth, felons, domestic abusers, and other people who may be a risk to themselves or others.
- Creating the Safer States Agenda for state legislatures which outlines 15 different measures individual states can take to reduce gun violence — measures like Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPO), also known as “red flag” laws — and providing model legislation for states to use.
This is only the beginning of the bipartisan, common sense work that can be done to reduce gun violence. We obviously need more solutions to help make our kids, families, and communities safer. We owe it to the victims and survivors of yesterday’s horrific mass shooting at Apalachee High School to keep this momentum going to prevent future tragedies.
- Gun Violence in America, Everytown, May 7, 2024.
- Firearms are the leading cause of death for American children and teens, Everytown, May 7, 2024.
- National Survey of Gun Policy, 2023 Results, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for Gun Violence Solutions, July 21, 2023.
- Unintentional Firearm Injury Deaths Among Children and Adolescents Aged 0–17 Years — National Violent Death Reporting System, United States, 2003–2021, CDC, December 15, 2023.
- White House Announces New Actions to Promote Safe Storage of Firearms, whitehouse.gov, January 25,2024.
Do This: Momonomics
It’s no surprise to us that, according to a July 2024 KFF survey, half of women voters “worry a lot” about being able to afford food and groceries.
That means many women you know have this issue on their mind — and it’s likely to be a factor when they decide who they are voting for in this election. So now that you know some Momonomics, your friends need to hear from you!
Remember that video we watched last week? We’ve made it — and other Momonomics content — super easy to share with your friends and family right now. Just select the post you want to share from below, and which social media platform you want to use, then follow the prompts to share with your network in just a few clicks!
And remember, Momonomics is for everyone. You can bust myths and counter disinformation by spreading the facts about the economy with everyone you know! Easy, right?
Watch This: Momonomics
In the past few weeks, Senator Elizabeth Warren joined us to discuss the economic threat of Project 2025, and financial advisor Shereen Boyer joined us for an “Ask Me Anything” event about the economy. More than 12,000 of you showed up for these two events! Wow.
We know how beloved these esteemed guests are, but this level of energy and attendance also proves something else we know — the economy is top of mind for suburban women.
We got rave reviews from both events because Shereen and Sen. Warren shared helpful, factual information about the current state of our economy in easy to understand ways. They also talked about what policy makers can do to improve the financial conditions of average Americans.
For example, watch this one-minute video of Shereen Boyer explaining why we are still seeing high prices for everyday goods like groceries, and how government policies could help us address the issue.
This is what Momonomics is all about! Giving you all the information you need to confidently talk about the economy with your friends and family.
If you’d like to dig in deeper to this week’s Easy A, you can find the full recordings of both recent events in our Momonomics playlist on our YouTube channel. Next week, we’ll help you share this important information with everyone you know!
Read This: Momonomics
We hear it from our community members all the time. Whether it’s an election year or not, the economy is top of mind for suburban women.
Of course it is! In many households, it’s the women who are making the day-to-day financial decisions. We’re doing the weekly shopping and all the budgeting and planning that comes with it. We’re keeping track of who needs what and when. From groceries to back-to-school shopping to veterinary visits to unexpected car or home repairs to knowing when there’s a little left to treat ourselves — no one manages money like modern suburban women.
But we also have questions. We hear the economy is doing well, so why are everyday goods and services still so expensive? Why is it so hard to find affordable housing? When will we ever pay off these student loans? What even is inflation?!
That’s why Red Wine and Blue launched Momonomics! Mononomics is our movement of mainstream suburban women who want the facts on the economy, not some partisan talking points.
You don’t have to be a mom to love Momonomics. Some of us are moms to kids, some of us are moms to dogs, some of us are moms to our communities, some of us are “childless cat ladies,” and many of us don’t consider ourselves moms at all. This campaign is for EVERYONE who believes our government should work for all families — no matter what they look like.
We’re providing tools and shareable content to help women confidently talk about things like inflation, childcare costs, rising housing costs, student loan debt, medical expenses, caring for our aging parents, and more.
For example, check out this carousel where we’re providing FACTS to counter some common economic myths that frequently circulate online. You can bookmark our Momonomics webpage for more content like this in the future, and stay tuned for next week’s Easy A to learn more!
Do This: PragerU: Coming To A School Near You
Now that you know about the extreme-right ideology being taught in public schools using PragerU materials, you’re probably wondering what you can do to stop it.
Whether you’re in one of the four states that approved PragerU (Florida, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oklahoma) or you’re trying to keep your state from becoming the next one on that list, the good news is, there are things you can do. Communities are pushing back on this kind of extremism in schools, and they’re winning!
For example, last year in the Pennridge School District in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a local group called the RIDGE Network successfully activated community members to defeat extremism. Laura Foster, co-founder of RIDGE Network explained how they did it on our Cost Of Extremism podcast episode about PragerU (season 2, episode 3).
Extremists held a majority of seats on the Pennridge School Board, and they secretly arranged to contract with Vermillion Education — a group similar to PragerU — for curriculum. Under the extremist majority, students were subjected to whitewashed history and other inaccurate lessons. But after the RIDGE Network and other community members organized and turned out voters in the 2023 elections, five open seats on the Pennridge School Board were won by common-sense candidates who oppose extremism, and the contract with Vermillion was canceled.
Here’s what Laura and other experts recommend you do to effectively fight extremism in schools:
- Regularly talk with teachers and school administrators. This is how you learn what is going on at school, and how you let them know you’ve got their back.
- Volunteer in your local school(s).
- Go to school board meetings.
- Have conversations with people in your community about your schools. Many of us are busy and just assume everything is okay unless we hear otherwise, so let people know what is going on.
- Get parents involved. Ask everyone you know who cares about your schools to join you in supporting them.
- Be the biggest cheerleader for schools in your community. Promote school activities and showcase the hard work educators are doing everyday to help children become well-educated, better citizens.
Download our Parent Playbook for even more ways to keep extremist BS out of your local schools.
With these actions and our Playbook in hand, you’ll be ready to defeat extremism — like that of PragerU — if it ever shows up in your local schools!
Watch This: PragerU: Coming To A School Near You
Last week, we shared some examples of PragerU videos that are being shown to children in public school classrooms in the U.S. They may have seemed too extreme to believe, so this week, we want you to see for yourself!
Watch this video where Jo from Red Wine and Blue pokes a little fun at some clips from PragerU videos, but seriously explains the threat they pose to our kids’ education.
Next week, we’ll talk about how to keep PragerU (and other extreme companies like them) from becoming part of the curriculum in your local schools.
Read This: PragerU: Coming To A School Near You
Picture this: a classroom full of third graders settles down to watch a colorful, animated video together. A cartoon Frederick Douglass — the abolitionist, writer, and orator who escaped slavery — confidently explains that while he isn’t “okay with slavery, … the founding fathers made a compromise to achieve something great.” Down the hall in a sixth grade classroom, a man in another video explains that “one of the most beautiful things God has created is a woman’s smile.”
Sounds too unlikely to be true? Think again! These are real videos created by PragerU, and they have been approved for use in public schools in at least four states (Florida, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oklahoma). And because they are free and publicly available, they are likely being used in countless other educational settings.
So what is PragerU? Well, it’s certainly not a university or accredited academic institution of any kind! PragerU is a conservative media company whose goal is to spread right-wing ideology to our kids through “edutainment” — videos and handouts created to appeal to children. Educators, news organizations, and historians have repeatedly found that their content includes inaccurate and false narratives on history and climate change, and politically biased rhetoric.
In their own words, PragerU was “created to inoculate children against the ‘woke’ and anti-American leftist narrative taught in most schools.” One of PragerU’s founders, Dennis Prager, has said he doesn’t understand what the problem is with his organization wanting to “indoctrinate” kids. The Southern Poverty Law Center says PragerU’s content is a dog whistle for the extreme right.
How do they get away with this in our public schools? For starters, they are extremely well funded. They get hundreds of millions of dollars from conservative donors, in addition to tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue from product sales. They are associated with big names in far-right politics like Elon Musk and Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk, who we’ve talked about in previous Easy A blogs (“Read This”, “Watch This”, and “Do This”).
While it might be tempting to brush this off, trusting that most reasonable educators would never let this sort of propaganda enter their curriculum, the scary truth is that many students are being taught this content. That’s because they’ve been approved in school systems where extremists have been elected to serve on school boards and as superintendents, like in Florida and Oklahoma. In their 2023 bi-annual report, PragerU says that their materials have been viewed eight billion times.
It’s dangerous for our students to be exposed to the factually inaccurate content that PragerU is serving. It’s especially dangerous when it’s taught in classrooms that aren’t diverse and where there aren’t other viewpoints from students or teachers to challenge PragerU’s narrative. But that’s exactly what PragerU wants. They want to keep our students from learning about diverse backgrounds and viewpoints because they want to keep us from moving forward as an inclusive, multiracial, multicultural democracy.
Every kid has the right to learn about themselves and others in school, and receive an accurate and honest education. Over the next few weeks, we’ll learn more about PragerU and how you can keep their content from being used in your local schools.
Do This: Turning Point USA: The Alt-Right Radicalization of Young Men
Now that we know how dangerous the far-right extremist group Turning Point USA and its founder Charlie Kirk are, it’s time to do something about it. Turning Point USA specifically recruits high school and college-aged people, so we need to be talking to them!
In our Cost of Extremism podcast episode on Turning Point USA, we spoke with college students Francesca Martin and Jacob Marson of Keep Arizona Blue Student Coalition. They told us that no matter how well-funded Turning Point USA is (which makes them successful in reaching young voters), their values do not align with most young people.
Our values — protecting reproductive rights, supporting public education, reducing gun violence, protecting the environment, and valuing diversity and inclusion in our communities — are more appealing! We want to safeguard their rights and provide for their future. We’re leading with our hearts, not hate. We’re just trying to be, and raise, good people who care about our communities. That’s a far more appealing message than Turning Point’s bullying, angry, hateful, and violent rhetoric, so we have to make sure young people hear from us too.
Our Rally Together program is specifically designed to help you identify people in your life who you can talk to about these important issues, and how to do it. Rally Together has proven to be the most effective way to educate and turnout voters, and turning out young voters this election will be crucial to our success.b>So that’s your Easy A this week — join Rally and get started talking to young people in your life about the dangers of Turning Point USA today!
If you’re in Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, or Virginia, start here!
If you’re in any other state, start here!
Watch This: Turning Point USA: The Alt-Right Radicalization of Young Men
We don’t know about you, but we’ve returned from our Fourth of July holiday more committed than ever to protecting our democracy against extremism. So let’s get back to learning about Turning Point USA!
We recently read how Turning Point USA’s founder, Charlie Kirk, is trying to normalize his brand of extremism and make it seem “cool” to young men. Now let’s watch award-winning journalist and author Kyle Spencer explain how Kirk does this, and how, like Donald Trump, he presents anger and rage as acceptable responses to democratic progress being made in our country.
You can see in the clip that Kirk tells his audience directly that “well-armed and disruptive men are the hope, not the problem.” It’s plain to see just how dangerous he and his extremist organization are, and they have the attention of more than 10 million of our young people online!
So what can we do about it? Watch for next week’s Easy A action and we’ll take on this problem together!
How to Confront the Affordability Crisis: Use the Ballot to Raise Wages
The US restaurant industry is on the cusp of historic change. After years of organizing and building power to raise wages and end subminimum tip-based wages, restaurant and service workers and “high road” restaurant owners in many states still work in an industry that offers a minimum wage of $2.13 an hour—a direct legacy of slavery. But since the COVID-19 pandemic, over one million workers have left the industry, resulting in thousands of restaurants raising wages to recruit staff.
In Ohio, advocates have filed a petition to raise the state minimum wage to $15 an hour and end subminimum wages for tipped workers, workers with disabilities, and youth. Tipped workers in Ohio currently earn $5.05. Nearly a million Ohio workers would receive a raise through this ballot measure.
The partners include a range of organizations, including SEIU District 1199, the Ohio Education Association, Ohio Organizing Collaborative, Red Wine and Blue, Ohio Voice, Policy Matters Ohio, and Ohio Working Families Party, as well as One Fair Wage.
Read the complete article at: Non-Profit Quarterly