A Tennessee dad who has been fighting COVID-19 misinformation and trying to navigate his family through the health crisis decided to take the mic at a Tennessee school board meeting to say his piece.
Justin Kanew spoke at the Williamson County Board of Education meeting on August 16. As the dad of a 5-year-old starting kindergarten, he had a lot of thoughts about some of the subjects that came up during the evening's meeting and decided to speak out.
Justin was surprised to learn his no-nonsense speech went viral. Tennessee, one of the states currently being hit hardest by COVID-19 and the delta variant, seems more divided on the issues at hand than ever before, but Justin's arguments left a lot of people thinking.
Justin started his speech by acknowledging that he didn't plan on speaking and just jotted some notes on his phone as he listened to the meeting unfold. He began by addressing one of the night's subjects, critical race theory.
"Critical race theory is not in our schools and it never was," he leveled.
"The people who are here to complain about it did not know what it was 6 months ago and had never heard of it."
"That's why they're going after diversity, equity, and inclusion instead and trying to pretend they're the same thing. They aren't," Justin continued.
"And frankly there aren't many communities around the globe who need DEI more than this one we live in."
Justin then moved on to the controversy around mask wearing in their area, sharing the story of his daughter's first day of school.
"My daughter is a kindergartener and her first day was right after the chaos last week," he said.
"She went to school and was one of just a few kids in her class wearing a mask, which made her ask why she had to. My answer was because we want to take care of other people."
"She's 5 years old but she understood that concept, and it's disappointing that more adults around here can't seem to grasp it," Justin said before exploring the recent explosion of religious exemptions to mask wearing that happened in the area.
"I asked a pastor friend of mine and he was very clear that there was no actual biblical justification for using the Bible to get out of a mask mandate passed by a majority of this elected board," he said.
"But thousands are doing it anyway, calling it a religious exemption, which is frankly just sad," Justin asserted.
"Avoiding masks is not in the Bible, but taking care of others is."
Kanew then touched on Governor Bill Lee's decision to allow parents to opt out of mask mandates for their kids. Kanew, who previously ran for Congress, had some strong feelings.
"Now today we have Governor Lee's executive order to allow opt-outs, which is government overreach undercutting a local decision," he said.
"If you only like democracy when it goes your way, you don't actually like democracy."
