Hey fam, it's me, Amara. Welcome to the Translash podcast, a show where we tell trans

stories to save trans lives. Well, Election Day is next week, and on Election Day,

thousands of school board races across the country will be decided.

And as those of you who have listened to the latest season of the anti-trans hate machine,

yes, that's a shameless plug.

Anti-trans politics are being used to destroy public education from the inside out.

And that process is actually tearing up our democracy from the ground up.

All of it is just helping to make the authoritarian case for school privatization,

which is how they hope to accomplish their goals.

That's why today we want to share critical conversations with you from this series

that time didn't permit us to do in this season of the anti-trans hate machine.

We hope that they will shed critical light on what's going on and what can be done about it.

First, I talked with Eliza Byrd, co-founder of a group that pushed back against the right-wing attack on schools called Campaign for

our Shared Future. Eliza breaks down exactly how this assault is central to the conservative

project to reshape education as we know it. There is at their root a desire to eliminate

the idea that there is room for everyone in our society

and that our goal is to foster a healthy multiracial democracy.

Then I sit down with Becky Pringle, head of the National Education Association,

America's largest teachers union.

In that conversation, Becky talks about what can be done to preserve the institution of public schools.

Throughout history, it has been educators who have stood in the way of an authoritarian's march toward unfettered power.

Now, this will be a pretty serious episode, but as always, let's start out with some trans joy.

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