Mariya Calkins of Moms For Liberty joins Gene Valentino on the GrassRoots TruthCast in a nationwide effort to protect our children. Join Us!

Mariya Calkins of Moms For Liberty joins Gene Valentino on the GrassRoots TruthCast in a nationwide effort to protect our children. Join Us!

Gene Valentino: Hi friends, Gene Valentino here and welcome to another edition of the Grassroots Truth Gas. We’re here in my favorite spot, Gino’s Hangar in Perdido Key, Florida. This is I’m, I’m right in front of, and right behind me is my favorite toy, the Icon eight five.

And this is where we play and work and. Puff Cigars and pretend we’re important. I’m with a lovely friend who I’ve had the privilege of meeting over the last few months. Her name is Maria Calkins. Maria’s from our neighboring county Santa Rosa County, and she’s got a very interesting background. We’re here to talk about something that’s getting on the radar ever since the movie Sound of Freedom.

Ever since Dinesh Desouza’s, 2000 mules. We’re going through a transformative change where the average citizen is stepping up and stepping out to become advocates of protecting. Those we have are [00:01:00] living and dying for each other and our children. Maria Calkins, head of Moms for Liberty, is that right?

Santa Rosa County of Santa Rosa County. That’s right. And we’ll talk about not only Moms for Liberty in Santa Rosa County. But the entire organization nationwide when we returned right after this.

Narrator: With breaking news and political commentary from a public servant, serial entrepreneur, community leader, philanthropist, and American patriot, and a darn nice guy, it’s time for the Grassroots Truth cast and your host, gene Valentino.

Gene Valentino: Welcome back to the Grassroots Truth Casts. I’m here with Maria Calkins from Santa Rosa County. Her husband’s James, James Calkins who was a current county commissioner in Santa Rosa County, has the same job I had here in Escambia County. Is county commissioner. And it’s where we get a chance to stick our [00:02:00] ore in the water and do good for the community.

James is doing it in Santa Rosa. I did it here in Escambia County, and we’ll have to get James on too. That’s great. Welcome. Thank you for coming. Thank you for inviting me. I’m glad We met at the Republican Party event a few months ago in Santa Rosa County. We were introduced by another commissioner, Mike, Kohler, who’s our representative here in this area.

Mike gave me the privilege of meeting Maria. Folks, Maria’s a head of a group that really reaches out to protect our children and to help our children in this nation. Maria, welcome. Introduce yourself. Tell us where you’re, where you’re coming from and where you are now. And then I have a bunch of questions for you about Moms for Liberty.

Mariya Calkins: All right. Well, I’m Maria Calkins. I’m a chairwoman of Moms for Liberty, Santa Rosa County chapter. We started out chapter in March of March 30th. That’s when we officially started out chapters. So we still young, but ever since we started, we [00:03:00] already created a lot of Waves, I would say. And dealing with our local school district.

I don’t know if you wanna touch that now or you wanna ask me later?

Gene Valentino: Yeah. I’ll ask you in a few minutes. Mm-hmm. So are you a, are you a American citizen? Are you

Mariya Calkins: Russian? Yes. Yeah, I’m American citizen. I’m a Russian origin, but I’m proud to be American and I’m I became a US citizen in 2018 and even before I became US citizen, I was advocating for conservative Republican candidates to get elected so that we can keep our country strong and away from the.

This evil movement that we can see

Gene Valentino: now, so many people take for granted this notion of the melting pot of the world. America is truly the melting pot of the world. Mm-hmm. You’re a perfect example of that because sometimes those people who have been given citizenship over the years and have taken it for granted.

The melting pot is the [00:04:00] immigrant coming in from who knows where, that becomes an American citizen and becomes one of the finer contributors to this nation. Mm-hmm. We see people in the political world stepping up now. Vivek Ram Swami on the Republican Party, a young billionaire in his thirties, for God’s sake.

Coming in for as a presidential candidate. Nikki Haley, who served as ambassador to the United Nations under Donald Trump’s appointment. And I could go on, there’s several people, even in this panhandle of Florida, of Indian descent who are very big entrepreneurs and are proud of their citizenship.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so when I look at you, Maria, I think of that and I want you to know it means a lot to me, and I’m very grateful. Someone like you steps up to do what’s really. Necessary to protect this constitutional republic. That’s right. The democracy we live in. That’s exactly, so you’re the re a district head or a head of moms for Liberty in Santa Rosa [00:05:00] County.

Right. Let’s start with the national organization. Mm-hmm. Who are they and how it, how did it get started?

Mariya Calkins: Well, it started with two moms who were former school board members and a current school board member. Or the third Founder of the Moms Liberty team. They just started because it, it was during Covid crisis and when all this unfairness started happening and when parents realized that our parental rights are under attack.

And when the government or governmental entity tells your children have to wear certain you know, it’s not even protective, but something on their face which tremendously affected children and ’cause. There, there are a lot of signs behind it that it’s psychologically affecting children and it definitely did not benefit their health.

And those decisions were supposed to be made by parents, not by government. We, we’ve seen during C O I D, huge [00:06:00] government overreach and that’s what motivated mount to start. And then as nationwide. Nationwide. They started growing and it’s the fastest growing organization. They started in January of 2021, and right now we have chapters in 45 states.

And we continue growing because the. Main reason why we so rapidly grow because we are parents, we’re grandparents. It’s all about children, protecting children and the future of our country because that’s who will be holding our country in their hands without children. And what we see right now, the government overreach and all those different indoctrination tactics in our public education being targeting our children.

And In order to protect them, we start doing this grassroots campaign of parents getting together and getting organized. Because before [00:07:00] Mounts celebrity were formed, a lot of parents already raised awareness on what’s going on about inappropriate materials and school libraries. But there was always they was never heard.

There was always like some here and there, but now we organize movement of parents, mothers, dads for Liberty, grandparents for liberty. Alright, so

Gene Valentino: you’re in Santa Rosa County. County, Florida. How did you find out about It’s a national organization.

Mariya Calkins: Well my why is my two girls, you know, that they are getting to that school age and just hearing what’s going on nationwide, it’s a, it’s a big, huge problem.

And we can see how parents being almost targeted by F B I. As a domestic terrorist and hearing all that on the news, I was like, well, let me see how I can contribute to this movement. So I contacted one of our team members in South Florida and I said, what do you need me to do? How can I contribute to help grow the organization?

And they said, do you wanna start a [00:08:00] chapter in Santa Rosa County because we don’t have one. Good. And we need someone to take a leadership position in that Place. And I said, of course. So, so we started from there and since March we, we have been discovering almost week after week, day after day.

We’re discovering more and more and more very concerning things with our school district.

Gene Valentino: Is what you’re discovering unique to Santa Rosa County, or is it a pattern over. The Panhandle of Florida over the states in the southeast or nationwide. It’s a

Mariya Calkins: nationwide movement.

Gene Valentino: It’s a, and what is it you’re seeing that’s sticking out as an overreach?

You said?

Mariya Calkins: Well, first of all, I would say that it’s a nationwide movement targeting and it’s a bad evil movement. Targeting school districts and in the school districts as I’ll give ours as an example, there are [00:09:00] a lot of inappropriate indoctrinating materials. I will start with just to give you example school libraries filled with porno, pornographic materials.

Wow. Promoting Santa Rosa County. Santa Rosa County. Yes. And that’s, that’s what’s so ridiculous. It’s the Bible bill here. I know. And that’s what I’m always saying. We not work San Francisco, we here in Santa Rosa County. I’m not giving you examples of work San Francisco. I’m giving you examples of Santa Rosa County and what’s going on.

Here in this Bible world. Yeah. And we discovered so many pornographic books. Books promoting transgenderism available in elementary schools as MLA Elementary, Rhodes Elementary, that’s all. Little children. My daughter, she’s elementary school aged girl.

Gene Valentino: The children come from parents, some of whom could be teachers in this area.

The man or woman who’s a teacher in the school system in Santa Rosa. From the fabric of the community, how is it, are the teachers [00:10:00] responsible for allowing this to get through or has somehow a select few in the school board or a a, a senior committee of the teacher group responsible for the dissemination of this inappropriate material?

Mariya Calkins: I’ll say the responsibility lays in our officials, and most of all even by law, the school board is responsible for instructional materials and what’s available in school libraries. Certainly librarians, they make an order of school books. That they order with the teachers. But there are a lot of teachers that did not even know.

And we have prime example of Acabe County teacher, Ms. Vicki Bagget, who brought awareness about this bad pornographic materials available in schools and because of concerned citizens like her, who’s a teacher of 30 something years that that was Tremendous difference was made in Escambia County [00:11:00] with the public education.

As you know superintendent was changed. And I believe that there’s few school board races that already being proactively involving

Gene Valentino: conservatives to in Escambia County. In Escambia County. Yeah. Your points made, I mean, this is a good example of watching the citizens rise up. And take back their government.

You know, we sometimes in the constitutional Republican republic, in a democracy, a democracy can get kind of messy. Mm-hmm. Because you’re out working all day long, and when you come home at supper, you’re not thinking of sitting down and making decisions for the community. All that happened all day.

Mm-hmm. So you rely on a representative, you elect a representative. You hope he and she is doing, The moral, ethical, prudent things necessary to make this a better community. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Education is just one component. Mm-hmm. That’s true. And, and, and you’re focusing, it’s not just on education, it’s for the [00:12:00] welfare of the children.

So here they are in here, they’re with masks on, which have no scientific proof that it’s working. Mm-hmm. And then you, more important than the mask is the psychological destruction. I heard you say. Right of the child’s ability during the formidable years. Mm-hmm. Before what? 7, 8, 9, 10 years of age. Wearing the damn mask and losing that personal interaction skill.

Right. That’s so necessary in their development. Exactly. Are you seeing, are you witnessing children who have been injured psychologically?

Mariya Calkins: Well, I can tell even my, my own nephew who goes to, who’s a member of public school education, San Rosa County. Yeah. It hurt him tremendously. Like he couldn’t breathe.

It was always wet because they, you know, they wearing those masks that definitely not even the medical equipment, it’s just a piece of fabric. It always gets wet. You cannot breathe. [00:13:00] You constantly have he had dizziness from that and it, it, it was absolutely ridiculous.

Gene Valentino: And what is Santa Rosa’s position on that now?

Mariya Calkins: Well, right now there is a rumor going on that they will try to con continue something like at some sort. But that’s, again, that’s just a rumor. I’m not sure if that’s gonna happen, but I know Santa Rosa County was one of the last ones who stopped mask mandates, which they should have been the first ones.

Comparing with other counties that more leaning towards those mask mandates, liberal counties. And I’d say you mentioned about Constitutional Republic. That’s exactly what we expect our representatives to represent our community. We conservative Christian community here in Santa Rose County.

And we want them to represent us well to not enforce mask mandate. To remove pornographic materials as soon as they were aware about that. But instead, when we go into our school board members and [00:14:00] asking them, like we showed them book lists with the titles, authors with brief description, what’s in there, which is shocking.

Jean, any Saint adult will agree. It’s shocking. Wow. We show them locations of the school library where it’s located. All they needed to do is take it out and protect our children. But instead they referred us to a bureaucratic process of meeting with librarians or filing a lengthy forms for each book.

Even though this book’s located in multiple libraries, they have multiple copies. Through throughout the district and the law prescribes the school board members to be responsible, not the librarians, but the school board members. If they were aware about those books, they should be the ones who take them out and make that decision instead of referring us to librarians.

And the school policy is definitely not inconsistent with the law that governor DeSantis

Gene Valentino: signed recently. Signed, yeah. [00:15:00] In July 1st, you know, there’s an old saying A politician will tell you what you want to hear. Mm-hmm. A leader will tell you what you need to know. Mm-hmm. And these crises that seem to bubble up in every generation.

When I was younger in the late sixties, early seventies, the big hoopla at the time was the Vietnam War during coming out of the Nixon administration, and then it morphed into something else in the eighties and the nineties. But the point I’m making is the politician. We’ll have to show leadership to defend the rights of the people they got that hired them.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And it’s your job and mine to make sure that that person who’s representing you and me, nine to five, is a person that’s gonna protect the moral integrity and the ethics and the, and the character and quality of what we’ve entrusted to them. That’s right. [00:16:00] Our children when we’re not there.

Exactly. And I hope under moms for Liberty that you have a leverage and a, and a force strong enough. To take these people public if they technically didn’t break the law. Mm-hmm. They certainly didn’t protect the moral fabric of this community by allowing pornographic material to sit on the library shelf.

That’s right. If they look the other way on it, that’s a passive leader that’s looking for a paycheck. That’s a passive leader and a very proactive politician looking for a paycheck. Mm-hmm. And not someone that’s directly. Representing you and me. Mm-hmm. I think you agree, you and Jim agree like me, that all we could hope for is to give our children a community a way of life.

Mm-hmm. When we’re old and gray, that’s better than ours. That’s right. We wanna hand off to them

Mariya Calkins: something better as parents. That’s right. As parents will always [00:17:00] want our children to have better life than us.

Gene Valentino: Tell me about Moms for Liberty in Santa Rosa County. We’re gonna get one open here in Escambia County, I hope.

But tell me about one. So it says Moms for Liberty, but I, I guess the guys aren’t I think the guys can be members too. Oh

Mariya Calkins: yes, absolutely. And the grandparents. We have grandparents, we have dads for Liberty. We have and we need our man to step up with it. We are the mothers. We are certainly very passionate and we do need man to support us as well.

Well,

Gene Valentino: without being sexist or chauvinistic, I mean it that way. Right. I mean, it might be helpful to have a, have the husband or the boyfriend or the grandfather Yes. Step up with a sense of fortitude and kick someone in the butt, figuratively to change this policy. Absolutely. I’m more concerned about how the politicians and the elected leaders.

Allowed this to get past them. What did they do to cause this problem to surface the way it did? And you not know your, your organization is there reacting [00:18:00] to a shortcoming of the protection of our children. Mm-hmm. It shouldn’t exist. John Adams talked about protecting the, the freedom of our children through education.

Mm-hmm. So how do we, how do we, how can we allow this to get, get to where it is? I

Mariya Calkins: think it’s a lot of politicians, like you said, that’s just being ignorant. And the federal governments through their funding and grants putting their grip on our local school districts in our local school district representatives.

Instead of being watchdogs for that and what’s going on and protecting our children, they’re just being ignorant and just working for a paycheck instead of working for the people, you

Gene Valentino: know. Maria on some of my podcasts, I talk about the notion I. Of the political interests, diverting, deflecting, or distracting your attention.

I call it Genos three Ds. And what I mean by that is we take your attention off one issue [00:19:00] that we really want you not to pay attention to and put your issue attention on something else. Mm-hmm. For example, on the political side. Joe Biden with more indictment and more evidence in front, right under our noses, right than the Nixon’s Watergate affair.

And in the same sentence we see them spending the news headlines going after Trump. Now with a force, right fallacious indictment that is so ridiculous, but far down behind the scenes. Which our leaders should be focusing on as our children. Mm-hmm. And here, an organization an it’s a not-for-profit organization, right?

That’s right. Comes up out of the ashes and appears from nowhere to now have to do what our very leaders are not even spending time doing.

Mariya Calkins: Right. We are grassroots. Grassroots and our organization is actually supported by those leaders. And we had our national summit in Philadelphia just this past June.

We had Donald [00:20:00] Trump came to support us. Governor DeSantis came over and. I can say that those leaders, they recognize the effectiveness of grassroots organization and how much passion

Gene Valentino: we have. And don’t forget, and don’t forget Matt Gates, our state representative. I.

Mariya Calkins: Yeah. Well, Matt will be probably attending our local event of made by Santa Rosa County.

We’re probably gonna bring other chapters to join us. Good. But yes, Matt is strong supporter and definitely he, he is a freedom fighter who mentioned just like way back to about completely removing the grips of department of Education, the federal one. So, and I think that will be a great step.

We need leaders like that.

Gene Valentino: And this is what you meant when you said before about too much government overreach.

Mariya Calkins: Mm-hmm. That’s true. So it’s through those fundings and through those grants, there’s certain programs being attached with that, that the district should implement. And like for [00:21:00] instance, social emotional learning that is another word of.

C r t and they would say, we do not implement that here. Critical race theory. Mm-hmm. Critical race theory. And if you look in any kind of character development and life skills and emotional development and all that kind of wording that it’s a part of that same program. But, so this is the way you can detect like for instance, in Santa Rosa County schools, there’s different Question marks like Project Wisdom.

There is a project Wisdom being implemented in, I believe it’s East Milton School. But it’s also a question mark what exactly it is. It’s some affirmations through tv, radio, or some positive thinking, and we just want our education to be about education. Yeah, to be traditional education, math, science, reading, writing, and.

Not some question marks like what exactly Why do you teach our children [00:22:00] to think? Yeah. And, and what to think. And it, it’s kind of going into some psychological aspects that’s not supposed to be touched by teachers and educators. It, it’s something should be discussed at home with parents, and that’s what we’re talking about, parental rights.

We just to mention one of the. Mental health professionals was presenting us to us in one of our mom’s Berry summits in Sarasota. And she mentioned, if you give me your child for four months, then that child will be absolutely. I can make your child thinking absolutely different. That is absolutely possible.

Wow, this indoctrination is real. And you can see that through those kids that being thriving for transgender surgeries.

Gene Valentino: This George Soros socialistic. Marxism, I know better than you attitude. Hmm. That is part of a deep state culture that is trying to take [00:23:00] over your rights as a parent. Nevermind the rights of a child, but your rights of a parent, the child is part of a village.

It’s no longer your child, you know, is to me such, such a falsehood. It is. And the culture behind that. Me. Now, there was a period of time, and I’ll go back to the eighties when I kind of. Felt that the parents could be doing more in keeping an eye on their kids in school. It’s almost like I’ll dump the kid off on the school teacher.

There was an era where I thought that was prevalent. Mm-hmm. And that was wrong. The parents should be obviously taking responsibility for the children. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What Moms For Liberty does is says, Hey, we’re stepping up to take responsibility for our children. Right. And that’s, that’s the beauty.

It’s re the doors is swinging back and we’re beginning to realize that we should be doing more for our children, the rearing of our children, and giving up to our children, to teachers [00:24:00] or some indoctrination that you’re talking about. Mm-hmm. It should be a felony. It should be against the law. It should.

It should

Mariya Calkins: be. And there is current laws that in place in the state of Florida, like pornographic materials law. If anybody would spread pornographic books on the street to children, that will be a violation, third degree

Gene Valentino: felony. Well, thank thanks to Governor DeSantis

Mariya Calkins: accelerating that. Right, exactly.

But where the, the why they being so complacent? The educators and I mean school board members when we presented at why they being so complacent is because of the exemption of obscenity laws. So as presenting it as instructional materials for sex education. Which is completely it, it is wrong.

It needs to be changed. That legislation needs to be changed in that direction, even furthermore, and thanks to Governor DeSantis for already making a lot of change to happen. This is, that’s good to hear. Yes. This is really, really [00:25:00] good. And we are very fortunate here because some other chapters throughout the states they just not being as fortunate as we are, having our governor, having our

Gene Valentino: back.

That’s true. But people like you are stepping up to do what’s just as important to me at the grassroots level. You’re finding other Maria Calkins women and men out there to join the cause. Mm-hmm. Before we go to a break, you wanna put a plug in for. Moms for Liberty, like where to find you, where, how to reach you, and Oh

Mariya Calkins: yes, of course.

Yes. Well, we Moms for Liberty, Santa Rosa County chapter. We located off of Avalon Boulevard. We’re meeting every last Tuesday of the month at 6:00 PM and we hope to see you there.

Gene Valentino: We’re talking with Maria Calkins. Who’s the head of Moms for Liberty here in the Escambia Santa Rosa County area. We do need someone for the Escambia County area.

That’s true. You know, here in Escambia County, I’m, I’m listening to my buddies who work out with me in the morning. [00:26:00] One of ’em has a wife who’s a teacher in the Escambia County School system, and we find some documents that are coming from some radical left teachers talking about transgenderism questionnaire for the kids, asking the kids what they think about their interest in changing their sexual identity.

Their natural sexual birth identity po Posing these esoteric questions on children before eighth grade to me is is criminal. It is criminal, and you’re causing the child to think about other things and focus on issues under, unrelated to what you said, reading, writing, arithmetics.

Exactly. By the way, American history, Makes sense and learning the, the culture, which, what, which is what made us so great. Speaking of what made us so great, we’re in a free world where we get a chance to have conversations like this. We don’t have to be worried about Russian dictators blowing airplanes out of the air.

That’s true. Not yet. Anyway, so sorry. [00:27:00] That’s we’re, that is isn’t a castigation of your heritage, by the way. It’s a function of. Of bad leadership and that’s different from the beauty your culture brings. I’m talking to Maria Calkins. She’s from Santa Rosa County, moms for Liberty. We’ve got another 30 minutes of more to talk about.

I’m sure we’ve got more to cover right after this.

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Senator Rick Scott of Florida: Gene Valentino’s Grassroots podcast. He tells the truth. He tries to get information out there to make sure people make good informed decisions.

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Gene Valentino: Hi folks. Welcome back. You know, if I said to you I have a program I’d like you to get involved in, that’s involved in fighting for the survival.

Of America by unifying, educating and empowering the parents, the grandparents to defend their [00:28:00] parental rights and the children they love so dearly. Where would you go? Who would you call? She’s sitting next to me. Her name’s Marie Calkins. And Marie, thank you for coming back for the second half of the show.

Marie is the area leader of moms for Liberty. Is that right? That’s right. It’s a 5 0 1 C three not-for-profit organization. C 4 5 0 1, C four, excuse me. It’s a not-for-profit entity. And so we talked in, in the first half about the entity. Do you have a website?

Mariya Calkins: Yes, it’s moms for liberty.org/santa Rosa County Floor.

Fl

Gene Valentino: fl Moms for Liberty. Dot org slash Santa Rosa County.

Mariya Calkins: Well, the best way to find it, just go to mounts liberty.org and then go to find my chapter, and then you will be able to see us on the map, which is Santa Rosa County. Or you can just type in Santa Rosa County.

Gene Valentino: Good. But the real pitch is I wanna make sure [00:29:00] someone out there donates to the what greater, what what, what greater good could there be, and to be helping to support what our government officials are not doing in protecting our children.

When they’re not with us during the day. And Maria represents a group of men and women who have garnered their resources gathered together in their meetings to now vet the integrity of what’s going on in one case, in the school systems. And Maria, what one of the things you said to me earlier is that without using any names, let’s talk about some of the.

Issues you’re dealing with right now, some of the causes you find yourself in the middle of to have to protect, to fund, to fight.

Mariya Calkins: That’s right. And our organization, as you mentioned, is about empowering and educating parents. Mm-hmm. That’s why we are going to every school board meeting and presenting the information that we were able to find.

[00:30:00] And a lot of that information, the school board members, they would don’t wanna hear. Mm-hmm. And they not being proactive with removing pornographic materials from our school libraries. So there are a lot of concerned citizens that brought awareness from both counties from Escambia County as well.

And our school board members. Now they creating more intimidation tactics asking private citizens that would like to speak before the board about their residency, if they Santa Rosa County residents and if they have children in public school.

Gene Valentino: How does this evidence itself? Is it, is it a situation where you’re uncovering bad behavior of teachers, bad behavior of administrators, or are they in some sort of combined way just looking the other way as all this pornographic material gets on the shelves to a minor, how is it evidencing itself?

Mariya Calkins: Well, I, I think the most, the biggest challenge we face [00:31:00] is that our elected officials, the school board members and the superintendent, they just want to, like you said, look the other way, because they do not want to have this image that is damaging their reputation and what we want to. But it does. It does, yeah.

Yes. And they. For us, it’s not about their reputation or about confronting them or being confrontational, it’s about children. We want to protect children from protect their innocence. They have a right to be kids, and we want to, when we started, we, and even now, we still very diplomatic. We are just showing them everything we found.

We just want them to take action and be more proactive and passionate as Moms

Gene Valentino: Liberty are. And so talk more specifically now about some of the kinds of things you’re dealing with daily.

Mariya Calkins: Well, daily I would say we research, we do a lot of research and we do a lot of [00:32:00] recording of what we found and, and then spreading awareness.

That’s what we do on a daily basis. We growing our organization, we do a lot of marketing. We trying, because we’re still we’re still young. Mm-hmm. And we still need to keep growing, keep adding more members. That’s why I would love. To invite everybody over who would like to join the fight for the future of our country, for our children and their protection, we need more, more parents, more concerned citizens more those American loving people to join our fight because our country and our children are being under attack by this evil movement of

Gene Valentino: indoctrination website and phone number if, if any.

Mariya Calkins: Mom celebrity.org and Santa Rosa County fl.

Gene Valentino: With slash Okay, got it. Is there a a, a, a public number

Mariya Calkins: available? I can just give my number that is on the website basically. Well,

Gene Valentino: we’ll take it off the website. Just get ’em to the website though. [00:33:00] Santa

Mariya Calkins: Rosa. So that will be moms for liberty.org. Yep.

Slash Santa Rosa County. Fl fl.

Gene Valentino: Mm-hmm. Perfect. Mm-hmm. So what’s your next challenge? What’s before you now going forward?

Mariya Calkins: Well, going forward we, we continue growing our organization and going forward we would like to see some good conservative leaders to step in and run for office for school, board office.

We have two seed coming up in 2024, and we have superintendents race that is coming out. We’d like to see some change as we try to work with our representatives. We try to remind them about Constitutional Republic and the people they should be representing. But unfortunately, so far it’s been very disappointing to see the ignorance and lack of action

Gene Valentino: by the parents.

Mariya Calkins: By the representatives. By the

Gene Valentino: [00:34:00] representatives. Elected, elected representatives. That’s even more hurtful. That’s right. It would seem to me folks that if you have any, any In this cause, not to mention the future of your own children you ought to step up and look at this. You know, there’s an old saying, failure to defend the rights of other people may someday result in your rights not being defended.

So to me, it’s so important that every parent, grandparent, mother or father, join moms for liberty. Dot org and and try to see how you can participate. We need Watchmen, watch men and watch women looking at the behavior of our elected officials. It not only locally, we certainly need to do it nationwide and it’s occupied our time on the debates that the president stepped away from this last week here in, we’re recording the show in the month of.

August, 2023. And this is right on the heels of president Trump’s regrettable indictment. A fourth indictment [00:35:00] by a district attorney in Georgia. Mind you and, and on top of that, a lot of A lot of wrongdoing at the federal level, which takes our attention normally off this grassroots topic, which isn’t so important, and I’m glad you’re paying attention to it.

My concern is that we provide the necessary resources to moms for liberty, financially. And if you can’t come up with a dollar or two, how about a little bit of time? Join, join her team. Go to the website. If you’re not from the Escambia County Panhandle area, and you’re watching this in Poughkeepsie, New York, or Tucson, Arizona right now, get on moms for liberty.org and find a local chapter near your home.

If there is none, I think you can create one.

Mariya Calkins: You can, you can start, you can certainly be a founder of a chapter, and that’s what I did when I couldn’t find a chapter in Santa Rosa County.

Gene Valentino: Really, and it was because of your concern of what [00:36:00] your children might be indoctrinated with locally. And that’s

Mariya Calkins: exactly what Jane, you just mentioned about this big, huge injustice on the federal level.

Yeah. And a lot of people think, what can I do about it? It’s like I can’t do anything about it. Everybody can do something. And that’s what I did. I I, I contribute my time. I started this chapter, think of what you can do. It could be small thing, it, but it could matter. And you made your contribution for survival of America.

And we need to work together. We need to contribute our time, our resources, into this fight because it’s it’s much bigger than us and we need to continue be

Gene Valentino: strong. I don’t think I need to mention this. It’s kind of obvious, but I bet a dollar or two that you’re a volunteer and you’re not getting paid.

Mariya Calkins: No, we’re not getting paid. Yes, we have volunteering organization.

Gene Valentino: Grassroots. It’s grassroots. Good name for our show too. Grassroots Truth Gas. For just this reason, we’re [00:37:00] bringing out some of the issues that are at the grassroots level of this nation. Maria Calkins representing Moms for Liberty as just one.

Maria, we covered it. I think we covered it. Do you have any final thoughts you’d like to

Mariya Calkins: conclude on? I just want to end with yes, we don’t get paid, but our investment is long term. We will see the fruits of this investment in the future of our children, our grandchildren. So please think about that and save the country for our

Gene Valentino: children.

Hello. That’s so obvious. Isn’t everything we’re doing for our children, we’re trying to leave them a nation, a lifestyle, bigger and better than ours, right? The least we can do is help nurture that. I would hate to think when I’m, my time has come that I left my son, my daughter-in-law, and my grandchildren worse off than me.

I would. I get choked up just [00:38:00] thinking about that. I feel I failed if I didn’t do something to try to make their life better than mine. You have brought that to my attention today, and for that, I’m grateful. Maria Calkins, folks from Moms for Liberty, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having us, and thank you for joining us.

This is thank another edition of The Grassroots Truth Cast. I’m Gene Valentino. Take care of yourself.

Thanks for joining us for Gene Valentino’s Grassroots Truth cast. Be sure to like and subscribe and God bless America.