Governor Gavin Newsom. (Photo: Kevin Sanders for California Globe)
Dear Gov. Newsom: Globe Reader Writes Op Ed on Behalf of his Suffering Kids
‘These formerly bright happy children were ingested into a hell of Zoom, loneliness and apathy’
By Katy Grimes, August 13, 2021 3:09 pm
A California Globe reader shared this powerful op ed/letter, outlining what Gov. Gavin Newsom has done to his family through the statewide school lockdowns. The reader is known to the Globe but asked for anonymity for his children’s sake. He is a husband and a father of four.
“I watched network news last night and they’re weaponizing my son. My son was sitting there crying with me … Want to come after me? Come after me, not my kids.”
These are the words of California Governor Gavin Newsom July 28, 2021 on CBS News, following the exposé of his son’s no-mask summer basketball camp.
Here is the reality, Governor Newsom: nobody is weaponizing your kids. People are questioning YOUR decisions, not your child’s. Nobody faults your son, nobody is blaming him for anything.
We’re blaming YOU.
YOU chose to send him to a camp where the staff and children were running around maskless. YOU received the email where it clearly states that the camp will not be enforcing mask policy. And yet you sent him all the while demanding our kids remain masked up at home for the last 16 months.
I don’t know which is worse – sending your offspring to a maskless camp in the first place, while clamping down again on the rest of us, or pulling him out so he can come home and cry with you while watching the news. Nice parenting. No long terms effects, I’m sure, nothing to see here, move along.
Who’s been weaponizing kids, Governor Newsom?
Among others, it has clearly been you and the Teacher’s Unions (who so surprisingly just dumped $2m into your campaign to not get recalled). While you’ve been visiting the French Laundry and letting your child run around maskless at camp, you have kept my children out of school since March 2020.
My son worked hard through high school and excelled at athletics to get into college. Then he persevered and met the requirements for graduation. But he did not get to have a college graduation, and will NEVER have a college graduation, and he will never get that back.
My daughter was abruptly shoved out of her college Freshman year – and a year and a half later has never been allowed to set foot on the campus again. This despite the fact that the college has huge lawns where distanced classes could have easily been held, not to mention the fact that people in her age group are at extremely low risk of severe outcomes from COVID.
Do you remember your sophomore year in college? Many people do, and many people remember it as one of the happiest times in their lives – intellectual rigor, new lifelong friends, freedoms they’d never dreamed of, not yet the pressure of making a living.
My daughter will never have those memories. Instead she spent half her freshman year and her entire sophomore year staring at a Zoom screen at her parents’ house. (For full tuition, by the way.)
Good times. This fall she will (hopefully) head back to campus, to hang out with people she didn’t really have time to get to know, with the realization that now as a junior the pressures of the real world are closer than ever. And I’m sure you’ll recommend that she wear a mask so she can never truly see the faces of her friends and professors.
Who’s weaponizing our kids?
There are many worse stories to tell. My college-aged son and daughter adapted and have handled things as best they can, and they’re going to be okay. I am very proud of them.
But I also have two teen girls, freshman in high school when things went to hell. They were just coming into their own, finding their friend groups, figuring out who they were. Yet adolescence is a tricky time, as we all know… Hey – why not lock them down for over a year and see what happens? Sounds like a plan.
Well I can tell you what happened. They plummeted. Fell off a cliff. Disappeared into a morass. Swallowed up by a California haze.
These formerly bright happy children were ingested into a hell of Zoom, loneliness and apathy. Grades dropped like rocks thrown off the Golden Gate Bridge, assignments were posted on myriad different complicated websites, classes were droning computer slogs where nothing of import was taught — save for the non-stop CRT teachings which seemed to be happening whenever I walked through the room, regardless of whether the subject was physics or 18th century literature.
Who weaponized children, Governor Newsom?
You could say, “well, you’re just a bad parent, you should have done so-and-so.” But I can tell you, I’m a damn good parent, and my wife and I tried everything. Take them outside, make them exercise, go over each and every assignment with them (give it a try for fun and see what a cyber hellhole that is), get them therapy (oh great, another freaking Zoom chat because nobody will see them in person), give them iron, blah blah blah.
No, the truth is, there was no way to keep things normal, when everything was so far from normal.
There were some children who flourished under these conditions, I acknowledge that. But I know of countless stories of children like mine who spent the last year disconsolate on a couch, lonely and sad, unenthused and with little hope. I feel the untold and lasting story of this pandemic will be the lost generation of children who will spend years recovering from this calamity.
Who weaponized children, Governor Newsom?
And now you and the teacher’s union and the Biden Administration are all insisting on masks, and even hinting that in-person school might not now happen at all, even while you’re consistently flouting your own rules. You got to send your kids back to school in October 2020. Must have been nice.
I doubt that anybody faults your children or holds them to blame for anything about this.
But the question remains, who weaponized children?
You did. You politicized MY children. And harmed them.
Recall Gavin Newsom.
“What Gavin Newsom has done to our kids is cruel,” his wife told the Globe. “And I’m hardly the only mom saying it.”
There are more than 6.2 million students attending public schools in California, and another 675,000 who attend public charter schools. The University of California system includes more than 280,000 students, the California State University system includes more than 485,550 students, and the California Community College system includes more than 2.1 million students – that’s nearly 10 million publicly educated students in California impacted by Gov. Newsom’s school lockdowns and Zoom learning.
One hell of a letter. September 14 is a month away. http://www.recallgavin2020.com
Thanks for posting, John. I got an email from the Recall people today —- they could use some funds for advertising. Those who can spare it, please donate for the final stretch. Go to the link John posted above.
Donate folks! We have got to win this one! People like Showandtell and I have spent the last year gathering signatures, mingling with voters of all political persuasions, handing out bumperstickers and yard signs. Gruesome has the Main Stream Media on his side and that is FREE campaign funds and they are going to let loose in the next few weeks. Topping off that there is Lizzie Warren, Nancy (Stretch) Pelosi, and FORMER Vice President “Dementia” Joe Biden that are going to flood the airwaves with BS that we are all racists (their favorite word) and right wing extremists. They are the racists and extremists! Donate now and get this punk Newsom out of the Governors Mansion and Larry Elder in!
If there is good to come of this it’s that Gruesome has likely created a large block of future Republican voters. I’ll send him a thank you note after the 2028 election if my prediction rings true.
The only thing now between us and freedom is thirty two days.
This father’s story needs to be in general circulation. Powerful and eloquent.
No other state in the union has issued such arbitrary nonsensical draconian inconsistent restrictions as California and you know what? California’s numbers aren’t appreciably better than anywhere else. What California does have is the most powerful public teachers union in the nation and they are driving current policy to the detriment of everyone else. And the teacher’s union will not pay any price for the harm they have done to this generation of children – yes, this generation – that’s not hyperbole – unless we change leadership top to bottom in this state.
No other state [well maybe one other] has suffered as much while its governor galavants with the elites flouting his own restrictions. Newsom and his family are publicly and often exposed to be getting along just fine with their normal activities unfettered by the restrictions they foist upon the masses. To the elites like Newsom, we are the great unwashed who must be herded and molded and prodded and incentivized and punished if we do not make the choices they deem appropriate. No, the elites do not recognized that we, the great unwashed, should be able to exercise our natural right to pursue life liberty and happiness as set forth in the constitution according to which our nation was built and under which we consented to be governed. Remember, the constitution was not drafted to control the people, it was drafted to control the scope and reach of government.
I just saw that the elite first string, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi are weighing in on behalf of Newsom. I pray they are surprised on September 15 when they wake up and find that the people of California have chosen to throw off the Covid yoke under which they have labored for the last 16 months – after Newsom said “two weeks” to flatten the curve. Turns out that was lie number one.
I hope that on September 14 there will be a critical mass of voters who check that YES box to recall Newsom and we will be released from this covid purgatory.
Remember: if it’s not close, they can’t cheat.
Carry on people.
Strength.
We are in the home stretch now.
Wonderful post, Full Stop —- so well said. Thank you and bless you!
Well said, Full Stop!
Wow,
What a a great Op-Ed and from one of the valued readers of thie great publication. Thank You Katy for highlighting this. I hope many who read this can identify with what parents and their children have had to endure.
Yes, I never ONCE blamed or crossed my mind to ridicule his son for his father’s actions. NO, this is all on you Governor Newsom. Let’s be honest you, Governor Newsom used your son to weirdly gain sympathy for the position you put yourself in!
Now do the right thing, give back the 2million dollar union bribe and unmask and allow the students to return to the education we the taxpayers are contributing to.
Our future depends on it!
“Do you remember your sophomore year in college?” Gavin probably doesn’t. According to wikipedia attended Santa Clara University on a partial baseball scholarship majoring in political science. Santa Clara is an expensive private college. We all know that “scholar-athlete” is an oxymoron – they are athletes who attend classes, but homework is optional. And political science is a joke of a major. He probably partied it up with his baseball buddies and fraternity brothers.
We all know he was lying through his teeth when he told the View that he was a Zoom dad. If his kids ever Zoomed for their overpriced education, it was from the comfort of their 12,000 square foot home on 2.5 acres in Fair Oaks – one of the most expensive areas in the Sacramento area. It doesn’t sound like they suffered. If they ever got sad, then it’d be time for a visit to aunt & uncle Getty.
Fed Up: As I recall, the Fair Oaks property that he shunned the Gov’s Mansion for was THE most expensive Sacramento residential property sold at the time. For those who never saw it, take a look at the photos at the link below:
https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Gavin-Newsom-Sacramento-Fair-Oaks-home-13556456.php#photo-16816018
“Among [the] amenities are a pool, hot tub, tennis court and outdoor entertaining area — not to mention a spacious wine cellar. Built in 1985, the home sits on an 8.2-acre lot and includes separate guest quarters on the property.”
Thank you sir for sharing your family’s story. Newsom has indifferently abused a generation of children and must be recalled. We must also implement School Choice to allow parents select schools that are meet the needs of their children. Thank you again for sharing your story. http://www.recallgavin2020.com
Forlorn Comrades
Commissars care not for you, not even their own supporters. They care about stripping you of your assets, freedom and greasing the wheels/road to serfdom….
Wake up….this is not the daily politics crap……this is about gulags, block wardens, 24 hour surveillance and other unimagined horrors…..