A Cog in the Wheel? Not a Chance.

Good trouble if you can get it...

I will be discussing the Koch brothers in this essay. If you are unfamiliar with them, here is a primer.

“Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”

~John Lewis

I once left an educational conference with nearly a dozen cans of Diet Coke, several boxed lunches, a handful of cookies, and every handout I could get my hands on. I left with every pen, lanyard, and every lesson plan that was out for the taking.

I’m not a hoarder or even participating in minor theft — it was all free. I was attending a Koch-funded Bill of Rights Teacher Institute and I was going to take those folks for every penny I could. The next day, I delivered the cookies and boxed lunches to the teachers’ lounge. I drank the Diet Cokes.

Koch money paid for my day out of school for this seminar by giving me a stipend and paying for my sub while I was out of the classroom. I think it was around $400 in total.

Did I make a dent in a billionaire’s pocketbook? No. Would I participate as a cog in the wheel in their dystopian vision of education? Hell no.

“If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth--certainly the machine will wear out… but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.”

~Henry David Thoreau

I have read enough protest literature to know one thing: don’t be a cog in the wheel. If you see something you don’t like, shut it down. If you can’t shut it down, make the harmful agenda more difficult.

That’s exactly the sort of minor mayhem I have caused for years. Slight chaos. A burr under the saddle. A thorn in the side. A constant irritation.

The older I get, the more brazen I have become in not lending myself to the wrong which I condemn. I applied to the Koch-funded Bill of Rights Teacher Institute after hearing about it at other teacher seminar I had attended.

My last five years of teaching had grown a little tired and monotonous so I applied for summer travel institutes with the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities and others like the summer program at George Washington’s Mount Vernon. All were prestigious and admission was difficult.

I was lucky to be admitted to several.

I love to travel, but what I really loved about these institutes was learning about American History from scholars in the places where history happened. It makes a huge difference. I have learned from scholars across the country.

My lanyard from the George Washington Institute. I have 15 keepsake lanyards from teacher institutes I have attended. I am almost as proud of them as I am my degrees.

Once I found out that Koch money is used to sponsor teacher institutes, I knew I had to go. The Koch brothers —David has since died, while Charles remains— are from Kansas and several seminars happen right over the state line.

By attending these seminars, I was taking up the space of another educator. I was thinking of young teachers who might be indoctrinated by their bullshit. I was using up Koch time and resources and there was no way I would use their material or their instruction in my classroom.

Koch money is funding extremism across the country, especially in their vision of the future when it comes to education. They push for universal school vouchers which defund public schools, but it’s even more insidious than that. The Bill of Rights Institute offers curriculum workshops throughout the country, distributes teaching materials, holds essay contests for students, and displays its wares at the National Council for the Social Studies conference.

In its materials for teachers and students, the Bill of Rights cherry-picks the Constitution, history, and current events to hammer home its libertarian message that the owners of private property should be free to manage their wealth as they see fit. As one lesson insists: “The Founders considered industry and property rights critical to the happiness of society.” This message—that individual owners of property are the source of social good, their property sacred, and government the source of danger—is woven through the entire Koch curriculum.

The material and the professional development are sneaky. A teacher could attend a training and walk out thinking not much about it, but there is an underlying premise…the right to private property (wealth) is the only right that needs any defense. That is exactly the point of the Koch doctrine.

The Koch billionaires spent much of their lives and a good chunk of their fortune pushing anti-tax policies. They helped found the Cato Institute, a right-wing think tank, and helped fund the Heritage Foundation.

Yes, the folks behind Project 2025.

I found it so odd that the Bill of Rights Institute was even funding teacher seminars in the first place knowing that the brothers hate public education.

David Koch once stated, “We advocate the complete separation of education and state. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended.”

Good god. Talk about the quiet part out loud. Koch money is hosting seminars to disseminate propaganda directly to public school teachers in an effort to end public schools.

They also fund seminars for students.

I had heard they have a Bill of Rights summer institute for students in high school. A fully-paid trip to Washington, DC. I encouraged my 16-year-old son to apply and he was accepted. He learned to interact with very right-wing topics and children who are being indoctrinated to speak and debate on those topics.

My son came out stronger in his liberal values — he also used up about $2500 in Koch money and took the seat of a student who may have been susceptible to indoctrination.

I do these things to give these oligarchs no rest. No peace. It is my small way of throwing a wrench into the gears.

I work just as hard to be a constant sort of irritation to the Herzog Foundation. A billion dollar Missouri-based company whose mission is to “catalyze Christian education.” In smaller words, they want to send taxpayer money to private religious schools and even push for vouchers for homeschoolers. The less they know, right?

The Herzog Foundation is also on the Board of Advisory for Project 2025.

I once stood in a cornfield with a dozen friends to protest the “school choice” grifter they brought to town. I often tweet out their events and hundreds of folks have signed up to fill the seats. The foundation had to shut down an event and re-register people after I tweeted out the registration link for a Sarah Huckabee Sanders visit. She came to Missouri to sell her school voucher snake oil.

How can I help it if hundreds of folks who have no interest in an event, and have a burner email account, register for Herzog events and break the registration links?

I constantly comment on their social media posts. I write about them. I tell others about their mission. In general, I make a nuisance of myself.

No rest. No peace.

You can do these things too. You can be a burr. A constant irritation. An annoyance.

What can we do about the oligarchs who are taking over our institutions and forcing propaganda into our schools?

We can be counter-friction to stop the machine. We can create good trouble.

~Jess