Storming the Capitol: Madam Speaker Doth Protest Too Much

“We should all storm the institution, out of anger that this is the attitude that they’ve taken about our history.”

It may surprise you to learn that this is not a statement made at some political event by former President Donald Trump. It may surprise you further to learn that it was made by the far-left Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, Rachel Talbot Ross, a Democrat from Portland. She made these comments, on camera, at an event aligned with the new state and federal holiday known as Juneteenth which celebrates the end of slavery in America.

When there was little immediate supportive reaction from her audience to her initial comment, she added, “We should be storming the Capitol. Really, I’m serious.”

And what has driven the second most powerful member of the State Legislature to make such a statement? The Maine Department of Education, she feels, has not done enough to provide quality curriculum about African American history in our state. Bear in mind, this is an government bureaucracy that has been under the control of Gov. Janet Mills and far left political appointees for five years.

“This is an atrocity, what the Department of Education has done,” she told the audience, claiming it is “part of the oppressive, suppressive, suprem[ac]ist system and ideology that the Department of Education learned from.

For many reasons, storming the State Capitol is a fool’s errand. First, because the Department of Education is not housed in that building but rather across the courtyard in the Cross Office Building. What is housed under the Capitol dome is the State Legislature and, as the Speaker of the House, Talbot-Ross is the elected leader of the largest of the two bodies that meet and make decisions there. By asking her audience to storm the Capitol, she was encouraging them to protest against—well, her.

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What Talbot-Ross appears to be learning, albeit very slowly, is that it is a lot easier to yell for change from among a crowd of outsiders than it is to make change happen from within the halls of power. Six months after she was elected as one of the two most powerful members of the State Legislature, her frustration with the speed of change is showing. Trying to rally a crowd into a mob is a desperate act of frustration with her own inability to lead from within.

The absence of immediate volunteers to join the storming party may have to do with the fact that federal prosecutors have recommended sentences ranging from seven days to 15 years for Maine citizens who participated in the protest-turned-riot in Washington in January 2021.

Talbot-Ross didn’t say “Trump was right!” but she may as well have. With her fellow Democrats slinging every ounce of mud they can find at the former president, much of it over his role in encouraging, if not inciting, the protestors at the U.S. Capitol, Talbot-Ross’s clumsy rhetoric gives Trump defenders mud of their own to sling back.

In addition to undermining her party’s anti-Trump agenda, the Speaker’s impatience belies her inability to lead her own party toward an agenda of her liking. What she really told those in the audience was, “I have been Speaker for six months, and I still have not gotten everything I demand. So, off with the gloves and let’s storm the Bastille!” One wonders what she hoped to accomplish by storming the building over which her party has complete control and then screaming out against an institution that elected her Speaker. Did she plan to demand to be granted an audience with herself to discuss her grievances? And again, her party has been in control of Maine’s Education Department for five years.

As her rhetoric and anger grew during her comments, Talbot Ross blamed a “suprem(ac)ist system” for preventing MDOE from producing and disseminating a robust curriculum on Maine’s African-American history. As the chief lawmaker in the House of Representatives she should be well aware that racism does not prevent MDOE from developing curriculum to be taught in schools. State law does that.

Maine’s ancient and stalwart attachment to the principle of “local control” prevents MDOE from telling schools how to teach. The idea that Augusta should butt out of teaching is so deeply ingrained that I suspect if the Speaker were to propose a statewide curriculum her colleagues would vote her out of her speakership at the next available opportunity.

Here is just one egregious example of how local control has become a third rail of politics. In 2015, when I was serving as the state’s Commissioner of Education, a veterans group came to MDOE offering to provide, free of charge, a pocket-sized copy of the U.S. Constitution to every public school student in Maine—all 70,000+ of them. What a generous offer, I thought. But, I barely had enough time to say “certainly” when the Office of the Attorney General, then led by a certain future Governor of Maine, interceded and made it clear to me in no uncertain terms that providing these free gifts was dictating curriculum and was thus forbidden in Maine.

Local control is how we justify giving well over a billion dollars to local schools across Maine in each state budget and ask nothing in return. There is no requirement of schools that receive the ever-growing pot of money for an ever-shrinking student population. No minimum standard of learning or growth required to get the check. Here’s your money. No strings attached. Enjoy!

Talbot Ross’s tirade is emblematic of a major problem in the halls of the Capitol building. All too often, legislators make decisions based on passion rather than logic, principle, and informed reasoning. They ignore the constitution, rail against the wrong evil, and then pass laws that don’t address the problem because they did not—pardon the expression here—do their homework.

If Talbot Ross truly wants to see a quality, meaningful curriculum that educates our now more diverse than ever young people of the rich history of African-Americans in our state, she could work to build one with any number of knowledgeable experts and offer it to school teachers if they choose to use it. No mandates. No requirements. No dictates.

Because it represents the entire statewide public school system, MDOE has more clout than an individual schoolteacher. Stephen King, for example, may not volunteer to teach a class in literature at his alma mater Lisbon High School, but, if MDOE asked, he might take some part in a new module that helps ninth graders statewide become better writers. If the local curriculum coordinator or principal felt, for whatever reason, that this was not an appropriate way to teach or learn, they could simply not make use of it. However, if a program like this were factual, engaging, and instilled a sense of both fascination and pride in students it could become popular and effective.

Instead of a strategy that has the greatest opportunity to succeed, one that is diverse and inclusive, by the way, Talbot Ross fell back on what she knows; on what got her to Augusta in the first place. Speak loudly, attack, and demand a certain outcome. When you do not get it, rage against those who you believe denied you, thus driving a deeper wedge between what could have been helpful groups. Her approach is based in fear and divisiveness.

If Speaker Talbot Ross were to set aside her efforts at attacking the machine she helps lead, and instead worked to develop an optional curriculum so compelling that teachers would welcome it in their classrooms and lesson plans, she might succeed in her goals of elevating the importance of black history in the nation’s whitest state.

If she does manage to step back from her MAGA-esque strategy of storming the Capitol, she might call an initial meeting of like-minded people, starting with her own father, Gerald Talbot, former head of the Maine State Board of Education and a historian of Maine’s black history in his own right. Perhaps he might bring along his 2006 book, Maine’s Visible Black History: The First Chronicle of Its People.

She might also learn to be more mindful of the reality that not everyone who does not act on her every wish—and immediately—is a white supremacist, and failing to accept and implement every demand she puts forth does not justify storming the State Capitol.