Chapter 19:

The predictable outcome.

By the fall of 2021, many public school students had only just gotten back to full-time in-person learning, and it was a disaster. Among even the most conscientious students, older, hard-learned habits had been abandoned, and newer damaging ones were by now ingrained. Chronic absenteeism (absent more than 10 percent of the time) was as high as 40 percent in some major cities. Kids were hopelessly behind, and teachers had been encouraged to just pass them anyway. By spring 2022, fights were breaking out in the hallways of San Francisco schools.

Earlier, in February 2021, teachers at Newark Central High School, in New Jersey, were instructed by Principal Dr. Sharnee Brown not to hand out any F grades. The order was called the “No F and Missing Grade Mandate” and the instructions were clear: “During the pandemic, no student will have missing grades or Fs.” That month, 1200 out of 2000 recorded Fs disappeared from the grading system at this school. This practice, while done out of empathy, left students academically unprepared for their next grade.

By the spring of 2022, a fight at Everett Middle School in San Francisco’s Mission District sent a student to the hospital with life-threatening injuries. Principal Esther Fensel said that the altercation was part of “an alarming and urgent rise in mental health concerns and behavioral incidents since the start of the pandemic not just at Everett, but across our district and our country.” It isn’t difficult to surmise that over a year of online learning left students not only academically unprepared, but emotionally, as well. Frustrations bubbled over. Fensel would announce her resignation not long after this incident.

I understand showing kids a measure of grace given all that they’ve lost, but simply passing students who can’t read or do math will not serve them in the world. Quick fixes like grade adjustments will not drive necessary academic improvement. A failure to assist in re-integration, and to help kids manage reconnecting with peers after eighteen months of near total isolation will result in young adults ill-equipped to enter the workplace and the world.

What open-schools advocates had warned about was all coming to pass, and there seemed to be no plan to address it. A generation of permanently harmed kids would be left in the wake of disastrous closed school policies.

And while Kelly had given up on speaking with me directly about her ongoing concerns regarding my big mouth, she continued to monitor my online activity, and handed dossiers of my Twitter posts to Chip on a weekly basis. Schools were off limits in our very occasional and very limited one-on-one conversations, but she did ring me to tell me not to post anything about the vote to recall Governor Gavin Newsom, which was set for September 14, 2021.

The special election recall was at least in part a referendum on the governor’s pandemic policies. It was an expression of frustration with his hypocrisy, most glaringly, the fact that he had kept public schools in California closed longer than any state in the country while sending his own four children to in-person private school. Furthermore, Newsom forced most businesses to shut down while allowing wineries to stay open, including his own. And, even though he had banned private gatherings of more than three households as well as indoor dining, he was caught eating at one of the most expensive restaurants in the world, French Laundry, with a group of lobbyists. Prior to covid, a meal at French Laundry cost $350; during covid the price was ratcheted up to $850. Governor Newsom claimed that the luxurious enclosed tent that they were in made it an outdoor meal, and that it was not a private gathering, because they were in a restaurant, making it in accordance with his rules. And he offered only the most perfunctory apology:

“I need to preach and practice, not just preach.”

Nonetheless, he continued preaching and not practicing. The recall may have been started by the Right, but a multitude of other frustrated California citizens soon joined the cause. And I had posted about it:

In response, I received this text from Kelly, encouraging me to forgo any commentary on the subject:

Not sure how you could call this anything other than suppression of political speech, as well as viewpoint discrimination, as no one would have cared in the slightest had I criticized President Trump. (Not cared? They’d have applauded!)

Of course, there were also other issues at play, like for instance that “the family” (what we called the Haas family) that still owns a majority stake in Levi’s are fierce Democratic partisans and have longstanding personal relationships with Gavin Newsom. Recently minted billionaire Mimi Haas is Levi’s largest single shareholder. Her son is married to Becca Prowda, the “Director of Protocol” (whatever that is) for Governor Newsom. Becca was appointed to the role in 2019, directly from her position as director of community affairs at Levi’s. This is just one of many entanglements “the family” has with the Democratic Party and Gavin Newsom.

Gavin Newsom, Becca Prowda and Daniel Lurie, May 2016

Newsom triumphed easily in the September 2021 recall, despite his evident hypocrisy. His main opponent, African-American businessman/radio commentator Larry Elder, was repeatedly characterized as “the blackface of white supremacy” because, apparently, if you’re a Republican you are a white supremacist even if you are black.

I think I realized after Newsom’s landslide victory that I had no chance of becoming Levi’s CEO, but I still thought maybe I wanted it. And Chip kept holding out hope that it was possible. In October 2021, we met over dinner, and he tried to entice me, not with money, but with the promise of influence in the social and political sphere. He knew that was more alluring to me than riches. He said: “Think about the influence you could have! If you were CEO, you could have decided that the company should have weighed in on closed schools, like I did with guns.”

I’ll admit, it was tempting. Chip went on to say: “You’re an activist at heart.”

I said: “No I’m not. I just stand up for what I believe in. I don’t compromise my values. That’s not the same as being an activist.”

He was unconvinced, the difference not readily apparent to him. But very clear to me.

Then Chip made a request. He needed my consent to do a background check on me and my husband. He said this was standard operating procedure for CEO consideration, and I do believe some sort of background check is standard.

The Levi’s background check was to include an investigation into whether I had any questionable financial entanglements or a criminal record. But also, of course, they were going to investigate my social media activity, and that of my husband. Including my husband seemed odd. I have a hard time believing that if a man were the candidate that they would investigate his wife’s social media presence in this way.

I had little doubt that Chip would come back in a few weeks and tell me that I couldn’t be the CEO because of the findings in the report. And I told him as much. However, Chip insisted that I was still the lead candidate. But I knew the jig was up. It seems obvious to me now that holding out CEO was just another way to try to get me to stop. Ironically, the promise of more influence was an attempt to limit my influence.

However, at that point, even if I’d deleted all my accounts, I was a goner. By then I’d been at it for a year and a half, and screenshots live forever.

Plenty of trolls had made it their hobby to ensure that my heresies were recorded for posterity. The “Covidians,” as they were called on Twitter, were true devotees, willing to go to unimaginable lengths to cement and signal their fealty to the cause. I’d been accused of everything from “grift,” to “doing it for likes and clicks,” to being too stupid to know any better (therefore incapable of leading an organization), to being selfish, to being a bigot. This “feedback” veered wildly, but I can assure you: I received no money; “likes and clicks” are of little significance to me, especially when compared to having a job that enables me to take care of my family; I’m not stupid. You can decide whether or not I’m selfish, and whether or not I’m a bigot.

The most passionate mob of trolls was a group of gymnastics fans who started a petition on Reddit to get me fired.

All of fifty-two obsessive gym fans were on board, and they’d committed to repeatedly calling the ethics hotline at Levi’s until I was shoved out the door. This particular woke mob had made it their business to see me ousted.

Hardly incidentally, this cohort had hated me when my gymnastics book, Chalked Up, had come out, too, since having to think about the abuse endured by athletes interfered with their viewing pleasure. Though “cancellation” wasn’t a term used widely in 2008, the push to cancel me had been relentless up until 2018, when long-time USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar was sent to prison for life and, overnight, I went from lying grifter to fearless heroine.

But as a critic of the sport, I’d never really been fully accepted, and my attacks on school mandates had brought these gym fans back in force. I could count on their being key members of my haters club.

My own brother had taken to piling on to the trolls who aimed to see me fired. Chris insulted both me and my husband repeatedly on our own Twitter pages. He said it was rude and ungrateful to challenge doctors and health officials. All he seemed to care about was the fact that he felt that we were dismissive of his wife’s status as a frontline healthcare hero.

Both Daniel and I declined to respond to my brother’s provocations on Twitter, but this was no longer some ordinary family squabble. Chris did not communicate with me privately to discuss my views, which he clearly found extremely problematic. By then, the fall of ٢٠٢١, we hadn’t spoken at all in over a year. We didn’t email or text, either. The last time we’d emailed he’d told me that he wasn’t interested in hearing me out on any covid-related matters. These were very difficult to avoid, as I had upended my entire life to move to Colorado so my younger kids could go to school, and I was on the brink of losing my job because of the stance that I had taken. Covid infiltrated everything. What else was there to talk about? Movies?

Chris and I were left with nothing to say to each other. The last time we’d spoken, he’d said, “social media is bad news,” and I took it to mean he’d prefer not to communicate there because things tended to get ugly fast. I didn’t take it to mean that I shouldn’t post, only that we shouldn’t engage. Which, to me, seemed fair and reasonable. I obliged.

Chris did not. He continued to respond to my and Daniel’s musings, seemingly unable to help himself. And he took to consorting with my trolls, posting things like this, which I read when I was driving my second oldest child to college:

I’m very glad they [my husband and I] have been body checked and I seriously hope they stfu soon. Silence would benefit them. They might hear their conscience.

I could hear my conscience perfectly fine. It’s what prompted me to continue to speak out in the face of family alienation, loss of friends, job insecurity and the general turning inside out of my life. But I was heartbroken by this betrayal by my brother as I wound my way through Nebraska and Iowa, en route to Chicago for the college drop off. I was a wreck, to put it mildly. In addition to sending my second off to college – always emotional for a mom – I was on the brink of losing my job and now my brother was actively trying to contribute to that end. I blocked him at this point, for a time, in an attempt to encourage what he’d told me over a year ago about wanting to avoid contentious interactions on Twitter. He saw my blocking him as an aggressive act. I saw it as self-preservation. For both of us. I knew if things continued as they were going, we’d have no chance at recovering. So I tried to force an end to it.

Noble actions on the part of the deeply unselfish covid-faithful included countenancing old and sick family members dying alone and afraid in the hospital, far from the soothing warmth of loved ones, and cutting off from the world children with near zero chance of getting the disease in order to “slow the spread.” Joining the call to get your own sister fired from the job that enabled her to support her family was just another act of reverence. It seemed the cruelty of the faithful knew no bounds.

Unlike with my brother, my dad and I continued to speak throughout. He read the articles I sent to him, and we discussed our divergent views. Sometimes, he even granted I had a point. It got heated sometimes, but we always came back to each other. My mom and I found some peace in just not discussing these matters at all. In June 2021, my parents had come to San Francisco for my son’s high school graduation. We muddled through our disagreements, as we always had. They loved me, and I loved them. And we all knew it, prioritizing our relationship over policy disagreements.

With my parents at Levi’s Plaza on their visit for my second oldest son’s high school graduation, June 2021.

Certainly, the trolling by strangers and my brother would all show up in the background check. And had it been waved off by Chip and the board, and they’d decided to give me the CEO job anyway, my tweets, and those of my antagonists, would have been unearthed and amplified, with the intent of having me lose my job instantly, as happened to Alexi McCammond at Teen Vogue.

Of course, there was the chance that things would flip, and all of my foes would end up pretending they’d always supported my message and fought for what was right as had happened in the gymnastics community.

It could go that way again. Maybe, when the lies told by those pushing covid hysteria are fully exposed, along with the terrible damage they visited upon an entire generation, those of us who were right all along will receive our due. But I don’t count on it. The woke are not big on self-knowledge or contrition, and the memory hole beckons. Indeed, it’s funny – if that’s the word – by late summer 2022, many of the Facebook responses from 2020 by my personal cadre of haters calling me a racist and a “Trumper” seem to have been deleted. And, in general, those who vilified people like me for speaking out against school closures have fallen silent. Or, they simply excuse the damaging policies with “well, public health officials were just doing their best.” By 2022, it was no longer unacceptable to talk about the immensity of the damage done to children, among so many others. It had become the accepted truth.

But, along the way we’d skipped a step. For there has been no accountability for the damage done, no answerability on the part of those who made and enforced the policies, let alone those who encouraged them by shutting down dissenting voices on social media and within their own social circle. It is as if this horrible thing happened, but nobody did it. But in fact, these were policy decisions made by government leaders, largely in blue states and cities, and by the public health officials that they had empowered.

On September 1, 2022, The New York Times reported on the “Nation’s Report Card” about the state of education with the headline: “The Pandemic Erased Two Decades of Progress in Math and Reading.” Black and brown children, already at significant disadvantage in educational attainment, were impacted the most, increasing overall inequality. Because this is not just about declining test scores. Kids who don’t learn to read and do math in grade school are at far greater risk of not graduating from high school, increasing the likelihood that they will live their whole lives in poverty.

Even when the damage from these policies is acknowledged, it is excused by Democratic voters and the media, who still claim that the Democrats are the party of education, kids and public schools. Despite the erasure of two decades of progress with the steepest drop in test scores in over thirty years, on September 6, 2022, in an opinion piece for CNN, Jill Filipovic proclaimed:

Democrats need to respond [to Republicans] with their own clear message: That education is a right and is among one of the most formative and valuable tools we give our children.

It’s true. Education is a right. It is one of the most valuable tools we give our children. But this isn’t a messaging problem. This is an action problem. For over two years, Democrats have signaled in every way possible that education is not a right, and that it is not a valuable tool. And even now, in September of 2022, Democrats continue to onerously restrict kids and impede their educational development. Unvaccinated kids in New York City public schools still can’t participate in sports or after-school activities. Toddlers in Headstart programs continue to be muzzled with masks, just when they are learning to talk.

As they attempt to burnish their message before the November 2022 elections, Democrats seem to believe that with the right talking points, they can convince voters that they didn’t shut the schools for well over a year and that, yes, they are indeed the party that cares about kids. Despite all evidence to the contrary.

It may already be too late for many of the kids who have fallen desperately behind, and for the kids who have dropped out and are not going back. The extended school closures are going to affect their life options and their life expectancy. The kids most impacted are owed an apology, at the very least. But mere acknowledgment is insufficient; those who implemented these policies need to be held accountable. Not as a matter of retribution, but in the common interest, to guarantee such harms are never allowed to happen again.

I waited a few months for the follow-up from Chip on the background check, wondering each day precisely when the hammer would descend. I finally got a meeting request for January 24, 2022, from Chip’s assistant. I suspect Chip had had the results for a few weeks, but was avoiding the unpleasant discussion.

At one point, I do believe that Chip had really hoped that I would be his successor. But he clearly hoped even more that I’d be obedient and stop challenging pandemic policies. He wanted someone outspoken and brave enough to use their voice and make hard calls when necessary. But not quite this much. A little less voice, a little more “yes sir,” would have been the right combination to land me the job. Alas, that wasn’t me.

On our video call, off the bat, Chip was sheepish. My hands shook beneath my desk, but I pasted a smile on my face. I was determined not to show any emotion, and I didn’t. In the moment, when he told me it was over and there was no place for me going forward, I didn’t have the wherewithal to ask to see the report. In any event, I strongly suspect that he would not have shown it to me.

I think he would have found some excuse, any excuse, not to share it, because there was likely some “gray” in the findings. It would probably have read as a judgement call. He may have feared that if he showed it to me, I might argue with him about the decision, and that I might actually be persuasive. But there was no point, because the decision had been made.

Chip asked that I stay while they found my replacement and maybe, in the interim, tone it down a bit on social media. In exchange, I’d earn more than a million dollars in severance, the “standard package” for an executive. This was unappealing to me for a whole host of reasons. Not least among them was that if I accepted their payoff, I’d inevitably be expected to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) on the terms of the separation. Those “terms” would mean I could not disclose that I was pushed out the door for speaking up about school closures and challenging Public Health authorities. Those “terms” would mean I couldn’t write this book that you are reading right now.

I nodded silently in the moment, when the deal was on offer. It was as much a nod of understanding as anything. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do. I was just trying to end the call. And as soon as I hung up, I started plotting my next move. I do wonder to this day what the report said.

I asked for the separation agreement three times between this call with Chip and my departure. It was never sent to me. But I realized almost right away that I wasn’t going to sign it.

At this point, in addition to fighting for full transparency about the harms done from school closures in order to hold power to account, I was determined to speak out on the illiberalism and censorship that has seeped out of universities and into corporations across the country. And to advocate for others to speak their minds freely. Even – make that especially – if I didn’t agree with them.