Hello, my name is Gail Griswold and I started ArmorVine in December 2023 to fill the need of tracking and reporting on government policy that is chipping away at our freedom and liberty. After years of following government in action, I realized there was a void in the research and reporting of what is actually transpiring in our local and state government.
The goal of ArmorVine is to track policy and legislation and report back to the grassroots of Missouri. Our legislators should be accountable to the people and protect freedom and liberty principles instead of government overreach.
My first real experience in the public policy arena was in 2019, when a local predatory tax scheme was put on the local ballot. After going to several meetings and listening to concerns, I realized that there was something more to just this tax increase. What I learned was that special interests will work against small mom and pops for their own agenda. An agenda not supported by voters or the businesses that they are taxing. We defeated that tax increase and continue this day to hold the taxing entity and representatives accountable.
In 2020, as the State was shutting down schools and businesses, I began to be more interested in the laws and rules coming out of the state capitol. Seeing firsthand how the state's laws were crippling local control, I worked with local leaders to push back on the Covid mandates in our schools and community. In 2021, I ran for my local school board of education on a platform of reform and deregulation from the state and federal overreach. The voters of my community showed up in force and I won my seat on the school board. At the first school board meeting, I was voted in as President of the board by a 4-3 conservative majority. Under my tenure, that first school board meeting in April 2021, we released the students and staff from Covid mandates and protocols including mandatory masking, testing, secondary quarantining, and other covid protocols that had plagued our school. We became a beacon of hope for conservatives across Missouri trying to take back their schools. In August 2021, our school board voted to turn down $8 million from the American Rescue Plan Act ESSER III funding from the Federal/State, becoming only 1 of 2 school districts in Missouri to do so. ESSER III had too many strings attached including 20% of the funds being mandated for programs like SEL (social-emotional learning). In fall 2023, our board voted to pass a SEL (Social-Emotional Learning) resolution stating that our District did not support the SEL standards that the state was looking to mandate on public schools. The Missouri State Board of Education and Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) continue to try to pass SEL mandates on publics schools. More on this later. In April 2024, I narrowly lost my school board seat by 14 votes in a low voter turnout year across Missouri. While that is partially my fault for not really campaigning, I am called by the Lord to refocus my energy back to my family and advocacy statewide for deregulation of Education, as well as many other pressing issues at the State level.
In just a few months of operation, ArmorVine has already gained attraction for our work standing up for freedom and liberty principles. Our team has grown in a very short time, and we continue to form new relationships every day with our fellowship and policy education. We welcome you to join us on our quest for truth and knowledge. Please subscribe to our blog to stay up to date on the latest news in policy and events of interest around Missouri.
Why did I choose ArmorVIne for our name? As an owner of a vineyard, I was called to this passage.
John 15
1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.
2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.
3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.
4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
6 If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.
7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.
10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.
11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.
12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
14 You are my friends if you do what I command.
15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.
17 This is my command: Love each other.
I am inspired by Him in the work that guides me every day. To train the vines and to cut the shoots that are a distraction from making the main vine bare the most fruit.
Thank you for visiting us here at ArmorVine as we continue to work with the grassroots to train the vine and bear the most fruit.
Kindly,
Gail
Gail Griswold
Owner
ArmorVine LLC