(AUSTIN AMERICAN STATESMAN) — Six young men in suits sit around a table in the library in the Capitol. One hands a short stack of white papers to another. He takes a brief look at the cover sheet, looks back up and begins pumping his fist and mouthing, “Yeah!”
It’s a bill, just filed by state Sen. Donna Campbell, that the team of lobbyists — some of the youngest registered in the state — has been fighting for since the Legislature convened in January.
The group of home-schooled graduates, ages 19 to 23, call themselves the Watchmen, a reference to Isaiah 62:6: “On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen; all the day and all the night they shall never be silent.”
They lobby on behalf of the Texas Home School Coalition — and an estimated 300,000 home-schoolers in Texas — and they have been anything but silent this week, making the rounds to House and Senate offices and speaking at a Senate committee hearing.