Moms for Liberty—sounds patriotic, doesn’t it? What could be malevolent about engaged parenting?
And yet, Moms for Liberty, a far-right political group, uses its platform to “disparage public schools, blame teachers’ unions for literacy deficiencies, and are determined to eradicate ‘woke nonsense” (Amy Littlefield, “The Real Agenda of Moms for Liberty,” August 7, 2023, http://www.thenation.com).
Moms for Liberty was founded in 2021 by Tiffany Justice and Bridgett Ziegler. Christian Ziegler, husband of Bridgett Ziegler, serves as the Republican Party chair of Florida. The group claims 120,000 members in 285 chapters in forty-five states. It has endorsed candidates to remove Critical Race Theory and ban books in school and public libraries (Littlefield).
At their summit held Fourth of July weekend in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, education officials from Florida, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and South Carolina were in attendance. In addition to the Republican Presidential candidates, one speaker was Oklahoma’s State Superintendent of Schools, Ryan Walters.
He ranted about public schools and teachers’ unions: “These are folks that want to destroy our society, they want to destroy your family, they want to destroy America as we know it…We don’t need a Department of Education” (Littlefield).
Amy Littlefield, a journalist for The Nation, attended this summit and expressed her findings: “By wrapping its efforts in rhetoric about parental rights and protecting children, Moms for Liberty had successfully presented itself as just a group of angry moms shouting down ‘wokeness’ rather than as the latest link in a decades-old conservative project to undermine public education while upholding white supremacy and patriarchy” (Littlefield).
What is behind the façade of loyalty to family and country? “Follow the money” is a familiar phrase in our society. It suggests that corruption can be brought to light by tracking the flow of money (Kee Malesky, “Follow the Money on the Trail of Watergate Lore,” June 18, 2012, http:// www.npr.org).
Reporter Kelly Jensen discovered that bigotry and power are two key themes as to why censors, such as Moms for Liberty, are targeting books. There is money to be made with book bans.
First, book banners complain about certain books, complain about tax money wasted on the review process, complain to sympathetic politicians, and demand private school vouchers.
Then, these vouchers further defund public education. Jensen concludes,” They own the entire cycle” (Kelly Jensen, “Manufacturing Problems with School and Library Books to Cash in on Solutions: Book Censorship News,” December 8, 2023, http://www.bookriot).
The reality is that tens of thousands of dollars are wasted, with public libraries reviewing all Young Adult books only for policies to change (Jensen).
Private entities such as BookmarkED facilitate book bans and cash in on their own propaganda. BraveBooksnow- Skytree book fairs face off against long-established Scholastic book fairs.
One Texas entrepreneur created “an app for that” to list books that “should be banned,” only to benefit financially by a bill introduced into the Texas Senate. Moms for Liberty, according to a 2022 tax report, raked in 2.1 million dollars. Untold amounts are accrued for school board elections and ballot proposal lobbying (Jensen).
Jensen concluded, “While we spend precious time making funny memes about Moms for Liberty and giving them cute social media names, other people are racing to create the next billion dollars solution to ‘solve’ the entirely manufactured problem” (Jensen).
If violation of the First Amendment’s freedom of speech and of the press was not threatening enough, consider the dangers of also violating the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects equal rights for all citizens.
The Hamilton County, Indiana, chapter of Moms for Liberty newsletter displayed this famous quote, “If the government has control over our children today, they control our country’s future” (Ja’hn Jones, “An Ominous Hitler Quote Highlights Moms for Liberty’s Extremism,” June 21, 2023, http://www.msnbc. com).
The issue is that this quote is attributed to Adolf Hitler in a 1935 speech. Later the chapter added “context” and finally an apology (Jones).
The Southern Poverty Law Center in its “Year in Hate and Extremism 2022” publication named Moms for Liberty as an extremist group (Odette Yousef, “Moms for Liberty Among Conservative Groups Named ‘Extremist’ by Civil Rights Watchdog,” June 7, 2023, http://www.npr.org).
Carroll Rivas of SPLC reports numerous calls to this organization from parents and educators expressing concern about the Moms for Liberty agenda. Rivas commented, “They are really out to undermine public education holistically and to divide communities” (Yousef).
This extremist group fought Covid safety measures and attempts to ban books and limit discussions about race. Ms. Rivas believes their parental rights banner does not apply to all parents.
“We’re thinking about all kind of parents,” she says— “parents of LGTBQ students, parents of black students who want to hear the full story of the history of the United States, parents of all kinds— who just want to make sure that their kids are getting treated fairly and equitably and that they have a really good, thriving education” (Yousef).
Moms for Liberty claims, “Two-thirds of Americans think the public education system is on the wrong track today” (Yousef). But is banning books the answer?
In a National Public Radio poll, with one half of responders listed as Republicans, the majority oppose banning certain books (Yousef).
Since January 2022, 139 bills in thirty-seven states have limited the latitude of trained professional educators to address racism, inequality, bias, and structural injustices in gender and sexuality issues.
Twenty states have enacted such restrictions by executive order (Amanda Saavedra, Meira Levinson, and Morgan Polikoff, “Survey: Americans Broadly Support Teaching About Most Controversial Topics in the Classroom,” October 26, 2022, http://www. brookings.edu.
These restrictive, spurious laws apparently don’t reflect the beliefs of most Americans. The Brookings article notes: “the American public wants students to be exposed to robust civic learning opportunities throughout K-12 education” (Saavedra, et al.).
As the election year 2024 begins, voters should consider the political groups they support carefully. They should cautiously analyze the sources of information. Fake news is rampant. They shouldn’t be misled by high-sounding rhetoric.
Voters need to investigate political groups and candidates through neutral sources, and to evaluate party platforms. If there is any hint of racism, bigotry, misogyny, or hatred, one shouldn’t vote for these candidates. If a party or candidate suggests ignoring the U.S. Constitution, one shouldn’t vote for them. If a group, party, or candidate promotes an “us versus them” agenda, one shouldn’t vote for them.
Our democracy depends on this scrutiny.
Violence occurred around the desegregation of public schools mandated by Board of Education versus Brown in 1954. Remembering this, Shannon Hiller, Executive Director of Bridging Divides Initiative at Princeton University, compares extremist groups such as Moms for Liberty to those who decried integration.
“That was hateful then and it’s hateful now” (Yousef).