A Good Call!

It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving organization.

Moms for Liberty among conservative groups named 'extremist' by civil rights watchdog

NPR

By Odette Yousef

June 7, 2023

More than two years into a conservative push against teaching about Black history, literature and gender identity in public schools, the Southern Poverty Law Center has concluded that a dozen so-called "parental rights" groups behind the movement are extremist.

The civil rights organization particularly focuses on the largest of these, the nonprofit Moms for Liberty, in its annual Year in Hate & Extremism report for 2022, saying that it advances an anti-student inclusion agenda.

The SPLC has put it and similar organizations on its list of anti-government extremist entities, drawing comparisons between them and parent groups that attempted to re-segregate public schools during the civil rights movement.

"They really are seeking to undermine public education holistically and to divide communities," said Rachel Carroll Rivas, deputy director for research, reporting and analysis at the SPLC. Carroll Rivas said her organization has received numerous calls from parents and educators who are concerned about the sudden appearance and tactics of Moms for Liberty activists in their schools.

The MfL are bullies. Media Matter wrote…

Moms for Liberty has gotten away with repeated instances of targeted harassment while maintaining some semblance of outward innocence and respectability because it falls back on the tired excuse of just being a group of concerned parents. But in reality, Moms for Liberty wields an image of caring mothers in order to covertly — and often with impunity for its public image — spread bigotry, hate, and sometimes messages of violence. 

The group’s history of harassment started at the top, with co-founder Tiffany Justice, a former Florida school board member who has been described as an “antagonizing and disruptive force” who has frequently made “inappropriate outbursts.” But it has spread well beyond her, with members — and often leadership — of various Moms for Liberty chapters harassing community members and school officials across the United States.

The NPR article goes on to say,

But Carroll Rivas said she believes the the "parental rights" banner that Moms for Liberty flies does not extend to all parents.

"We're thinking about the kinds of parents — parents of LGBTQ students, parents of Black students who want to hear the full story of the history of the U.S., 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," she said.

That’s the thing… they don’t speak for all parents!

They say that they are for parent’s rights but in reality they are only for their bigoted views, parents who are for inclusion and not exclusion are bullied into silence. MfL want to ban books, shut teachers up, stifle parents who oppose them.

The New Republic writes…

With the midterms looming, what better way to get parents to show up to vote than by convincing them that leftist school boards are grooming children with pornographic novels and cultural Marxism?

[…]

For the last six months, Taylor and her co-founders [of Moms for Social Justice] have received constant harassment. Local Moms for Liberty members have threatened to report them for child abuse or distribution of pornography, publicly accused them of grooming children, and tagged them as #________ [I don’t want to advertise the link] in their closed Facebook group. “They have literally called us witches,” Taylor told me.

Back to NPR,

The SPLC report compares Moms for Liberty and similar organizations of today to pro-segregationist parent groups that flourished in the wake of the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. That decision forced schools across the U.S. to integrate, but it also gave fire to a movement to undermine public education. The report names, as examples, the Mothers' League of Central High School and the "Cheerleaders" of New Orleans, which were established to resist inclusiveness at schools during that earlier era.

"That was hateful then, and it's hateful now," said Shannon Hiller, executive director of the Bridging Divides Initiative (BDI) at Princeton University.

The Orlando Sentinel had an interesting Letter-to-the-Editor...

Moms for Liberty not for liberty at all

This week, the Southern Poverty Law Center officially designated the Moms for Liberty as a hate group. In other news of the obvious, the sky is blue. It’s hard to see them as anything other than hateful, despite their tongue-in-cheek “Joyful Warrior” catchphrase. Yes, they’re joyful — about excluding and dehumanizing people who aren’t like them. They’re warriors —for white patriarchy and christofascism. They may be moms, but what they aren’t is “for liberty.”

Liberty would look like respecting every student in every school. Liberty would let teachers teach accurate history. Liberty would look like a library full of books — not empty shelves. Liberty would be keeping one’s bigotry to oneself and letting others live their lives.

This mom is for actual liberty — for teachers to teach however they see fit. For students to have the freedom to learn. For transgender people to have the dignity to use whatever restroom they prefer. For people with disabilities to exist in public spaces. For everyone to be who they are, to love who they love, to wear what they want, to go where they want to go. That is liberty.

Judi Hayes Orlando

These MfL just want “Reading, Riting & Rithmetic” they want to take us back to the nineteenth century.

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I will be up at the cottage with company for the next week+ so all my posts for the next two weeks have been pre-written.