'Moms For Liberty' Ride Wave of Support for Non-Woke Agenda, Vow to 'Unify, Educate & Empower'
12:44 GMT 27.11.2022 (Updated: 15:33 GMT 27.11.2022)
© GREGG NEWTON
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Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who was reelected in the wake of November’s midterms in the US, endorsed 30 candidates for school boards, which are often able to exert influence on policy and curriculum. After almost all of them triumphed, he declared that, “Florida is where woke goes to die.”
"Excited" is how the conservative activist group Moms for Liberty has been describing itself in the wake of the November midterm elections in the US.
While the much touted so-called "red wave" failed to materialize, the Republicans were nevertheless able to seize control of the US House of Representatives. But it was the outcome of the school board races this election cycle that the group has been enthusing over, hailing a wave of "anti-wokeness."
The social welfare non-profit, which actively opposes "woke" cancel culture, the teaching of Critical Race Theory in schools, shared toilets and locker rooms for girls and boys, and the over-the-top focus on a pro-LGBTQ agenda, threw its weight behind more than 270 school board candidates nationwide. In Florida, at least 61 of the 67 candidates supported by the "Moms" won, leaving the group "thrilled."
"Nationwide, over 50 percent of our candidates won, after the organization shifted its focus solely on school board elections, school board races and what was happening in education," Tina Descovich, co-founder of the Moms for Liberty, told Sputnik.
She clarified that the non-profit’s chapters endorsed 500 candidates nationwide this year. In Florida, where the group is based, a political action committee threw impressive financial backing behind candidates, which explains the 80 percent win rate, Descovich said.
Reflecting on the group’s first venture into the political fray, the co-founder of Moms for Liberty said:
“Tiffany Justice and I were the co-founders of Moms for Liberty. We both served on school boards here in Florida from 2016 to 2020. We both got involved originally to run for school board in our communities for different reasons, but for the same general reason. We both are moms, we have children, we had concerns in our school districts of things that were happening.”
17 April 2022, 23:06 GMT
It was after the two women had reached the end of their terms that they became increasingly aware of how so many parents were trying to petition their school boards for change amid the COVID-19 pandemic. They were demanding the opening of schools, railing against the requirement for the children to wear masks, and desperately urging a revised curriculum. But… the school boards were deaf to the parents’ pleas.
“They were shutting off mics, they were closing up meetings and not handling the public well at all. We decided to launch an organization that could help parents to organize and push back against the things they were seeing and dealing with,” Descovich recalled.
'Unify, Educate & Empower'
Moms for Liberty has chapters organized by county across the US, meeting monthly. Sometimes they read through parts of the US Constitution or Declaration of Independence, because they understand the importance of familiarizing themselves with the principles their country and its laws are founded on, Descovich explained. They always find time to go over local school board agendas and catch up with what their school districts have in the works.
Never straying from a hands-on approach, the group members identify concerns that they have and then hammer out plans to help correct whatever problems they are having within their community.
Moms for Liberty is no stranger to being accused of embracing a bigoted, homophobic, racist, fear-mongering, and even extremist position. However, the group firmly rejects such labels, reiterating that their mission is to “unify, educate and empower” parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government.
“The ultimate goal for us is to protect and defend parental rights, which means to push back against any government entity that is making decisions for our children that parents should have to be the ultimate authority on,” Tina Descovich told Sputnik.
Do they have to deal with antagonism? Sure, that’s inevitable, and facing up to hate emails, voicemails, and even threats has become part of their daily routine, Tina Descovich revealed. The mainstream media loves to run with false, fabricated information about the “Moms,” with outlets not averse to copying one another’s stories. But the nonprofit claims that pushing against “false narratives, lies and a whole lot of hate” only makes them stronger, and they never falter in their mission.
The reason for the antagonism is because people with certain ideologies in control of public education and access to children for decades are loath to relinquish that power, Descovich explained.
“We're the first organization that's pushing back against the power that teachers’ unions have within our school districts,” said the co-founder of Moms for Liberty.
Dangers of Woke Agenda
The so-called “woke” agenda is dangerous in that it is often in direct conflict with the values that parents are trying to teach their children, the “Moms” believe. Instead of focusing on teaching the children things like reading, writing, science, math, and history, public schools embark upon a path of redefining morals and values that are in opposition to what the families are teaching in their homes, Tina Descovich warned. Furthermore, parents are often blindsided, as special interest groups pushing for such things as shared restrooms and locker rooms for boys and girls wade in without publicly debating these policies, the activist added.
“Our government is set up in a way that these policies should have come before the public to be debated and discussed and hear everybody's input before decisions were made. But at least in Florida where I live, that's not how it was done,” she said.
Take the group called Equality Florida. It came in, through the back door, pressuring school districts to put guides in place without even going before the public, and allowing boys and girls to choose which locker room they're going to change in, which bathroom they're going to use, where they're going to sleep on overnight field trips with no parents notified, the activist explained.
Her own children were getting frustrated at some of the stuff they were witnessing, said Descovich, as she shared her own personal experience with the woke agenda at school. Her teenage son would snap pictures of some of the glaring examples at school, sending them to his mother and wondering, “why are they doing this?”
“He gets frustrated, too. You know, he's at school to learn. And he sees it for what it is and does not appreciate it,” Descovich added.
Schools and families should join forces to educate children, not sow confusion. This is the only way to ensure the youngsters are well-adjusted, happy, successful, and living their fullest potential, the nonprofit group believes.
In For the Long Haul
The group has been emboldened by the results of the recent elections, seeing that a fair percentage of the candidates they endorsed have been elected. But they are aware that they are in it for the long game, and have no illusions of swift changes.
“We've had a lot of wins, but we have a long way to go. There are 13,000 school districts in the United States, so we have a long, long way to go. I think we will see changes in school boards where we have taken a majority of the seats. Even within those districts, things take a long time to permeate down and to change policies and to get everybody on board. It's going to take a long time, but we are definitely [moving] in the right direction,” Tina Descovich, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, concluded.
