Friends:

There is a lot to unpack here and I'll only do a bit. Honestly, we all need to take time to parse out all of this and have conversations about it. At the most general level, who are "Moms for Liberty, also known as "M4L" and "MFL"?" As per this blog by Heath Brown, their information is hidden from view, however, they say that they have 275 chapters in 45 states and more than a hundred thousand members nationwide. Some view them as akin to the Tea Party Movement that formed in 2009.

They say that they're anti-CRT, but they really aren't because they clearly do not understand it. This stance nevertheless serves their purposes as it allows them to conveniently weaponize race that they decry as “woke indoctrination.” They're also anti-LGBTQ and they back a false ideology of Christianity known as "Christian Nationalism" that promotes allegiance to country and their specific definition of Christianity. They also have a penchant for parading Black and Brown people who align with their cause to make it seem that they're more diverse than they really are. 

As you can read from the Southern Poverty Law Center website, the SPLC characterizes M4L as an anti-government, extremist group. 

Medhi Hassan with MSNBC notes that they keep their funding sources secret yet they enjoy close ties with the Heritage Foundation, also noting that they received funding in 2021 from Judy Fancelli who bankrolled the "Stop the Steal" January 6th attack on our nation's capital. The optics are deeply troubling. You can follow them yourselves on Twitter to learn more.  

What's most revealing to me is just how toxic they are from all the various reports I'm reading right now. The things is that "rage tactics," as Williams (2022) observes in her must-read piece in The New Yorker, is actually what they're about.

They do not express a desire to actually transform schools and curriculum, as those of us in the Ethnic Studies Movement seek to accomplish, but rather to promote censureship, dismantle public education and privatize schools by fostering a campaign of disenchantment in hopes that white, suburban mothers, in particular, turn against public schools. Ethnic Studies Movement advocates like myself are diametrically opposite, seeking to mend, not end, public education.

Born out of our long, extended, historical project of democracy as a nation, that at the grassroots level, is truly about living and being in relation to our public schools, and the public sphere, M4L belies the notion that public life should be rewarding—even if in moments contentious—whether occurring at local, city, or state-level politics.

It's almost as if the more unpleasant they are, the more power they think they have. I would hope that instead of praising M4L and giving them a platform as Trump and DeSantis have done, that all people of decency and conscience see them as the enemies of democracy that they are. 

If you have any doubt about this, I urge you to read the Williams (2022) piece. Even if this organization is less ascendant than they portray themselves to be, their access to eye-popping resources from conservative non-profits and wealthy donors is impactful, with power to potentially distort the public imagination of their levels of trust toward public education as connected to the common good that they abhor.

Thanks to Diane Ravitch for sharing this piece by Heath Brown.

-Angela Valenzuela

References

MSNBC News. (2022, Nov. 30). The Far-Right Moms Fighting the School Board Wars, The Mehdi Hassan Show [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLG1LWUN0tY

Williams, P. (2022, Oct. 31). The Right-Wing Mothers Fuelling the School-Board Wars, The New Yorker.

Numbers suggest murky future for Moms for Liberty

New chapters are forming, but not where it matters most for 2024

by Heath Brown | July 6, 2023

Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash

There’s been a lot hay made lately about Moms for Liberty — the group formed in 2021 to oppose school mask mandates and other pandemic precautions. Jennifer Schuessler at the New York Times called them “a force in Republican politics” and Chris Lehmann at The Nation likened the group to the Tea Party.

There are good reasons to take Moms for Liberty seriously.

As Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider explain on their podcast, it’s re-positioned itself over the last 12 months as the voice of anti-teacher vitriol, eager to ban books at the mere mention of race or LGBTQ issues. Classics, like The Color Purple, Water for Elephants, and The Bluest Eye, were challenged by the Indian River County chapter of the organization in Florida last fall.

Candidates for the Republican presidential nomination also have taken the organization up on the offer to speak to its members, most recently at last week’s Moms for Liberty Summit in Philadelphia. At the event, Governor Rick DeSantis called Gender Queer, a memoir by nonbinary writer Maia Kobabe, “hardcore pornography.” The book has been banned by over 50 districts recently, the most of any book in the country, according to Pen America.

There’s no doubt Moms for Liberty is a thing today, but it’s much less clear where it’s heading in the future.

For one, Moms for Liberty is organized like other civic groups: chapters arrayed across the country planning local events and mobilizing school board protests. On Thursday, the chapter in Orange, NC is holding a monthly meeting. Later this month, the Douglas County, NE chapter is participating in a campaign kick off for State Board of Education candidate, Lisa Schonhoff.

And, it’s just this structure that lead Jonathan Weisman at the New York Times to claim Moms for Liberty “draws power from its diffusion — 275 chapters in 45 states with nearly 115,000 members.” As Weisman points out, though, we have to take Moms for Liberty at its word on its size.

Based on what it shares publicly, there’s no doubt Moms for Liberty is growing. If we focus here just on the number of chapters in the country, the organization seems to have grown 50% in the last two years, from 152 chapters in 2021 to 282 today (my count is 7 higher than Weisman’s). In 2021, 17 states had no chapters at all, while today that has fallen to just 7 states.

The growth, however, hasn’t been evenly spread throughout the country. Four states — South Carolina, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida — account for a third (44) of the new chapters over the last two years. This suggests that the political power is considerable and expanding in some states, but nearly absent and even waning in others.

Or, consider that, Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada — a GOP strategists’ wish list for the 2024 presidential election and 3 of the 4 toss up states according to Larry Sabato’s 2024 forecast— all have fewer chapters today than just two years ago.

If we look deeper at the chapter numbers, the apparent political power is even more questionable. The chapter formed in 2021 in Arizona’s largest county, Maricopa, no longer seems to be operating today. It’s neighbor, Pima, still has a chapter, but that county has one-fourth the population.

Similarly, in Texas, though the total number of counties with a chapter increased from 7 to 9, Moms for Liberty lost the chapter in the state’s largest county, Harris. In fact, only 1 of the largest 5 counties in that state, Denton, has a chapter operating today.

Moving northward to Colorado, between 2021 and 2023, Jefferson County, the fourth largest country in the state, dropped its chapter. Today, just 1 of the largest 5 counties in that state, El Paso, has a chapter.

To be sure, chapters likely vary greatly in membership, so it’s hard to draw any solid conclusions based on chapter numbers alone. Nonetheless, it’s equally hard to conclude that Moms for Liberty is a political juggernaut with the opportunity to change the direction of the 2024 election, like the Tea Party did in 2010. Despite the media coverage and attention of national political leaders, the numbers right now just don’t bear that out.

Also, recall, the Tea Party peaked quickly then faded out just as fast. By 2014, Devin Burghart of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights showed that the Tea Party Patriots had already lost 90% of its chapters. Of course, Burghart also pointed out that Tea Party Patriots wasn’t merely a local phenomenon. National donors saw in the Tea Party a vehicle for other ambitions and poured money into national operations.

Similarly, Moms for Liberty has attracted the attention of financial backers, many with similar ties to other conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation and the Leadership Institute. Uneven chapter growth may, then, mean little to the ultimate political fortunes of the organization. How Moms for Liberty advances the interests of its wealthiest supporters and their favored presidential candidate may, in the end, determine whether it’s a political player in 2024.