The one positive that came from the awful COVID pandemic was parents’ discovery that their children were barely learning the basics and, in many cases, were being exposed to questionable material.
Suddenly, school board meetings were getting prime-time news coverage, and the parental movement took off.
One of the groups at the forefront of this charge against woke education and corrupt school boards started as just two ladies from Florida and has since spread across the country. Moms for Liberty is the new boogeyman or, should I say, boogeymom of the left-wing education agenda.
And while this midterm cycle did not see the promised red wave in Congress, school board races across the nation saw new candidates backed by the Moms for Liberty organization notch some incredible wins.
So naturally, the mainstream media is completely freaking out.
Our children do not need a sexual spirit guide at school. https://t.co/Xorwf5ip5o
— Moms for Liberty (@Moms4Liberty) November 18, 2022
A Force To Be Reckoned With
Moms for Liberty started with just the two founders, Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich, from Florida. Today the organization has over 100,000 members, an incredible growth rate considering that they’ve only been active for two years.
Initially, this group was scoffed at by the left as just a bunch of ‘Karens’ disrupting school board meetings. However, this group got organized and helped propel many school board candidates to victory.
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Of the more than 500 candidates the group backed, about half were victorious. They didn’t just support passively but put their money where their mouths were to the tune of $50,000 alone in Florida races.
Even the Florida Governor got in on the school boards, backing 30 candidates, of which all but five won. Think about that for a second; a Governor got involved in campaigns for school board positions.
And it’s about damn time if you ask me.
Moms for Liberty will continue to endorse school board candidates who value & prioritize parental rights.
School Boards must demand curriculum transparency, fiscal responsibility &put a stop to the “woke agenda” in K12 schools. https://t.co/FpQbfgvxBh
— Scarlett Johnson (@scarlett4kids) November 17, 2022
Where The Rubber Meets The Road
Americans, and parents in particular, have started to realize that while the sexy news generally comes from DC, the work that affects their daily lives often happens without any coverage or accountability within their local political frameworks.
History professor at The New School, Natalia Petrzela, explains:
“School boards often influence policy and curriculum more than state or national bodies.”
One particular flipped school board wasted no time getting to work, much to the dismay of the left-wing media. The Berkeley County School District in South Carolina swore in six new board members, all endorsed by Moms for Liberty.
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Within two hours of this week’s school board meeting, the new board voted to do the following:
- fire the Superintendent
- fire the district’s lawyer
- ban Critical Race Theory
- set up a book and material review committee
Moms for Liberty celebrated the quick action on Facebook by posting:
“6 new board members clean house first night on the job”
But, of course, there are plenty of people who are outraged and terrified.
This meme is courtesy @againstgrmrs, a coalition of gays who stands with @Moms4Liberty to call out the oversexualizing of minors in schools. pic.twitter.com/Dwh3oiL2FI
— Chris (@NightGuardian34) November 17, 2022
Dangerous And Extreme
Paul Bowers, who is a writer in attendance at the South Carolina school board meeting, wrote:
“A hard-right faction took control of the 4th largest school district in South Carolina last night and immediately got to work smashing anything that wasn’t nailed to the floor.”
Interestingly, the above description ignores the fact that the public duly elected these board members. It’s not as if they swooped in as some parental coup to overthrow the school board and unilaterally impose their will.
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I also thoroughly find it fascinating that school board members and groups of parents not interested in their children learning race, sex, and gender ideology are ‘hard-right.’ Yet, as the National Education Association President Becky Pringle says, groups like Moms for Liberty are:
“Sadly, right now, some are working to impose a dangerous agenda.”
These candidates promised things like curriculum transparency, fiscal responsibility, and an end to woke agendas. Seems pretty tame and reasonable to me.
Middle school classroom in California. Homeschool your kids. pic.twitter.com/hcFkvkdArN
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) November 17, 2022
The Motivation
The truth is parents flocked to groups like Moms for Liberty because what we all shared as parents was shock over what has been happening at our public schools without our knowledge and, perhaps most importantly, our approval.
Democratic pundits are still scratching their heads on why Governors Ron Desantis and Glenn Youngkin have been so popular and politically successful.
The answer is easy; they put parents first instead of special interest groups. The mainstream media would like to make you believe that right-wing extremist parents want to willy-nilly ban books in a nod to, you guessed it, Nazis.
However, the truth is more nuanced, as usual. One of the school board candidates this round, Monica Radyko, explained:
“We don’t want to ban books, but parents are just now seeing how pornographic some are. Anyone can check them out at a public library. Why do they need to be in school to be checked out without a parent’s permission?”
An example of one of these books is My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf, found in some Junior High Schools. One passage reads:
“Dahmer touched and fondled the corpse and repeatedly masturbated while standing over it, at last fulfilling his monstrous fantasy.”
Probably not appropriate reading material for most 11 to 13-year-olds.
Our children are being taught that family is bad. https://t.co/0Gd5rv18KR
— Moms for Liberty (@Moms4Liberty) November 17, 2022
What They’re Really Mad About
The left-wingers, teachers’ unions, and special interest groups aren’t mad that parents want books removed from public school libraries or curricula focused on math, reading, and science versus CRT and gender ideology. Instead, they are angry that this movement is organizing and gaining momentum.
For decades Republicans and parents had surrendered the education space to the Big Education machine. As a result, teachers unions, special interest groups, and Ph.D.’d ‘experts’ had the run of the roost regarding the classrooms and school boards.
Unfortunately for them, COVID woke a sleeping beast: parents. Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice declared that they are here to stay, highlighting their plans:
“We’re going to take over the school boards. But that’s not enough. Once we replace the school boards, what we need to do is we need to have search firms, that are conservative search firms, that help us to find new educational leaders, because parents are going to get in there and they’re going to want to fire everyone.”
And that is what the liberals are wrapped around the axle about; they are scared—scared of losing their power and their grip on our children’s minds.
And they should be.
We need better civics education in this country. https://t.co/ZSzV6tsagD
— LCPS Can Do Better (@LCPSDoBetter) November 18, 2022
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