Moms for "Liberty"

& what that means

Dear Frog Troublers, I hope you all made it through the storm okay and are comfortable, dry, and warm. We lost power on Friday night, and got it back last night—in the down time, the girls did some pretty funny renditions of “Hard Knock Life,” all about losing power and missing Saturday morning cartoons. They lucked into play dates at friends’ houses (Bea is still at a sleepover), so Richard and I had a chance to drive around the county, looking at the damage—mostly downed trees and power lines.

We also saw an increasing number of school board election signs. I wonder if you’re seeing them where you live? School boards are non-partisan in most North Carolina counties (though this is changing in many places), meaning that candidates don’t run as Republicans, Democrats, Libertarian, or Green Party candidates. The decisions they make are practical and local—budgeting, planning, communicating with the public—which is meant to be removed from politics. But with COVID-19, book bans, and anti-Critical Race Theory, of course they are not. And this is nothing new. When we first moved to North Carolina in 2005, Wake County was a national model for diverse and fair school assignments—no school in Wake County could have more than 40 percent low-income students, which makes a lot of sense when you think about creating schools where kids have a fair chance. Even though the system improved test scores as well as racial diversity, many affluent white families resented their kids’ long bus rides (or sharing resources with poor BIPOC kids), and they elected a Republican-backed school board that in 2010 did away with the county’s desegregation efforts. This plan lasted less than two years, when the anti-busing board members were voted out, but the district has still not been able to return to previous levels of desegregation and economic equality.

I remember my 1980s and 90s school boards in King William County, Virginia as viciously Republican, refusing to accept federal money for a free breakfast program because that was “the mother’s responsibility.” But I don’t think these old dudes (at least, I remember them as old dudes) were funded or fueled by any sort of outside group. Just plain old generational wealth, racism, and sexism.

You may have heard of Moms for Liberty, a conservative group started during the pandemic by former school board members from Brevard County, Florida. On the face of it, moms as school board members makes sense—what a great way to push back against those sexist old ideas! So many of the wonderful people who teach my kids are moms. Our awesome principal is a mom. Most of the people I see on my Zoom screen in PTA committees are moms (shout-out to Conner, our dad-hero web-builder!). But Moms for Liberty, a non-profit that is ostensibly about parents’ rights, is really about a very specific kind of mom.

Although the newly-formed group claims to make most of its money from small donations and T-shirt sales, Moms for Liberty has powerful right-wing and far-right affiliations, receives funding from Conservatives for Good Government (a right-wing Florida PAC), and hosts high-dollar fundraisers far from the individual counties where they’re pouring money and support. Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich appeared on the Rush Limbaugh show to complain about “inappropriate story time” shortly after the group was founded, and their organization is frequently praised in right-wing media.

You can learn a lot about Moms for Liberty by looking at their website. They want to “fan the flames of liberty” (yikes!) and claim to be “dedicated to fighting for the survival of America by unifying, educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government.”

As with states’ rights, it’s helpful to ask, parental rights to do what? As far as I can tell, the rights these parents are most concerned with are the rights…

-To harass, threaten, and dox public school board members, teachers, and staff members.

-To oppose mask mandates during the pandemic’s most dangerous surges.

-To encourage book bans and oppose books (even for high schoolers) that have any mention of sex or sexuality. (After the Brevard County Moms for Liberty challenged 41 books in school libraries, including Slaughterhouse-Five, Indiana’s Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library condemned the group in an open letter and offered free books to interested students.)

-To oppose teaching about America’s full history, including our history of enslavement and racism.

-To oppose sex education (in a time when most abortions are banned in 14 states and counting).

Today, there are more than 160 chapters of Moms for Liberty in 33 states, including one in Chatham County. Our Moms for Liberty candidate is a woman named Jessica Winger. She has signs up all over the county, which just list her name (in strategic blue with a little red star), but she is featured on the Moms for Liberty site, and their talking points are all over hers. Over the course of the pandemic, Ms. Winger attended a lot of Chatham County school board meetings to rail against mask mandates. Her website claims that Critical Race Theory is “now the official policy of Chatham County Schools.” The proof? This photo of a Black-white fist bump and “System Equity Transformation Framework” graphic offered by a so-called “whistleblower”:

I’ve never met Jessica Winger (she’s only lived here a little while), but I have met Del Turner, our vice chair, many times. Del has been a school board member for 12 years, has lived in Chatham County for 32 years. She has served on the Chatham County Planning Board, CC Affordable Housing Task Force, CC Partnership for Children, CC Housing Initiatives, and the CC Comprehensive Plan Task Force. If your kids go to an on-site after school program, you can thank Del—she helped start that program! Here are her issues, according to her website:

Del advocates for honest curricula based on accurately documented history.

Del is working to end ‘tracking’ students into vocations that will be obsolete in a few decades and ensuring all students have access to the full range of educational pathways.

Del is re-imagining low-population schools as traditional schools combined with magnet schools for fine arts, the performance arts, and STEM.

Del wants to incorporate civics into K-12 curricula to prepare students for citizenship, regardless of vocation.

Del believes teachers should be compensated on a level commensurate with their invaluable contribution to our community.

I met Del in 2012, when Richard and I helped her register new voters in Siler City. Many times, I saw young unregistered voters shrug off our first attempts, saying, “Nah, it doesn’t matter.” My inclination was to accept that and move on, but I learned persistence from Del, who’d ask, “why not? Tell me why you don’t think it matters.” And for most part they respected that, because they recognized (without her saying a word about it) that she was an educator. Nine times out of ten, they registered.

Del Turner is running alongside Gary Leonard and Jane Allen Wilson. As her website explains, “In Chatham County elections, all residents vote for school members from all districts. For a map of the Board of Election Districts, visit the Board of Elections website here.”

I haven’t seen as many Turner-Leonard-Wilson yard signs—they don’t have a group like Moms for Liberty backing them. But I’ll be voting for them and looking for other opportunities to support them—if you’re interested, you can find a list of school board meetings to attend here.

Are you involved with the school board where you live? Any interactions with / observations about Moms for Liberty?

They appear to have eleven chapters in North Carolina. I imagine that will grow. A quick scan of their Twitter account shows a lot hateful, fearmongering, anti-trans talk. Their website (and Jessica’s) is actually very light on content—a pledge about parental involvement and decision-making, videos of moms complaining at school board meetings (always unmasked and often with masked, pro-LGBTQ teachers in the background), T-shirts that say “We do not co-parent with the government.”

Personally, I’m glad I don’t have to make all the choices about my kids’ school and what or how they learn. I’m an educated person—I even have a master’s degree in elementary education—but even since I was in school, best practices have changed. My kids’ teachers work all year round to stay current, and I trust them. It would never occur to me to ask for books to be taken out of my kids’ library, or to harass school board members and teachers or demand that my kids not learn something documented to be true. I send my kids to public school and will continue to do so. I buy school lunch so I don’t have to make it myself, and I was delighted when it was free during the pandemic. I don’t consider any of this co-parenting, but parenting is hard! And I’m really grateful for the help.

Hope you’re having a restful weekend, Frog Troublers! It’s actually getting a little sunny right now, so I’m going to go outside and enjoy it.