It didn’t exist three years ago but today it is one of the most powerful pressure groups in the United States. Moms for Liberty, a parent-teacher organization, is on a mission to combat “school wokism” which it says endocrines kids. It was created in 2021 during the pandemic by three Florida mothers opposed to wearing masks and closing schools. When they returned to face-to-face classes, they took up a new hobbyhorse, dear to the conservatives: the fight against inclusion measures and the teaching of questions of gender, sexuality and race. They denounce both the training of teachers in diversity and the “biased” teaching of American history which, according to them, would inculcate in children that all whites are racists.
Moms for Liberty quickly became a big hit with Republicans. They claim today 115,000 members belonging to 285 local branches in 45 states. The “merry warriors”, as they call themselves, campaign for the “right of parents to have a say in education in the public”. Their strategy is to infiltrate the school boards which, at the local level, decide on the programs. In 2022, more than half of the 500 candidates supported by Moms for Liberty have been elected! Their members have successfully fired school principals, censored inclusion and diversity policies, and blacklisted dozens of books deemed “inappropriate” from libraries, often on the subject of race or LGBTQ people. Among the sulphurous works: The bluest eye by Toni Morrison The Scarlet Maid by Margaret Atwood or Martin Luther King Jr and the March on Washingtonby Frances Ruffin.
On several occasions, these “Mothers for Freedom” have been accused of intimidating or even harassing teachers or parents. In some localities, school board meetings have turned into fistfights. Last year, a member of the Arkansas branch was investigated after raising the idea of shooting live ammunition at librarians. In Tennessee, another threatened parents who opposed the “Moms” to report them to social services for child abuse. In a letter to its members, the director of the Indiana section even saw fit to quote Hitler by name (“Only he who possesses youth can bet on the future”)! The Southern Poverty Law Center, an association that promotes tolerance and studies extremist organizations, places Moms for Liberty in this category.
Education at the center of the next presidential election
The group claims to be apolitical. In reality, he is totally subservient to the Republican Party and two conservative think tanks. This partly explains its ascending influence, visible at the end of June during its annual convention in Philadelphia. No less than five 2024 presidential candidates came to woo them, including Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida who passed many reforms dictated by Moms for Liberty. “Mothers will be the key political force in elections in 2024,” he said.
“Attempts at censorship in education are not new, underlines Jonathan Zimmerman, professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania. Unlike France, where education is centralized, there are in the United States some 13,000 school districts, in charge of programs. The novelty is that education is no longer just a local or state issue. DeSantis and the Republicans calculated that they could make it a national theme for get elected.”
Will the question of “wokism” really decide the 2024 elections? Too early to know. Several Democratic groups are mobilizing against the weight of Moms for Liberty. Public opinion is divided. According to a recent CBS News poll, 85% of respondents said they were opposed to the purge of books about LGBTQ or race. As Professor Zimmerman remarks: “Americans don’t like censorship, it goes against their ideals.”