PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania — Parents attending the Moms for Liberty summit are coming away with the tools to reclaim school boards and advocate for their children’s educations.
The four-day summit, which was attended by hundreds of parents — mostly mothers — representing 40 states, featured prominent speeches by presidential candidates, such as former President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), as well as left-wing protests outside.
RON DESANTIS VOWS TO ABOLISH THE IRS — CAN HE ACTUALLY DO IT?
After Moms for Liberty was recently labeled an extremist hate group by Southern Poverty Law Center (or SPLC) — a move that was resoundingly condemned by the founders and Republican politicians — this year’s summit faced protests and fresh skepticism from the mainstream press, questioning whether it was really a “parental rights” organization.
But inside the Marriott Philadelphia Downtown hotel, staff spoke of positive experiences with the attendees. As the conference closed down Sunday afternoon, staff lined the convention center to give the moms a round of applause for their cordiality and respectfulness.
Beyond the headlines of protests and presidential hopefuls were hours of closed-to-press training sessions to give parents the tools they need to advocate for their rights as parents against local school boards.
Topics included how to spot classroom materials that sexualize children, submitting Freedom of Information Act requests, fund-raising, and launching campaigns for school boards. In light of the recent SPLC labeling that the founders said put a “target” on their backs, sessions also addressed the matter of dealing with political adversity and an unfriendly press.
“It’s one more tool in my peaceful arsenal,” Sarah Garriott, the Pierce County, Washington chapter chair, told the Washington Examiner. “I can use that knowledge to then help disrupt some of these lies that are being told to us.”
Attendees from the same chapter split their time among the different sessions to divide and conquer the information and report back to their members.
“We need to get in there every day and fight at the board of education to uncover the truth, push for transparency, find out what the curriculum is,” Kerry Gillespie, a chapter member of Anne Arundel County, Maryland, told the Washington Examiner. “They’re providing us with the information and the resources for how to go about those types of everyday battles within our school system.”
For Gillespie, the most important issue is getting members of the community to commit to running for school board — something she said she is considering. She also leads the Maryland Alliance for Parents and Students, a group focused on getting conservative school board members elected across the Old Line State.
Some of the Moms for Liberty breakout sessions focused on how to run a campaign, fundraise, and govern after a win — both being in the minority and majority on the board.
Gillespie, who ran unsuccessfully for a General Assembly seat in 2022, said she knows how “intimidating” running a campaign for the first time can be.
“The biggest hurdle is internal,” she explained, saying the breakout sessions give chapter members the tools to start grassroots machines “so that you don’t feel as left-in-the-dark; you feel like you have a pathway.”
“If there are people who do decide to run for office because they’re concerned about these issues, they’re going to have a groundswell of support behind them,” Gillespie said.
Even in the face of doxxing threats and pushback from opposing forces, Gillespie explained, “what Moms for Liberty says we are, is what we try to be in my chapter and what I have seen every mother in this fight try to be, which is a joyful warrior for our children.”
Moms for Liberty chapters can also become research arms, persistently prodding local schools and school boards for information and explanations, Ruth Roberson, another mom from Anne Arundel, home to the capital city Annapolis, told the Washington Examiner.
“The main thing is to ask questions,” she explained. “A lot of times they’ll say, ‘Oh, well, you’re not credentialed. You don’t have a Ph.D. I’m so much smarter than you.'”
She continued, “Well, let me tell you what … you don’t have to have a degree to be in charge of your own kid and how you want to raise them.”
Calling the level of transparency in Anne Arundel “opaque,” Roberson said she would be putting FOIA requests to work, adding: “We get roadblocked and the gatekeepers don’t want the parents to have any knowledge, so we’re going to use the things that we have at our disposal, the legal apparatus, and use freedom of information. That’s our plan.”
Noting that local chapters are made up of busy mothers who volunteer their time, as well as some of the procedural hurdles like paying for FOIAs, Roberson said she hopes the national network can work to pool resources to look into major problems in a given locality.
For Elizabeth Smith of Erie County, Pennsylvania, and Garriott, learning more about American history, and both federal and respective state constitutions will help them learn the extent of the rights they maintain as parents.
Equipped with positive narratives about historical figures, including founders such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and Black persons involved with the American Revolution, Garriott said her Washington chapter can flip the script on the “systemic racism,” and “oppressive whiteness” messaging schools are teaching.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“I guess if you want to tear down a Constitution, you have to tear down the people who wrote it, right?” Garriott said, adding the Left has put in a lot of effort to make people believe “all of the Founders [were] white, misogynistic, horrible people, rather than building them up.”
Educating local parents on what is going on in the schools and the power they have to get involved is one of the biggest barriers to entry, Smith said, noting she hopes to bring what she learned back to Erie County and pass it on to not only her children, but everyone in the county.
