With an innocuous-sounding name that is unknown to many voters, a group called Moms for Liberty has been growing rapidly in influence in conservative circles and the national Republican Party.
After starting in 2021 in Florida to battle against mask and vaccine mandates in public schools, the parental rights group says it has since grown to 285 chapters in 45 states.
Now, their message has spread to Hartford County, where the local chapter is hosting a controversial national guest speaker in the Farmington Valley on Oct. 21. Avon Democrats have planned a protest rally outside the event against the Moms’ conservative views. The Moms have become so contentious that they have spawned a counter-group called STOP Moms for Liberty.
Expanding from its original issues, the group has become involved in the conservative parental rights movement, including book bans and opposing critical race theory, which has galvanized conservatives but has been dismissed by others as not being widely taught in Connecticut schools.
With stunning speed for a group formed by three mothers only two years ago, Moms held its second annual summit and heard speeches from the top tier of Republican presidential candidates — former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Yale Law School graduate Vivek Ramaswamy.
“Mothers in the Republican Party have felt that it’s very important to get more control over what’s happening on local school boards and what’s going into the education of their children,” said Gary Rose, an author and longtime political science professor at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield. “The Moms for Liberty movement is actually a potent force in grassroots politics today and is something that we’re going to hear more of.”
Rose added, “So much of it has come from the cultural, moral issues — the woke movement that is now affecting public schools. Gender identity, critical race theory, mask mandates, vaccines — it’s all related to what’s happening in public schools, and mothers are very concerned about what their kids are hearing.”
At the political level, Republican Glenn Youngkin largely rode the wave of discontent on cultural issues to become governor of Virginia. In Connecticut, a concerned group of five activist parents won a Republican primary for the school board two years ago in Guilford, but then lost to Democrats in a high-turnout general election.
Connecticut symposium
In Avon, the Moms group is hosting an event entitled: “Symposium on parental rights — what’s the controversy?”
The main speaker, author James Lindsay, is described as a “leading critic of critical race theory,” according to a copy of the invitation that was obtained by The Courant.
Lindsay is a controversial author who was banned from Twitter before being reinstated after billionaire Elon Musk purchased the platform. He has been panned by critics for promoting conspiracy theories and is the author of “Race Marxism: The Truth About Critical Race Theory and Praxis.” He has been a guest on Fox News and the Joe Rogan podcast.
He was also the author of “Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity ― and Why This Harms Everybody.”
The Moms’ invitation says only that the Oct. 21 symposium will be held in the “Farmington Valley Area,” but others say it will be at the Avon Senior Center, the site where Democrats will gather in protest.
“The Avon Democrats strongly denounce any organization that serves to demonize, dehumanize, and erase entire groups of people,” Democrats said on Facebook. “We denounce efforts to remove books from libraries, topics from curricula, events and individuals from history lessons, and diverse voices from conversations. And we denounce the intimidation our educators, librarians, and school administrators are experiencing across Connecticut and the nation because a tiny cross-section of the population is resurrecting ‘purity’ agendas as a tactic to push vulnerable groups into the margins of society.”
They continued, “The rhetoric espoused by Moms for Liberty and their funders and affiliates is full of homophobic, transphobic, racist, and xenophobic vitriol. We encourage you to research how this group has evolved and what their end game is.”
The Moms’ chapter in Hartford County issued a statement that the group was being mischaracterized and opposes banning books. The chapter started earlier this year and says it runs independently of the national organization.
“We do want books to be age-appropriate. No book ban or book burning,” the group said. “We are not transphobic or homophonic. LGBTQ+ is well represented in our chapter. … We don’t want homophobia or racism or sexism. … Parents are labeled as an ‘extremist group’ for saying, ‘I raise my children, the government does not.’ ”
Regarding sports, the group said, “We support girls’ sports and uphold Title IX. A girl who spends so much time, effort, and energy in training, including their parents’ time and money, to have her dreams of winning a competition or scholarship taken away by a biological male is soul crushing. Feminists fought so hard for that.”
But Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz said the group has a broader agenda.
“Moms for Liberty is the group behind the book bans that are occurring all over the country and all over Connecticut,” Bysiewicz told The Courant in an interview. “They are a big source of it, but clearly it’s coming from other places, too. … If you look at the Moms for Liberty website, it all seems very innocuous. … This is really serious, and it means that the voters of Connecticut should be paying close attention to who is running for the board of education and what their priorities are.”
Bysiewicz said she is concerned about Lindsay, the guest speaker who is coming to Avon.
“James Lindsay has had a lot of public remarks that that are homophobic,” Bysiewicz said. “He was saying that the Pride flag is the flag of a hostile enemy. He said drag queens make themselves targets for violence. … It’s really extremely disturbing. He is someone that talks about white genocide, which is the eradication of the white race.”
In his keynote speech, Lindsay will discuss his book, “The Marxification of Education.” He will then also appear in a panel discussion moderated by author and political analyst L. Todd Wood, a former military pilot who flew missions for Delta Force and Seal Team 6.
“He’s on a new mission now — to protect the American way of life and rescue it from the destructive grip of the socialist ideology that threatens its sovereignty and everything that makes this country great,” Wood’s web site says.
The event with Lindsay costs $25 per person, and a two-hour, private dinner with him later in the day costs $100 per person, including a signed copy of his book.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled the Moms group as “extremist” in its views.
“Moms for Liberty and its nationwide chapters combat what they consider the ‘woke indoctrination’ of children by advocating for book bans in school libraries and endorsing candidates for public office that align with the group’s views,” the law center says on its website. “They also use their multiple social media platforms to target teachers and school officials, advocate for the abolition of the Department of Education, advance a conspiracy propaganda, and spread hateful imagery and rhetoric against the LGBTQ community.”
But Rose, the longtime political science professor, says some of the rhetoric is exaggerated and overheated.
“The Southern Poverty Law Center calls everybody extremist,” said Rose, who has written 15 books on politics over the past three decades. “I don’t think honestly people who study politics today are really taking the Southern Poverty Law Center’s descriptions and categories of groups as serious as they once did. It has become such a far-left group that anybody who is right-of-center is now labeled extremist. I wouldn’t put much stock in what they say. It’s difficult to call Moms for Liberty an extremist group, but it doesn’t surprise me in the least that they put them in that category.”
While well known in Republican and conservative circles, Moms is not as well known among Democrats and the general public.
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal knew little of the group, asking an aide if his office had received any inquiries.
“I haven’t dealt with them,” Blumenthal told The Courant.
Like Blumenthal, House Republican leader Vincent Candelora of North Branford knew few details about the group. But he said politicians and others need to tone down the rhetoric and stop labeling various groups as extremist.
“What I continually find disturbing is that Democrats are very quick to label people and discard them and are very intolerant to different viewpoints — and I think that’s a very dangerous approach they have been taking,” Candelora said in an interview. “Their continued intolerance for peoples’ views is really treading in an area I have never seen before. As elected officials, we should be listening to what everybody has to say, rather than just attempting to label it and discard it as extremism.”
Candelora added, “I’ve been familiar with some of these groups, and I don’t necessarily agree with all of their positions. But I would not label them as extremists. I wouldn’t say they’re hate groups. I wouldn’t say they’re homophobic. … The labeling needs to end. Politics has become a blood sport, and it needs to stop.”
The leader of the Moms’ Fairfield County chapter is Amanda Dombrowski, a 43-year-old mother in Trumbull who became politically active and supported Republican Bob Stefanowski for governor in 2022 by organizing a Facebook group that was known as “Moms for Bob.”
Before becoming a mother, she previously had independent views but then she started taking a more conservative stance. Those issues included mask mandates in schools, along with ongoing concerns about crime, taxes, and inflation.
Along with hundreds of others, Dombroski traveled to the state Capitol on the day of the State of the State Address in February 2022 with her 4-year-old to protest mask mandates. She told a television reporter that parents should make the decisions and the mask mandate was “absolutely ridiculous.”
For decades, Republicans and Democrats would fight over issues like taxes and national security. But that has changed.
“It’s the social issues and moral issues that are emerging,” Rose said. “That’s what the Moms for Liberty are concerned about. It’s a new era when it comes to a school board election, where you would think there would be more concern about having a good education as opposed to the issues and the political ramifications of those issues. School boards are a hot area now.”
Christopher Keating can be reached at ckeating@courant.com
