Snake in the grass
Rarely has any institution been more ironically and inappropriately named. I mean, wouldn’t you expect an entity with a name like “Moms for Liberty” to be the very soul of motherly nurturing of personal liberties? Wouldn’t you expect them to be organised around the principle that all children deserve dignity, equality and civil rights?
Me too. But Moms for Liberty is instead an American organisation that advocates against school curricula that mention such things as LGBTQIA+ rights, race and ethnicity, “critical race theory” and discrimination. They are a deeply conservative political organisation devoted to banning books not promoting learning. They are really about taking away liberties rather than adding to them.
What’s more, they also want all mention of global warming removed from the classroom curricula. Global warming, they “reason,” is an issue too much linked with liberals, and they do not want children exposed to “liberal ideas.”
Well here’s a “liberal idea” for them: In the 1980s, the US experienced an extreme weather event every four months. Nowadays there’s one every three weeks. By the time children of today are adults, that number will have increased to several times a day.
The average daily temperature of the planet is increasing year upon year. For the past three years each succeeding year has been the hottest on record. By the time those children who’ve been influenced by “Moms for Liberty” grow up, that global warming trend will have become unbearable. They will then see “Moms for Liberty” for what it actually is: an evil organisation that exploited their naive innocence in order to advance the interests and profits of oil companies and Republicans. And by then it will be too late.
It’s the agenda of Moms for Liberty to infiltrate school boards nationwide and take them over. Their progress is terrifying to behold. And to give you an idea of how loony tunes these people are, along with censoring a number of LGBTQ+ books, subjects and Pride-related paraphernalia, Moms for Liberty members across the US have tried to claim that Joe Biden and “woke” teachers are working to turn kids gay, which of course isn’t just absurd it’s impossible.
This year the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organisation that tracks extremists, termed Moms for Liberty a far-right extremist group. They have been criticised for harassment, for deepening divisions between parents, for making students’ education more difficult and for having close ties to the Republican Party rather than being a genuine grassroots entity.
And they’re coming for your kids. Make no mistake, Republicans have a long term agenda, and Moms for Liberty is part of that agenda. The organisation is a snake in the grass that will one day contribute to the destruction of American democracy and earth’s ability to sustain human life. They are inimical to our survival and they must be stopped. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.