Moms for Liberty, a national organization that has led efforts to ban anti-racist and LGBTQ-themed library books and school curriculum, is generating national headlines by accusing theMassachusetts Municipal Police Training Committee of bias because it designates Moms for Liberty an antigovernment organization.
Moms for Liberty says it obtained the state’s police training materials through a Freedom of Information Act request and found that it had been labeled an extremist group. GBH News has not been able to confirm this independently.
But state officials note that the Southern Poverty Law Center identifies Moms for Liberty as an“antigovernment organization” with links to extremist movements.
The Municipal Police Training Committee provides instruction and syllabi for more than 20,000 full time and part time police officers in the state. A state official told GBH that the curriculum “includes reference to groups such as Mothers for Liberty and others, not to ascribe labels, but to help officers recognize movements that may influence community dynamics, public discourse, or protest activity.”
Moms for Liberty claims that the training committee syllabus said the organization uses parents’ rights to make schools less welcoming for minority and LGBTQ students. The group frames its work as a broad effort to help parents who are concerned about books that feature LGBTQ characters and that focus on America’s fraught racial history.
The group has launched a public campaign on right wing media to bring attention to the dispute with Massachusetts, with co-founder Tina Descovich appearing recently on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast and the Daily Wire’s YouTube broadcast.
“We have parental rights that were given to us by God,” she told the Daily Wire’s hosts. “We have parental rights that have been affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States that we can opt out of some of these things or opt into other curriculum.”
But Maya Carey, a senior research analyst for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Unit, told GBH News that the group hides behind the “parents’ rights” mantle.
“Moms for Liberty has been designated as an anti-government group by us since 2022,” Carey said. “And they really push out this conspiracy theory that public schools and public educators are attempting to indoctrinate children through this radical Marxist agenda.”
Carey applauded the training committee for including Moms for Liberty in its syllabi.
“I think that it’s very admirable that any organization would look at this information and use it to help prevent crimes and discrimination against members of their community.”
A spokesperson for the Municipal Training Committee in a prepared statement told GBH News that the agency “is committed to delivering objective, legally sound training that supports fair and impartial policing statewide.”
The spokesperson explained that the group’s curriculum “draws on a broad range of open-source materials and activity happening across Massachusetts to expose officers to the perspectives they may encounter in the field while emphasizing respectful, unbiased engagement with all members of the public.”
Larry Ellison, former president of the Mass Association of Minority Law Enforcement Officers, said the extremist designation is appropriate.
Ellison, who is Black, said he had gone through the training offered by the state and knowing whether a group is “hostile to others, is without question important” for officers to know.
“From what I read they [Moms for Liberty] find offensive someone that looks like me or someone who thinks differently than them. So, I think it’s very helpful for officers to know who they’re encountering.”
Moms for Liberty did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
