Beware of the Mom Army ready to slay "the dragon" of public education
As Truthout reported last January, right-wing special interests are bankrolling "a new wave of 'parent' groups, deployed to make it appear there is wide opposition to public school policies while advancing the agenda of their (largely undisclosed) funders."
The truth is that in poll after poll, parents overwhelmingly express support for their children's public schools and approve of the job teachers are doing. Although "voters have expressed concern in polls about the state of K-12 education in the U.S.," according to NPR, "parents seem to like their own kids' school, and they like their kids' teachers even more." Most parents are even saying that "my child's school does a good job keeping me informed about the curriculum, including potentially controversial topics."
According to the most recent Gallup poll rating the honesty and ethics of various professions, teachers continue to be among the top three most trusted occupations in the country after nurses and medical doctors. The "parent" groups involved in the assault on public education would have the public believe otherwise.
The most prominent of these groups today are Parents Defending Education, National Parent Union, and Moms for Liberty. In Oregon, we have two parent groups that are at the forefront of these efforts; Oregon Moms Union and ED300. The latter no longer seems active as an entity since the lifting of COVID restrictions and full reopening of school buildings, both of which were the organization's top priorities. Though ED300 may not be holding anymore rallies or school reopening media campaigns, some of its prominent members are still at the forefront of anti-public education efforts, including ED300's co-founder, Rene Gonzalez. Gonzalez is a registered Democrat with conservative views, who bills himself as a centrist. Gonzalez was recently informally endorsed on Twitter by Ben Edtl, a far right supporter of school choice, and founder and CEO of the white nationalist group, Free Oregon. Gonzalez is running for Portland City Council this fall against the progressive incumbent, Jo Ann Hardesty, who has been endorsed by the Portland Association of Teachers.
Right-wing activism targeting public schools is trying to make inroads in Portland. Four Portland Public School Board seats will be up for election this coming spring, so those opposed to the radical right agenda must be proactive against ultraconservative influences gaining a foothold. Already last October, anti-maskers descended on the PPS headquarters, taking over the space and forcing the school board meeting to transition online. During the last PPS Board meeting, a parent claiming to be new to the area, delivered public comment condemning the "wokeness" forced onto students in the city's schools. She referenced an "exposé" on gender identity-affirming curriculum purportedly taught in PPS. The article was written by conservative activist and senior fellow at the conservative think tank, the Manhattan Institute, Christopher Rufo, who continues to single out and smear social justice-focused educators, unleashing doxxing campaigns against them, and ensuring Portland's presence on conservatives' radar as a key battleground for the Right's culture wars. In her testimony, the parent objected to education focusing on gender identity and deemed anti-racist books such as Me and White Supremacy, which she claimed are read in schools, to be racist. Betraying her ignorance on the topic of racism, she asked the rhetorical question, "how is it okay to combat racism with racism?" She followed that query by denying racism is real since, according to this white parent, anyone coming to the U.S. regardless of their race has equal opportunity for "a good life." This speaker hit the same talking points heard in the rallies of the national group Moms for Liberty, and those of the strikingly similar Oregon Mom's Union, both working to sow seeds of distrust of teachers to spur a mass exodus from public schools.
Truthout says this about these conservative parent groups' tactics and funding:
These 'parent' groups appear to have joined the decades-long coordinated dark money effort to dismantle public education. Rather than focusing explicitly on promoting privatization, they have attacked public schools — going after masking policies, remote learning and evidence-based curricula they dislike."
The "Movement": Not-So-Thinly-Disguised White Christian Nationalism Brimming with Right-wing Populist Rhetoric
According to the Moms for Liberty website, the organization's mission is "fighting for the survival of America by unifying, educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government." The mission statement begs the question: what is meant by "the survival of America?" What is the America Moms that for Liberty thinks that is in danger of being destroyed?
Throughout the first-ever annual Moms of Liberty national summit held last month in Florida, Christian references abounded, matching Yale University Professor of sociology and religious studies, Philip Gorski's, description of white Christian nationalism. Gorski writes:
"White Christian nationalism (WCN) is, first of all, a story about America. It says: America was founded as a Christian nation, by (white) Christians; and its laws and institutions are based on 'Biblical' (that is, Protestant) Christianity. This much is certain, though: America is divinely favored. Whence its enormous wealth and power. In exchange for these blessings, America has been given a mission: to spread religion, freedom, and civilization—by force, if necessary. But that mission is endangered by the growing presence of non-whites, non-Christians, and non-Americans on American soil. White Christians must therefore 'take back the country.'"
Not all the speakers at the summit were white, however, the rhetoric of saving America from destructive forces is firmly anchored in the desire for a white Christian nation, perhaps with a few token conservative Christians of color accepted into the majority-white America that Moms for Liberty seems to envision as its dream domain.
The desire for all-white schools and the concept of school choice, a dominant theme for Moms of Liberty, are historically linked. Radical right economist Milton Friedman came up with the idea of school vouchers as a way for white Southerners to escape the newly integrated schools post the Brown v. Board of Education ruling. But the primary motivation was to starve public schools of resources. Historian Nancy MacLean writes in the Washington Post, "White Southerners first fought for 'freedom of choice' in the mid-1950s as a means of defying the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which mandated the desegregation of public schools. Their goal was to create pathways for White families to remove their children from classrooms facing integration," thereby bleeding the public education system dry until it withers and dies.
As MacLean writes, "improving education was never the true reason for free-market fundamentalists’ embrace of vouchers. . . The vouchers were a tactic. The strategy they served was to stick parents with the full cost of their children’s schooling and the labor of finding and arranging it." Privatization was the end goal and racist dog whistles the means to achieve it in the 1950s just like they are today."
It is not difficult to identify expressly right-wing populist elements in today's radical right-funded parent groups' rhetoric. In their book, Right-wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort, Chip Berlet and Matthew Lyons define right-wing populism as "motivated or defined centrally by a backlash against liberation movements, social reform or revolution." Berlet and Lyons add: "This does not mean that right-wing populism’s goals are only defensive or reactive, but rather that its growth is fueled in a central way by fears of the Left and its political gains." The authors explain: "a populist movement . . . uses populist themes to mobilize a mass constituency as a sustained political or social force."
Labor scholar and activist Bill Fletcher Jr. has this to say about right-wing populism:
"Right-wing populism in the USA draws its inspiration from key elements of the Confederate States of America experience and mythology. These include, but are not limited to, white supremacy, xenophobia, sexism, states’ rights, contradictory imperial and isolationist tendencies, conservative Christianity, and militarism. These elements of right-wing populism in the USA, as Berlet and Lyons note, have congealed through the twentieth century in response/reaction to the progressive motions, and most particularly the social movements of the 1950s through early 1970s. These social movements, even in nonrevolutionary form, challenged many of the basic origin myths associated with the formation and development of the USA. Whether these myths are associated with race, gender relations or the actual development of what became the USA, they each have served as critical oppressive elements in keeping the larger social order together."
According to the European Center for Populism Studies, the populist rhetoric "often consists of anti-elitist sentiments, opposition to the perceived ‘establishment’, and speaking to the ‘common people.’" Anti-public education groups pit parents against "government unions" (and therefore the bloated, untrustworthy federal government which the radical right seeks to dismantle), and liberal teachers who are on one hand seen as a corrupting influence, and on the other, as lazy and whiny (think COVID closures and teachers demanding higher pay, as examples). The latter image of the teacher as a lazy loafer who is really no more than an unskilled babysitter with long summers and undeserved benefits, evokes the old trope of the public worker as a parasite, which according to Yale University's Associate Professor of Ethnicity, Race, and Migration, Daniel Martinez HoSang, originated during the Reconstruction period to discredit the Freedman's Bureau by contrasting "hard working" white men with "freeloading" Black people in post-Civil War propaganda.
Martinez HoSang and Joseph Lowndes write about the media depictions of unions and government workers following the Great Recession, clearly recycled a decade later:
Using such rhetoric--sometimes outright, other times coded--along with messaging stoking the public's homophobia, transphobia and racism by pointing fingers at educators is a tactic designed to create a constituency that will remain activated as a political and social force. Mobilizing and growing a conservative Christian base to support the libertarian agenda of eliminating social services and public goods is precisely the goal behind the right-wing billionaire financing of the Astroturf parent organizations.
Fake, but Dangerous
A tool for spotting phony education groups was developed by Professor Daniel Katz, and used to test the authenticity of Moms for Liberty by political scientist and education researcher Dr. Maurice Cunningham. Firstly, the extremely fast exponential growth of Moms for Liberty is suspect. The organization formed on January 1, 2021 in Florida. Only a year and a half later, it claims to have more than 95,000 members in 215 chapters all across the country. (As of yet, only two chapters in Oregon are listed on the Moms for Liberty website. They are in Deschutes and Douglas counties.)
The sponsors of the first-ever annual summit held in July by Moms for Liberty included the Leadership Institute and Heritage Foundation, both--as Dr. Cunningham writes--"critical members of the Council for National Policy, a secretive network of right wing billionaires and Christian fundamentalist leaders that underwrites and coordinates right wing politics."
Dr. Cunningham writes this about the founders of Moms for Liberty:
"The two 'founders' are former school committee member Tina Descovich, a communications and marketing professional and Tiffany Justice, also a former school committee member. But there was a third founder, Bridget Ziegler. She is still a school committee member and her husband, Christian Ziegler, is vice chairman of the Florida Republican Party and the owner of a political marketing firm. He boasts that Moms for Liberty will provide crucial ground support for DeSantis’ re-election."
The summit organized by Moms of Liberty, whom Dr. Cunningham calls "far right extremism with a cuddly title," was held in Florida, the "freest state in the United States," as Republican Governor Ron DeSantis claimed during his summit keynote. The summit's theme was "Joyful Warrior," and its goal was to provide an "in-depth look behind the education curtain into the war being waged against America's families in our public schools." Participants were encouraged and trained to "take a stand against the ongoing government encroachment on parental rights that seeks to drive a wedge between parents and an entire generation of America's youth."
The summit's most notable speaker, aside from former Trump Cabinet secretary Ben Carson, Senator Rick Scott, and Florida Governor DeSantis, was former U.S. Education Secretary under President Trump, Betsy DeVos, who has said she considers her "education activism" a means to "advance God's Kingdom."
In her keynote at the Moms for Liberty summit, DeVos explained that she is advocating for "education freedom" rather than school choice to emphasize a broader fight beyond one focused on improving or closing buildings. She said that the problem is that "we continue to fund systems and buildings," and that instead "we need to fund students" by providing families with the resources they can spend on a learning option of their own choice. DeVos believes the moment we are in is critical. She said: "The momentum around policy change that will support students and families has never been more significant." DeVos let it be known that "as we move to an education freedom environment," the U.S. Department of Education that once employed her should cease to exist. This statement received the loudest audience cheer, and signals a direction the Right is pursuing to dismantle the federal office. This is significant because, in U.S. Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici's words, the U.S. Department of Education is in charge of carrying out "our foundational federal education laws (which) are the hard-won products of the civil rights movement," providing oversight over students' civil rights and equal access to free, quality education.
Tiffany Justice, one of the co-founders of Moms for Liberty aka "moms on a mission to stoke the fires of liberty," addressed the audience stating, "2022 is the Year of the Parent, and moms and dads are the true political party." She reminded her audience of the organization's mission to "fight joyfully for the survival of America."
The tone of the conference was distinctly anti-teacher with unions being called "K-12 cartels" by the speakers. DeVos asserted that teachers would be freer and more fulfilled without union representation. "Under an education freedom environment," insisted DeVos, teachers would have "awesome opportunity." It would be "a boom for great teachers," she argued, because educators would have "the freedom to find their right fit."
Meanwhile, Governor DeSantis who was presented with a wooden sword as a token of appreciation for his gladiator-style fighting spirit by the leaders of Moms for Liberty, boasted of his recent legislative victories, such as the Parents' Bill of Rights' aka "Don't Say Gay" Bill, Curriculum Transparency legislation, and the Stop Woke Act, passed in Florida in the past year. These bills are what PEN America calls Educational gag orders, meant to restrict teaching about topics such as race, gender, American history, and LGBTQ+ identities in K–12 and higher education. PEN America tracks these bills and has released a report this month. Among the report's findings is the following:
- This year, proposed educational gag orders have increased 250 percent compared to 2021.
- This year’s bills have been strikingly more punitive. In 2022, proposed gag orders have been more likely to include punishments, and those punishments have more frequently been harsh: heavy fines or loss of state funding for institutions, termination or even criminal charges for teachers.
- While most gag order bills have continued to target teaching about race, a growing number have targeted LGBTQ+ identities. This includes Florida’s HB 1557—the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill
During the Summit, DeSantis also touted his controversial civics boot camp for teachers and his campaign to help conservative school board candidates get elected. Initiatives coming out of Florida are important to pay attention to because the state continues to be a testing ground of conservative education policy and reform, or as the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council states, "Florida has historically been a national leader in parental choice, boasting a variety of policies like education savings accounts, tax credit scholarships, and open enrollment that allow families to make personalized decisions around their child’s education." Programs piloted in Florida get replicated in other states.
Arizona is another state that pilots education reform legislation. Last month, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed into law the nation’s first universal education savings account program. The bill ensures families receive scholarships by re-directing their current education tax dollars for education programs of their choice. The amount is approximately $7,000 per student. Ducey praised the move in a news release, saying: “Arizona is now the gold standard for educational freedom in America."
We can be sure in Portland that the four seats on the PPS School Board up for election this spring will have candidates funded by the very same dark money networks. As far as civics education initiatives, Oregon just passed its own legislation last year requiring civics credit for high school graduation starting in 2026. Conservatives are already pushing hard to influence the civics class content to be taught.
With right-wing billionaires pouring funds into growing and training pro-school choice parent groups, conservative school board candidates, highly publicized think tank pieces, and libertarian legislative activism, no state or district is safe from the danger of a radical right coup in the context of public education.
Who is Oregon Moms Union?
Whereas Moms for Liberty has only two chapters listed in Oregon, its ideological twin, Oregon Moms Union, currently has School District Captains listed for 64 districts throughout the state. Oregon Moms Union formed in 2021 just like Moms for Liberty to "help organize parents to fight for their kids' right to an education." The School District Captains' job is to connect OMU with local like-minded parents interested in advocating for school choice. Earlier this month, the Portland District Captain was listed as Sonja Feintech, who helped organize the anti-mask protest inside PPS headquarters last October. Feintech is also Free Oregon's Chief Political Officer. Free Oregon is a white nationalist organization founded in 2020 to "fiercely (fight) against government overreach" and protect "law abiding citizens'" 2nd amendment rights. Free Oregon's founder, Ben Edtl, has run for numerous public office posts. In his latest campaign, he stated his promise to work to "stop political indoctrination in our public schools,
restore statewide standards, remove divisive CRT and
return school districts to local control." Free Oregon bills itself as a group of "charismatic freedom fighters" that "has become a force to recon (sic) with." The group's Chief Political Officer Feintech is no longer listed on the OMU website as a District Captain, which has left Portland "captainless."
The President and Co-Founder of OMU is MacKensey Pulliam, the wife of Stan Pulliam, mayor of the town of Sandy and former Republican candidate for Oregon Governor who lost this year's primary.
Like Moms for Liberty, OMU will be holding its first-ever summit this year. The event is called the Parents Matter Summit, and will be held in September in Salem. Offerings include the anti-union Freedom Foundation's strategy session, "The Almighty Union" and a training for parents interested in campaigning for their local school board entitled, "Are You Ready to Run?" Co-founder of ED300, Jennifer Dale, will be facilitating a workshop called, "Are your children getting the education they deserve?"
Presenters of national acclaim include former public school teacher and "lover of Jesus Christ," Rebecca Friedrichs, whose 2016 U.S. Supreme Court lawsuit, Friedrichs v California Teachers' Association, purportedly "blazed the trail for ending forced unionism for all teachers and government employees in the United States." The lawsuit actually ended fair share payments by nonmembers in all public unions. These payments were a fraction of union dues but were considered payment for the contract and benefits bargained by the union.
Another speaker is right-wing media commentator, political scientist and former professor Dr. Carol Swain, who is currently a Distinguished Senior Fellow for Constitutional Studies with the Texas Public Policy Foundation and an educational advisor for American Cornerstone Institute founded by Dr. Ben Carson. She is also former vice chair of Trump's 1776 Commission and member of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing 501(c)(3) nonprofit group which Sourcewatch described as "'a little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country' and 'a hyper-secretive Christian Right powerhouse that helps set the movement’s agenda.'"
Corey DeAngelis will also be a featured speaker at the summit. He is the national director of research at Betsy DeVos's American Federation for Children, the executive director at Educational Freedom Institute, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, and a senior fellow at Reason Foundation. According to Sourcewatch, "the Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank founded by Charles G. Koch and funded by the Koch brothers," billionaire libertarian activists who have fueled the capitalist radical right restructuring of U.S. politics and democratic governance. The Cato Institute which is headquartered in Washington D.C. and "favors policies 'that are consistent with the traditional American principles of limited government, individual liberty, and peace.' . . The Cato Institute is an 'associate' member of the State Policy Network, a web of right-wing 'think tanks' in every state across the country."
The conference sponsors provide clues to the Oregon Moms Union origin story and funding. The sponsors are: Parents Defending Education (PDE), the Freedom Foundation, Cascade Policy Institute, and National School Choice Week.
PDE self-identifies as "a national grassroots organization working to reclaim our schools from activists promoting harmful agendas." Dr. Cunningham has written about PDE, pointing out their connections to right-wing billionaire funders and calling the organization "school privatizers going hard right to attack school boards, superintendents, principals, and teachers . . . about as grassroots as say, a Koch political operation." According to PDE's website, PDE president and founder Nicole Neily is also the president of Speech First, a national campus free speech organization, and has worked at the Independent Women’s Forum and the Cato Institute.” Sourcewatch details Neily's dark money connections:
"Neily has worked for many Koch-affiliated groups. Neily was the president of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, the Cato Institute’s manager of external relations, the coalition relations manager for FreedomWorks’ Center for Global Economic Growth, and a 'Koch summer fellow for both the Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.' Additionally, Neily is associated with other Koch-affiliated groups. Neily served as a board member for Young Voices and Young Americans for Liberty.'"
As Dr. Cunningham explains, PDE's Director of Outreach, Erika Sanzi has a close relationship with pro-privatization networks. He writes:
"Sanzi has worked for billionaire funded school privatization groups, also bringing home a hefty paycheck. According to research from Mercedes Schneider the Education Post, an online publication originally funded by Eli Broad, paid Sanzi $121,000 in 2016 and $131,000 in 2017. She is also a 'senior visiting fellow' at (the conservative think tank) the Fordham Institute."
PDE used to operate a webpage where parents could report incidents of supposed indoctrination in their children's schools. That feature has disappeared from PDE's website, as has PDE's former Vice President for Strategy and Investigations and the Director of the IndoctriNation database and FOIA work, former investigative journalist and frequent right-wing media commentator, Asra Nomani. The organization still provides a guide to filing a FOIA request in order to, in PDE's words, expose "the indoctrination of children with divisive ideas, the hijacking of our schools, the politicization and corruption of our educational systems." Portland and Beaverton teachers and programs have been targeted by PDE for their focus on racial justice in public schools.
Another sponsor of OMU's Parents Matter Summit is Freedom Foundation. As Sourcewatch states, Freedom Foundation "is a libertarian think tank well-known for advancing aggressive techniques to dismantle unions." It is funded in part by the Bradley Foundation and the Charles Koch Foundation and based in Olympia, Washington. The Foundation's mission is "to advance individual liberty, free enterprise, and limited, accountable government," according to its website.
Cascade Policy Institute is another sponsor. It is a Oregon-based libertarian think tank which "develops and promotes public policy alternatives that foster individual liberty, personal responsibility, and economic opportunity." As its website states, the Institute "promotes incentives, decentralized decision-making, and market solutions to public policy dilemmas." It is a member of the State Policy Network (SPN), and in fact was co-founded by Tracie Sharp, who at the time was the President and CEO of SPN. According to Sourcewatch, Cascade Policy Institute's funders include SPN, the Cato Institute, the Bradley Foundation, and the Donors Trust and its supporting 509(a)(3) organization Donors Capital Fund, both in part funded by the Kochs.
Grassroots? Hardly
None of the above players scream grassroots organizing, but rather the opposite, a strategically created radical right network razor-focused on achieving its mission of growing and protecting its funders' wealth by dismantling the public commons, weakening the power of government, and neutralizing resistance. Historian Nancy MacClean writes about this network in her "piercing examination of the Right's relentless campaign to eliminate unions, suppress voting, privatize public education, stop action on climate change, and alter the constitution," her book entitled, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan forAmerica:
"Their cause, they say, is liberty. But by that they mean the insulation of private property rights from the reach of government--and the takeover of what was long public (schools, prisons, western lands, and much more) by corporations, a system that would radically reduce the freedom of the many. In a nutshell, they aim to hollow out democratic resistance."
MacLean concludes:
"The libertarian cause from the time it first attracted wider support during the southern school crisis, was never really about freedom as most people would define it. It was about the promotion of crippling division among the people so as to end any interference with those who had vast power over others believed should be their prerogatives. Its leaders had no scruples about enlisting white supremacy to achieve capital supremacy. And today, knowing that the majority does not share their goals and would stop them if they understood the endgame, the team of paid operatives seeks to win by stealth. Now, as then, the leaders seek. . . liberty for the few--the liberty to concentrate vast wealth, so as to deny elementary fairness and freedom to the many."
The Need for Collective Resistance
How do we combat the radical right's takeover? How do we stop it in its tracks for the sake of true democracy? Our strategies must include exposing the funding and purpose of these radical right groups, as well as decoding and countering the messaging they use to recruit the masses for the billionaires' endgame. When teachers and parents unite for publicly funded quality community schools, the radical right’s plan can be defeated. It is up to us and the time to collectively resist is now.
Comments
Post a Comment