Moms for Liberty, the parents’ rights organization which rose to prominence for championing more parental involvement in education, was labeled a hate group by a state committee responsible for training police officers.
The Massachusetts Municipal Police Training Committee classified Moms for Liberty as a “hate group” in its training materials, putting them in the same category as groups such as neo-Nazis and antifa, according to a report from the Daily Wire, which obtained the information through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The MMPTC prepares over 20,000 police officers throughout Massachusetts for their duties as law enforcement officials. This includes developing and delivering “training standards of municipal, MBTA, environmental, UMass, campus police officers, and deputy sheriffs performing police duties and functions.”
“The Municipal Police Training Committee contributes to the safety and security of the Commonwealth’s citizens by establishing training standards for and delivering training to more than 20,000 individuals who serve as police officers throughout the Commonwealth,” reads the organization’s website. “The training ranges from basic training for new officers to mandatory and specialized professional development training for incumbent officers.”
Moms for Liberty was categorized as an “anti-government extremist group,” according to the Daily Wire. The designation came from assessments made by the Southern Party Law Center, a radical left-wing policy establishment, yet apparently used by the MMPTC. The training materials acquired in the FOIA request revealed that the MMPTC claimed Moms for Liberty “targeted books that reference race and gender identity” and weaponized the concept of parents’ rights as a “vehicle to attack public education and make schools less welcoming for minority and LGBTQ students.”
Tina Descovich, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, rebuked the classification and subsequent accusations. She said her group encourages moms to get engaged through activities such as attending school board meetings, among other things.
“Moms for Liberty is here to show up at school board meetings, speak out against curriculum, failing schools, inappropriate books maybe in your public school library,” Descovich told the Daily Wire. “Antifa is burning down whole cities and parts of cities and rioting in the streets. These two are not equivalent.”
“We want parents to have the ability to opt out of sexualized books or curriculum, things that don’t align with their religious beliefs, as the Supreme Court just affirmed in their most recent ruling in the Montgomery County, Maryland case,” Descovich added.
She also questioned the MMPTC, pondering the motives behind Moms for Liberty being included in the trainings.
“We have to ask what is going on here in Massachusetts with these trainings to police officers,” said Descovich. “We are not conducting ourselves in a way that police ever need to be concerned about the way we act. As a matter of fact, our chapter chair there in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, who is the one that brought all this to my attention, said she has local members of their police force come up to her all the time and say, ‘Please keep going. We can’t talk about it publicly, but I have kids. I appreciate you guys speaking out. So thank you for your courage and your bravery.’”
The trainings link to a heavily critical article from PBS, which claims that Moms for Liberty is a “well-connected extremist group that attacks inclusion in schools.” It also specified that Moms for Liberty works to get right-wing candidates elected to school boards, the Daily Wire reported.
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“PBS is anything but fair and balanced,” Descovich said. “And now the state of Massachusetts is using those PBS articles to target us, to put a target on our back and tell police in that state that we are a threat.”
“All we are is moms and dads that are concerned about our children, that are speaking up in a public forum, which we have the constitutional right to do,” she added.