Massachusetts police training calls Moms for Liberty ‘hate group’
The group that trains police officers in Massachusetts names parental advocate Moms for Liberty on a list of hate groups that also includes neo-Nazis and violent, black-clad leftist Antifa.
The Massachusetts Municipal Police Training Committee cites the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center in its source materials, labeling Moms for Liberty an “anti-government extremist” group.
The training program, which reaches more than 20,000 officers annually, made the incendiary claim in documents obtained through a public records request by Moms for Liberty, the Daily Wire reports.
Moms for Liberty is a national parental rights group formed in 2021 by former school board members Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice. The nonprofit organization helps parents “advocate effectively for their children at school board meetings and across all levels of government.”
The organization also advocates for transparency in public schools, especially as it relates to sexual content and gender ideology, its members say.
Of Descovich and Justice, the Moms for Liberty website explains:
“Drawing from their firsthand experience, they recognized that the fundamental right of parents to guide their children’s upbringing was under threat. They witnessed policies and curricula that hindered children’s mastery of essential skills and jeopardized their overall development and education.”
The Massachusetts police training materials claim the group “uses ‘parents’ rights’ as a vehicle to attack public education and make schools less welcoming for minority and LGBTQ students.”
Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich rejects the characterization.
“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, whereas “Antifa is burning down whole cities and parts of cities and rioting in the streets. These two are not equivalent.”
The training materials link to an inflammatory PBS article describing Moms for Liberty as “a well-connected extremist group that attacks inclusion in schools.”
Descovich repudiates such biased portrayals.
“PBS is anything but fair and balanced,” she 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.”
“We want parents to have the ability to opt out of sexualized books or curriculum,” she adds, “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.”
The group doesn’t behave in any way that should concern law enforcement, Descovich argues.
“We are not conducting ourselves in a way that police ever need to be concerned about the way we act.”
Local officers have even expressed their support to Moms for Liberty members, she said.
“Our chapter chair there in Plymouth County, Massachusetts … 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.’”