Suburban parents mobilize in effort to smack down right-wing Moms for Liberty

Parents in a Pennsylvania swing district are fighting back against Moms for Liberty and exposing the shadowy right-wing network behind a crusade to ban books on LGBTQ and race and impose extremism in classrooms.

Republicans have stoked outrage against alleged left-wing ideology and purported "pornography" in schools to peel off suburban voters, like those found in Pennsylvania's Bucks County, and the conservative organization Moms for Liberty has captured school boards across the country and imposed their standards on libraries and education standards, reported Amanda Marcotte for Salon.

"We are a diverse group that has the parents that have bothered to do the homework," said Elizabeth Mikitarian, a retired kindergarten teacher who started Stop Moms for Liberty. "Our contention is that Moms for Liberty has an issue with society."

Kevin Leven of the Bucks County Anti-Racism Coalition started attending Pennridge school board meetings to keep an eye on the right-wing majority, which includes a member present at the Jan. 6 insurrection, and caught wind of plans to adopt a curriculum crafted by an education consulting company with ties to the hardcore conservative Hillsdale College.

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"With the Jordan Adams contract being added to the agenda at the last minute," said parent Jane Cramer, referring to the owner of the consulting firm Vermilion, "a lot more people in the community started to hear what was happening."

The 31-year-old Adams, who launched Vermilion in March, has no experience developing curricular for public schools but claims to have five years of teaching experience and, crucially, spent five years working at Hillsdale College, which is leading the charge to remake public education to promote conservative Christian views.

"I heard the exact same speeches that I had heard in the state of Florida," Mikitarian said. "I realized this was a whole scripted movement."

The Pennridge school board offered the bare legal minimum of public notice before rushing through the Hillsdale-approved curriculum primarily written by Adams, which was approved 5-4 by the Moms for Liberty-aligned majority over the objections of school administrators, and parents started noticing that books targeted by the group had been mysteriously checked out for the entire year, making them inaccessible to students.

"[The board is] using lawyers as a weapon against the public, basically to create roadblocks hoping that you just eventually give up," said parent Darren Lausten, who is suing the school district over the shadow book ban. "The more they did that, the more I was just like, f--k this. It just p---ed me off, so I've spent, like, so much godd--n money trying to beat this."

In addition to the lawsuit, other parents are organizing to oppose the right-wing majority or run to replace them on the school board.

"They pretty much just cut and pasted Hillsdale's curriculum and sold it to us," said first-time school board candidate Leah Rash, who compared Adams to the con man in "The Music Man." "They created a problem and then sold the solution."