“I have been targeted by this man at rallies, school board meetings, and online. I now fear for my life, and the lives of my four children,” Cousins wrote in a statement to the officer, according to a copy of the police report reviewed by VICE News. Engels’ targeting of Cousins, she believes, came as a result of the harassment campaign conducted by the Orange County chapter of Moms for Liberty. Moms for Liberty was founded in Florida by Tina Descovich, after she lost a school board re-election bid in a deeply red district in 2020. The group has grown rapidly and now boasts over 115,0000 members in 280 chapters across the country. Moms for Liberty has deep ties to the GOP establishment, and has notched some significant wins, like all its book bans, and helping get the “Don’t Say Gay” bill signed into law in Florida. They have also been instrumental in getting hundreds of candidates onto school boards, where they have quickly fired superintendents and other officials who are not aligned with their worldview.“I don’t know how they got access to my pictures, but they did. They posted them everywhere, constantly calling me a groomer and a pedophile.”
And it seemed to work, at least initially. “We were seeing our city pass safe ordinances for the LGBT community,” Lyons said. “We were hosting events like to teach parents how to support trans and queer youth, and they were heavily attended.”Then Moms for Liberty came along in 2021, and showed up at school board meetings to protest mask mandates. Then they started calling for book bans that targeted LGBTQ authors and topics, and claimed that Lyon’s group were pedophiles and groomers aiming to sneak pornography into school libraries.“Do we want to look at our kids 20 years from now and tell them that in this moment of great racial reckoning and social unrest and tell them that we did nothing?”
“When you’re on a school board or local elected office you normally have frequent fliers who you see very often at school board meetings, parents that are really involved and so you just know them because they’re just hyper-involved in the schools in a positive way,” Christina Gagnier, founder of Our Schools USA, told VICE News, adding that in recent years, Moms for Liberty members began turning up out of the blue. “In our community, a group of parents emerged who other board members had no idea who they were, they were not parents that were immediately identified by our school-side administrators or others.”Moms for Liberty established a chapter in Gagnier’s district in Chino Valley, California in March 2021, just months after the national group was officially incorporated in Florida. At the time, Gagnier was on the Chino Valley School Board, and like others who spoke out against Moms for Liberty, she became a target for their coordinated attacks. “I would get pretty vitriolic emails saying ‘I hope you die,’” Gagnier said. “I shared that I have an autoimmune disorder during one of our board meetings, so people started saying, ‘I hope you die from your disease. I hope you get more sick.’”Moms for Liberty have managed to activate parents who have never been involved in school policy, but who are motivated to show up to school board meetings and push their far-right agenda.
When VICE News first spoke to Defense of Democracy in December 2022, they were struggling to combat Moms for Liberty and cope with the influx of new member requests. But when VICE News spoke to Svoboda again in April, she felt as if the tide had turned.“We have them on the defense which feels so fucking good. We never thought we’d have that kind of effect,” Svoboda said. One of their victories was getting three Pennsylvania lawmakers to sign a letter critiquing the Marriott hotel chain for hosting Moms for Liberty’s second annual convention in Philadelphia next month.“Hosting an organization with a track record of promoting discriminatory practices and divisive policies goes against the principles of inclusivity and respect that should be upheld by a reputable establishment like yours,” Sen. Nikil Saval, Rep. Mary Louise Isaacson, and Rep. Ben Waxman wrote in the letter addressed to management at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown hotel. Marriott did not respond to a request for comment on the event or the letter from the lawmakers.But success has come at a cost. Svoboda’s son, who is a member of the Gender Sexuality Alliance at his high school, has been targeted by attacks from Moms for Liberty. A former New York State assemblyman wrote an article calling members of the club groomers and pedophiles, and Moms for Liberty groups publicized the piece in Dutchess County, where Svoboda lives, and neighboring Orange County.“We treat Moms for Liberty like the KKK. If you knew that a KKK meeting was happening in a church down the street from your house, everyone would be alarmed.”
“As a founder of Stop Moms for Liberty I expected the attacks,” Mikitarian said, but when a cease and desist letter issued by lawyers on behalf of Moms for Liberty mentioned a family member’s name, it was a step too far. “Come after me but not my family,” Mikitarian wrote on her Facebook page after a Moms for Liberty group in Pennsylvania posted the letter on their page.“The letter is a sham and they’re trying to take steps that they believe will intimidate us and scare us,” Mikitarian told VICE News. “They constantly throw out that they're coming after us legally and yet there’s nothing they can come after us for. We haven’t defamed them because we haven’t said anything we don't have proof for.”The speed of Moms for Liberty’s growth, the resources it has available, and its deep ties to GOP donors and lawmakers has led critics to question its bona fides as a grassroots movement. The group has repeatedly said that it makes the majority of its money from selling t-shirts, but it has incorporated as a 501(c)4 non-profit which is a well-known vehicle for dark money groups. Moms for Liberty refused to say who has donated money to its cause. Critics have said that it’s an astroturf movement.Conversely, the vast majority of the grassroots movements fighting Moms for Liberty claim to have virtually no money. “We have no budget, I can’t stress that enough. We have nothing. And we have been able to create this. We are grassroots,” Svoboda said, pointing out that she has been working 70 hour weeks for the last year without getting paid a single dollar for her work.But one organization fighting Moms for Liberty is taking a leaf out of the Moms for Liberty playbook. Our Schools USA has been established as a 501(c)4 and will soon be setting up a Political Action Committee, in order to support their candidates in school board races across the country.“We have got to play the game and that’s the game they’re playing,” Gagnier said, adding that if they named their donors those donors would immediately become targets for Moms for Liberty harassment.But for most of the groups who are fighting back against Moms for Liberty, the fight is happening in classrooms and school board meetings in towns and cities around the country, where dozens or hundreds of small victories are building, activists hope, into a national movement. “When you feel like your child is in the crosshairs, that’s when you’re willing to roll up your sleeves and say: ‘Okay, what needs to get done,’” Svoboda said. “I wouldn’t be doing this if, in my heart, I didn’t believe there were more good people than bad in the world.”Follow David Gilbert on Twitter.“They had no one refuting what they were saying, no one fighting back or pushing back—and now they do.”