Moms for Liberty Mobbed by Protesters During NYC ‘Town Hall’

Kate Briquelet/The Daily Beast

Moms for Liberty’s New York City event drew a large protest from local parents and the LGBTQ community Thursday evening—as well as guests including disgraced former Rep. George Santos and Rudy Giuliani’s son Andrew.

Protesters flocked to Manhattan on Thursday to oppose the right-wing extremist group, which hosted a “town hall” for “an honest conversation on the state of education” that featured anti-trans and school choice activists.

But most of the airtime was spent listening to panelists stoke fears about the usual conservative bugbears: transgender care for minors and critical race theory.

For about 15 minutes at the end, a handful of people in the crowd were able to ask questions, which resulted in anger and several fraught interactions.

This, despite an event flyer claimed that “all viewpoints are welcome.”

Panelists included “Billboard Chris,” a frequent Moms for Liberty collaborator who travels the continent railing against gender-affirming care for minors, and Nicholas Giordano, a community college professor and occasional Fox News contributor.

Other “parents rights” adherents included NYC community education council member Maud Maron, who called trans-identifying children “a social contagion” and Paul Rossi, a former private school teacher fired for challenging antiracism lessons. He is now a consultant for affluent parents concerned about “woke” ideology, the New York Post reported.

Another participant, Wai Wah Chin of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance Greater New York, was reportedly instrumental in ending affirmative action.

Before attendees could get inside, they walked the gauntlet of demonstrators undeterred by the winter temperatures. The crowd chanted “Love, not hate!” outside Bohemian National Hall on the Upper East Side, where a line of NYPD cops watched over the barricaded scene. Among them were state and city lawmakers and Moms for Liberty opposition group Defense of Democracy.

Disgraced former U.S. Rep. George Santos at a Moms for Liberty event in New York City. Kate Briquelet/The Daily Beast

Jo Macellaro, a public school teacher in the Bronx, stood near the entrance with a sign reading: “I’m the trans teacher you’re so scared of.”

The 33-year-old educator knows firsthand how hateful rhetoric can take a toll. A colleague anonymously reported them to a watchdog for the New York City School District after they taught a lesson on pride month, and they’ve been called a “groomer” by other teachers on social media.

Macellaro told The Daily Beast they were glad so many people showed up to protest. They’ve worked with trans students in elementary school and said, “It’s hard for me to imagine how hard it is for them,” especially when “most of the information from people like Moms for Liberty is false.”

“Trans kids I know just want to be kids,” they said.

Jamie Bauer, a Manhattan retiree who held a “Moms for Hypocrisy” sign, told The Daily Beast, “What they did in Florida they are not going to do here. We’re going to protect our teachers, administrators, and librarians from these bigots.”

The Moms for Liberty movement is also personal for Bauer, 65, who identifies as nonbinary. They grew up a queer kid in school without the support many NYC students enjoy today.

“I suffered because I didn’t have it growing up,” Bauer said. “I want to protect kids so they don’t have to go through what I went through.”

They were referring to students’ access to books, therapy, medical care, and the ability to ask questions.

Jo Macellaro, left, at the Moms for Life protest. Kate Briquelet/The Daily Beast

Diane Sabella, 75, said of Moms for Liberty: “They’re trying to mold our children into a Stepford Wives kind of thing.”

“They want us to learn what they want to teach us and nothing else,” added Sabella, who held a “Moms for Intolerance” sign. “That’s what they do in other countries that are censored.”

Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich, however, didn’t welcome the outcry from New York’s liberal-minded residents. She instead claimed that the group, which has fueled book bans and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric across the country, was being persecuted.

“Our haters don’t just protest us, they are nasty nasty people,” Descovich posted on X days earlier. “They harass, try to cancel, intimidate, smash windows, spray paint, flip middle fingers and yell obscenities. And they call us the haters. Show me a picture or video of me doing any of these things, ever.”

Inside, the Moms for Liberty waited in a small meeting room lined with chairs. Toward the front was Santos, who wore fancy red shoes and posed for a picture with a fan’s Maltese named Anarchy. “They do good work,” Santos told The Daily Beast of Moms for Liberty. “They advocate for common sense in schools amid all this insanity.”

Moms for Liberty boss Tiffany Justice moderated two groups of panelists and a Billboard Chris speech over nearly two hours, as NYC parents waited for a chance to speak afterward. Most of those New Yorkers weren’t M4L fans.

Before that could happen, the crowd was shown a COVID documentary clip from one of the speakers called “15 Days: The real story of school closures.”

One parent was Alexandra Jamieson, who arrived an hour early for a shot at speaking out and never got her chance as the sideshow dragged on. The Brooklyn mom came because she had trans friends and friends with trans children and has been watching “what Moms for Liberty is doing to suppress LGBTQ children and families, Black history, and the arts.”

“You gotta stand up to bullies and fascists, hopefully with humor and facts,” said Jamieson, who wore a “Trans Equality Now” shirt under her coat.

The long-awaited audience portion opened with one man who asked the panel what their plan was for reading, writing, and arithmetic curriculums. “I would love to know what you think are wrong with the current curriculums and how we’re going to change them, because you haven’t said anything about it for two hours,” he said. “You’ve wasted two hours.”

He did not leave satisfied with an answer.

Jamie Bauer, left, at the Moms for Liberty protest. Kate Briquelet/The Daily Beast

Connie Mun, a Manhattan parent and former community education council (CEC) member, used her time to confront Maron, who cracked a joke about a queer student.

“There was a young woman who spoke or a couple of young people but there was one young woman who spoke at the public speaking session last night at the board meeting,” Maron said. “She identified herself as a proud queer woman, which I think means she’s a straight girl without a boyfriend.”

The room laughed but Mun found the comment cruel and offensive.

“You are in charge of the education of all these students,” Mun said. “That was so unnecessary and spiteful.”

Mun asked the panelist, “Why are you telling me how to raise my kid? If you want to raise your kids to believe there’s no such thing as transgender kids, that’s fine. But why are you dictating…”

“The state is shoving that down your throat,” Giuliani interjected from across the room.

Maron began answering the question by saying “it was a little bit of a joke” about the aforementioned student and sharing that she believed LGBTQ ideology was “deeply homophobic.”

One Black parent educator at the event said that when children of color have “culturally responsive education” and “access to books of people who look like them,” they better succeed academically, as do their white peers.

She asked how Moms for Liberty would respond to Black, Latin American, and Asian parents who don’t want such materials removed from schools. Before she could finish her question, Justice defensively interrupted.

Giordano, who is white, jumped in and said, “When we look at the United States of America and we’re saying that every single different cultural group has to have a cultural education that matches either their skin color or their ethnicity or their gender, we’re not a country anymore at that point.”

“I didn’t say teach all cultures,” the parent interrupted. “I said culturally responsive education.”

Justice then turned to panelist Charles Love, a CEC colleague of Maron, who began talking over the parent. “Your stats are flawed, number one,” he said, in one of many moments that revealed Moms for Liberty panelists were unable to have constructive conversations with opponents in the room.

The building that hosted the gathering was also under fire for hosting the event.

The Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association (BBLA), which rents its space from the Czech government, declined to cancel Moms for Liberty’s contract, citing the advice of their counsel. Instead, BBLA’s president Joseph Balaz vowed to “personally match the rental fee BBLA received for this event” and donate it to “one of our organizations which actively supports young, future leaders.”

Thursday was far from the only time parents and LGBTQ activists have protested the far-right juggernaut’s gatherings and demanded event spaces cancel them.

Last summer, when M4L hosted its annual summit in Philadelphia, hundreds of people appeared with megaphones and colorful signs including “We don’t co-parent with fascists,” and “Klanned Karenhood: Coming for a school near you!”

While the group presents itself as a grassroots organization, it is heavily funded by national conservative organizations like the Heritage Foundation and the Leadership Institute. Its Florida-based PAC received donations from Publix heiress Julie Fancelli, who reportedly helped finance former President Trump’s Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally on the Capitol.

A stream of bad press hasn’t stopped Moms for Liberty’s organizing, though its school board candidates didn’t fare well in elections last year.

In June, the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled the organization an “anti-government extremist” group in its 2022 “Year in Hate & Extremism” report, which said its “activities make it clear that the group’s primary goals are to fuel right-wing hysteria and to make the world a less comfortable or safe place for certain students—primarily those who are Black, LGBTQ or who come from LGBTQ families.”

Weeks later, an Indiana chapter of M4L apologized for quoting Adolf Hitler in one of its newsletters. And in November, M4L removed two of its Kentucky leaders after they posed for photographs with members of the far-right Proud Boys. That same month, a faith-based outreach leader for M4L in Philly was exposed as a registered sex offender, convicted of abusing a teenage boy.

Since M4L’s launch in 2021, some chapter members have harassed teachers or gone as far to call cops on school librarians over a YA fantasy novel.

The group’s latest scandal: One of its co-founders, Bridget Ziegler, admitted to having at least one threesome with a woman after her husband was accused of rape.

After the town hall ended amid bickering and shouts and one man being escorted out, Mun told The Daily Beast, “It wasn’t a town hall. It was a disinformation campaign.”

“This is New York City and I didn’t expect it to be as insane as it was,” she added.

“I was sort of shocked at the amount of hate and misinformation and that they basically talked about everything except curriculum and education.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.