A Lakeville teacher denigrated the parental rights organization Moms for Liberty and compared them to segregationists in a recent letter to the editor.
Lakeville South High School social studies teacher Peter Woollen said the United Daughters of the Confederacy’s objective was to “protest desegregation and to install statues of treasonous Confederate generals and soldiers wherever possible.”
“One of their most important goals was to attack curriculum in schools and adopt history books that promoted the virtues of the KKK and the white power structure while diminishing any notions of white guilt surrounding the institutionalization of slavery,” he wrote.
According to Woollen, Moms for Liberty is a “similar group.”
“Although the Daughters of the Confederacy and Moms For Liberty come from different periods in our history, I would contend that they share more similarities then [sic] differences,” he said.
Woollen argued that the goals of the two groups “are not entirely dissimilar.”
“The tightly scripted Moms For Liberty groups that have been popping up all around the county have been banning books by BIPOC and queer authors and generally opposing diversity, equity, inclusion and any curriculum that hints at nonbinary gender or suggests that institutionalization of racism in America exists,” Woollen said.
He also explained that society should acknowledge and respect the multiple “truths” of its citizens.
“At the core of the ethos for both is the fundamental fear of diversity and equity and the ridiculous notion that a white, straight Christian America is more virtuous than a changing pluralistic society that acknowledges and respects the identities and truths of all its citizens,” Woollen said. He wrote that readers should “find a time in history where those who were banning the books turned out to be the good guys.”
Moms for Liberty says that its goal is to empower parents to be involved in their children’s education. In its mission statement, the group says it is “unifying, educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government.”
Moms for Liberty was deemed a hate group earlier this year by the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center, which claimed the organization advances an “anti-student inclusion” and “antigovernment” agenda.
Moms for Liberty previously told Alpha News that its “fundamental goal” is “empowering parents to be a part of their child’s public school education.”
“Empowering parents continues to be our mission today and that has fueled our organization’s growth — like wildfire to now 45 states in the country,” the statement said. “Name-calling parents who want to be a part of their child’s education as ‘hate groups’ or ‘bigoted’ just further exposes what this battle is all about: Who fundamentally gets to decide what is taught to our kids in school — parents or government employees?”
Hayley Feland
Hayley Feland previously worked as a journalist with The Minnesota Sun, The Wisconsin Daily Star, and The College Fix. She is a Minnesota native with a passion for politics and journalism.
