NBC10’s Lauren Mayk spoke with the ‘Moms for Liberty’ organizers and protesters, as hundreds of emails were sent to NBC10 and the Marriott about cancelling the upcoming events the group has scheduled in Philadelphia at the end of the month.
Ahead of the Moms for Liberty group visiting Philadelphia at the end of the month, advocate groups protested and have launched a coordinated campaign calling for the hotel to cancel the event.
From June 29 through July 2 the Moms for Liberty group will hosting its annual summit at the Marriott at 12th and Market Street and will have an event at the Museum of the American Revolution.
On Friday at 6 p.m. protesters gathered outside of the Museum of the American Revolution in Old City. The protest was put on by Defense of Democracy, a national nonprofit organization advocating for the American public school system.
Galaei, a queer and trans, Black, indigenous, and people of color (QTBIPOC) radical social justice organization, is one of the groups that is calling for the Marriott to cancel the event.
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The group posted a script on its Instagram account with the hashtag “StopHostingHate.”
The script they shared read as follows:
“Hello, my name is [......] I am a [resident/frequent visitor] of Philadelphia and am concerned by Marriott’s support of the hate group Moms for Liberty, which is using the Philadelphia Marriott as a meeting place for their yearly summit from June 29th-July 2nd, 2023. Marriott will no longer have my business if it does not cancel the Moms for Liberty summit reservations and do its part to keep our schoolchildren safe.”
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Different variations of this message have also been sent to local news organizations in Philadelphia.
Moms for Liberty is a group that was founded in 2021 in Florida by two mothers, Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich, that aims to “stand up for parental rights at all levels of the government,” according to their website.
Jazmyn Henderson is with Act Up and is among those pushing back against the Moms for Liberty group's plan.
"Everybody is framing this Moms for Liberty thing like this is a debate in ideologies and that they're just concerned parents who are worried about their kids...but my transness is not an ideology," Henderson told NBC10's Lauren Mayk.
The nonprofit has been deemed an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, who has a page dedicated to highlighting the ways that Moms for Liberty advances an anti-student inclusion agenda.
SLPC claims that Moms for Liberty "spreads hateful imagery and rhetoric against the LGBTQ community", "advocate for the abolition of the Department of Education" and "advance a conspiracy propaganda."
As of June 6, the nonprofit was added to a list with about a dozen other groups that SLPC has deemed as anti-government extremist groups.
"There's a lot of things on there that we completely reject. Any of the terminology where they say we're extremist for wanting to say mother instead of birthing person, we reject those things," Descovich, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, said. "
Descovich said the group's mission is to unify, educate and empower parents. She said the summit will include information about running for school board and that despite hosting presidential candidates they're not planning to endorse in that race.
The summit their holding later this month is slated to have leading candidates of the Republican presidential nomination speak, such as former president Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron Desantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
Descovich went on to say that the group doesn't want children in preschool through third grade being taught that they can be a boy or a girl, neither, or both, and that they can change their gender identity in school. That's something they believe should be taught by parents at home when they think their child is ready.
We also reached out to the Musuem of the American Revolution and their response was:
"Because fostering understanding within a democratic society is so central to our mission, rejecting visitors on the basis of ideology would be antithetical to our purpose."
We also reached out to the Marriott for comment and they did not respond.
When asked if any of the pushback Moms for Liberty has received ahead of their summit will change their plans, Descovich said, "Not at all."
The summit Moms for Liberty is set to have in Philadelphia will be its second summit. The first summit was held in Florida and was also held at the Marriott.
