PHILADELPHIA—A smattering of protesters hollered insults, like “bigot” and “fascist,” over a loud speaker, blasted music, waved rainbow flags and danced in the street in a transgender “dance protest” on Friday and Saturday at the Moms for Liberty “Joyful Warriors” National Summit in Philadelphia.
The political rally, which was advertised beforehand as a dance protest in media stories, social media posts, box trucks with electronic signs, and handmade signs plastered on utility poles in the city listing the location and the words “Trump is coming to town.”
Protest organizers had a stack of cardboard signs for walk-up protesters to borrow, but the stack was not fully used. There were snacks, sidewalk chalk for writing insults on the ground, tables with reading materials to persuade the public, and people with clipboards and pens working the crowd.
A world away, attendees of the Moms for Liberty summit gathered inside the venue with messages of encouragement for each other to continue standing up for conservative values despite being called “bigots” or worse by those with opposing values.
Over the course of two days, the grassroots conservative Moms group, which formed out of parental concern over “destructive” policies in schools two years ago during the COVID-19 pandemic, had the political power to attract five Republican presidential hopefuls: candidates Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and former President Donald Trump on Friday and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and Vivek Ramaswamy on Saturday. Some summit speakers believe that is why Moms for Liberty is being targeted.
Ramaswamy and Family
Vivek Ramaswamy, alongside his wife Apoorva Ramaswamy, a throat surgeon, sat on stage with his two children and Moms for Liberty cofounder Tiffany Justice, talking about national policies, popping a pacifier into the baby’s mouth, describing the changes he would make to education, and handing the children teddy bears.
Each time the children did something cute, the room full of mostly moms cooed in unison, “Awww.” One mom remarked later that it is probably good marketing to bring the kids on stage. “[I]t totally works.”
Ramaswamy’s policies work for many moms as well. They stood up to applaud several times in the middle of his speech, including when he announced that if elected, he will shut down the U.S. Department of education. The money saved would make school choice possible.
He would also end other federal agencies such as the FBI, IRS, ATF, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which he would make into something different.
“The FBI does not need to exist. In fact, local prosecutors and local police get the job done just fine without a intermediary agency sitting in between. Same thing with the U.S. Marshalls and you have the DOJ. When you have a bureaucracy that sits in between, that’s a formula for corruption—for labeling conservative parents domestic terrorists,” he told the press after his speech.
These agencies, he says, create a fourth branch of government.
He said that the opponent protesters gathered outside didn’t want to hear the truth, and then listed some truths.
“God is real, there are two genders, fossil fuels are a requirement for human prosperity, reverse racism is racist, and parents determine the education of their children,” Ramaswamy said. He had some other truths but by then, the Moms were on their feet and cheering too loudly to hear his words.
At 37, Ramaswamy is the first millennial to run for U.S. president. He says his generation is hungry for a cause, purpose, and meaning.
He said that the woke culture of radical America being popularized today leaves a black hole in its wake—”a moral vacuum.”
“And when you have a black hole that runs that deep, that is when the poison begins to fill the void. Wokeism, transgenderism, COVIDism, depression, anxiety, drug usage, suicide,” Ramaswamy said.
“You think it’s a coincidence that we see the rise of these secular cults and insecurities at the same time—it is not the reason. They are symptoms of a deeper hunger, a deeper national identity crisis that we’re in today … this is our moment as conservatives, as liberty-oriented Americans, to now level up and fill that void with a vision of American national identity that runs so deep that it dilutes the woke agenda to irrelevance.”
Asa Hutchinson Touts Experience
Hutchinson served eight years as Arkansas governor and left the job in 2023, having met the term limit. He is now running for the GOP’s 2024 nominee.
“We want to give our children every opportunity to make a good living when they finish school. I set a goal for computer science in every high school in Arkansas, and we led the nation in terms of a comprehensive education program for computer science,” he said. “We went from 1,100 students taking computer science to over 23,000 students. We set a model for the nation, we’ve gone from 10 percent of schools across the nation that have computer science, to 51 percent.”
As president, Hutchinson said he would put computer science programs in every high school in America.
As governor, he signed a transparency bill requiring school districts to put that the curriculum they are teaching on a website. The law defines a process for parents to go to the school board and raise objections if they wish.
Hutchinson said he would take the heavy hand of government off the backs of local school districts, so parents have their voices heard.
“I don’t want a leftist government telling parents, or interfering with how they deal with the most sensitive issues in terms of genders and healthcare. And I don’t want a conservative government doing it either. I want the government out. I want the parents to decide.”
“I’m running for President of the United States because. If you look at all the candidates running, you’ll see no one with the breadth of experience at the state and federal level that I bring to the table,” Hutchinson said.
As a federal prosecutor that addressed fights in the streets, Hutchinson had also been in charge of border security.
“I know what needs to be done on the southern border, balancing a budget. We actually did in the Congress 20 years ago. We need to do it again. And I have done it as a governor as well,” he said.
