Go inside a training by Moms for Liberty and Leadership Institute for conservatives looking for control of Wisconsin school boards

At Milwaukee’s Pfister Hotel on Tuesday, Julie Barrett described how members of her organization, Conservative Ladies of Washington, testify on bills in the Washington state Legislature.

“We don’t always want them to know if someone that’s testifying is with our organization,” she said. It’s why they have someone else, like a parent, testify instead, she explained.

“They don’t know that there’s any affiliation, and we keep that very under wraps. I think that’s a very strategic thing to do,” Barrett said. “You’re going to get average citizens willing to do the work — but they’re not really willing to, you know, put themselves as a target.”

About a dozen people traveled from across Wisconsin on Tuesday to learn strategies like that one for building up the conservative parental rights movement. They participated in a training hosted by the Leadership Institute, a national organization that maintains on its website “the best way to fight Critical Race Theory and leftist indoctrination in America’s schools” is through school boards.

Co-leading the training with Barrett was Bridget Ziegler, one of the founders of the national organization Moms for Liberty. The organization openly opposes teachings about systemic racism and LGBTQ+ identities in schools and advocates for removing books from school libraries.

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In an interview Tuesday, Ziegler confirmed the group aims to build ranks among people who operate locally — in the background, out of the public eye — while letting larger organizations take the heat.

“With notoriety comes a lot of different criticisms. Not everyone wants to have the spotlight on them, but they do want to see change happen," she said.

The Southern Poverty Law Center designates Moms for Liberty as a far-right antigovernmental organization targeting anti-inclusion activities while self-identifying as part of the parental rights movement. The group uses social media to target schools and teachers, advocate to abolish U.S. Department of Education, advance conspiracies and "spread hateful imagery and rhetoric against the LGBTQ community," according to the SPLC.

The Leadership Institute and Moms for Liberty training took place in a seventh-floor conference room of the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee, one of many events planned around Wednesday night's Republican presidential debate. The event was part of the Leadership Institute's broader national push to train conservatives to influence local school boards, both online and in person.

Ziegler said the school board program trained about 2,000 people last year. The Leadership Institute, as a whole, provides more than 50 kinds of training and workshops.

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About five members of the local Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association handed out flyers in protest of the training early Tuesday. They highlighted that a Moms for Liberty chapter in Indiana used an Adolph Hitler quote on its newsletter earlier this summer. The Moms group later apologized.

Just outside the Pfister conference room, the Ozaukee chapter of Moms for Liberty set up a table covered in books they took issue with, like “Antiracist Baby,” “Not My idea: A Book About Whiteness” and “Gender Queer.” A separate training participant brought with her a stack of papers listing books with "sexually explicit content" to pass out to the crowd.

Gregory Erickson, 63, drove two hours to attend the training from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. He also planned to stay later for an event at the hotel with Riley Gaines, a former college swimmer who has been outspoken against transgender women's rights to compete in women's sports.

A veteran and former insurance agent from Wisconsin, Erickson said the "No. 1 reason" the training event was helpful is because it provided "courage for people to stand up for what's right."

The training was tailored to people like Erickson: those who might have some experience with politics — he used to go door-knocking for conservative candidates — but who wanted to beef up their skills. Several participants spoke about their experience running for school boards in Wisconsin.

Ziegler and Barrett outlined hard skills for the group: how to influence legislation, track bills, build relationships with lawmakers and speak at school board meetings. For deciding which bills in the Legislature to follow closely, Barrett suggested a specific strategy: pull up a PDF and search for keywords, like "equity."

“You can scroll through and look at all of those keywords in their context. That’s a really good way to help you identify, 'Is this is a bill I need to be concerned about?'" she said.

“Here in Wisconsin, it sounds like you guys are going to have some good bills that you’re going to get to champion," she added, referring to the state's Republican-controlled Legislature.

The presenters also outlined their media strategy: Never turn down an interview. Barrett told the crowd that X, formerly known as Twitter, is her preferred social media source for conservative information. She called TruthSocial, a social media platform created by Donald Trump, an “echo chamber.”

Speaking to the group, one participant said even if rural areas in Wisconsin are “red,” they lack political organization.

“And they’re getting bombarded and hit really hard with this (gender ideology), with the woke, and they don’t even know what to do with this. And then they’ve got good ol’ boys school board members that are in complete denial it’s happening," said the participant, who did not identify themselves.

Ziegler created the school board training program in summer 2022. She told the crowd that private citizens “have a lot more influence than you give yourself credit for.”

“The mobilization that’s happening right now, it's the most amazing thing," she said. "And I will tell you, the education establishment can’t figure out how to get us to shut up.”

Cleo Krejci covers higher education, vocational training and retraining as a Report For America corps member based at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Contact her at CKrejci@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @_CleoKrejci. Support her work with a tax-deductible donation at bit.ly/RFADonation.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Leadership Institute, Moms for Liberty, guide Wisconsin conservatives