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On the South Coast, a small and dedicated cadre of conservative activists has organized around lightning-rod cultural issues in recent years. Their growing coalition can trace its history through a string of protests that focus on local schools. This year, one of those activists, a Rochester School Committee member, said she had joined Moms for Liberty, encouraged others to sign up, and brought to her district a national lawsuit against Title IX expansion.
The roots of this local conservative movement go back at least to fall 2021, when the pandemic was grinding on with more than 50,000 deaths and 3 million new cases each week. A small group of parents in the pastoral exurbs of Mattapoisett, Marion, and Rochester (known together as the “Tri-Town”) decided they’d had enough of public health mandates. Kristina Mullin, a parent with children in local schools, began showing up at daily dismissal to protest masks, which were required at the time.
Outside the junior and senior high schools in the Tri-Town’s Old Rochester Regional School District, Mullin convinced about a dozen other unmasked parents to hold hand-drawn signs. “Honk For Freedom,” read some. “Let the Kids Breathe,” scrawled another. “We are really looking for people to have the freedom of choice in this matter,” Mullin told a local radio station.
Another parent, Karen Thomas, became inspired to start a Facebook group supporting the cause, called “Mattapoisett Marion Rochester MA Against Mandates.” Thomas, a longtime employee of a local hospital, has helped oversee this Facebook page with Mullin as it’s grown to over 500 members and become an engine for the Tri-Town’s conservative movement. The page has been renamed “Tri-Town Family Alliance,” and offers a mission statement: “To protect family rights and the safety and well being of all children.”
Thomas relied on that language during the most galvanizing conservative protest in the Tri-Town: removing school library books.
Thomas emerged as a prominent voice in the local campaign to remove 10 books from school libraries, including Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” and Maia Kobabe’s “Genderqueer,” all previously approved by the librarians. In fall 2022, Thomas spoke before the Old Rochester Regional School Committee: “I feel that we need to protect our families and values,” she said, advocating that “there needs to be steps that critical race theory and comprehensive sex education do not take root in education or curriculum.” (Critical race theory, a graduate-level legal theory, was never taught in the schools, but became a buzzword of some conservative organizing.)
The attempt to remove books from the high school library, most of which were by LGBTQ+ authors or about LGBTQ+ people, was ultimately defeated.
Amid the Tri-Town debate, unusual alliances developed. One local woman, Kathleen LeClair, said she was not interested in book banning but thought its proponents’ arguments had shown the schools weren’t being transparent. (The extensive deliberations of the school committee and their reports on the books were all public.)
“People in the community… [are] getting hysterical about the ‘Far Right,’” — a label LeClair found directed at herself. “I’m an Obama voting registered Independent,” she wrote in an email to The Light. “Am I considered far right?”
Meanwhile, members of Thomas’ expanding Facebook group entered electoral politics. One member, Greg Hardy, a local contractor, became a first-time candidate for the school committee that oversaw Rochester’s lone elementary school, which his children attended.
Hardy told a local weekly newspaper that he has been “paying more attention to the public school system” after recent “challenging” years. The books issue, in particular, had caught his attention. The frustration of seeing the district fail to remove contested books led Hardy to donate 12 books to the district. Ten were rejected.
“As someone who donated books… which were actually banned and not accepted, I understand both sides of the issue,” Hardy was quoted as saying.
The two accepted books from Hardy’s donation were “Woke Racism” by John McWhorter, and “False Alarm” by Bjorn Lomborg, according to Sippican Week, the local newspaper. The high school’s principal told the paper that all 10 of the other donated books did not meet the appropriate standards for a high school library.
Hardy found support and resources for his campaign from some incumbents who shared his values. Joe Pires and Anne Fernandes were two school committee members (on the regional board for the Tri-Town’s high school and the single-town board for the elementary school, respectively) who had favored the original attempted book removals.
Pires and Fernandes campaigned alongside Hardy. But their coalition ran into trouble when The Light reported that neither Hardy, Pires, nor Fernandes had submitted any of the required campaign finance reports before the May 2023 election. The only documented fundraising for their campaigns came from an IE PAC (the local equivalent of a Super PAC) that raised $20,000 and employed out-of-state Republican marketing strategists.
When The Light asked Hardy about his campaign expenses in May 2023 outside of a Rochester polling place, Fernandes offered him counsel. Heeding the advice, Hardy responded, “No comment.”
Hardy did not win his race, but Pires and Fernandes did. Pires is now a candidate for state representative, seeking an open seat to represent the Tri-Town, Fairhaven, and slices of New Bedford and Acushnet on Beacon Hill.
Fernandes also won and is serving as a school committee member. She did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. Throughout the masking and books protests, Fernandes was among the Tri-Town’s most active organizers. In 2022, she reposted a video from Moms for Liberty for the first time. In 2023, after posting about the Massachusetts Family Institute (MFI) — an organization opposed to same-sex marriage — she encouraged attendees of Rochester’s Republican Town Committee meeting to enroll in the MFI’s political trainings.
This year, Fernandes confirmed that she is a member of Moms for Liberty. “Of course I am a member,” she wrote in a Facebook post that scoffed at the organization’s designation as an “extremist” group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. She encouraged others to join up.
Only a few days later, Fernandes wrote an email to ORR Superintendent Mike Nelson to inform the district it was named in a Moms for Liberty lawsuit that sought to prohibit the expansion of Title IX protections that include new rules guarding transgender students.
Email Colin Hogan at chogan@newbedfordlight.org
Editor’s Note: This story was updated on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, to clarify that Anne Fernandes did not respond to requests for comment.
Thank you for your balanced reporting on this very important local issue. I hope you will be following up as this exemplifies why local news is so important. I will be sending another contribution.
The average education level in Rochester is low.
Same for Mons for Liberty.