Downtown Huntsville was bustling ahead of the arrival of a controversial congresswoman.

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene spoke at the Madison County chapter of Moms for Liberty’s second annual fundraiser dinner on Saturday night. Her speech covered a variety of hot-button issues, ranging from the Jan. 6 attempted insurrection to transgender rights.

Moms for Liberty’s Madison County chapter is a conservative political group that regularly attends local library board meetings. The national organization Moms for Liberty frequently draws attention for pushing public libraries to remove books it considers sexually explicit, many of which include LGBTQ+ content.

Before the dinner, many LGBTQ+-affirming organizations gathered for the “Marjorie Taylor Queens Book Drive” event in the Campus 805 greenspace.

It was led by Rainbow Trouble and capitalized on the congresswoman’s presence to collect books to donate to a grassroots library.

“Moms for Liberty, one of their biggest things is censorship, and removing books and any information about anything outside of what they consider normal,” Rainbow Trouble President Deanna Wolf said. “So we thought, why not do the exact opposite and collect the books that people should be allowed to read and put them in a place where people can access them?”

She said the group collected approximately 400 books to donate to the Diversity Library at Shenanigans Comedy Theater’s The Center, a resource hub for people in the Tennessee Valley.

“We want literature that focuses on how diversity should be understood and celebrated,” Wolf said. “Every child deserves representation without resentment.”

The drive included participants such as Dr. Marisa Allison, talking about books they enjoyed, such as “Fahrenheit 451.”

The At the Root Collective was formed in response to an effort to censor books at the Huntsville-Madison Public Library system, led by Moms for Liberty.

“Over the course of the two years that we’ve been fighting back against them, the mark that they’re trying to reach has changed,” Allison said. “So at first they were like, let’s take sexually explicit books out of the children’s section. ‘We’re not banning books.’ They said this over and over, ‘we’re not banning books.’ Then, we’ve moved on to an entirely different metric, where they’re like transgender materials; they say that all of those materials need to be out of the library completely. And just most recently, they have now called for books about racial justice, which they call critical race theory. They now want those out of the library completely as well. So their objectives are just to keep moving and moving.”

Healthcare university student Katie Banish was on the other side of Campus 805 to join Huntsville 50501‘s, “MTG is not welcome in HSV” protest.

“It’s really scary to be going into that field knowing that my ability to to practice, to follow things like the Hippocratic oath, that says do no harm and that you’re supposed to treat everybody are being fundamentally broken down, like with with current laws, especially surrounding abortion and right to health care,” Banish said.

She marched with the group to Stovehouse, where they protested until leaving shortly before the Moms for Liberty event began.

Brewer’s Cooperative was filled with Moms for Liberty supporters before the dinner began.

It was vandalized with graffiti against Rep. Greene and Moms for Liberty the day before. Owners covered the glass walls with privacy paper.

“You’re dedicated, giving your time, sacrificing your reputation, fighting for your children and we’re the ones in here with the paper on them, on the glass,” Rep. Greene told the crowd. “Think about this, the communists are outside. The communists are out there, but they’re attacking us inside and calling us fascists. This is insanity.”

She delivered an impassioned address on themes of patriotism, economic decline and political activism. She recalled her early days in Congress, where she asserted that the 2020 election was stolen and positioned herself as a committed supporter of President Donald Trump. She also spoke about the American Dream deteriorating because of the failures of what she called Washington elites. She warned that young people are hopeless about their futures because of the rising costs in the United States.

Rep. Greene underscored her dedication to conservative cultural issues, particularly opposing transgender rights and drag performances aimed at children. She described her first act of political resistance as protesting a drag queen story hour at her local library, claiming that community leaders and churches failed to stop it. This experience, she said, propelled her into political life.

“This is a library where I took my children for years and we did story times there, but never with a drag queen. (…) I show up and I go in and I’m like, This is my library,” Greene said. “I’m going in here, and I don’t have little kids, but I’m coming to story time. So I come in there (…) and he’s reading them these books literally about changing your gender, a complete and total lie to these kids.”

She praised groups like Moms for Liberty for defending children and supporting her legislation, the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, which would criminalize gender-affirming care for minors. She railed against what she framed as government corruption, illegal immigration, foreign wars and Planned Parenthood. She concluded with anecdotes about facing threats and FBI investigations.

Prior to the event, Madison County Moms for Liberty Chapter Chair Emily Jones said the group invited Greene “because she’s one of the most unapologetic voices in the country when it comes to defending faith, family, and freedom— three things our chapter believes are absolutely worth protecting,” Jones said.

“She has been a consistent supporter of the Moms for Liberty mission at the national level, standing with parents who are speaking out against indoctrination, overreach, and the breakdown of trust in public education.”