An activist group in South Florida that has launched a campaign against the expansion of charter schools in Miami-Dade County and bills itself as a group of “Miami moms fighting for your child’s right to read and learn” is led by a disgraced Democratic operative with a rap sheet that includes shoplifting from a local Target store and a lengthy history of civil judgments.
In late June, Moms for Libros launched a campaign, dubbed Our Schools Miami, to prevent the expansion of Success Academy—New York’s largest and most successful charter school network—to Miami, a move the School Board of Miami-Dade County greenlighted in April. Five Success Academy elementary schools are set to open in the fall of 2027.
“A New York charter network, backed by a billionaire, is moving into five Miami-Dade public high schools — without community input, with a documented history of harming children, and at taxpayer expense,” the Our Schools Miami website warns. The billionaire in question is Citadel founder Ken Griffin, who relocated from Chicago to Miami in 2022 and who made a $50 million gift to help fund Success Academy charter schools in South Florida.
Moms for Libros was founded in 2023 to combat the parents’ rights group Moms for Liberty. While Moms for Liberty has been described in the press as a “DeSantis-linked group,” Moms for Libros has rarely been characterized as a political operation steered by Democratic political operatives. Instead, it has been described by the Miami Herald as a “local parent group” that “popped up” to “push back on book bans” and by Axios as a “local group” that describes itself as “concerned parents fighting back against the DeSantis administration’s politically motivated censorship of books and education for our children.”
In fact, the group’s cofounder, Vanessa Brito, is a longtime Democratic activist currently serving as the campaign manager for Democratic congressional candidate Phil Ehr, who is looking to challenge Republican incumbent Rep. Carlos Giménez (Fla.) in the general election. Brito previously served as vice president of the Kendall, Fla., Democratic Party, according to her LinkedIn.
She was arrested in 2024 on an outstanding warrant after allegedly shoplifting from a Miami Target in 2017 and then skipping her court date. She was also arrested in 2019 at a Daytona Beach, Fla., Walgreens from which she’d previously been banned, a charge she did not contest, though a sentence was withheld. Brito said her 2024 arrest amounted to “bullying,” and that she missed her court date because she was caring for her critically ill mother.
“I chose not to go so I could stay with her as long as I could,” Brito told the Washington Free Beacon.
Yet the Democrat, who also managed Ehr’s unsuccessful 2024 campaign, has also been found liable in several civil and small claims judgments—including for her failure to pay an $11,850 bill for her mother’s nursing home care at the Coral Reef Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, now the Coral Reef Subacute Care Center, court records show. Even then, she didn’t pay up, and was held in contempt of court in 2017 until the court threatened to issue a warrant for her arrest.
Brito’s chronic nonpayment extends to her professional life, where courts have found she improperly pocketed the proceeds of a crowdfunding campaign and failed to pay one political consultant for voter data and another for making robocalls.
Brito was slapped with a $29,000 civil judgment in August 2022 after filing a lawsuit against Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R.)—bankrolled by a GoFundMe campaign that raised money from approximately 2,100 donors—to reinstate the supplementary unemployment benefits the state provided during COVID-19. “To pay for attorneys fees and court costs, we need to raise money! With your generous donations we can pay the attorneys that will fight to reinstate the $300/week FPUC benefits,” Brito wrote. “You are giving many families a fighting chance to keep their lights on, food on the table, and so much more.”
The court sided with the lawyer Brito retained to file the lawsuit, Scott Behren, who alleged that Brito and her parents “placed the GoFundMe monies in their personal bank accounts and … used them for their own personal purposes” rather than paying the lawyers. While the case itself was unsuccessful, Brito was ordered to pay Behren $29,000 in legal fees—but has yet to pay up, Behren told the Free Beacon.
“I don’t feel we owe him a penny and I couldn’t care less about that judgment,” Brito told the Free Beacon.
Brito also stiffed two other service providers—a voter-targeting firm, webElect, which had provided her with custom voter data, and a robocall company, MassRoots, which conducted over 70,000 robocalls, court records show. The Miami-Dade County Court ordered her to pay webElect over $15,000 in April 2014, though Brito failed to appear for deposition and the court held her in contempt in September 2015. It is unclear whether webElect ever succeeded in recouping the money. webElect president Doug Homan declined to comment. The Virginia Beach General District Court ordered Brito to pay MassRoots $810 in March 2013. The firm’s owner, Isaac Dietrich, told the Free Beacon that Brito “was a client of ours back in 2012” and “ghosted me” after receiving an invoice.
Brito said she is merely a “ceremonial” leader and “board member” of the organization and that she is now focused on other issues.
Brito’s colleague, the cofounder and president of Moms for Libros, Lissette Fernandez, is also beset by financial troubles. She was slapped with a lawsuit in 2019 over an unpaid loan and, as of 2025, is having 25 percent of her wages garnished. TD Bank also successfully sued Fernandez for her failure to pay a Target credit card and, though she agreed to a payment plan, the bank notified the Miami-Dade County Court in December 2019 that she had stopped making the required $100 monthly payments.
Fernandez told the Free Beacon that the organization is a “volunteer-run” “labor of love” and not a “money-raising scheme” and that the wage garnishment stemmed from a credit card she defaulted on after the birth of her son and had no bearing on the group’s work.
Led by Brito and Fernandez, Moms for Libros and Our Schools Miami are encouraging parents to contact school board members and get involved with the local teachers’ union, United Teachers of Dade—an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association—as well as with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Moms for Libros’s tax-exempt status was revoked in late 2025 after it failed to file mandatory tax returns for three straight years, so it is unclear whether Brito and Fernandez are drawing a salary from the organization, though they told the Free Beacon it is purely a volunteer effort. Fernandez told the Free Beacon that she wasn’t aware of the situation, takes compliance seriously, and would work to rectify the situation.
The group sells merchandise online. Supporters can purchase long-sleeved t-shirts that say “Powered by Cabernet and civic engagement” and short-sleeved t-shirts declaring, “Wine moms vote.”
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