Banning books in schools (1 Viewer)

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    Optimus Prime

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    Excellent article I thought deserved its own thread
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    On the surface, it would appear that book censors and censored authors like myself can agree on one thing: Books are powerful.

    Particularly books for children and teens.

    Why else would people like me spend so much time and energy writing them?

    Why else would censors spend so much time and energy trying to keep them out of kids’ hands?

    In a country where the average adult is reading fewer and fewer books, it’s a surprise to find Americans arguing so much about them.

    In this election year, parents and politicians — so many politicians — are jumping into the fray to say how powerful books can be.

    Granted, politicians often make what I do sound like witchcraft, but I take this as a compliment.

    I’ll admit, one of my first thoughts about the current wildfire of attempted censorship was: How quaint.

    Conservatives seemed to be dusting off their playbook from 1958, when the only way our stories could get to kids was through schools and libraries.

    While both are still crucial sanctuaries for readers, they’re hardly the only options. Plenty of booksellers supply titles that are taken off school shelves.

    And words can be very widely shared free of charge on social media and the rest of the internet. If you take my book off a shelf, you keep it away from that shelf, but you hardly keep it away from readers.

    As censorship wars have raged in so many communities, damaging the lives of countless teachers, librarians, parents and children, it’s begun to feel less and less quaint.

    This is not your father’s book censorship…..

    Here’s something I never thought I’d be nostalgic for: sincere censors. When my first novel, “Boy Meets Boy,” was published in 2003, it was immediately the subject of many challenges, some of which kept the book from ever getting on a shelf in the first place.

    At the time, a challenge usually meant one parent trying to get a book pulled from a school or a library, going through a formal process.

    I often reminded myself to try to find some sympathy for these parents; yes, they were wrong, and their desire to control what other people in the community got to read was wrong — but more often than not, the challenge was coming from fear of a changing world, a genuine (if incorrect) belief that being gay would lead kids straight to ruination and hell, and/or the misbegotten notion that if all the books that challenged the (homophobic, racist) status quo went away, then the status quo would remain intact.

    It was, in some ways, as personal to them as it was to those of us on the other side of the challenge.

    And nine times out of 10, the book would remain on the shelf.

    It’s not like that now. What I’ve come to believe, as I’ve talked to authors and librarians and teachers, is that attacks are less and less about the actual books.

    We’re being used as targets in a much larger proxy war.

    The goal of that war isn’t just to curtail intellectual freedom but to eviscerate the public education system in this country.

    Censors are scorching the earth, without care for how many kids get burned.

    Racism and homophobia are still very much present, but it’s also a power grab, a money grab. The goal for many is a for-profit, more authoritarian and much less diverse culture, one in which truth is whatever you’re told it is, your identity is determined by its acceptability and the past is a lie that the future is forced to emulate.

    The politicians who holler and post and draw up their lists of “harmful” books aren’t actually scared of our books.

    They are using our books to scare people.

     
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    How Orwellian that a group for "liberty" is attempting to remove the freedom to read a certain book.
    It’s their business model. Has been for decades. Name themselves something desirable but totally antithetical to what they are actually doing.
     
    Wonder what happens when someone complains about the bible or any other religious themed books
    =============================================================

    By now, it should be blindingly obvious that many red-state book crackdowns are designed to encourage the impulse toward censorship. By enabling lone actors to get dozens of titles removed from school library shelves while meeting deliberately vague criteria for objecting to them, these measures invite overzealous parents to hunt for books to purge.

    A bill advancing in the Florida state legislature suggests this could create problems for Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is using book crackdowns to bolster his GOP presidential hopes. As it gets easier for single objectors to get books removed, the bans could get more absurd — and stick to DeSantis himself.

    The proposal in question, which appears to have the governor’s general support, would require the instant removal of certain books targeted for objections, even before any sort of evaluative process unfolds. Advocates for free expression say this represents something new.

    “If Florida passes this bill, it may be the first state in the country to institute in every public school a rule requiring the immediate removal of materials following an objection,” Jeffrey Sachs, a political scientist who closely tracks these proposals, told me. “For activists on the right, this is a new strategy that will greatly speed the process of censoring materials."

    The provision is buried in a bill that’s already received attention for another reason: It would expand the state’s “don’t say gay” law prohibiting classroom discussion of sex and gender up to high school — well beyond the initial goal of limiting discussion only through third grade.

    That’s bad, but the book-banning provision, which has attracted far less attention, makes it worse. That part of the bill mandates that instructional material facing objection in public schools through 12th grade for depicting “sexual” or “pornographic” conduct be “unavailable to students until the objection is resolved.”

    This means books and other materials would be removed before something akin to due process occurs. Such objections could be lodged not just by a parent, but any resident in the county, meaning anyone could get a book removed more easily than before...........

    Right-wing activists in Florida are already lodging objections on vaguely sexual grounds to an extraordinary range of books, as the Popular Information newsletter demonstrated. In some cases, dozens of books are getting banned in counties because of the objections of one parent, as happened when a member of the right-wing “Moms for Liberty” orchestrated the removal of 20 Jodi Picoult novels from school libraries in Martin County.

    It can take months to process an objection, meaning this bill, if passed, could take a book out of circulation for long periods even if the complaint is groundless. This will obviously invite activists and lone parents to mount as many flimsy objections as possible. The likely result? More absurdities such as the ban of Picoult novels, and more national scrutiny tying those absurdities to DeSantis’s book-crackdown regime.

    DeSantis probably calculates that this would serve his short-term political interests. Headlines about banned books — and liberal outrage in response — will bolster him among GOP primary voters. It might boost him among party elites who want to see DeSantis harness MAGA’s preoccupations toward defeating former president Donald Trump in the Republican primary.............


     
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    In the ongoing battle over school book bans in Pennsylvania and nationwide, one group is speaking with an outsized voice.

    Founded in early 2021 in Florida, Moms for Liberty (M4L) has expanded since then and now has over 200 county chapters nationwide in 35 states. The organization currently claims over 200,000 members.

    Originally focused on opposing mask mandates in schools during the COVID-19 pandemic, Moms for Liberty quickly expanded its agenda to oppose LGBT-positive policies in schools, LGBT-themed materials in school libraries, what they believe is critical race theory in curricula, and many other diversity-positive issues related to schools and students.

    The organization has seen success in Pennsylvania, with chapters in at least 27 counties across the commonwealth.

    Thanks to efforts by M4L and its Republican allies, Pennsylvania ranks third in the nation in the number of school library book bans. Between July 2021 and June 2022, the commonwealth saw 457 book bans across 11 school districts.

    Texas and Florida rank first and second in book bans.) While some of the bans have been rescinded, many Pennsylvania school districts continue to face pressure to remove material with LGBT content or diversity-themed content from their libraries and classrooms.

    Moms for Liberty has active chapters in at least 27 counties in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia Gay News graphic)............

    M4L tends to follow a predictable playbook. If a particular school board is not responsive to the organization’s demands, M4L mobilizes its membership to put forth a slate of right-wing candidates for the next election. According to Karen Smith, board member for the Central Bucks school district, that was exactly the strategy that gave M4L supporters a majority in Smith’s district. The result is that Central Bucks is undergoing a new round of efforts to ban a fresh list of LGBT-themed and racially inclusive books from the school library.

    In response to M4L’s expanding presence, organizations are springing up to push back against the conservative takeover of local school boards. These include: Parents for the Freedom to Learn, whose purpose is to mobilized progressive parents to oppose oppressive education policies and book bans; School Board Partners, which seeks to challenge the growing conservative presence on school boards; and Truth(Ed) advocates to protect students’ rights to an unencumbered education. All these organizations have a strong, vocal online presence, as they attempt to combat Moms for Liberty’s expansion...................

     
    just a stunt, but funny
    ================

    Florida Democrats are attempting a new stunt, reported The Daily Beast this week: using Gov. Ron DeSantis' landmark law allowing parents to remove books from schools to ban the governor's own publication.

    "In a clever bit of trolling, Florida Democrats are subjecting DeSantis’ new tome — 'The Courage To Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival' — to the rules that he and GOP lawmakers established to weed out books with allegedly inappropriate content on race, sexuality, and gender from school libraries," reported Jake Lahut.

    "Fentrice Driskell, the minority leader in the Florida House, is leading an effort across 50 counties to see if any of them might review or ban DeSantis’ book based on his law’s vague and unwieldy criteria."

    “The very trap that he set for others is the one that he set for himself,” said Driskell in a statement to The Daily Beast.

    Such a move would not have much practical effect, since according to the report, no school in Florida currently stocks DeSantis' book in their libraries, let alone uses it in any academic curriculum. However, the report notes, the point is to "[draw] attention to how HB 1467’s vague and arbitrary language can be abused when taken to its logical conclusions — while putting a critical spotlight on the contents of the book, widely seen another clear sign that DeSantis will run for president in 2024."

    The law does not strictly define what counts as "inappropriate" content on race or gender, meaning that numerous books and other content that simply mentions these topics have been targeted by right-wing activists — among them a book about the life of baseball star Roberto Clemente, and a film about civil rights activist Ruby Bridges, although the school in the latter case denies it was actually banned.............

     
    You know You blow when you forking Judy Blume posts about you.

    Side note, her original Superfudge is still my favorite book ever. That entire series was awesome.
    Judy Blume stood up for the right to read at Variety‘s Power of Women luncheon, presented by Lifetime, in New York City on Tuesday.

    The resident Floridian spoke passionately against Gov. Ron DeSantis’ recent moves to censor public education in the state. “I live in Key West — even though we like to pretend it’s not in Florida — we have the same governor,” Blume said to the crowd. “A governor who wants to control everything, starting with what kids can think, what they can know, what they can question, what they can learn, and now even what they can talk about. We have a legislator who’s trying to put through a bill preventing girls in elementary school from talking about periods… Good luck there.”

    Blume is, of course, referencing her 1970 children’s novel “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” and the backlash the book suffered for having the audacity to talk about puberty. Starting off with a little history lesson, the celebrated author painted a picture of what she had to endure and how that experience led her to the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC).

    “Let me take you back to the 1980s when the censors crawled out of the woodwork overnight, following the presidential election,” Blume said. “And what a time that was – with parents rushing into [their] children’s schools waving a book saying, ‘I demand that you get rid of this book!’ Most of the time these parents had never even read the book (maybe they had pages turned down). But because in many places schools and libraries didn’t have their policies in place, the books were removed, sometimes quietly, sometimes not.”

    Blume went on to accuse the censors of operating out of fear and recalled how fellow author Madeleine L’Engle was accused of promoting new ageism. “I guarantee Madeleine never heard of new ageism when she was writing ‘A Wrinkle in Time,'” Blume said.

    “With me it was sexuality, and specifically puberty – which to some people was a very dirty word. It wasn’t something the censors wanted to talk about with their kids. You know — if they don’t read about it, they won’t know about it, and if they don’t know about it, it will never happen to them… guess what,” she continued. “So when I first came under attack, I felt alone. I felt scared. I mean this was America, right? I thought we were a country who celebrated our intellectual freedom? So after awhile I was absolutely thrilled to find NCAC, or maybe they found me. I can’t remember but either way it was a life changer. And it turned out that I was not alone.”...........

    “I would like to end this on a sweet and positive note but the reality is, we are right back where we were in the ’80s except it’s the ’80s on steroids… This time it’s not the moral majority or only the religious right. This time it is coming from our government,” Blume said. “Lawmakers, drunk with power, with a need to control everything. Sure it’s still sexuality, but it’s gender, it’s LGBTQ+, it’s racism, it’s history itself that’s under fire.”

    Blume then turned her speech directly to the recent censorship moves from DeSantis, dubbed the “don’t say gay” bill in Florida.

    “Teachers are under fire, librarians are threatened,” Blume said. “They are criminalizing teachers and librarians. It’s not just that they’re threatening their jobs, they’re threatening them. They could go to jail, all because they stand up for the rights of the students they teach. All because they refuse to give in to fear. I’ve known librarians who have saved lives by handing the right book to the right child at the right time. And for that one kid, finding themselves in a book can be a lifesaver.”.............

     
    A rising tide of censorship threatens to dash everything from lesbian dragons to Amelia Earhart picture books off the shelves of school and public libraries.


    Book lovers should take heart. The censors can be beaten.

    And longtime library advocates have mustered an arsenal of statistics, talking points and legal strategies to keep shelves full and fascinating.


    The most powerful fact: Censorship isn’t popular. Fifty-six percent of respondents to an August 2022 survey disagreed with the statement: “If any parent objects to a book in the public school library, that book should be removed, even if other parents like the book.”

    A poll published in March 2023 by Wall Street Journal-NORC found 61 percent were more concerned that “some schools may ban books and censor topics that are educationally important” than by the prospect that instructional materials might offend students or parents. That skepticism isn’t partisan, either.

    Because library and school policies are made locally, library advocates must tailor their campaigns to their communities.

    In a red state or town, that might mean public testimony shouldn’t emphasize that books by or about LGBTQ people or people of color are disproportionately challenged.

    It could backfire, explains Peter Bromberg, associate director of EveryLibrary. A lawmaker who thinks homosexuality is wrong or anti-racism is a menace will be more likely to excise books if he thinks doing so will further his crusades.


    Instead, library supporters can point out that censorship has costs and wastes public resources. Libraries have been sued for removing books or restricting access to them on the grounds that it is illegal for public facilities to favor one political viewpoint over another.

    Towns can’t ban books because they’re Marxist, or use internet filters that restrict access to gay rights websites while letting users browse conversion therapy ministries.

    Even if a library or school system wins a case, defending it costs money, and damages can be substantial. Recently, reminders of the risks of litigation helped library advocates temper a censorship policy in League City, Tex…..

    And library lovers can offer evidence that censorship efforts can backfire in costly ways: Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry’s tip line for complaints about librarians and teachers was flooded with witty anti-censorship spam.

    While the campaign wasted public resources, it stung given that Landry had previously cited a lack of funds as a reason not to set up a tip line for reports of clerical sex abuse.


    Some anti-censorship arguments resonate nationally.
Advocates can point out the books that could be caught in legislative dragnets.

    One puckish censorship opponent in Utah challenged the Bible on the grounds that it contains “incest, onanism, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, fellatio, dildos, rape, and even infanticide.”

    Talarico recently lamented that the Texas books bill could evict Larry McMurtry’s “Lonesome Dove” from schools, denying students access to one of the masterworks of Texas literature………

     
    A Utah school district is considering banning students from reading the Bible after a complaint was made about the holy book containing 'inappropriate and pornographic' content.

    Schools across the state are using a conservative Utah law passed in 2022 to challenge dozens of books that parents, students, teachers and board members might find offensive.

    A complaint was made on December 11 about the religious text, which is just one of 81 books Davis School District is considering removing.

    The DSD has an eight-page policy to guide the selection and removal of materials across its 92 schools.

    It most recently banned The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, along with 33 other books, as a result of the request. Thirty more were kept after the review process.

    Whoever requested that the holy text be removed would have been required to present as evidence 49 pages which could be deemed as inappropriate.

    The book must include indecent public displays as defined by the law, which includes a description of illicit sex or sexual immorality.

    It can cover descriptions of human genitals in the state of sexual stimulation, sexual intercourse, sodomy, masturbation, erotic touching of the pubic region, buttock or female breast.

    However, if a book is ruled as not being sexual, the committee will also review it for harsh language, violence, and other references that may be inappropriate for a specific age.

    The group of at least seven people, which includes a district administrator, a licensed teacher who is teaching English Language Arts, a librarian, and at least four parents who have children enrolled in one of the district's schools, will now vote on whether the Bible can remain in school libraries.

    While it is not clear exactly which passages the complainant flagged up, there are several mentions of violence throughout the Holy Bible..............


     
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    VERO BEACH, Fla. — Since its new policy was approved about a month ago, four books have been removed from school libraries in Indian River County.

    Among the latest is a graphic adaptation of the life of Anne Frank, a teenager who hid from the Nazis for two years during World War II. Frank was discovered and later died in a concentration camp during the Holocaust.

    Original 'Diary of Anne Frank' remains at school libraries

    The book, titled "Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Adaptation," was recently removed from the Vero Beach High School library after a parent group expressed concerns.
    "We think true history absolutely needs to be taught, the Holocaust, the Anne Frank diary," Jennifer Pippin, who chairs the Indian River County chapter of Moms For Liberty, said.

    She argues that in one graphic scene in the book, Frank asks a friend to expose themselves to one another.

    In another scene, Frank walks along nude statues that are sexually explicit, according to Pippin..........


     
    VERO BEACH, Fla. — Since its new policy was approved about a month ago, four books have been removed from school libraries in Indian River County.

    Among the latest is a graphic adaptation of the life of Anne Frank, a teenager who hid from the Nazis for two years during World War II. Frank was discovered and later died in a concentration camp during the Holocaust.

    Original 'Diary of Anne Frank' remains at school libraries

    The book, titled "Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Adaptation," was recently removed from the Vero Beach High School library after a parent group expressed concerns.
    "We think true history absolutely needs to be taught, the Holocaust, the Anne Frank diary," Jennifer Pippin, who chairs the Indian River County chapter of Moms For Liberty, said.

    She argues that in one graphic scene in the book, Frank asks a friend to expose themselves to one another.

    In another scene, Frank walks along nude statues that are sexually explicit, according to Pippin..........


    Why do they think nudity = sexuality? Why do they think that a child who feels like they are the wrong gender = sexual grooming?

    They are definitely the ones with some weird sexual vibes going on. Not everyone else.
     
    Jerry Craft was intent on creating the kind of story he wished had been in his classroom while he was growing up in New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood — a positive tale featuring a Black protagonist that wasn’t, as he says, about “misery and history.”


    His story about Jordan Banks, a Black student who transfers to a predominantly White private school — loosely inspired by the youthful experiences of Craft and his two sons, who are now both grown — was swiftly a hit. And for more than two years, Craft relished visiting classrooms and Zooming with students, without controversy.
Craft calls the response to his work “a lovefest,” as children gave him their drawings of the characters in his 2019 bestseller, “New Kid,” the first release in a three-book, graphic-novel series aimed at middle-grade readers. By early 2020, “New Kid” became the only book to rack up the Kirkus Prize, the Newbery Medal and the Coretta Scott King Author Award.


    But then, in late 2021, Craft got word: A school district in Katy, Tex., had pulled “New Kid” from circulation after a parent petition claimed that the book contained harmful content involving critical race theory.

    “New Kid” was reinstated after a 10-day review — when a committee found no inappropriate content — but not before Craft’s Zoom appearance there had been postponed. According to the PEN America organization, a nonprofit that defends free expression for authors, “New Kid” has also been challenged in at least two other Texas school districts, as well as districts in Florida and Pennsylvania.

    And, more enduringly, Craft and his work joined the hundreds of other works challenged each year as potentially inappropriate amid the current culture wars. Craft says he would have preferred to receive attention for simply drawing a book that students have embraced.

    Instead, he and his titles — including his “New Kid” follow-up released this week, “School Trip” — have gained enough attention that by Thursday, he was a guest on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” on which he emphasized that the term “graphic novel” does not mean a novel with graphic content.
“You think that’s not real,” he said, “but there are people that think that, so they’re like: ‘I don’t want my kid to read a graphic novel.’”


    Craft still speaks with a tone of disbelief over bans in the United States, while noting he has received no complaints from overseas readers. “I thought I was doing this book with a happy, Black family. There’s no slavery, no struggle for civil rights, no police brutality,” he told The Washington Post, adding: “To have it be as controversial as it’s been is just mind-boggling.”


    So how did he respond to that first Texas case? “I had to Google ‘critical race theory,’” Craft said with a laugh during a Zoom call earlier this week from his home in Florida — another state where books aimed at young readers have become ongoing targets in cultural standoffs over what is appropriate to teach in schools…….

    People often challenge books they find controversial “because they dispute the presentations around gender identity, sexual orientation, race and racism, and this rubric around what is claimed to be critical race theory,” says Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.

    Yet in truth, she notes, many of the titles are “simply books that elevate Black people, authors of color and elevate the voices of Black persons, or they offer alternative perspectives on our history of race and racism in the United States.”

    The ALA director says that about 40 percent of the challenges are to “100 titles or more at one time” rather than an individual title challenged by a lone concerned parent. “What we’re seeing is political advocacy groups trying to suppress the voices of marginalized groups and prevent students the access to different viewpoints.”…….

     
    VERO BEACH, Fla. — Since its new policy was approved about a month ago, four books have been removed from school libraries in Indian River County.

    Among the latest is a graphic adaptation of the life of Anne Frank, a teenager who hid from the Nazis for two years during World War II. Frank was discovered and later died in a concentration camp during the Holocaust.

    Original 'Diary of Anne Frank' remains at school libraries

    The book, titled "Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Adaptation," was recently removed from the Vero Beach High School library after a parent group expressed concerns.
    "We think true history absolutely needs to be taught, the Holocaust, the Anne Frank diary," Jennifer Pippin, who chairs the Indian River County chapter of Moms For Liberty, said.

    She argues that in one graphic scene in the book, Frank asks a friend to expose themselves to one another.

    In another scene, Frank walks along nude statues that are sexually explicit, according to Pippin..........





    The principal’s office of Vero Beach High School, which is located in a community on Florida’s east coast, recently decided to remove “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation” from its school library, according to Cristen Maddux, a spokesperson for the Indian River County school district. Maddux told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency the book was determined to be “not age appropriate.”

    ================================================================

    Neither was dying at 16 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
     
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    So a young girl going through puberty while hidding from the Nazis are not "age appropriate"

    My niece told me last summer that her teacher had assigned that book as required reading during the first year of the pandemic to a class of 5th graders as a way to discuss puberty which many were hitting during the time when everything was shut down. My niece told me that the book made it easier for everyone to discuss the difficult subject even when in remote learning sessions.
     
    The current “parental rights” movement has a dirty little secret: It depicts parents as victims of teachers and librarians. Yet many of the movement’s proposed solutions fob off parental responsibilities onto those public servants.


    Listen to enough debates about what books belong in public and school libraries, or about sex education, and a theme emerges: Even as they demand more rights, advocates of book bans and curriculum-dodging appear to wish they could do less parenting.


    Take the group of Alaska parents who recently asked their local library to remove books “which are intended to indoctrinate children in LGBTQ+ ideologies” from the children’s section, or put them on a restricted shelf. “Parents who do not wish for their children to stumble across … confusing ideas,” they complained, can’t let their kids browse without close supervision.

    Or take this move. Texas state Rep. Jared Patterson introduced a bill requiring vendors who want to sell books in Texas to rate their offerings as “sexually explicit” or “sexually relevant,” based on whether the books are “patently offensive,” “pervasively vulgar,” “obscene” or “educationally unsuitable.”

    Apparently, it’s not enough for parents to keep an eye on what their children are checking out. Instead, librarians must read the minds of every adult in town, anticipate what each one might find objectionable and pre-censor their shelves accordingly.


    Such proposals actually give publishers, librarians and school administrators more power to make moral judgments on behalf of parents, not less.

    Instead, parents should explain to their kids what they’re forbidden to check out and why. And let their kids’ librarians know. When she was a school librarian, says Andrea Jamison, Illinois State University College of Education professor, she would enforce parents’ rules.

    But she insisted they explain their reasoning to their children themselves. Stepping in to impart those values on their behalf would usurp parents’ rights.


    In dodging these conversations, parents are also transferring their anxiety about how their children are growing up onto teachers and librarians……

     
    This is like towns that filled their local swimming pools with concrete than let black people use it too
    ===========================================
    Officials in Llano County, Texas will meet this week to decide if they will close their local public library system and terminate all employees after a federal judge last week ordered 12 books with LGBTQ and race-related content to be returned to library shelves.

    Seven residents sued the county after books including “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” by Isabel Wilkerson, “They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group” by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, and “Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen” by Jazz Jennings were taken off library shelves, CNN reports.

    In their First and Fourteenth Amendment lawsuit residents says their civil rights were violated. A federal judge agreed, ordering the county to put the books back on the shelves within 24 hours.

    “They argue in the suit that their First Amendment rights to access and receive ideas had been infringed when officials limited access to certain books based on their content and messages. The county residents also alleged their 14th Amendment right to due process was violated as the books were removed without notice or ability to appeal,” The Texas Tribune reports.

    “U.S. District Court Judge Robert Pitman wrote in an opinion filed Thursday that the plaintiffs had ‘clearly met their burden to show that these are content-based restrictions that are unlikely to pass constitutional muster.’”


    The Tribune’s Alejandro Serrano Monday evening reported, “Less than two weeks after a federal judge ordered Llano County officials to return to the public library system books they’d removed and allow them to be checked out again, officials this week will consider shutting down the library.”...........



     
    It isn’t every day that the ruminations of local bureaucrats in a small rural Texas county become national news.

    But when commissioners in Llano County — population 21,000 — voted Thursday to keep its three-branch library system open, the moment was closely monitored by the biggest news organizations in the country.


    That’s because Llano County has become a national symbol of local right-wing censorship efforts after officials threatened to close its libraries entirely rather than allow offending materials to remain on shelves.

    Under intense scrutiny, the commission blinked. Its leader acknowledged feeling pressure from “social media” and “news media.”
The commissioners’ apparent reluctance for Llano to be seen as a locus of censorship points to an unexpected development: Skirmishes emanating from book bans at schools and libraries in red states and counties, once localized affairs, are becoming viral national sensations. And the American mainstream appears to be paying attention.

    Like many other similar conflicts, this one was triggered by a single Llano resident, Bonnie Wallace, who objected in 2021 to library books she pronounced “pornographic filth.” A bunch were removed, including unobjectionable materials such as Maurice Sendak’s “In the Night Kitchen” and Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.”


    The county also dissolved its libraries’ advisory board and reconstituted it with advocates of book removal, including Wallace herself. After other residents sued for the books’ return, a judge ordered the books placed back on the shelf, prompting the county to consider shutting the libraries pending the suit’s resolution.

    At Thursday’s hearing, several of Llano’s self-designated commissars of book purging read explicit sex scenes from young adult books, but they went further, advocating for closure. One said: “I am for closing the library until we get this filth off the shelves.”


    But one of the big surprises of these sagas has been outbreaks of resistance to book purges in the reddest places, and here again, some locals dissented. One said: “We have to be a community that values knowledge.” Another fretted: “We are all over the media, and this is making us look pretty bad as a community.”


    It turns out that even in an overwhelmingly conservative place (Donald Trump won nearly 80 percent of Llano’s votes in 2020), plenty of people value free expression. Many Republicans aren’t on board with the right’s censorship agenda. And these folks can organize…….

     
    Book bans in US public schools increased by 28% in the first half of the 2022-23 academic year, the writers’ organisation Pen America said on Thursday, describing a “relentless” conservative “crusade to constrict children’s freedom to read”.

    Releasing a new report, Banned in the USA: State Laws Supercharge Book Suppression in Schools, Pen said the increase was over figures for the previous six months.

    “Censorious legislation in states across the country has been a driving force behind new restrictions on access to books in public schools,” it said……

     

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