Burning Down Democracy One Book at a Time

It’s banned books week, a time to reflect on the never-ending compulsion of a few to deem compendiums of the written word unsuitable for public consumption. My hope is for denizens of democracies to reject such actions.

There have always been people who feel moved to tell the rest of us what we shouldn’t read. Until recently this behavior was mostly the province of hard core religious types seeking to suppress blasphemous thinking or actions. Often the ACLU or some other similar rights-forward organization would step in and save the day.

Further down in this post you’ll learn about some wonderful contemporary efforts to push back against book banner types and the agendas they serve.

I’ll know a book worth banning when I see it. I might even choose not to read it. 

***

These days, America’s largest cult –the ones with the red hats– has adopted book banning and/or suppression as part of a strategy against “woke,” a term defining anything and everything outside the realm of working for some flavor of an authoritarian state. 

If they had an actual list of commandments from Dear Leader, number two would be something along the lines of Thou Shall Not Feel Empathy.

School books, whether they’re part of the curriculum, classroom optional collection, or library are MAGA’s prime targets. Some state governmental agencies have taken upon themselves to limit learning in a manner that amounts to putting blinders on students. 

Book bans in U.S. public schools have increased by 33% over the last school year, according to a study by the nonprofit Pen America. 

The study, Banned in the USA: The Mounting Pressure to Censor, found 3,362 book bans that will affect 1,557 different titles throughout the 2022–23 academic year and will influence the works of 1,480 authors, illustrators, and translators.

Florida, where people wearing swastikas no longer fear humiliation, was responsible for 40% of the books banned, followed by Texas, Missouri, Utah, and Pennsylvania. Other states, like Alabama, have enacted general purpose legislation against writings that might make white people feel bad about historical oppression.

A North Carolina school district even went so far as to try and ban Banned Books Week (They failed after negative public response). Here’s a snip of the original memo to principals. 

• Please be sure to communicate this to all teachers and staff. Under the Parents’ Bill of Rights, any attempts to share material in relation to Banned Book Week could be seen as a violation of the measure. 

The Florida Democratic party filed a Freedom of Information Act claim and discovered  the superintendent of the Charlotte County schools had ordered all books with LGBTQ+ themes and characters to be removed from district classrooms and libraries. The order extended beyond instruction materials to books that students are allowed to bring into classrooms and libraries as well.

Closer to home, last week the Escondido Union School District closed its school libraries after a book “containing sexually explicit material” was found in one of its campus libraries.

From the Coast News:

• Library services will resume on EUSD campuses once the audit is completed by “no later than” Oct. 6, according to the superintendent.

• Some social media posts have suggested that the book could be one of the “banned book” titles that have been recently challenged at schools and libraries throughout the nation. The Coast News is awaiting further confirmation from the school district regarding the book title.

***

MAGA keyboard warriors, operating under the banner of “parental rights” are dedicated to challenging individual titles no matter where they’re available.

• A Washington Post analysis of thousands of challenges nationwide found that 60 percent of all challenges in the 2021-2022 school year came from 11 adults, each of whom objected to dozens — sometimes close to 100 — of books in their districts.

Parents Rights might sound unobjectionable until you look at what’s being done by advocates for this cause. Jamelle Bouie at the New York Times explains.

• The reality of the “parents’ rights” movement is that it is meant to empower a conservative and reactionary minority of parents to dictate education and curriculums to the rest of the community. It is, in essence, an institutionalization of the heckler’s veto, in which a single parent — or any individual, really — can remove hundreds of books or shut down lessons on the basis of that one person’s political discomfort. “Parents’ rights,” in other words, is when some parents have the right to dominate all the others.

• And, of course, the point of this movement — the point of creating this state-sanctioned heckler’s veto — is to undermine public education through a thousand little cuts, each meant to weaken public support for teachers and public schools, and to open the floodgates to policies that siphon funds and resources from public institutions and pump them into private ones. 

In the real world, 74% of parents feel that book bans infringe upon their parental rights. 92% of parents believe their children are safe when visiting a library. Two-thirds also agree or somewhat agree that libraries should include children’s books on complex topics like racism and sex. 89% agree or somewhat agree that characters in books “should be diverse and reflect multiple communities.”

Humph. Enough about groomers and evil librarians, already. One thing I can tell you is that local MAGA disruptors are actually a small group traveling from one staged outrage to the next.

Book banners of the MAGA persuasion are expanding their horizons to include public libraries. A recent post at Popular Information has the lowdown:

• A new report from the American Library Association (ALA) finds that this year, between January 1 and August 31, there have been "695 attempts to censor library materials and services and documented challenges to 1,915 unique titles." The number of books challenged "has increased by 20 percent from the same reporting period in 2022." Last year was the highest number of challenges recorded since the ALA began collecting data two decades ago. In all of 2019, there were only 377 challenges.

• The ALA’s data only includes permanent bans of books subject to a formal challenge. Since many books are taken off the shelves without a formal challenge or while such a challenge is pending, the report functions as a snapshot of the overall issue.

• While much of the attention on book bans in the United States has centered around school libraries, the ALA report reveals that censorship efforts in 2023 are just as likely to target public libraries. According to the report, 49% of challenges to books were in public libraries — up from 16% in 2022. 

Now book publishers are also under the gun, as Summer Lopez from PEN explains in a Time Magazine op-ed:

• Not content to demand books be removed from classroom shelves, or to pass laws that restrict topics students can read about in school libraries or even discuss in classrooms, now the book banning movement is going after publishers, with legislation that would censor what books they can publish or distribute to public schools, with imprisonment and fines as possible punishment upon conviction in some cases. Today’s efforts to ban books in schools are already unparalleled in recent history, and over the past year, new laws have supercharged the movement; but legislation that directly targets publishers represents a novel attack on books in schools. 

There is no bottom for these folks. In Idaho, after the Governor vetoed House Bill 314a, allowing parents to sue schools or libraries for a statutory amount of $2,500 for allowing children to access any materials with “sexual conduct” or deemed “harmful to minors,” Sheriff Bob Norris starting visiting libraries looking for likely suspects that would have qualified under the law.

Via Jessica Pishko in To Catch a Library:

• Norris implied that he was open to investigating “if there is a criminal dynamic to people who expose young children to this type of material,” comparing it to adults who expose kids to illegal drugs. (Never mind that these books were both in the “young adult” section, which is for 15-18 year olds.) He seems to think that “sexual content” might cause teens to “experiment” and, therefore, commit crimes. (“Deal with it” appears to largely have content on masturbation which…is still legal as far as I know?)

• Norris is the latest sheriff to center library books as part of an ongoing harassment campaign some far-right groups are waging against librarians. This appears to be part of his “listening and learning” tour since he took office in 2020. Norris, a retired Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department employee, ran as a “law-and-order” GOP candidate and threatened to be extremely aggressive with protestors.

***

This book banning business is about more than collections of words applied to dead tree byproducts. It’s about the future of democracy, and it is one front of many in a multifaceted effort to denigrate institutions throughout society. Chaos and nihilism is the goal, to make way for some flavor of authoritarian rule.

Fortunately, there are good people ready to defend society, imperfect as though it may be.

This year’s Banned Books Week is being led by Levar Burton, a hero in the movement for childhood literacy, and a beloved actor who starred in Roots and Star Trek.

• His PBS children’s show Reading Rainbow lives in the hearts of many Americans who grew up from 1983 and on, he currently has a podcast dedicated to literature titled Levar Burton Reads, and he executively produced The Right to Read, an award-winning documentary from this year that shows how literacy is a civil rights concern.

• To Burton, the importance of books and reading can not be overstated, “Books bring us together. They teach us about the world and each other. The ability to read and access books is a fundamental right and a necessity for life-long success,” he’s said.

• “But books are under attack. They’re being removed from libraries and schools,” he continued. “Shelves have been emptied because of a small number of people and their misguided efforts toward censorship. Public advocacy campaigns like Banned Books Week are essential to helping people understand the scope of book censorship and what they can do to fight it. I’m honored to lead Banned Books Week 2023.”

The San Diego Public Library and the Library Foundation SD have joined Books Unbanned, an effort to make challenged titles available to young readers throughout the nation.

Via the Times of San Diego:

• Through the program, young readers can access a collection of frequently banned or challenged tomes in e-book or audiobook form. The list, according to the organizations, includes more than 250 titles, some among the most targeted books in the U.S., such as “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison and “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson.

• “The library must be where diverse materials representing our communities are available and where all ideas can be presented and discussed,” said Misty Jones, the San Diego Public Library director. “Book bans and challenges threaten our freedom to read and the library’s role as an open and welcoming space.”

Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill to ban school boards from rejecting textbooks based on their teachings about the contributions of people from different racial backgrounds, sexual orientations and gender identities.

“From Temecula to Tallahassee, fringe ideologues across the country are attempting to whitewash history and ban books from schools,” Newsom said in a statement. “With this new law, we’re cementing California’s role as the true freedom state: a place where families — not political fanatics — have the freedom to decide what’s right for them.”

At The Mary Sue, they report on Red Wine and Blue, a progressive advocacy group that was founded in 2019 in Ohio and now has multiple local chapters across the country. 

• Their official page labels them “Book Ban Busters” which I think is kind of neat! It makes them sound like superheroes. And let’s be honest, they have to be to do this kind of work. They talk about how extremists are trying to attack education, in some instances even banning books about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks. They state what I think could be a good tagline, saying “Suburban women aren’t having it.” A unique thing they are doing is sending ‘Banned Bookmobile’ kits out! This is a part of their new initiative called “Freedom to Parent 21st Century Kids”.

• This name is brilliant because they are reclaiming a word that Conservatives love to abuse, “freedom.” The banned bookmobile kits contain: 20 banned or challenged books, bookmarks and stickers, a banned bookmobile sign, and information that can be handed out. On their site, you can also join the banned book club, buy a banned book, or host a read-in. They provide training and video content where they talk with authors who have had their books banned. From my perspective, they are doing quite a good job and countering the “anti-woke” agenda.  

An online presence that both promotes quality books and has reporting on the push back against book bans is Book Riot.

•  For Banned Books Week, October 2nd-6th, Book Riot’s How to Fight Book Bans and Censorship ebook will be on sale for $1.99, starting Monday. This book compiles the most timely and relevant of our censorship coverage, including historical background, practical tips, graphics to share, and other resources. All the essays in this collection have been updated. Author Alex London calls it a “vital resource for educators and librarians, and for communities who have had enough extremism and want the context and the tools to defend freedom of speech in our schools and libraries.

In Florida, opposition to book bans and restrictions on what can be taught in schools has led to the formation of Moms for Libros. A Guardian story on the group highlights the phrase “Reading is Resistance.”

***

 If you really want to grasp the breadth of the problem, check out the Harper’s Bazaar graphic (by state) rolling list of banned books.

***

Opposing banning books wouldn’t really be a thing unless a couple or so of the right’s intellectual types authored articles claiming that bans didn’t really exist. Predictably the New York Times has an op ed, which I won’t link to because I don’t want to reward stupidity. It’s all a big ado about nothing they say, while making arguments about word definitions, etc.

***

Speaking of Reading, Here’s Some Food for Thought

***

'They seemed primed to take over': How the Great Dying doomed the 'beast tooth' and set the stage for the dawn of the dinosaurs at Live Science

• The excerpt below is taken from "Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth's Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis" (Hachette Book Group, 2023), by Michael Mann. It looks at how climate change following the Cambrian explosion caused the biggest mass extinction on Earth — dooming the creatures set to dominate and set the stage for dinosaurs to rule.  

---

• The mechanisms that can freeze the planet, as was the case with Snowball Earth can also lead to inhospitably hot climates, when enough carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere. Arguably the greatest extinction event of all time — called the Great Dying — appears to have resulted, at least in part, from a massive heat-inducing release of carbon into the atmosphere 250 million years ago. 

• Is this ancient event a possible analog for a sixth, human-caused, climate-change-driven mass extinction today? In answering this question, we will at times work our way through some details of the science, but the payoff is that we will see not just that scientists are able to unravel such mysteries, but how they do it.

***

"Never Seen Anything Like It:" The Biggest Month in Antitrust in 50 Years Via BIG by Matt Stoller

• Before the Biden administration, antitrust was mostly dead. It had picked up a bit under Trump, but mostly no one thought much about this area of law. And the reason was pretty simple. Nothing was happening. The FTC was using its authority to go after powerless actors, such as Uber drivers, church organists, bull semen traders, and ice skating teachers.

• The changeover has been absolutely stark, and it’s accelerating. Many of my sources in the competition policy world are giving me the same message, which is that this is the most extraordinary month they have ever seen in antitrust.

• There are the big fights, the cases against Google and Amazon, the suits against private equity and meat price-fixing. There is also smaller stuff, the behind-the-scenes institutional changes, like funding levels for antitrust enforcers and newly populist conservative nominees for regulatory agencies that could make a more assertive competition agenda part of a new bipartisan consensus. The rearguard opposition to change is immensely powerful, but the forces of the status quo are actually losing.

***

6 toxic attitudes that could kill democracy Via Mark Jacob’s Stop the Presses
(I chose #6 because it’s relevant)

• 6. “I don’t care what they do in Alabama. I live in California.”

• Being a patriot means caring about the people of all 50 states. A lot of them are being victimized by horrible politicians, and they need our help. Even from a purely selfish perspective, we ought to care. Fascism is like cancer. It spreads. If Wisconsin Republicans get away with impeaching a Supreme Court justice who was elected by an 11-point margin and hasn’t ruled on anything yet, it will embolden MAGA fascists nationwide. When Ron DeSantis pushes book bans and tries to strong-arm businesses for political reasons, he’s not just thinking about Florida. He wants to take it nationwide. 

• Also, our entire nation is damaged because red states send fascist punks like Josh Hawley and Marjorie Taylor Greene to Congress. You don’t get a chance to vote against them, but you’re suffering from them nonetheless. You can give donations to candidates in other states. Consider it.