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    ‘Criminal liability for librarians’: the fight against US rightwing book bans

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    In the classic comedy Blackadder, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger demanded “tougher sentences for geography teachers”. So much for satire. In the real world, US Republican politicians are now seeking “criminal liability for librarians”.To Skye Perryman, president and chief executive of the nonprofit Democracy Forward, as absurd as rightwing book bans can seem (a Florida claim that the Arthur books can “damage the souls” of children a particularly florid example), this is no laughing matter at all.She says: “In Arkansas, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a bill into law that would have done a number of things, including creating the potential of criminal liability for librarians.”The law, Act 372, would make it a misdemeanor offense, punishable by up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $2,500, for librarians and booksellers to furnish minors with materials deemed “harmful” by authorities. The law also provides for challenges to materials in public libraries.Last Saturday, two days before the bill was to become law, a federal judge blocked it, as a violation of free speech rights under the first amendment to the US constitution.The judge, Timothy L Brooks, quoted Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel: “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.” Feelings are running high.Arkansas is set to appeal. It will face organised opposition. Democracy Forward is part of a broad coalition including the Arkansas Library Association, the Central Arkansas Library System, community bookstores, the American Booksellers Association, the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild, the state branch of the American Civil Liberties Union and individual library users.For Perryman, such work is only beginning.“What we know is that laws like the one in Arkansas are part of a national effort from anti-democratic forces, movements and people that do not represent the vast majority of the American people, or even the vast majority of people in states like Arkansas, that are seeking to sow culture wars in order to undermine democracy.“In Arkansas, we blocked that law with a broad coalition of booksellers, librarians and community members, and I think that’s really important in terms of understanding what’s happening in these communities. We are seeing people who do not typically go to court, who do not typically resort to the legal process, really mobilising.”Attempted book bans in libraries and public schools have proliferated in Republican states, complaints made on grounds of history, race, gender, LGBTQ+ rights and more. Attempts to ban titles by high-profile authors (Maya Angelou, Amanda Gorman, Art Spiegelman) have attracted national headlines. The phenomenon has perhaps been most visible in Florida, under a governor, Ron DeSantis, running for the Republican presidential nomination, and with “grass roots” groups such as Moms for Liberty sprouting and shouting loud.Perryman points to sources of fertiliser for such rapid growth.“We have seen a real effort on the part of anti-democratic and far-right actors like Sarah Huckabee Sanders, like Ron DeSantis in Florida, like [Governor] Greg Abbott in Texas, like legislatures that have developed this [policy]. We have seen a real effort from those sort of lawmakers to develop strategies that are responsive to a very vocal but small minority of people.“The far right has been strategic about trying to organize groups such as Moms for Liberty, formed to provide an appearance that there is an organic movement sprouting across the country, that people are really concerned about children being able to access books, about freedom of expression and what’s being taught in schools.“And what we see time and again is that those voices do not represent a majority of people, and that they are part of a network that is coordinated to try to create issues, in order to be able to roll back progress and roll back our basic freedoms, including the freedom to read and the ability of communities to thrive.“In order to combat that, we have to understand what we’re up against. And so what we have done at Democracy Forward is not only work with on-the-ground communities seeking resources to fight back, who need legal representation … but also to really look and monitor what is happening at the local and state levels throughout the country. And who is behind those efforts.”Democracy Forward was founded after the election of Donald Trump in 2016, by “a dedicated and spirited group” who wanted to take the fight back to the right. Before her current role, Perryman was chief legal officer and general counsel of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, working to “enhance access and equity in healthcare”.She now links book bans to assaults on other civil liberties including access to abortion, a right three Trump appointees to the US supreme court helped remove last year.“If you would have lived a few years ago in the United States, what you would see was laws popping up around the country where there were criminal penalties for doctors for doing their job.“Rightwing actors that were highly coordinated and resourced pushed the law further and further, in order to be able to play in friendly jurisdictions and ultimately they did what they sought to achieve, which was to overturn a constitutional right to access reproductive healthcare through abortion.”Now, Perryman says, “in the censorship space, it is very important to understand that this is a similar playbook.“When you have political movements that do not represent the majority of people … you have to assume that their desire is to fundamentally alter our democracy and to fundamentally alter our first amendment, our ability to express ourselves, the ability of children to be able to get good education and ideas and materials.“And so we take this very seriously, because this is a movement in this country that is a threat to democracy and we will do everything we can to push back.” More

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      Judge blocks Arkansas law allowing librarians to be charged over ‘harmful’ books

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      Arkansas is temporarily blocked from enforcing a law that would have allowed criminal charges against librarians and booksellers for providing “harmful” materials to minors, a federal judge ruled on Saturday.US district judge Timothy L Brooks issued a preliminary injunction against the law, which also would have created a new process to challenge library materials and request that they be relocated to areas not accessible by kids. The measure, signed by the state’s Republican governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, earlier this year, was set to take effect on 1 August.A coalition that included the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) in Little Rock had challenged the law, saying fear of prosecution under the measure could prompt libraries and booksellers to no longer carry titles that could be challenged.The judge also rejected a motion by the defendants, which include prosecuting attorneys for the state, seeking to dismiss the case.The ACLU of Arkansas, which represents some of the plaintiffs, applauded the court’s ruling, saying that the absence of a preliminary injunction would have jeopardized the free speech rights enshrined in the US constitution’s first amendment.“The question we had to ask was – do Arkansans still legally have access to reading materials?” Holly Dickson, the executive director of the ACLU in Arkansas, said in a statement. “Luckily, the judicial system has once again defended our highly valued liberties.”The lawsuit comes as lawmakers in an increasing number of conservative states are pushing for measures making it easier to ban or restrict access to books. The number of attempts to ban or restrict books across the US last year was the highest in the 20 years the American Library Association has been tracking such efforts.Laws restricting access to certain materials or making it easier to challenge them have been enacted in several other states, including Iowa, Indiana and Texas.Arkansas’s attorney general, Tim Griffin, said in an email on Saturday that his office would be “reviewing the judge’s opinion and will continue to vigorously defend the law”.The executive director of the Central Arkansas Library System, Nate Coulter, said the judge’s 49-page decision recognized the law as censorship, a constitutional violation and wrongly maligning librarians.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“As folks in south-west Arkansas say, this order is stout as horseradish!” he said in an email. He added: “I’m relieved that for now the dark cloud that was hanging over CALS’ librarians has lifted.”The lawsuit which produced Brooks’s injunction names the state’s 28 local prosecutors as defendants, along with Crawford county in west Arkansas.A separate lawsuit is challenging the Crawford library’s decision to move children’s books that included LGBTQ+ themes to a separate portion of the library. More

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      Obama speaks out against ‘profoundly misguided’ book bans in school libraries

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      In an open letter to American librarians, Barack Obama has criticised “profoundly misguided” rightwing efforts to ban books from libraries in public schools.“Some of the books that shaped my life – and the lives of so many others – are being challenged by people who disagree with certain ideas or perspectives,” the former president wrote.“It’s no coincidence that these ‘banned books’ are often written by or feature people of colour, Indigenous people, and members of the LGBTQ+ community.”Obama’s letter on Monday supported Unite Against Book Bans, a campaign led by the American Library Association (ALA).Obama also appeared in a TikTok video posted by the Kankakee Public Library, from Illinois, which has found success with viral videos.The 44th president appeared at the end of the short video, which otherwise featured staff reading books subject to bans or attempted bans. Obama was shown reading and sipping from a library-branded mug. More videos are set to be released.The ALA has found that in US public schools last year, “a record 2,571 unique titles were targeted for censorship”, often by parent-led groups, “a 38% increase from the 1,858 unique titles targeted for censorship in 2021”.It adds: “Of those titles, the vast majority were written by or about members of the LGBTQ+ community and people of colour.”In his letter, Obama also cited “unfortunate instances in which books by conservative authors or books containing ‘triggering’ words or scenes have been targets for removal”.He added: “Either way, the impulse seems to be to silence, rather than engage, rebut, learn from or seek to understand views that don’t fit our own. I believe such an approach is profoundly misguided, and contrary to what has made this country great.”Obama is the author of his own bestselling books: Dreams from My Father, The Audacity of Hope and A Promised Land, the last named the first volume of his political memoirs. His wife, Michelle Obama, is the author of the hit memoir Becoming and a recent follow-up, The Light We Carry.In his letter, Obama said writers “like Mark Twain and Toni Morrison, Walt Whitman and James Baldwin taught me something essential about our country’s character.“Reading about people whose lives were very different from mine showed me how to step into someone else’s shoes. And the simple act of writing helped me develop my own identity – all of which would prove vital as a citizen, as a community organizer, and as president.”Regarding school book bans, the former president also said it was “important to understand that the world is watching.“If America – a nation built on freedom of expression – allows certain voices and ideas to be silenced, why should other countries go out of their way to protect them?“Ironically, it is Christian and other religious texts – the sacred texts that some calling for book bannings in this country claim to want to defend – that have often been the first target if censorship and book banning efforts in authoritarian countries.” More

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      The Guardian view on US book bans: time to fight back | Editorial

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      “A book is a loaded gun in the house next door,” warns a character in Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s dystopian vision of an America where books are considered so dangerous they must be incinerated. The novel appeared 70 years ago, in the aftermath of Nazi book burnings and amid McCarthyism and Soviet ideological repression. But the urge to ban books has resurged with a vengeance, with the American Library Association (ALA) recording a doubling of censorship attempts in 2022, to 1,269 across 32 states: the highest rate for decades. Pen America, which champions freedom of expression, tallied more than 2,500 cases in the last school year.These attempts are not merely more numerous but are also broadening and deepening. The decisions of school boards and districts take place in the context of politicians grasping electoral advantage and punitive yet often vaguely worded state laws on education – such as the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis’s, Stop-Woke Act. At least 10 states have passed legislation increasing parental power over library stock, or limiting students’ access. In place of spontaneous challenges to single titles come challenges to multiple titles, organised by campaign groups such as Moms for Liberty. The ALA says that 40% of attempts last year targeted 100 books or more.Not only schools but now community libraries too are under scrutiny. The efforts are also increasingly punitive. Missouri Republicans this week voted to defund all of the state’s public libraries after librarians challenged a bill that has removed more than 300 books and that threatens educators “providing sexually explicit material” with imprisonment or a fine of up to $2,000. A library in Michigan was defunded last year; another in Texas is under threat this week.These challenges are overwhelmingly from the right. And while liberal parents have sought to remove titles such as Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from mandatory reading lists over their approach to race, this time the demand from parents is not merely that their child should not have to read particular titles – but that no one’s child should be able to unless they buy it privately.Pen America notes: “It is the books that have long fought for a place on the shelf that are being targeted. Books by authors of color, by LGBTQ+ authors, by women. Books about racism, sexuality, gender, history.” They include works by celebrated children’s writers such as Judy Blume, literary greats including Toni Morrison and Margaret Atwood – and even the comic picture book I Need a New Butt. Librarians are attacked as “paedophiles” over sex education titles or those depicting same-sex relationships. In part, this is a backlash against efforts to diversify reading matter in schools and libraries. The pandemic also gave parents greater insight into what their children are studying and fostered a “parental rights” movement rooted in opposition to mask mandates.The primary cost is to children denied appropriately selected books that could be life-affirming and life-changing – even, perhaps, life-saving. The chilling effect of challenges makes librarians and teachers second-guess their choices and cut book purchases. In two Florida counties, officials this year ordered teachers to cover up or remove classroom libraries entirely, pending a review of the texts – reportedly leaving weeping children begging: “Please don’t take my books.” But parents, librarians and communities are waking up to the threat, and are organising and educating to counter it. Books are the building blocks of civilisation. They must be defended.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Ron DeSantis’ academic restrictions show he hopes to change history by censoring it | Francine Prose

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      Ron DeSantis’ academic restrictions show he hopes to change history by censoring itFrancine ProseFlorida’s Stop Woke Act and ban on African American studies will only deprive students of the right to think and learn For some time now, conservative groups have pressured libraries and classrooms to remove certain “controversial” books from their shelves and their syllabi. These are texts that tell uncomfortable or unpopular truths about our nation’s origins, including inequality, race, history, gender, sexuality, power and class – a range of subjects that a small but vocal group of Americans would prefer to ignore or deny.Ron DeSantis bans African American studies class from Florida high schoolsRead moreThese efforts achieved one of their most notable successes last April when the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, signed the Stop Woke Act, which prohibits in-school discussions about racism, oppression, LBGTQ+ issues and economic inequity. Books that have not been officially vetted and approved must be hidden or covered, lest teachers unknowingly break an ill-defined law against distributing pornography – a felony.On 1 February, these pernicious restrictions on academic freedom spread beyond Florida, when the College Board announced its decision to severely restrict what can and cannot be taught in the newly created advanced placement class in African American studies. Cut from the curriculum (or in some cases made optional) was any discussion of Black Lives Matter, mass incarceration, police brutality, queer Black life and the Black Power movements of the 1960s and 70s. Writers who have been removed from the reading list include bell hooks, Angela Davis and Ta-Nehisi Coates.These decisions are alarming and disturbing on so many levels that it’s hard to decide which aspect is the most damaging and insidious. At risk are our foundational principles of free speech, our conviction that educators – and not politicians – should be writing up our lesson plans and deciding what transpires in our classrooms, our belief that students can (and need to) consider complicated issues.As someone who has taught for decades, I can hardly imagine abruptly cutting off class discussions that have veered (as they inevitably will) into these now forbidden areas. Must we fear that our students will report us as insurrectionists and felons for having mentioned the grotesque racial disparities in our prison populations? I believe that education not only involves the transmission of hard information but also helps students to think for themselves, to weigh opposing arguments and to make informed decisions. How can these goals be accomplished when we are being told to (quite literally) whitewash our nation’s history, to deny that we are walking on appropriated land in a country built by kidnapped and enslaved people, when we are being encouraged to lie about the very ground beneath our feet?Students aren’t as stupid as the Florida legislature seems to think, and by adopting these new regulations, we are only encouraging them to distrust their teachers and the system that so blatantly misrepresents the realities they so clearly observe around them.In the past, authoritarianism – and the indoctrination that sustains it – has used educational systems to further its agenda. We can recall images of first-graders wearing little red kerchiefs and saluting the eastern bloc dictators, of students let out of class to welcome the Führer to town. We know that democracy depends on the free and open exchange of ideas, on conversations that begin early in the life of its citizens – and that fascism thrives when only one point of view is permitted. DeSantis’s rulings, and the campaigns that have engendered them, are inherently anti-democratic.We cannot change history by censoring it. We cannot pretend that we were never a slave-holding society, that racism ceased to exist when Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. We cannot erase the past, or influence a young person’s gender and sexuality by removing a book from the library. Students are not political pawns or ideologues-in-training. They are our future and it’s frightening to imagine a future populated by citizens who were forbidden to argue and debate, to hear about a historical event from multiple perspectives and to learn to make the critical judgments and necessary distinctions that will help them navigate our increasingly complex and challenging world.It’s been noted that Ron DeSantis graduated with a degree in history from Yale, where he was presumably encouraged to engage in – and to learn from – the open debates that he is now attempting to stifle. Presumably, too, he learned what a good education is, what it means to be taught to think – and that is precisely what he is denying students who are less privileged than he and his Yale classmates.It’s a political decision designed to win over the Trump supporters that the governor will need in his bid for the presidency – that is, white working-class Americans who don’t understand that their own children are also being denied the education that will help them overcome the class divisions that perpetuate our economic inequality. Private school students will still be able to study history in depth, to learn to reason, to process and assess the accuracy of what they are being told. It’s the public school kids who will be funneled into the low-paying jobs, the dim futures for which their schooling has (not accidentally) prepared them.‘We’ve moved backwards’: US librarians face unprecedented attacks amid rightwing book bansRead moreUltimately, what’s most troubling about the new restrictions and proscriptions is that historical facts are being recast as snowflake propaganda. The truth is being distorted or omitted at a moment when we, as a nation, have never so desperately needed to maintain our grip on reality.Without being taught to distinguish truth from fiction, without being asked to think, without learning how this country evolved – a history not just of heroism and noble principles but of theft, brutality and crime – our students will be easy prey to every conspiracy theory that comes along. They will find it far more difficult to imagine and implement the important ways in which we hope to become a more equitable, less racist – and better educated – society.
      Francine Prose is a former president of Pen American Center and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
      TopicsLibrariesUS educationUS politicsRace in educationRaceBlack Lives Matter movementcommentReuse this content More

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      Pennsylvania school district accused of banning Girls Who Code book series

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      Pennsylvania school district accused of banning Girls Who Code book seriesPen America says Central York school district banned the books but officials strongly deny it in statement A school district in Pennsylvania has banned the Girls Who Code book series for young readers, according to an index of banned books compiled by the free expression non-profit Pen America.The books are four of more than 1,500 unique book titles that have been banned by schools across the country after conservative pushes to censor books. According to a report released by Pen America in April, 138 school districts across 32 states have banned books from their classrooms and school libraries.A recent update to Pen America’s banned book index said the Central York school district last year banned the books The Friendship Code, Team BFF: Race to the Finish!, Lights, Music, Code! and Spotlight on Coding Club!. The school district has over 400 banned titles on the index.A statement from officials in that district on Monday strongly denied that they had banned the book series.“The information published in this article is categorically false,” the district’s statement said while linking to a Business Insider interview with the founder of Girls Who Code which reported the ban. “This book series not been banned, and they remain available in our libraries.”The Central York district last year received national attention after it banned resource materials listed in 2020 by its diversity committee, including children’s books and documentaries. A coalition of students and parents successfully pushed the district to rescind its ban after public pressure.In a statement explaining the ban of the diverse resources, the school district’s board president at the time, Jane Johnson, said: “What we are attempting to do is balance legitimate academic freedom with what could be literature/materials that are too activist in nature, and may lean more toward indoctrination rather than age-appropriate academic content.”The Girls Who Code series features a group of girls who become friends in their school’s coding club. The series is in partnership with Girls Who Code, a non-profit that runs computer coding clubs and programming in schools for girls.How to beat a book ban: students, parents and librarians fight backRead moreThe CEO and founder of Girls Who Code, Reshma Saujani, expressed her anger over the series being banned.“We use these stories to teach kids to code,” Saujani told Business Insider. “It felt very much like a direct attack on the movement we’ve been building to get girls coding.“This is an opportunity to realize how big this movement is against our kids and how much we need to fight.”Saujani said that the group Moms for Liberty, a conservative non-profit formed in 2021 that has been pushing book bans through local chapters across the country, was responsible for the Central York district’s ban on the series. The organization has advocated for banning books on race – including ones on the civil rights movement – and on LGBTQ+ themes, saying the volumes are “sexually explicit”, according to media watchdog Media Matters.Aggressive campaigns to ban books in schools and libraries across the country have flared up over the culture wars of the last two years. While campaigns to ban books have always existed in the US, the movement gained momentum in 2021 when conservatives took aim at the academic “critical race” theory and turned it into a buzzword to stoke fears of liberal ideals being taught in classrooms.According to Pen America’s banned books report, many of the titles being banned deal with LGBTQ+ themes or have non-white characters. The organization estimates that more than 300 groups, including local chapters of national organizations like Moms for Liberty, have been pushing for book bans. The groups have gained large traction through social media, where lists of titles have circulated.The campaigns try to deflect accusations of racism and bigotry by claiming they are targeting material that is offensive or inappropriate for children.Pen America estimates that 41% of banned books deal with LGBTQ+ themes while 40% have protagonists or secondary characters who are people of color.An author of one of the Girls Who Code books, Jo Whittemore, said on Twitter: “Some people choose not to focus on how awesome and empowering and inspiring these books are but instead choose fear.”TopicsPennsylvaniaUS politicsLibrariesnewsReuse this content More

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      Cancel culture is real but it’s not the ‘woke mob’ you should worry about | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Cancel culture is real but it’s not the ‘woke mob’ you should worry aboutArwa MahdawiBooks deemed anti-church or containing LGBTQ issues are being banned across the US at a terrifying rate by the conservative right Hello, my name is Arwa Mahdawi and I would like to cancel myself, please. I have a book to sell, you see, and it would seem that the easiest way to drum up a lot of free publicity these days is to declare yourself the latest victim of cancel culture. Suddenly everyone is inviting you on the telly to wax on about how you’ve been cruelly silenced by the woke mob. “Nobody can say anything any more!” the usual pundits lament in their 972nd piece on whether cancel culture has gone too far. “Free speech is dead! It’s just like Nineteen Eighty-Four!”I don’t know if Big Brother is going to let me share this, but I have something terribly shocking to tell you about cancel culture. Here we go: you should definitely be worried, but it’s not the woke mob you need to be worried about. A depressing amount of energy is being expended on arguing whether calling someone out for using language a lot of people perceive as bigoted is “cancel culture”. But, while endless arguments rage about the intolerant left, free speech is under a terrifying assault from the right.Want to know what real cancel culture looks like? Well, just sit back and look at the unprecedented surge of book banning efforts happening across the United States. Last year, for example, a county prosecutor’s office considered charging library employees in a conservative Wyoming city for stocking books about sex education and containing LGBTQ themes. Around the same time, Moms for Liberty, a rightwing advocacy group, tried to get a number of books banned from Tennessee schools because they contained content that disturbed them. They deemed a book about Galileo to be “anti-church”, and were outraged that a book about Martin Luther King contained “photographs of political violence”.More recently, a school board in Tennessee banned Maus, Art Spiegelman’sPulitzer prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, from its classrooms. Their reasoning? It contained eight swear words and a picture of a naked cartoon mouse. Yep, you read that right. What upset these people most about a book detailing how Jewish people were gassed to death in concentration camps by Nazis were some curse words.Let’s be clear: there is nothing particularly novel about uptight school boards in conservative areas getting worked up over material they deem offensive. However, what is happening in the US at the moment is a lot scarier than a few over-involved parents clutching their pearls over naked mice. As the American Library Association noted last year, there has been a “dramatic uptick in book challenges and outright removal of books from libraries.” The free-speech organisation, PEN America, has voiced similar concerns. “It’s a pretty startling phenomenon here in the United States to see book bans back in style, to see efforts to press criminal charges against school librarians,” the organisation’s chief executive recently told the New York Times.It’s not just school boards trying to police what kids can read about: it’s politicians, too. Last year, Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, introduced proposed legislation that would let parents sue schools for teaching critical race theory to kids. To be cute, he called this the Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (W.O.K.E) Act. Now, Florida is trying to pass a bill that critics have nicknamed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which would let parents sue schools or teachers who bring up topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity. (Just a little reminder to everyone that DeSantis loves describing Florida as a beacon of freedom, in what he deems to be an increasingly authoritarian America.)In an interview with the Washington Post last week, Spiegelman warned that what is happening now should be seen as a “red alert”. Maus being banned was no anomaly, but “part of a continuum, and just a harbinger of things to come”. What can I say? If it’s the “woke mob” that scares you after all this, then you must be fast asleep.
      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
      TopicsCensorshipOpinionFreedom of speechLibrariesUS politicsLGBT rightsReligioncommentReuse this content More