Book Banning

[bobtheinquisitor]

I think you’re confusing the outrage media’s portrayal of the left for the actual left. Your ideas about reality are not based on reality.

You come across as ignorant as that guy who thought Africans never built any two story buildings. Sounds to me like you get your news from white supremacist circlejerks.

[easye]

Book Banning in the news again.....

The plot thickens: The battle over books comes at a cost

www.npr.org/2023/08/11/1192034923/the-plot-thickens-the-battle-over-books-comes-at-a-cost

Once-beloved librarians now vilified
It's something of a "new normal" here — as it is around the nation. No longer are just books under fire, but also the library administrators, teachers and long-beloved librarians who are defending them. They're being shouted down by parents, vilified on billboards, reported to the police, and trolled online, leaving many fearing for their safety.

"I had an actual death threat," says Livingston Parish school librarian Amanda Jones, her voice breaking as she recalls one particular post: "We know where you work + live....u have a LARGE target on ur back. Click... Click... See you soon."

Jones says it started after she spoke out at a library board meeting against censorship and "book policing." Without mentioning any specific book, Jones said that challenges "often done with the best intentions," tend to target the Black and LGBTQ communities. Removing or relocating those books, she said, would be "extremely harmful to our most vulnerable - our children."

"Just because you don't want to read it or see it and does not give you the right to deny [it to] others," she said that night.

Then, she says, her comments were twisted online. She was accused of "advocating teaching anal sex to 11-year-olds," and pushing "sexually erotic and pornographic materials," to children "as young as six." That prompted a barrage of insults and threats as relentless as they were vicious.

"We're going to put ur fat evil commie PEDO azz in the dirt very soon b****" read one. Another pictured Jones with a red and while circle around her face.

She was terrified.

"I was hyperventilating," Jones says through tears. I didn't leave my room for days, and I cried so much that my eyes swelled shut. It was a mess, a real mess."

Jones started having panic attacks, she lost 50 pounds and chunks of hair, and ended up on a medical leave for six months. She was so scared, she started carrying a gun.

Amid all the skirmishes over individual book titles and challenge policies, it's easy to miss the toll it's taking on librarians, kids, and the country. Jones's case may be more extreme than most, but countless other librarians around the nation who are also feeling the heat are also quitting in droves, leaving libraries short-staffed. It's all driving up the human, civic, and financial costs embroiled in the battle over books.

We saw a bit of this locally as well.

[Haighus]

Despicable.

I know this isn't news at this point, but the US has a problem.

[skyth]

They need to start suing people that accuse them of being pedos for defamation. Teach them that there's consequences for those types of false accusations.

[redchimera]

That is rage inducing. Threatening to kill someone is a crime in the US as well as here isn't it?

[skyth]

Somewhat related.

www.yahoo.com/news/newest-anti-woke-tantrum-wingers-100001810.html

According to ABC 13 Eyewitness News in Houston, things started when school trustee Melissa Dungan declared that she had spoken to parents who were upset about "displays of personal ideologies in classrooms." When pressed for an example, according to the news report, "Dungan referred to a first grade student whose parent claimed they were so upset by a poster showing hands of people of different races, that they transferred classrooms."

[herzlos]

Why are parents like that taken seriously by schools? I thought they were going to have been upset by a poster about Eid or something, but people of different races co-existing? Jesus.

[easye]

Aug 11, 2023 13:06:46 GMT -5 redchimera said:

That is rage inducing. Threatening to kill someone is a crime in the US as well as here isn't it?

In theory.  Generally, the best you can get is a Restraining Order, which doesn't do much real restraining.  It is more of a trigger to get the cops involved again, and is generally after-the-fact.      

The Police generally don't do much until someone actually follows through with the threat. 


Related: 
www.npr.org/2023/08/12/1193463117/violent-threats-against-public-officials-are-rising-heres-why

Violent threats against public officials are rising. Here's why

Hughes says the rising number of arrests is due to factors including the ease of making public threats via social media, an increased focus from law enforcement on domestic extremism and what Hughes calls a cultural "mood music" that normalizes violent rhetoric.

It's not just federal officials. A recent University of San Diego study surveyed local public officials in that city and found 75% reported receiving threats and harassment. Women, it found, are disproportionately impacted.

Violent political rhetoric is seeping into daily life
It is figures on the political right who are primarily fueling this hostile environment, says Katherine Keneally, a senior researcher at the nonprofit Institute for Strategic Dialogue, although their vitriol isn't just directed against Democrats and public officials.

"What I think is important to note is that Republicans are also being threatened by members of their own party," she says, often due to perceptions of being insufficiently loyal to conservative principles or figures.

[tannhauser42]

We'll see if any more books get banned at my wife's school this year. Last year she had put together a reading list for the school, and one of the books ended up getting pulled due to a parent complaint because, horror of horrors, one of the female characters had a WIFE. it wasn't even a major element of the book, just mentioned a few times in passing like "her wife dropped her off at work" kind of thing.

[easye]

Did a parent complain and it was dropped immediately, or was there a process?

[tannhauser42]

It basically got thrown out of the reading list immediately, because my wife was the only one who would have fought for it. We're in Texas, after all, so she's a bit in the minority amongst her peers.

The reading list wasn't a required reading thing, it was just some sort of school wide activity of encouraging all the kids to read various books and vote for their favorites in a sort of March Madness bracket for books.

[easye]

Not in my corner of WY, but it goes to show that the Book Banners are still very active and changing tactics. They ran into challenges in many school boards, and at the State Legislative level. However, not all elected boards have been safe....

www.cnn.com/videos/us/2023/08/17/wyoming-librarian-fired-lgbtq-books-county-board-bts-contd-cnntm-vpx.cnn

'This is a sh*tshow': Man speaks out before board members fire librarian

Sorry this is a video.

CNN's Phil Mattingly speaks with Terri Lesley, the former director of a county public library system in Wyoming. Library board members voted to terminate Lesley's position after she refused to remove certain books the board claimed were inappropriate for children.

[easye]

School book bans show no signs of slowing, new PEN America report finds

www.npr.org/2023/09/21/1200725104/book-bans-school-pen-america

School book bans and restrictions in the U.S. rose 33% in the last school year, according to a new report from the free speech group PEN America, continuing what it calls a worrisome effort aimed at the "suppression of stories and ideas." Florida had more bans than any other state.

Overall, PEN America said it found 3,362 cases of book bans, up from 2,532 bans in the 2021-'22 school year.

The organization counts any move that restricts access to a book as a ban, including books removed from classrooms or libraries or both, as well as books temporarily removed while they're being challenged.

Sometimes, I think the 80's moral panics never really ended, they just went underground and shifted.....

[mdgv2]

They evolved into Fox News.

No. Really.

[easye]

My local book banners have been quiet lately, but the National stage and Florida it is still pretty loud.....

Children and parents begin uphill fightback against book bans in Florida

www.cnn.com/2023/10/06/us/florida-banned-books/index.html

Now that books are being banned and disappearing from school libraries, students and parents are showing up to school board meetings in Florida to argue for access to books that take on difficult subjects. But they are losing out to a new state law that makes it easier for opponents to get books off shelves.

The conservative Moms for Liberty and allied groups turned board meetings into spectacle, reading out explicit passages from books without context to argue that they should not be available to minors. This summer, a Florida law went into effect stating that if a board member stopped a reading because it was offensive, the book could be removed immediately.

It turned performance into policy. Some school board lawyers are confused by the rules, and and those arguing for access have few ways to fight back.