THIS is how you fight book-banning "concerned parents" ...

 

h/t to Barista.net

A shout-out to the Glen Ridge Public Library Board of Trustees for voting UNANIMOUSLY to keep six YA LGBTQIA+ books available in public libraries.

When it came down to it, the eight residents of five households who had demanded the books be banned did not even have the courage to show up at the meeting.

How do you beat book-banning a-holes (assuming your Governor is not already a book-banning a-hole?)?

This is how:

Glen Ridge Public Library Board of Trustees had received 240 letters from community members and groups about the book ban attempt. More than 40 community members, leaders, librarians, educators, students, parents, elected officials, medical professionals and LGBTQIA+ advocates spoke out before the Board, with an additional 39 community members signed up to speak before the Board closed comments and began deliberations. ...

Glen Ridge resident Phil Johnson organized Glen Ridge United Against Book Bans, a dedicated group of parents, residents, clergy, and educators who fought the ban and brought awareness to the issue with a community response that included a petition signed by more than 2,900 Glen Ridge residents, as well as 300 yard signs displayed around the Borough and a rally that took place before the vote. Many of those who came out against the challenge Wednesday wore one of 300+ t-shirts designed by a local Glen Ridge artist, featuring the town’s signature lamps with a flame in Progress Pride colors, and created as part of Glen Ridge United’s efforts.

Glen Ridge United also announced it has created a fundraiser for the Friends of Glen Ridge Library.

Take note:

1. Show up in LARGE numbers so that the book banners cannot claim they speak for the people

2. If people cannot show up, gather names on petitions

3. Put up yard signs so that people can see the community is against censorship

4. Hold a public rally

5. Somebody step up and take charge

This was a public library, not a school library, so note two important points:

1. The book banners have expanded their targets, and after libraries will come brick-and-mortar and online bookstores, probably with a beginning argument for age requirements to buy certain books. 

2. What worked here WILL also work in a school district, but the book banners are ALREADY well-organized, so this is going to be a lot of work.

Duval County Florida has banned the biographies of Rosa Parks, Hank Aaron, Malala, Hiawatha, Jackie Robinson, and Sonia Sotomayor

 

... among 175 others.

The mind reels at the sheer audacity of declaring the story of Rosa Parks to be "racially divisive."

The mind melts at the idea that the biography of a sitting Supreme Court Justice is removed from the shelves.

The heart breaks to find out that we have returned to a time when Jackie Robinson is again controversial.

The rest of the list is equally bizarre, including ...

Christopher Rufo and the very bad, race-hustling Tweet ...

 OR: How Christopher Rufo aspires to be the Tucker Carlson of higher education ...

I hate to link to it, but you really need to be able to see it: 

The debate between "Lincoln freeing the slaves" and "the slaves freeing themselves" has existed for a long time in the community of Civil War historians.

It not only pre-exists the development of Critical Race Theory, it pre-exists the entire life of the race-hustling Rufo.

The emphasis on the idea that Blacks were passive recipients of the white grace of emancipation delivered by President Abraham Lincoln is one of the prime mantras of the avowedly racist writings of the highly influential "Dunning School" of Civil War and Reconstruction history at Columbia University that dominated US textbooks from the 1920s to the 1960s.

Here's an example of the kind of writing that the Dunning School offered, from William E. Woodward's Meet General Grant (1928):

"The American negroes are the only people in the history of the world that ever became free without any effort of their own. ... They had not started the war nor ended it, [but] twanged banjos around the railroad stations, sang melodious spirituals, and believed that some Yankee would soon come along and give each of them forty acres and a mule.”

This kind of racist, anti-historical crap (to which both Mssrs. Rufo and Carlson appear to subscribe) was most ably answered by W. E. B. Dubois in the closing pages of Black Reconstruction in 1935:

Shine a light in dark places: NCC DE Moms for Liberty -- crusaders or useful tools??

 

This is what the national Moms for Liberty organization says on its "Who We Are" page:

This is what they don't tell you: