The Associated Press published this article about how DeSantis has unleashed a nation-wide zeal for censorship. It appeared in newspapers across the nation.
TALLAHASSEE — As he vies for the Republican presidential nomination, laws pushed by Gov. Ron DeSantis have led to an upswing in banned or restricted books not only in Florida schools but also in an increasing number of other conservative states.
Florida last year became the first in a wave of red states to enact laws making it easier for parents to challenge books in school libraries they deem to be pornographic, deal improperly with racial issues or are in other ways inappropriate for students.
Books ensnared in the Florida regulations include explicit graphic novels about growing up LGBTQ+, a children’s book based on a true story of two male penguins raising a chick in a zoo and “The Bluest Eye,” a novel by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison that includes descriptions of child sexual abuse. Certain books covering racial themes also have been pulled from library shelves, sometimes temporarily, as school administrators try to assess what material is allowed under the new rules.
While efforts to ban books or censor education material have come up sporadically over the years, critics and supporters credit DeSantis with inspiring a new wave of legislation in other conservative states to regulate the books available in schools — and sometimes even in public libraries.
The number of attempts to ban or restrict books across the U.S. last year was the highest in the 20 years the American Library Association has been tracking such efforts.
EveryLibrary, a national political action committee, said it’s tracking at least 121 proposals introduced in state legislatures this year targeting libraries, librarians, educators and access to materials. The group said 39 of those proposals would allow for criminal prosecution.
“He really is blazing a trail,” said Tiffany Justice, the Florida-based co-founder of the conservative group Moms for Liberty, whose members have filed challenges to books in libraries in several states. “What Ron DeSantis does that I think is effective is he uses all the levers of power to make long-term change happen.”
“Other governors,” Justice said, “are paying attention and following suit.
In Arkansas, Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a law, set to take effect this summer, that could impose criminal penalties on librarians who knowingly provide “harmful” materials to minors. The law also would establish a process for the public to challenge materials and ask they be relocated to a section minors can’t access.
“It’s a perverse world when we’re talking about trying to criminalize librarians,” said Nate Coulter, executive director of the Central Arkansas Library System in Little Rock, which is expected to sue over Arkansas’ law.
In Indiana, school libraries will be required by July 1 to publicly post a list of books they offer and provide a complaint process for community members under a law Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb signed this month. In Texas, a bill creating new standards for banning books from schools that the government considers too explicit has been sent to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk.
In Oklahoma, the state school board has approved new rules that prohibit “pornographic materials and sexualized content” in school libraries and allow parents to submit formal complaints. The rules still must be approved by Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt.
DeSantis insists books aren’t being banned, preferring to call the forced removal of some books “curation choices that are consistent with state standards.”
“There has not been a single book banned in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said Wednesday. He later said, “our mantra in Florida is education, not indoctrination.”
Librarians, free speech advocates and some parents and educators say the push is driven by a small, conservative minority that happens to have outsized clout in Republican primaries like the one DeSantis is now competing in.
“This is all part of his plan to run for president, and he believes his vilification of books and what’s happening in public schools is his path to the presidency,” said Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, the state’s main teachers union.
Kasey Meehan, who directs the Freedom to Read program at the writers’ organization PEN America, said that, when books are targeted in Florida, they later become the subject of complaints filed by parents in other states.
“It’s something that continues to cause alarm for individuals who are advocating for the freedom to read or for a diversity of knowledge, ideas and books to be available to students across the country,” Meehan said.
There have been challenges to books in schools for decades — “The Bluest Eye” has been targeted in various states for years, long before DeSantis became governor.
But the restrictions accelerated in Florida after DeSantis signed bills last year barring discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third-grade classrooms, a ban that has since expanded through 12th grade. He also created a mechanism for parents to challenge books in school libraries and has targeted how race is taught in Florida schools.
Many teachers and districts complain that the laws’ standards are so vague they don’t know what books might place them in legal jeopardy.
Michael Woods, a special education teacher in Palm Beach, said new rules compelling him to catalog books in his classroom led him to empty a small library he set up where students could choose to read something that interested them. Now those volumes are stored in a box he’s stashed in his closet for fear of getting in trouble.
“That kind of positive connection to reading is no longer there,” he said.
The individual challenges to books might be coming from a fairly narrow segment of the population, according to PEN and the American Library Association, which track requests to pull books. The library association said 40% of all requests challenged 100 or more books at a time.
Raegan Miller of Florida Freedom to Read, a group fighting the book restrictions, said she has talked about education issues with fellow parents of all political persuasions for years, and no one has ever complained about inappropriate material in their children’s schools. She contends the issue has been ginned up by a small group of conservative activists.
“Do you really think we are all just happily dropping our kids off at Marxist indoctrination and pornography?” Miller said. “You only hear this stuff at school board meetings.”
Moms for Liberty, which boasts 285 chapters, has a strong presence at school board meetings in the state and nationwide. It also has successfully backed several candidates for school board.
The HITS (Heads In The Sand) just keep on coming …
“There is no book banning in Florida>” –Ron DeSantis
dis·in·gen·u·ous. adj. insincere, characterized by pretense that something is other than as it is known to be by the person doing the pretending
e·quiv·o·ca·tion. n. the use of ambiguous language to conceal the truth or to avoid disclosure of the truth
plau·si·ble de·ni′a·bil′i·ty. n. phrase. the ability of officials or leaders to deny knowledge of or responsibility for actions committed by persons acting under their authority
Empowering uneducated, cognitively challenged, knuckle-dragging white nationalist Christian fundamentalist sibling spouses to challenge and remove books from school libraries, classroom libraries, public libraries, and retail outlets and thereby determining what your kids can and cannot read is book banning at one remove, but it is still book banning. Denying it fools no one.
Fascists always do this. That’s why Orwell invented the term doublespeak.
Hush now … they’ll be banning dictionaries next …
No. They will be replacing them all with the Newspeak dictionary, don’t you think?
https://pen.org/florida-book-bans-not-a-hoax/
I’m not sure an ALEC-driven policy can be considered to be contagious. The contagion spread a long time. Seems like some book in 2010 brought one symptom to my attention. What we are now seeing is the expression of the disease on differing — but predictable! — parts of the body.
Florida’s book banning crusade has proved contagious. Right wingers and bigots in other red state rush to catch up with DeSantis. DeFascist made a national reputation by attacking Black history, attacking gays, demonizing the 1% who are trans, and making drag shows illegal (yes, I know, when children are present). But you can see how quickly “parental rights” disappear when a parent wants to get medical care for their child, when parents want to take their children to a drag story hour at the library, or when the parents of a 10-year-old rape victim want her to have an abortion.
“[H]e uses all the levers of power to make long-term change happen.”
DeSantis brags about how when he first became governor, he ordered an exhaustive review and detailing of the powers of the governor under the Florida constitution so that he could most fully and effectively leverage power to get whatever he wanted. And he has promised to do the same as president of the United States so that he can dramatically change things.
It’s not like he hasn’t told you what he plans to do.
Florida is ground zero for the creeping fascist plan. DeSantis is using the state to ‘mislead’ by example, and the other right wing governors fall in line. Billionaires are stuffing DeSantis’ pockets with so much cash to advance their democracy stifling agenda.
It’s not creeping in Florida or Ohio! They’re shifting from third to fourth gear. And speeding up.
Let’s call this DeSantisism, a fascist campaign spreading fear of books through political repression and the persecution of booksellers, teachers, educators, et al.
“McCarthyism, also known as the second Red Scare, was the political repression and persecution of left-wing individuals and a campaign spreading fear of alleged communist and socialist influence on American institutions and of Soviet espionage in the United States during the late 1940s through the 1950s.”
I am not sure where this quote arises, and I am aware that the term “Red Scare” refers specifically to the era of the 1919 Palmer Raids and the McCarthy hearings in 1950-54. Still, my study of the era from 1877, when the country almost exploded in a civil war between the working poor and the established industrial order, to today, I have never found the issue of communism very far below the political waters.
From the hearings of the House Committee on Un-American activities (HUAC) during the 1930s under Martin Deis to these modern hand wringing sessions about the supposed moral degradation of society, the motivation has always been the same: distract the voters so the real issues of the day can be pushed aside, and the people in control can stay in control.
A recent WaPo article focused on FL book bans said 60% of the complaints came from 6% of the complainants. One of them was interviewed; she put 124 through in 2022 alone. She explained she volunteers to take any heat by submitting them under her own name. There’s a large group doing the actual legwork. Half of them represent one or another Moms for Liberty chapter, the other half represent various local groups of “concerned citizens.” [Guess there are a lot of weenies out there who wouldn’t do this work unless they could operate anonymously.]
Suggest that parents either purchase the banned books or go to the public library. If you really want them they are available. Why create all this hate?
Who is creating hate? If librarians, with their training, select books, I trust their judgment. Why is it easier to buy a gun in Florida or Texas than to get a library book that some crank doesn’t like?
GOOD QUESTION
The “hate” is being created by those few who believe they have the right to dictate what everyone else’s children can find in the school library. It is particularly pernicious when the books being banned appear to be almost exclusively about minority populations particularly when it brings to light harsh realities of past history that in many instances linger into the present day.
April: opposing a banning of written material is creating hate? You need to explain that one to this old farm boy.
When the government controls what children can read, then, the government takes total control of the people, and, we are, allowing for this form of, abuse of power to, continue…
yes
Conservatives are fond of claiming the greater middle of the population. From Nixon’s “Silent Majority” to Falwell’s “Moral Majority”, conservative rhetoric attempts to paint itself as a small voice for correctness in a sea of immoral thought. Poor me. All around me people are losing their minds.
In fact, these extremists are selling snake oil. They are far out of the mainstream. Most Americans are pretty tolerant if they are not constantly confronting things they do not understand. The challenge for a tiny group of reactionary thinkers is to control enough of the media to make naturally tolerant people think about being under assault.
Ironically, Lenin’s Bolshevik movement named itself as a majority, when it was much smaller by number than the Menshevik portion of pre-revolutionary Russia. This most distant of any left wing movement used precisely the same propaganda technique as modern conservatives.
And so we have book banning, Moms for liberty, and Desadist in Florida.
“Many teachers and districts complain that the laws’ standards are so vague they don’t know what books might place them in legal jeopardy.”
There is little chance of legal jeopardy occurring. People need not fear these “laws” nor the fools creating them. They cannot possibly fire everyone. And they don’t even know it yet. Division and fear is what they thrive on because it’s all they’ve got. Always looking to fear The Other. Well now, we’re The Other. It’s here-in our face. So what are we going to do about it?
What we need among teachers and librarians are more statements to the contrary, not fear-mongering. We need organization from national, state, and local unions. From the ACLU. From everyday citizens and parents who are sick and tired of this tyrannical behavior by politicians, Mothergroups, and Chris Rufo types. A clear message needs established along with teams of lawyers ready to challenge any and all attempts to silence those who care about sharing all stories of the human existence.
I hear nothing, so it seems like nothing is being done. Stop being reactive and start taking charge of this situation. Control the message and be consistent. Point out the lies. The absurdities. But most of all, have the backs of our teachers and librarians, and then in the truest sense, our students as well.
Thanks, Subterfuge. I agree with you. What’s needed is massive disobedience. They can’t fire everyone!
As part of my education to become a librarian, the concept of Intellectual Freedom was stressed. This trend of censorship goes against the core of everything a library is meant to accomplish. We have to remember that libraries were set up as intellectual institutions even before there were books (remember those scrolls). This whole concept of banning books is extremely upsetting for those of us who have been trained in the field.