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It's the weeds.
I'm Fabulous Cineas, sitting in this week for John Quill and Hill.
And today on the show, the growing threat to defund public libraries across America, a
deep dive into book bans, and what it all says about the strength of our democracy.
Growing up, my dad siblings and I had a Saturday morning routine.
We'd wake up early, eat breakfast, and explore Prospect Park or the Brooklyn Botanical Garden.
And then, we'd spend the entire afternoon at the Brooklyn Public Library.
I still remember the excitement of walking into the library, pushing open the heavy front
doors and stepping through, within moments I was on my way to my favorite place, the big
comfy chair in the kid's section.
I wanted to read the line the witch in the wardrobe for the umpteen time or dive back into
middle earth through the habit.
I also remember getting my first library card.
He gave me a newfound sense of control and responsibility, because only big kids got
that privilege.
The sheer wonder of spending hours at the library as a kid was empowering.
But of course, libraries aren't just for kids, they're open to all.
I really think libraries are one of the last bastions of information and ideas with a mission
that is intended to help the community grow with no other purpose other than being
there for the community.
That's Cody Crone.
He's an administrative librarian near Kansas City, Missouri.
Cody has worked in libraries for more than 13 years and he speaks poetically about the
power of the library.
Libraries have to be able to provide those materials that show us all that we are a part
of the world.
We all need to be here.
We're all helping each other get better.
Whether we really believe that or not, and sometimes we have challenging conversations,
but we're all here for each other to get better.
And libraries help bring people together, and they show us that we're not alone.
But in the past few months, the foundation of what libraries represent in Missouri has
been shaken.
Last August, Republican lawmakers passed Senate Bill 775, which set new content standards
that libraries have to meet in order to get state funding.
These rules bend anything containing quote-unquote explicit sexual content and could lead to
fines and or jail time for anyone who broke them.
Months later, in February, the Missouri ACLU filed a lawsuit against the bill.
And then, in March, in what was seen as retaliation to the lawsuit, the state legislature threatened
to remove $4.5 million of library funding from the state budget.
The action sent shockwaves through a system that had never really been caught in political
crosshairs before.
When you take this funding away, you're removing people and services from that library.
You're harming the communities of Missouri by removing this funding.
In addition to being a librarian, Cody is also the volunteer legislative committee director
for the Missouri Library Association.
I spoke to him at the tail end of a busy legislative session.
All of my years working on the legislative committee, we built relationships with legislators
and I would say up until probably last year when we saw Senate Bill 775 with the amendment
affecting school libraries and schools, I really would have thought that our relationships
were built up well enough that if there were concerns on the things that were being shared
in schools or in libraries, that they would come and talk to us.
So I'm a little disheartened that those conversations didn't happen and the need was felt to go ahead
and run forward with 775 last year with the administrative rule in October and November
and then to remove library funding as well.
It's been a little chaotic, it's been a little all over the place and my job throughout
all of this has been to make sure that librarians can be on the same page and understanding what's
going on with our legislation.
There's a lot of rhetoric going on right now around libraries and I really would love for us
to be able to focus and get back to what it is that libraries actually do.
So can you clarify what that final rule was in May?
What were libraries across Missouri required to do in order to receive this funding from the state?
So libraries were required to make available their collection development policies that address
how they make selections in terms of age appropriateness.
The second point is they just can't spend it on things that are considered
pornographic to minors, obscene or are considered child pornography.
Those things are already illegal.
The next point was having a policy that allows a minor's parent or guardian to determine
what that minor or child can access in the library.
And that is probably one of the vagus points around all of this that we had to interpret.
The next point is not having age inappropriate materials displayed in children's areas
of the libraries, not having events or presentations at the library unless they have age-appropriate
designations attached to them, which again a lot of libraries already do that with the
programs that they provide and then having a publicly accessible materials challenge policy.
Many libraries have been confused in asking questions.
What does this mean?
Does this mean that I have to expire all of the children's cards that we have on file
and force parents to come back and to sign another registration notice saying that I understand
that this library card provides my child access to all materials in the library.
I don't want to comment on what libraries have done because it's confusing, it's vague.
Each library is done what they think is best in order to be able to comply and to be able
to retain these funds and that's the thing.
The larger libraries could probably take this hit and be fine and survive and their services
would probably not really change.
Their public probably would not see drastic changes in services that they're providing.
For the smaller libraries, the rural libraries, I had several conversations with library directors
where they would have had to make hard decisions on whether they can bring in audiovisual materials
in a community that is aging and increasingly relying on the audiovisual materials because
maybe as we get older, our site tends to go and we can listen better.
But I'll tell you the hardest story I heard was the So State Aid can be used for a range
of things and one of those things can be paying for personnel.
One library in a small town that is the only jobs center in that town now because the
jobs center closed.
So the librarians are spending lots of time sitting down with customers, just helping
them edit their resumes, edit cover letters, find out where to search for jobs online,
filling out those applications online.
These are communities that also are relying on that library for its internet service because
they more than likely don't have an internet at home or even have devices at home.
So it's their jobs center and their internet access point and you take those dollars away
and now my library that has six people in it only has four or two people.
Now I can't spend as much time with my customers at the computer helping them with their resume,
helping them understand how to navigate an online application when they've never navigated
an online application in their life.
Having staff who have the ability and the time to answer those questions are vitally important
for all libraries.
So the Missouri House stripped the funding but the Senate did ultimately restore it.
Is the threat actually gone?
I actually don't have an answer for you on that.
So immediately the threat is gone.
I see no reason why the funding that got restored would be removed after the fact.
So the only other step that I'm aware of where waiting on is for the governor to sign
all of the budget bills.
I sure hope that the conversations we had with legislators clarified what was going on
and that there won't be this initial reaction to just straight up remove our funding.
I do think that we could see some other legislation that surrounds this idea of no longer
trusting their libraries to ethically provide materials to their communities.
Those are things that I'm going to be watching for.
And the thing that I have to go back to is these libraries were put together and voted
on initially.
Maybe they might have been put together 50 plus years ago.
So by a whole other generation, but they have remained in place.
They were voted by the people to be put together.
They voted to have a tax to support that library.
And then the state decided that it was important for the state to also provide some funding
to the state's libraries because if a community recognizes the importance of a library within
itself, the state recognizes that that is important as well.
The state might not won't start a community's library for them, but it will support them.
And that is in our state constitution that library funding is provided for a library that
is created within a community.
Can you just talk about the connection between book bans that are happening at in school
classrooms, in school libraries and how are they connected to what we see the state
legislature doing in Missouri?
So the book bans are specifically connected to that Senate Bill 775 that got past last
year.
Where the school's response to interpreting, again, getting back to interpreting what
the intent behind the law was.
And so you see several school districts out in St. Louis.
I know one here near the Kansas City area that have removed books.
I don't know the specifics of them, but I can imagine it's not too far off base to say
that someone came to the school with a list of books and a complaint saying that they disagree
with this book being on their shelves with the law in place last year.
The school's most likely saw that it better to remove the materials first and to evaluate
them later than to put any of their employees or any organizations that are associated with
at risk of having this law applied to them.
But at the end of the day, when you start removing materials that you've brought into the
collection based on your collection development policy, which I'm certain that schools have
those.
If you have a policy on it, you need to stick to your policy.
Otherwise, you're making exceptions off the cuff and at the behest of the loudest voice.
And when you listen to the loudest voice, it's not always the best for everyone you're
serving.
And when you serve a large community or even a small community of students, they themselves
are diverse.
And it's important to recognize that you need to have something in your collection for
everyone.
You'll see schools say, well, if we remove it from the school library, they can still
access it from the public library.
Again, the problem is, can they actually get to the public library to access that material?
That's not a substitute because there are all sorts of other barriers.
Whereas they're at school.
They have the opportunity to visit their library there.
They have to go to school legally.
They're required to go to school and get an education.
So having the materials that they can see themselves in is important for schools to fulfill
and make available as well.
Cody, thank you so much for being with us today.
Thank you so much, Fabiola.
I really enjoy getting to talk with you.
So that's what's happening on the ground in Missouri.
Up next, the movement to ban certain books from schools and how the bands are playing
out across the country.
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It's the weeds.
I'm Fabio Sinius, sitting in today for John Cole and Hill.
We just heard about the legislative threat that libraries in Missouri face the spring.
And now I want to zoom out and look at the country as a whole.
Because we're not just hearing about school book bands or the threat to the fun libraries in one state.
They're happening all over.
So in the first half of the school year, we counted over 1,400 instances of book bands.
That's Casey Mean.
She's the program director for Freedom to Read at Penn America.
A nonprofit organization that fights censorship and advocates for free expression through literature.
Part of their work includes tracking book bands in schools across the country.
And I wanted to know, how do we even define book bands?
You know, this has been something I think that has been challenged increasingly.
But you know, Penn America has always been quite consistent in our definition.
And we define it as an instance of which access to a book is removed or diminished.
So if we had a book that was previously available in a public library and that public library decided to remove that book permanently to remove that book temporarily.
And put it under some sort of, you know, review process or reconsideration process.
Or they decided to restrict access to that book by requiring parental permission or putting it in a section of the library where you need to ask a librarian for permission to access that book.
Are there misconceptions about book bands that you think need to be dispelled?
Maybe something that the public gets wrong about book bands and how they work?
There's so much rhetoric, increasing rhetoric to around what books are being challenged in schools.
Publicly, we hear time again that we're not banning books.
We're just removing our restricting books based on age appropriateness or we're removing the porn in public libraries or the porn and score.
They have seen material and there's so much in there to unpack.
But if there is in fact porn in schools or public libraries, like who the heck would have put it there in the first place?
What we see instead is that that language that what is actually being removed under this guise of pornographic or obscene or harmful to minors.
Material are books that are inclusive of LGBTQ plus characters identities are books that talk about race and have characters of color are books that discuss sex and have any kind of mentions of sexual content or sexual experiences.
I mean, those are the books that are being pulled.
But by no kind of legal or colloquial understanding, do they meet pornographic terminology or obscenity terminology?
I think that's like a big one that I think Penn America and others really try to unpack that.
This is very kind of provocative rhetoric about what books are being removed is a mischaracterization of the books that are actually being pulled from schools and public libraries.
So let's talk numbers. How many book bans have you all tracked whether you want to talk about 2023 or in the past two or three years?
We at Penn America have been tracking instances of book bans in public school and school libraries.
The other folks like the American Library Association is looking at books that are being challenged in public libraries.
But for Penn America, you know, we have seen since 2021 we've been tracking instances of book bans and we do see, you know, kind of continuous increases in the books that are being challenged and removed from our public schools.
So in the first half of this school year, which is our most recent, which our most recent report speaks to, we counted over 1,400 instances of book bans.
And for Penn America to record a book ban, there has to be some sort of like publicly accessible data out there.
So either it's been reported locally by journalists or it's been, you know, put on a district website that's publicly available.
We always say we're likely undercounting this quite significantly and that there are likely many books that aren't even being publicly reported for us to record.
The thing that I think, you know, kind of doubles down on that alarming number is within those instances of book bans that's about 800 unique book titles.
So there are 800 books across the country and just the first half of the school year that are being deemed as, you know, no longer appropriate or have been removed from, you know, circulation as part of this movement over the last, you know, year and a half since we started tracking book bans.
We've seen, you know, about kind of like over 4,000 total instances of book bans from fall 2021 through fall 2022.
We'll have another kind of end of the report, which will look to this entire school year.
And our preliminary sense is that we will continue to see increased and heightened numbers of book bans and to clarify again.
So when you say 1,400 instances and then 800 unique titles. So that means in the 1,400s, a certain title could have been banned several times across like different states.
Double counted, triple counted. That's exactly right.
Yeah, you know, so when we think about an instance of a book ban, it's at the district level, but this movement that we're speaking to, this like book ban movement is exceptionally well coordinated, they're well organized, they're well resourced.
So when a book kind of ends up in a list, that list is then shared across districts.
So you do see a lot of similar books being banned across, you know, multiple districts, which is how we end up at our top most frequently banned book lists.
I'm still shocked that there can be 800 unique titles. I agree.
Like that is just shocking to me that there can be just in the fall just for 2022 into 2023, the first part of the school year 800 unique titles.
Yes, and these are books that were, you know, the books don't just like have hazardly show up in school libraries. I mean, there's a lot of, you know, thought that goes into selection processes force that have, you know, always traditionally existed.
So the idea that there's, right, this, there's this many books just from the fall where that access to those books have been removed is alarming.
I think, you know, I think that number, that's the number that kind of always sticks with me too. It was like 800 unique. I don't even have 800 books in my house.
It's like a lot.
Yeah, I used to be a teacher, a middle school teacher, and the process for getting a new book into school or like writing curricula and saying, hey, we should introduce this book into that's not something that happens overnight.
It's like an entire approval process to get a book in front of students. So that, that is fascinating.
Have you noticed any trends or commonalities between the books that are being banned as part of book bands? So what kinds of genres are being targeted or themes are being targeted?
So last school year overwhelmingly, we saw that books that were being removed, included LGBTQ plus characters or had LGBTQ plus themes or included characters of color.
That trend continues into this current school year. In addition, you know, this school year, we also saw more and more books being banned that include a very broad understanding of sexual content.
So, you know, books that discuss kind of like health and well-being, books that have any sort of physical violence or sexual sexual assault, books that have any sexual experiences between characters, books that mentioned teen pregnancy or abortions.
So I think what we see kind of playing out at real time is efforts to diversify and diversify the books that are accessible in school libraries and in public libraries is being met with a very strong pushback that, you know, is narrow in its ideological viewpoint.
Are there specific titles that you can share that maybe books that have been banned over and over, and then are there some random outlier books that are like, why did this get banned? Why did this get caught up in the ban?
You know, there's kind of like the most well-known or kind of like the books that continue to show up, unfortunately, on these most banned books. It's not a, it's not a list, you know, to be excited about, but the books are amazing.
We see genderqueer, flamer, the hate you give, all boys aren't blue, tend to be, you know, kind of four of the most frequently banned books, you know, from year to year.
We've also seen the Hammaid's Tale, different graphic novels that are increasingly popping up on banned books because they have that like visual depiction of some of the things that people are challenging.
This year, we also saw several of Ruby Car's books, like milk and honey.
You know, Ruby, unfortunately kind of appeared this year, and then we saw, you know, the book challenges show up in several different districts.
But again, the way that, you know, her prose is kind of shaped in different ways or discusses, you know, sexual assault has brought that book into the books being challenged.
Poet X is so beautiful by Elizabeth Asafado. You know, that book written for young adults, if my memory is right, like they don't actually even have sex, they kind of just think about having sex, you know, or so challenging that.
So it's just, it's so many. And I think what we see is the authors of these frequently banned books.
I mean, again, they're women, they're non-binary, they're individuals of color, they're queer LGBTQ plus individuals.
So even like the, you know, the authors behind many of these works are, you know, directly kind of connected to the works that are being censored.
And I think, you know, we know that these are identities that have historically been underpublished and also, you know, underrepresented in school libraries.
So, you know, again, it's kind of just like, it's sitting in this moment of increasing diversity and representation is just, is being met with a really strong resistance to keep books off shelves.
So beyond the fact that we're talking about books, so what would you say is the connection between book bans at schools and then book bans at public libraries?
Pen America uses a term and scare if, you know, harkens back to historic moments of censorship.
But certainly, you know, is kind of our attempt at pen America to capture this broad effort that, you know, uses kind of heightened intimidation and anxiety around what and cannot be taught in public schools, public libraries, public spaces more broadly.
So these growing campaigns that we see showing up in different kind of educational institutions to suppress certain ideas and certain content areas, you know, that's, that's how we see kind of this connection between what's happening in public schools and what's happening in public libraries.
And certainly it's nowhere that both like kind of institutions, but your public schools and your public libraries are so central to kind of democratic ideals of our country and are, you know, really intended to be these places where knowledge is accessible to all, right?
You have your public education is is ensuring that knowledge is available to all your public libraries same same idea that books and knowledge and resources and ideas and viewpoints are like broadly available to the public so to see kind of restrictions of this way that target, you know, certain types of content, certain types of identities, certain types of ideas as it's just it is alarming and kind of pushes against the ideals of our democratic institutions.
Which states would you say are leading the effort to ban books in schools so this fall when we look at kind of the states that are banning the most we see Florida having kind of the highest number of districts banning books but then Texas having the most instances of book bands as well as South Carolina and Michigan, Missouri, Utah and we're, you know, we're also up there in the top contenders as well.
It sounds like a lot of the bands that target books about identity, whether it's race or sexuality, they try to ignore history, how are teachers supposed to have less in plans that don't include these books.
How are students supposed to explore school libraries without being able to read these books and access this kind of history that's trying to be banned.
We hear from educators and librarians, you know, all over the country quite a bit and anecdotally, I think there is a real challenge here and how to navigate what's happening.
You know, in some states, Missouri and Florida, Tennessee and other places, there's like real kind of like threats in the legislation around criminalizing or penalizing educators or librarians who are deemed as providing, you know, harmful material to students.
And there's, you know, we, we append would call that like a chilling effect. There's a real chilling effect that's happening where educators and librarians are unsure.
How do you move forward are unsure what they can and cannot say and are worried about, you know, potentially being punished for for sharing resources or for speaking about history or for, you know, celebrating pride month or black history month.
There are all these moments that we have during the school year for educators to uplift different lived experiences and identities in there and their own teaching.
Recently, we've been following a case in California where the social studies program that was voted to be removed by the school board and part of, you know, what's being identified for that removal is supplemental material and Harvey milk.
The first openly gay politician in the state of California and the few board members have identified that as like offensive.
So this idea that we can, you know, remove elected officials or remove that history of California, remove the story and the information of activists who was, you know, an LGBTQ activist, but also was involved in many different ways in the state of California's history.
So it's just, it's increasingly kind of alarming in a bit. It just demonstrates the way that speech is being chilled and in many different ways in what students can access and what students are reading and what's certain, so are able to learn and how we kind of share share that history that you speak to.
But mentioned before that this is a concerted effort to ban books. So can you talk about the progression of book bands in various states like what needs to happen first for a book to get banned and how does it actually end up getting banned?
One would start with having a, you know, a nice conversation with the educator, the librarian about Lego, you know, my student brought this book home.
You know, I had some questions about why it's signs like talk to me about kind of the merits of assigning this book or, you know, having my, my child or my student, you know, bring that book, you know, for additional reading, right. So like step one conversation.
If the conversation doesn't go kind of, you know, if there's still concerns following the conversation, there's always been like formal reconsideration policies. So you would share like a specific objection to a specific title.
And then that title would be reviewed and assessed again based on kind of artistic and literary merits. And then there would be a decision from a review committee, which typically would be, you know, maybe like five people and administrator at the school, a librarian, maybe a student, maybe a parent.
So then that committee would then make a decision whether to retain the book or to remove the book.
What we see happening now is a few things like if you're following kind of that traditional process, what's happening more and more is you're receiving challenges of 10 books, 30 books, 100 books, and to go through that kind of
procedural best practice of a review can take years really. I mean, there's a district in South Carolina, both for that receive 97 book challenges and they are convening review committees for each of those books.
And I mean, I think it really could take probably like several years before they're able to, you know, read and review and make a decision on each of the 97 books for that school district.
So the way in which the current movement is, you know, kind of just like overburdening the traditional process of how reconsideration policies and practices were done.
We also see, you know, legislation playing a role or even like guidance from like departments of education around airing in the side of caution, which is leading to more and more kind of administrative or school board level decision making around books that are just being removed without kind of that formal reconsideration review process.
So we followed legislation in Missouri that again prohibitive kind of explicitly sexual material from from being in schools and that led to, you know, over 100 cases where books were just, you know, being removed without any specific challenge without any kind of formal review, but out of fear of being out of compliance with that piece of legislation.
So just another example of, you know, the many ways in which we are seeing books either challenge or not challenged and then reviewed from access.
Sometimes new stories about book bands can feel really abstract, but they're impacting real people in a number of states. So are there some specific stories about how book bands affect children, family, schools, other people in a community that you can share with us?
I think it's quite layered to be honest and maybe that's why it's not as publicly discussed because it's a harder, it's, you know, in some ways it's harder to talk about, but, you know, pen America often talks about how books can be mirrors windows and glass stores.
It's a Dr. Bishop was a believe a sociologist who kind of coined that phrase that books books offer this way to see oneself reflected and then to also learn about others with different lived experiences.
And to like be that, you know, that door to gaining empathy and to having like a deeper understanding of somebody who may look and live differently than you.
So when we see books being bands again, we see, you know, there is a bit of a narrow focus on the types of books, the specific books that are being banned.
And this idea that you would like ban or remove a book that represents one's own identity is so harmful. I think it's harmful to authors, it's harmful to students, it's harmful to the students who don't get to read a book about somebody who has a different lived experience than them.
And the messaging that comes with a lot of this that, you know, a book that has, you know, let's just say like an image of a same sex couple holding hands or kissing or taking, you know, their kid to a school like that image could be so offensive to somebody that it needs to be removed from a school library.
I mean, that whole that that rhetoric and that message is quite harmful to the people who in fact, you know, are, you know, identify as LGBTQ plus or have a family member or have parents, you know, who are a same sex couple.
So I think, you know, something for us to continue to kind of interrogate and maybe amplify like those, those real impacts at a very, you know, individual level.
Absolutely. I want to talk about the legal landscape of book bands are people fighting back against book bands and courts and how has legal action impacted book bands so far.
I do know that pen America has been involved in some legislation against book bands in various states as well.
Yeah, so pen America is currently filed suit against a scambia school district in Florida and, you know, the lawsuit there argues that the school district violated for some amendment rights of students authors and the publishers by removing books.
Based on what we've been talking about these like ideologically driven objections to the content or disagreements with the messages and views within those books.
We also are arguing that the district has violated equal protection clause with a 14th amendment that because the books again are being singled out are disproportionately by non white or by authors of color or by LGBTQ plus authors or those, these are books that talk about, you know, race and racism or include LGBTQ plus identities.
It would tell you you kind of like legal precedent that book bands are are not upheld, you know, there's precedent that says books, you know, should be available and can't be banned because of these narrow ideological objections.
So I think folks are hopeful that, you know, current lawsuits will look back and follow, you know, historic precedent here.
Illinois just did something pretty bold. Basically, the democratic governor came out there, governor Pritzker saying we are going to ban book bands can ban ban. So can you talk a little bit about that.
Do you think more states will will follow Illinois and and what do you think Illinois banning the bands beans and what kind of impact it will have.
Like I would say the Illinois governor taking this proactive measure, you know, is fantastic. And I imagine that there are states that will follow, you know, we maybe have some, you know, thoughts about the way in which the legislation was enacted, you know, I think because funding is a mechanism that is included in this piece of legislation.
And as discussed earlier, like we have seen the way in which public library systems have like willingfully foregone funding, you know, rather than have inclusive books.
So there is like that that moment of like let's just hope they're, you know, are just good actors in the state of Illinois that won't use this very positive proactive measure to just shut our library systems.
But we recently saw all a joint statement from the California governor's office, the state's superintendents office out of the Department of Education in the state as well as the office of the attorney general.
And their joint statement was, you know, is also instructive like the Illinois bill that speaks to, you know, the statement just reminds school decision makers of constitutional precedent.
And also kind of uses the attorney general's office to say that when books are removed, that the attorney general will, you know, investigate kind of the process and rationale behind those removals.
So just in other ways that I would say we're seeing kind of states take more proactive measures and, you know, adding like an additional check and balance to this movement to pull books from public schools and public libraries.
Up next, we'll get into what this unprecedented moment of literary censorship means for democracy as a whole.
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We're back. It's the weeds. I'm Fabi Olsenius. I don't know about you, but it feels like these book bands came out of nowhere.
Like, once 2022 hit, it was just kind of like, oh, I guess we're talking about book bands now.
You know, I would say no. It didn't come out of nowhere, although it is still a bit surprising that it kind of manifested in this way.
But, you know, I think in some ways, I would say 2020 was kind of like a focusing moment.
Obviously, we all know what happened to 2020. So many different things.
But for public schools, in particular, I think they became kind of like a base of real politicized debates around.
Do we open our clothes? Do we require vaccines or not? Do we mask or do we not mask?
You know, that was also where we begin to see the origins of moms for liberty.
It's also where we see this resurgence of parental rights movements.
So in from 2020, I would say this is kind of a continued offshoot of that of these very heightened issues that are kind of being battled out in public schools.
In a way that I think that is unique that we have not seen public schools be kind of the central place for this type of politicized ideological battles.
But we are certainly seeing it now.
Like I think it stems from just like a distrust of public institutions, a distrust of public schools.
And this idea that individual parents and individuals should have a larger or could have a more heightened say in what is being offered to their students.
And at least in the case of public schooling and then at public libraries, I think it's almost similar.
It's like what, you know, what isn't is not part of public narrative, what isn't is not part of our public history, what isn't is not part of public knowledge.
And I think we're just seeing this become a bit more politicized than, you know, any part like any recent history that we can harken back to.
Yeah, the distrust that idea sounds really true to me.
Like there was a lawmaker in Louisiana who said that he believed libraries to be like liberal grooming centers.
And so that was the reason why he thought that things needed to be shut down, which is sounds extreme, but it feels like there's that distrust at the center of that.
It does sound extreme.
Yeah, and some of that, like that's the kind of like rhetoric that I think has really added gas to the to the movement is like this idea that right that there's.
You know, I think we see it all warm.
It's like terrible misuse of words like groomers and pedophiles and even again back to where we started like pornographic materials.
You know, there is there is kind of this like fear.
Well, at least I, you know, I imagine that there's like a fear and a mistrust of that's kind of seeding a lot of that, which is, you know, which again is challenging.
And I think when we look at public institutions and public schools, I mean, really, you know, the aim is to be inclusive for all and to not have a very narrow ideological viewpoint and what's offered.
You know, but also to be honest and representative of like our shared collective history.
So I feel like a lot of this conversation is about on a foundational level, just American society.
Like what kind of country do we want to create for children and what do we want them to have access to in the process?
So what would you say is the connection between books and reading and democracy more broadly?
And then how are these book bans threatening those connections?
Yeah, I mean, I think we see them efforts to ban books as deeply undemocratic that book banning and poses restrictions on students and families based on the preferences of a few, which we see over like I speak to this idea that it's a coordinated movement.
And within that it's really a local minority here that we're not talking about everybody, like majority of folks disagree with book banning.
I think a majority of, you know, even parents would see that they would like to make decisions for their own kid, but not necessarily impose their views on everyone's child who's in a given public school.
So, you know, I think what we see is undemocratic. I think we also see the way in which schools again are intended to serve the educational process by making knowledge and ideas available and ensuring that there are books available regardless of personal or political ideologies.
So moving forward, you know, I think we would love to see a place where all students have that freedom to read and the freedom to access a diversity of views and stories and to see themselves and to see others with different lived experiences reflected in books.
So, you know, that is our hope is that we can bring us back to a place where that freedom to read, that freedom to learn is recentered in these conversations and is brought back to public schools and other institutions that serve that intended goal.
Casey, is there an end in sight and what do you think that ends looks like or what do you hope the end would look like?
I hope that there's an end in sight. I think it might get a bit rocky before it gets better.
You know, I think we are keeping an eye towards our upcoming presidential election in the way in which, you know, policies that are being driven by governors or others who are showing up as candidates could have, you know, quite broad.
But like, you know, if kind of they take the seat of president that they could have broad implications for students nationwide, you know, I think we ultimately, if history shows us anything, it's that people who ban books are not favored in the long term and that books are, you know, just a critical like resource and tool for thinking bigger and differently about our future and what our world, you know, could look like.
And I think enough people kind of know that and are willing to fight for that as well. So, you know, I don't know, I'm forever optimistic, but you tell me we need that we need the optimism and we're just so glad that you're out here doing the work that you do and and spreading optimism around something that seems so bleak.
For every pet America, there's so many individuals going to their school boards running for school board, prior educators like yourself for current educators librarians and retired librarians students that I think are, you know, really tuned into what's happening and are, you know, potentially that group may have been less coordinated as it started.
I think we're seeing increasing coordination on messaging and language sharing and the way in which we can continue to identify that.
This is undemocratic that this is against First Amendment, you know, principles and free speech principles and that, you know, a better a better way forward is a place where we freely access books and we have the freedom to read freely.
So we'll keep pushing and I think having an opportunity like this on the weeds to talk about it and hopefully galvanize other folks is an amazing opportunity as well.
Okay, so thank you so much for being with us today. No problem. Thank you for having me.
That's all for us today. Thank you to Cody Cron and Casey Mean for joining me. Our producer is Sophie Lalonde. Christian Ayala engineered this episode.
Anoop Dusso and Caitlin Penzi Mugh fact checked it. Our editorial director is A.M. Hall and I'm your host for today Fabiola Cineus. And just a quick programming note, we're off next week for the 4th of July holiday.
But John Cohen will be back in the host chair with a new episode on July 12th. The weeds is part of the Fox Media podcast network.
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