Over the past year, book challenges and bans have reached levels not seen in decades, according to officials at the American Library Association, the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) and other advocates for free expression.
NEW YORK — Until a year ago, Stephana Ferrell’s political activism was limited to the occasional letter to elected officials.
Over the past year, book challenges and bans have reached levels not seen in decades, according to officials at the American Library Association, the National Coalition Against Censorship and other advocates for free expression. Censorship efforts have ranged from local communities such as Orange County and a Tennessee school board’s pulling Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel “Maus,” to statewide initiatives.
The responses have come from organizations large and small, and sometimes from individuals such as Ferrell. Vera Eidelman, staff attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1982 ruling declaring that “local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books.” The tricky area, Eidelman acknowledged, is that schools officials are allowed to ban books for reasons other than not approving of the viewpoints the books express.
The wave of bans has led to new organizations and to a change of focus for existing groups. Katie Paris, an Ohio resident and the founder of Red, Wine & Blue, a national network of politically engaged “PTA mamas and digital divas” founded in 2019, said that last year she began receiving calls from members begging for help as debates over “critical race theory” erupted.
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