ICYMI: Book Bans Are On the Rise

Here's what you can do to stop censorship

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I was listening to an interview yesterday with a Machaela Cavanaugh, a State Senator from Nebraska, who, until three days ago, was filibustering legislation that would deny gender-affirming care to transgender kids.

Speaking to the Nebraska legislature, she said:

If this legislature collectively decides that legislating hate against children is our priority, then I am going to make it painful, painful for everyone.

Because if you want to inflict pain upon our children, I am going to inflict pain upon this body. I have nothing, nothing but time.

And I am going to use all of it.

It’s really worth listening to her voice while she says this, because she is on fire.

Cavanaugh’s argument, that the legislation she opposed was the product of a national, right-wing campaign against LQBTQIA people, reminded me of the strategy of another group, Moms for Liberty, that I wrote about last week.

Founded in Florida in January 2021, Moms For Liberty has spread out in local chapters across the country.

While each group has a local flavor, they are part of a national strategy to get elected to school boards, and press for book bans at local and school libraries, targeting books that explore race, gender and sexuality.

PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans, tallied between July 2021 and June 2022, shows 2,535 instances where children’s access to books in classrooms or libraries have been restricted.

The bans include books by Maya Angelou, Alison Bechdel, and Malala Yousafzai, to name only a few.

In April 2022, PEN documented the profound increase “in both the number of books banned and the intense focus on books that relate to communities of color and LGBTQ+ subjects,” since 2016.

Moms for Liberty and other groups can succeed because libraries are vulnerable, Claire Woodcock, a journalist who follows Moms for Liberty, and a former librarian, told me.

“These groups like to wear people down, wear librarians down,” she said.  

As simple as it sounds, showing up and just using your local library makes a big difference in the power activist groups have to shape what books are available, Woodcock told me.

“Keeping an eye on things is really important,” she said. “Literally using your public library, making sure that your library card is active.” 

“When you go to libraries, you have choices,” she said. 

Among Moms For Liberty, “there’s a desire to eliminate choice.”

Read the full post, here.

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Matriarchy Report is a project of Lane Anderson and Allison Lichter. We are two journalists writing about family, care work and solutions from a feminist perspective--research, interviews, personal stories and the occasional geriatric mom joke.

Lane Anderson is a writer, journalist, and Clinical Associate Professor at NYU, who has won several awards for her writing on inequality and family social issues (and not so many awards for her general feminist angst). She was raised in Utah and is based in New York City with her partner and daughter.

Allison Lichter is a chair of the journalism program at The New School and worked for many years at New York Public Radio and at the Wall Street Journal as a producer and editor. She was born and raised in Queens, and lives in Brooklyn with her partner and daughter.