lofthouse
Sunday 28th July 2024 4:49pm [Edited]
Nowhere
13,883 posts
Books are being banned, especially in red states....
The issue is playing out in public school districts and campus libraries across the United States, 1st Amendment advocates warn: Book bans, gassed up by state legislation pushed by conservative officials and groups, are stacking up at an alarming rate.
In a report published Thursday by PEN America, the nonprofit free speech organization cited 1,477 instances of books being prohibited during the first half of the 2022-23 academic year, up 28.5% from 1,149 cases in the previous semester. Overall, the organization has recorded more than 4,000 instances of banned books since it started tracking cases in July 2021.
At issue is more than "a single book being removed in a single district," said Kasey Meehan, the Freedom to Read program director at PEN America and a lead author of the report.
"It's a set of ideas, it's themes, it's identities, it's knowledge on the history of our country - these are the kind of bigger buckets of what is being removed, restricted, suppressed in public schools and public school libraries," Meehan said.
Across the country, book challenges and bans have soared to the highest levels in decades. Public and school-based libraries have been inundated with complaints from community members and conservative organizations such as as Moms for Liberty. Increasingly, lawmakers are considering new punishments -- crippling lawsuits, hefty fines, and even imprisonment -- for distributing books some regard as inappropriate.
