[ A program has lent tens of thousands of e-books in places theyre
forbidden.]
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BROOKLYN’S LIBRARY MOVES TO SLIP BOOKS THROUGH RED STATE BANS  
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Madina Touré
September 24, 2022
Politico
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_ A program has lent tens of thousands of e-books in places they're
forbidden. _

The Central Library branch of the Brooklyn Public Library system is
visible in New York City on July 7, 2022., Ted Shaffrey/AP Photo

 

NEW YORK — The front line of America’s culture war now runs
straight through the nation’s school libraries — with
conservatives in dozens of states outlawing books and instruction and
the left working to shield targeted authors.

Far from the trenches in states like Florida and Texas, organizations
in deep-blue New York are stepping into the fray by directly lending
25,000 books to non-residents since spring, including thousands of
students living under the bans. The Brooklyn Public Library’s
“Books Unbanned” program provides access to its eBook collection
and learning databases for people between the ages of 13 and 21.

The library’s program is reaching into Oklahoma, which enacted some
of the most sweeping laws last year to ban materials that might
cause anyone to “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form
of psychological distress” because of their race or gender identity.

One Oklahoma high school teacher resigned after suffering backlash for
introducing students to the program. Now colleagues, students and
community members are making yard signs, and kids are wearing shirts
to school advertising the program with a barcode that connects to the
BPL website on phones.

“The QR code has become — for lack of a better phrasing — it’s
become a symbol of resistance locally in my state,” former Norman
High School English teacher Summer Boismier said in an interview. She
says she quit in protest, and her teaching license is now in jeopardy,
after she provided the code to students.

Proponents say they are protecting children from sexualized material,
political indoctrination and concepts designed to impart guilt on
white students. Detractors, meanwhile, say the policy chills
discussion around institutional racism and deprives LGBTQ children
resources to better understand themselves.

Similar bans have been instituted in a push that’s seen hundreds of
titles nixed in nearly 3,000 schools across 26 states, according to
the nonprofit free speech group PEN America.

The group No Left Turn in Education, which supports some bans, says it
opposes schools that impose the “orthodoxy of the left,” as well
as books containing sexually explicit imagery.

“The school is not a playground for politicians,” founder and
president Elana Fishbein said. “The school is to educate kids to
give them the tools that they need to eventually succeed in life. ...
It should be neutral territory.”

Restricting books isn’t new, but the bans — some statewide and
others only affecting specific school districts — are increasingly
part of a larger, nationwide clash over classroom discussions of race
and gender identity that has seen conservative activists push money
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candidates for school board positions
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The right in particular has seized on education issues in upcoming
November elections after Republican Glenn Youngkin’s pledge to give
parents more power over what their children learn in school helped
propel him to victory in Virginia last year.

But in Wisconsin, for example, Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, said in
June that if he loses reelection in November, Republicans will ban
books
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especially those pertaining to LGBTQ issues.

Back in Oklahoma, Boismier’s departure galvanized parents in the
area to hand out flyers and T-shirts with the QR code that students
are wearing to school. Heather Hall, who owns a local bookstore, said
Books Unbanned has been a lifeline for her middle-schooler, River, who
uses they/them pronouns.

“How extraordinary is it that I am in Norman, Oklahoma … I have my
kid who is going through some stuff in middle school and has access to
these very kind people all the way across the country,” she said.

Before the academic year began, Boismier covered potentially violative
books in her classroom with butcher paper that included the QR code
for Books Unbanned. That prompted a parent to complain
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students could access “pornographic material,” including “Gender
Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe that explains what it means to be
nonbinary and asexual.

Boismier said that she was initially told she was being placed on
administrative leave. But the school district denied that claim,
saying she was never placed on administrative leave, suspended or
fired
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that Boismier chose to resign.

Nick Migliorino, the superintendent of Norman Public Schools, recently
said the parent alleged that Boismier made “derogatory and divisive
remarks” about state legislators
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class time and used her classroom “to make a political display
expressing her own opinions.”

Migliorino also said there was no violation of the Oklahoma state law
or State Department of Education rules and that the issue was not
about “any books actually on the teacher’s shelves or the use of
the public library QR code.”

The city, Oklahoma’s third largest with a population of roughly
120,000, is considered one of the red state’s more moderate burgs.
Donald Trump nonetheless won the area by 14 points in the 2020
presidential election. The area also grapples with a dark history:
until 1967, it was a “sundown town” that barred Black people from
owning homes or even staying out after nightfall.

Liberal Brooklyn’s intrusion is frustrating conservatives like
Oklahoma Education Secretary Ryan Walters, who says some books are
inappropriate for kids and wants Boismier’s license revoked.

“Rather than being more concerned about the kids and their
development and is this appropriate for kids at that grade level,
they’ve decided to take an ideological bent here — not an academic
exercise — but an ideological one in pushing this into our
schools,” Walters said in an interview.

The Brooklyn library says disseminating information is part of its
core mission. And when more states began outlawing books in schools
and libraries, the library system felt compelled to defy them.

“We’re saying this is what libraries do, we provide access to
these materials,” BPL president and CEO Linda Johnson said.
“Literature is such a powerful thing and it’s something which
allows you to get to know yourself better, your world, it allows you
to see new things and we don’t think anyone should be shut out of
that regardless of where they live.”

Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library
Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, lamented various
states’ efforts to silence LGBTQ individuals, as well as Black,
indigenous and people of color. She called Oklahoma a nexus for
legislative activity that seeks to remove such books and “tightly
control” young people’s education.

Fishbein from No Left Turn in Education says books such as Jelani
Memory’s “A Kids Book About Racism” and Anastasia
Higginbotham’s “Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness” teach
students to hate the United States.

Books Unbanned “went viral” since it launched in April, and the
library was deluged with more than 5,100 inquiries from teens
nationwide, Johnson said.

The program is making inroads elsewhere across the country.

Texas American Federation of Teachers president Zeph Capo said it is
reversing efforts by conservative groups like Moms for Liberty that
are leading book-banning efforts even if putting books in front of
teens isn’t necessarily slowing them down.

“The library code is not stopping them from continuing to push these
policies in an attempt to disrupt the schools,” said Capo, whose
statewide union has 66,000 members, including educators, retirees and
school employees. “The library code may be, I would say, is making
them ineffective in keeping books away from kids, absolutely.”

Texas is the epicenter of the nation’s classroom book bans,
having nixed more texts this year than any other state
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to the Texas Tribune.

In October 2021, state GOP Rep. Matt Krause asked schools throughout
the state if they have any of the roughly 850 books on a list that he
compiled
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focus on race and sexuality. Some school districts in Texas began
removing those books.

Lone Star State parents can also temporarily remove their students
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classes or activities they deem incompatible with their religious
beliefs. They can also check instructional materials and see their
students’ records.

New York’s other public library systems — the Queens Public
Library and the New York Public Library — have undertaken efforts
similar to BPL. The NYPL, which serves the boroughs of Manhattan, the
Bronx and Staten Island, made banned materials free through their free
e-reader app in April and May.

Tony Marx, the New York Public Library’s president and CEO, said it
is not a “big city pushing liberal agenda” but about libraries
doing their jobs to make knowledge and information accessible.

“What Brooklyn is doing is fabulous,” Marx said. “What any of us
can do to help resist this effort to constrain what the public can
read is essential and … we should do everything we can. The simple
fact is that it’s outrageous that this is happening.”

_Madina Touré is the New York City education policy and politics
reporter for POLITICO New York. She focuses on K-12 and higher
education._

* Banned Books
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* resistance
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* Brooklyn Public Library
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