Highlights from ACLU NJ's 'More than Empty Shelves: How Book Bans Undermine Identities and Restrict Information'
Highlights from ACLU NJ's 'More than Empty Shelves: How Book Bans Undermine Identities and Restrict Information'
Featuring: "Angelic trouble" and the quintessential boogeyman, Moms For Liberty
It’s Banned Books Week for the American Library Association and they’ve chosen the theme "Let Freedom Read” for this year’s nationwide push to ensure your children have access to inappropriate material.
ACLU New Jersey held a panel discussion at Labyrinth Books in Princeton on Monday evening titled “More than Empty Shelves: How Book Bans Undermine Identities and Restrict Information” that featured three guest speakers: Martha Hickson, Kasey Meehan, and Brielle Winslow-Majette, with the event moderated by ACLU-NJ Legal Director Jeanne LoCicero:
Martha Hickson, New Jersey Library Association 2023 Librarian of the Year
Kasey Meehan, Freedom to Read Program Director at PEN America
Brielle Winslow-Majette, Deputy Director of Garden State Equality
If you’ve been following the new developments in both school and public libraries over the last several years, you will already know what to expect from the discussion. Lots of talk about how children need to “find themselves” in books in libraries across the nation, lots of talk about parental rights, and how important it is for children to have access to challenged books.
That being said, there were a few key things that stood out like a sore thumb that I’d like to bring to your attention. Let’s begin.
Meehan, who is the Freedom to Read Program Director at PEN America mentioned a report released by the organization just last week that looked at a “rise in book bans” during the 2022-2023 school year. Meehan said, “We counted over 3,000 instances of book bans across 33 states, Democrat and Republican alike, but certainly the scale and magnitude of book bans in Republican-leaning states is much higher.”
Before Martha Hickson begins she plugs a Banned Books Brunch Benefit coming up this Saturday at the Bayard Rustin Center For Social Justice. The online flyer for the event hosted by eventbrite is said to directly support the BRCSJ Defenders of the Right To Read and promises “Yummy food in delightful company to share a meaningful moment indeed!”
Quick side note:
The Bayard Rustin Center For Social Justice webpage opens up to this graphic, reading “Angelic Troublemakers Assemble”. An obvious nod to Rustin’s quote, “We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.”
Author of Marxification of Education and New Discourses podcast host, James Lindsay, explains what the phrase “good trouble” or “beautiful trouble” means to Marxists.
In the New Discourses episode titled “Action, Reaction, and Beautiful Trouble” Lindsay explains how the phrase “good trouble” is being used by the American Library Association (ALA), specifically the ALA’s President and self-proclaimed “Marxist lesbian”, Emily Drabinski.
“This is why we need one another, and why we need the American Library Association (ALA). We need to make trouble—good trouble, the kind of trouble that matters, the kind of trouble I became a librarian to get into—and we need to make it together,” Drabinski states in her July 2023 article for American Libraries.
According to Lindsay, the phrase is an updated version of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, “The real action is your target's reaction” -which they proudly display on the Beautiful Trouble website.
Back To The Panel Discussion
After plugging Saturday’s event, Martha Hickson announces that Sen. Zwicker will be receiving the Defenders Of The Right To Read award “in recognition for the outstanding work he’s been doing.” It should be noted Sen. Zwicker, along with Senate Majority Leader Teresa Ruiz (D., Essex) proposed bill S3907 that would withhold State Aid for any NJ school library or public library for restricting access to certain books or that “fails to adopt the American Library Association's Library Bill of Rights.”
The flyer highlights Senator Andrew Zwicker & drag performer Harmonica Sunbeam as guests. Sen. Zwicker (D-NJ) introduced SB 3592 earlier this year that according to New Jersey Globe, “prohibits New Jersey’s officials from cooperating with other states’ anti-transgender laws – preventing extradition, cooperation with subpoenas, and the sharing of medical records – and also gives state courts increased powers over child custody when gender-affirming care is involved.”
Sen. Edward Durr (R-NJ) introduced SB3076, New Jersey’s “Child Protection and Anti-Mutilation Act” on September 29, 2022, which would prevent puberty blockers from delaying normal puberty being given to minors. (This includes prescribing or administering doses of testosterone or other androgens to females, or estrogen to males.) The bill also seeks to prohibit physicians from performing surgeries on anyone under the age of 18 that would result in sterilization, including, but not limited to, castration, vasectomy, hysterectomy, oophorectomy, orchiectomy, and penectomy, performing surgeries such as metoidioplasty, phalloplasty, and vaginoplasty on minors, or the removal of any healthy or non-diseased body part or tissue, except in the case of male circumcision.
“If it’s within my power as a New Jersey legislator to protect and do proactive legislation on behalf of vulnerable communities, then that’s what I’m going to do,” Zwicker told New Jersey Globe back in March.
Harmonica Sunbeam’s about page states “Miss Sunbeam showcases her unique ability to uplift, encourage and engage children through the Drag Story Hour program where drag queens go into libraries, bookstores, festivals and other events to read books to kids of all ages.”
Hickson tells the audience that her life was changed on September 28, 2021, after five books were challenged during Banned Books Week. She claimed that not only did they object to these books, but “worst of all for me they objected to Martha,” alleging she was labeled “a pornographer, pedophile, and groomer of children,” during a board meeting. “My life became a turmoil immediately, and that is why I’m here now because they got me mad and I’m fighting it.”
Hickson said this is happening to librarians every day. Since 2021 Hickson said books have been challenged in 11 counties in NJ, affecting 38 titles she claimed are all LGBTQ+ people or people of color. Hickson doesn’t specifically name any of these books, but we can assume they include “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” “Here and Queer,” “This Book is Gay,” “Gender Queer,” “It’s Not the Stork,” “It’s Perfectly Normal” and “You Know, Sex.” Each of these challenged titles was not due to the LGBTQ+ author, nor the race of any author, but rather their sexually explicit content. Here are just a few of the graphic images found in the challenged books.
According to Patch, Westfield Public Schools in New Jersey pulled a book from the general collection in their library in 2022 titled "Our Skin: A First Conversation About Race" by Megan Madison and Jessica Ralli after a formal complaint was filed. One of the opening lines of the book reads: "A long time ago, way before you were born, a group of white people made up an idea called race. They sorted people by skin color and said that white people were better, smarter, prettier, and that they deserve more than everybody else." Another line reads, "racism is also the things people do and the unfair rules they make about race so that white people get more power.”
PEN America’s 2021-2022 report on challenged books, “Nearly half of the unique titles of banned books were young adult books, but bans also affected many books for younger readers, including 317 picture books and 168 chapter books.” The report does offer a helpful index for those who want to know exactly what books have been challenged and where, though it would be helpful to know why each title has been challenged. It can be found as a spreadsheet here.
PEN America also calls out Moms for Liberty by name, which has been a running theme over the past year or so. Moms for Liberty has been the non-official boogeyman in almost every conversation I’ve heard on books that have been challenged, no matter the state. Hickson also mentions Moms for Liberty a number of times in the 60-minute panel on Monday. “PEN America has been my life raft through all of this. PEN America has been amazing,” Hickson declares.
Hickson said many counties in New Jersey are dealing with multiple titles being challenged all at once rather than one at a time. She claims she knows of a man who is challenging 50 titles in her high school library, and that his wife is currently running for a seat on the Board of Education in this unnamed district. “So, guess where my future is headed,” Hickson said.
Moms for Liberty is named by Hickson as one of the “organized groups” ushering in the book challenges at schools and public libraries. She noted that Moms for Liberty was recently designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as an “extremist anti-government organization.” She also named No Left Turn as a group “you should be mindful of,” saying they’re “especially active in south Jersey.” Also named, Team PYC (Protect Your Children) and New Jersey Project.
A situation I reported on earlier this year in Roxbury was also mentioned by Hickson in which parents were sued by a Roxbury librarian after speaking out about sexually graphic books they had discovered in Roxbury High School libraries.
Hickson said this happened after an email was sent to the Superintendent who then quietly removed one title from their shelves. Hickson seemed upset about the fact that the Superintendent took immediate independent action, saying Superintendent Loretta Radulic “just wanted to sweep it under the carpet.”
I reported in May, “In one email from September, Superintendent Loretta Radulic said the graphic novel “Let’s Talk About It” had been pulled from shelves. However, it was still available in the library for students with parental permission to check out the book. In November, Superintendent Radulic sent a follow-up email stating the board would discuss and review several more books. These included “Flamer” and “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl”.
Two weeks after concerned parents and citizens spoke up about the books during a board meeting on March 6, 2023, they were served with a defamation suit filed by Roxbury librarian Roxana M. Russo Caivano.
Hickson also mentioned that new policies for libraries in Sparta require library workers to “examine” books before they’re purchased for the library’s collection. “I know I have some librarians and former librarians in the room. We can’t do that,” she said. This is an odd thing to say considering later in the same discussion Hickson goes into great detail about how librarians can evaluate a book’s contents and check ratings left by “qualified professionals” (whatever that scale is based on) online. At the very least, they could go to a local bookstore that has the book and “examine” it there. “It’s a way to make the librarian a scapegoat,” Hickson claimed.
On the subject of Sparta’s library policies, Hickson explains, “The public is permitted to enter the library at any time to inspect the contents of the library. So any educators or librarians in the room know what chaos that is.”
What’s the problem with the public having access to materials at a public library without notice? What are you so worried they will find?
Hickson then brings up the fact that New Jersey Sen. Edward Durr and Sen. Michael Testa have “threatened” to draw up legislation that would require a rating system on books, much like that of the movie industry. (G, PG, PG-13, R, M, etc). “Kids can’t go to an R-rated movie or buy an M-rated video game without parental consent,” said Testa (R-1). “There’s no reason we can’t apply similar age-based restrictions to books in school libraries that contain sexually explicit images or adult themes. We should let parents decide which ratings are appropriate for their children. It’s a reasonable solution that I suspect Democrats will reject.”
Hickson claims this proposal is troublesome because there is “quite a difference between an industry agreed upon and adopted rating system and one imposed by the government designed to censor.”
Yet, earlier we learned Sen. Zwicker wants schools and public libraries to adhere to the American Library Bill of Rights (SB3907) or lose their State funding. How is this any different?
Moving on, we hear from New Jersey native, Deputy Director at Garden State Equality in New York, Brielle Winslow-Majette. Brielle’s main focus throughout the discussion was ensuring children “see themselves” in books in the library. This message is echoed in some of Brielle’s TikTok videos showing her reading Author Damien A. Lopez’s self-described transgender book “I Am A Prince” to an “LGBTQ Classroom”. “Students thrive when they see themselves in the lesson,” she says in one TikTok.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
She also mocks parents’ concerns in other TikTok videos:
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
“What parents think the first day of school is like with a gay teacher”:
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
“In high school, I went to a boarding school where there were only three black people in my class. There were no black books that we read, there were barely any black students for me to relate to,” Winslow said. She clarifies that though there was one black family on campus, they weren’t queer, so there was no one she could relate to. Winslow alleged that the reason for all of the recent book challenges is that “they” don’t want children to realize their potential through characters in books. She explains that “marginalized kids” may not realize they can reach certain goals until they see themselves represented in books where the character achieves these goals.
Winslow claims that rather than this being an “attack on libraries or education or school systems” it’s actually “an attack on youth.” Winslow reads two unverified testimonies she says are from NJ youth about their feelings on challenged books.
The focus on youth being the vehicle to get some of these books to remain in libraries can’t be lost on the reader. Chairman Mao Zedong’s Red Guard, made up of Chinese youth was also used as a vehicle to ensure Maoism reigned supreme.
“Our objective is to struggle against and crush those persons in authority who are taking the capitalist road... so as to facilitate the consolidation and development of the socialist system,” one directive of The Sixteen Points: Guidelines for the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966) reads.
Throughout all of the discussions and conferences I’ve sat through, that’s the constant undercurrent. The ALA, specifically, has a plan to use the youth in the fight to keep certain books in the hands of minors.
Kasey Meehan, Freedom to Read Program Director said schools shifted their focus on inclusivity during the George Floyd-Covid era. “Many school districts, many educators, many librarians are really looking to bring more books that are more representative of our pluralistic society into the classroom and is being met with a really vocal minority that is pushing quite strongly, and effectively, unfortunately against that representation.”
I think it’s safe to say that the majority of those who are challenging these specific books aren’t interested in not seeing anyone represented, anywhere. Those challenging the books are quite clear on why they don’t want certain graphic materials accessible to minors in school and public libraries, and it has nothing to do with any form of racism or bigotry. They simply don’t want step-by-step instructions on how to insert objects into orifices, perform oral sex, or other graphic illustrated imagery of sex acts being performed available to their children. They also don’t want racism taught to their children via literature that claims to be anti-racism but reads to the contrary.
“What’s happening with these book bans, and I knew it the minute all five of those titles came across the airwaves, that this is a proxy war. It has nothing to do with books,” Hickson alleges. “Books are just the tool. Books are the instrument to go after the people, and in my case those people are my students, those people are my kids, and they are not going to take those tools away from my students. The other thing I’m seeing happen with this is now that they’ve gotten such traction with the books, the books are now a launchpad to go after much bigger, broader agendas. Things like what we’re seeing in New Jersey here with the forced outing, the trans policies.”
Hickson also added that “hate speech” is becoming normalized at board meetings and used to assert power and “keep people in their box, to ‘other’ them, frankly take power away from them, and keep power where they want it.”
Winslow then clarifies Hickson’s statement about books being tools. “That is the tool to affirm children, but they’re going to be who they are regardless of a book.”
And there’s the key term: AFFIRM
That’s what got us in this mess, to begin with. People searching for someone to affirm them in their feelings. Affirmation is what leads children to become permanently sterilized, cut off body parts, and undergo irreversible hormonal changes. Rather than focusing on someone’s gender dysphoria, we’re fast-tracking minors through hormone replacement therapy and cosmetic surgery to affirm their perceived gender. Instead of them bending to the will of society’s norm, society must bend to their delusions and flip reality on its head so they feel better about their identity.
“So, taking away the book doesn’t change the outcome,” Winslow said. “Actually, it would make them feel more comfortable in their skin the sooner they get the book so they don’t feel different, or feel ostracized. So their mental health isn’t impacted by the fact that no one in this world looks like me, loves like me, I feel alone. No, because this book is their friend or their pathway.”
Affirmation.
Hickson also details how soft censorship is affecting librarians who choose to voluntarily remove books from circulation. She says some choose not to buy certain books to add to their collections in an attempt to avoid any pushback from concerned citizens who don’t want this material accessible to children in public schools and public libraries.
“What’s baked into it is to create a climate of fear so that we can do the work of the book banners for them,” Hickson said.
“Why do they pass on purchasing certain books? The cause for that most often, 75% say if there’s a book that has sexual content in it, that’s most likely to get them to pass on buying a book. 37% say if it’s LGBTQ content they may pass on it.”
Hickson then describes how in her research on a book for teens she was considering purchasing she saw “the scary words ‘Sex on the page’” in the book description. “Those are scary words now for a librarian.”
“I had to sleep on it. I was like, ‘Oh, God, do I really want to go through this with this book?’ I slept on it and I ordered the book,” she said.
Meehan chimes in about the “harmful rhetoric” surrounding these challenged books and belittles claims that have been made time and time again about their explicit sexual content.
“Suddenly I find myself talking about sex the most in my job these days. Like, let’s talk about sex in books and why it’s important. When we think about the rhetoric and we think about the efforts to ban books there’s like this conflation of these books being harmful or not appropriate or whatever, insert word, where 75% of all books banned are young adult books, are picture books, are truly picture books, are middle-grade books, are chapter books. Those are the books that we count. These books are already identified by professionals, identified through associations and journals, and given lots of review and thought. Even before they get there, they’re conceptualized. They are designed, they’re written for young audiences but these are the books most affected in book bans,” Meehan said. “This past school year alone, we had 193 recorded bans on picture books. I always find that the most illuminating because to the points we’ve all raised earlier, it’s not the books. There’s nothing in these picture books that can be deemed to [be] anything beyond innocuous except for identity, or an image, or a flag, or something else. I think in some ways, that really captures, unfortunately, the movement, is how we see it play out in our books for our youngest readers.”
You mean like this, Meehan?
Nothing innocuous to see here, especially for our “youngest readers”. Move along, bigot.
Questions From The Audience Time!
One audience member writes a question and sends it up to the moderator, ACLU NJ’s own Legal Director, Jeanne LoCicero who reads the question off to the panelists. “We know our kids best and the books that parents are upset about are actually harmful to our children. Shouldn’t I have the right to decide what my children have access to?
“Oh! Can I get that one?” Hickson says with a tone of absolute elation. Some in the audience audibly laugh. After thanking the parent for their question and for “caring about what your kids read,” Hickson replies, “With all due respect, I want to disagree with the premise of the question, that the books are harmful. First of all, there’s no harm in the book other than maybe a paper cut.” A few laughs again from audience members. “If you open the book and find that there’s content that is unsuitable for you and your child, the book has a cover. You can close it. You can put it back on the shelf. I know in my library I have 20,000 other choices to offer you and if we engage in conversation about your concern, I bet I can find a book that fits. It’s sort of like a shoe store. Try it on, you don’t like it, I’ll get you something else. But, when you come after me with a sledgehammer and try to ban that book from everybody else, it doesn’t really work that way. One of the things we hear a lot is that these books are obscene and that they’re pornographic. That is your opinion. Both of those are legal definitions that can be applied only by a court. There’s a three-prong Miller Test. I encourage you to look that up. But, the fact of the matter is, kids are going to grow up, go out in the world, they’re going to encounter a lot of stuff. Life is messy, life can be dangerous and it’s best we equip them with knowledge. It’s trite but true, knowledge is power. I do agree, however, that you absolutely have the right to manage what your children read and access.”
“One of the phrases we hear a lot from the Moms for Liberty crowd is, ‘I do not parent with the government,’ paradoxically, that’s exactly what they’re asking for. They’re asking an instrument of the government, their public school, or their public library to do the parenting for them by removing access to the books.
“The better way to go about this is to be the parent. Have a conversation with your children about what your expectations are, your limits are. If you do not trust your child to adhere to your expectations and limits, you can have a conversation with the librarian. When you find a title that’s problematic for you, talk to the librarian. We will. I’ll do it. I can put a note in your student’s library record that says, ‘Parent objects to ‘This Book is Gay,’ please do not circulate’. When your child comes to me I’m going to say, ‘I’m so sorry, I can’t circulate this book to you. Your parent has asked me not to. Perhaps I can recommend another.’ But, it’s much better to have a conversation with your kids and your librarian than to cause a public uproar.”
Another question an audience member poses, that LoCicero frames by saying, “You brought up one of the arguments that Moms of Liberty uses, and another one of our questions asks, ‘Can you talk about the arguments being used to justify book bans? Are they religious, political, racial, moral, and how does this figure into the proxy war you mentioned?’”
Meehan takes the question and responds saying it depends on the district and state, as well as parenting group challenges that include misinformation. “Often they’re grounded in maybe personal beliefs, but often connected to what I continue to call a campaign to foment anxiety about the types of books that students are accessing in schools.”
Question three was whether or not parents should feel optimistic about information available online in the “face of these bans”, while the fourth question was regarding how parents can help to support Gov. Murphy’s “information literacy” bill S588, which includes “digital, visual, media, textual, and technological literacy.”
Ahh, this is where my earlier statement about Hickson claiming librarians can’t “examine” books before they purchase them comes back into play. She replies, encouraging parents to research and read book reviews. “I believe that there is cause for optimism with the availability of information on the internet because that’s one of the ways that parents can actually learn about books. Just as I read book reviews before I purchase a book from the library, they’re available to you too. Go on Amazon. Those professional reviews are listed right there.”
Back to Moms for Liberty.
“However, it’s a double-edged sword because there’s tons of misinformation out there as well and I do want to highlight one of the tremendous sources of misinformation, it comes to us again from Moms for Liberty. It is a faux book review site called Booklooks.org. Now, if your idea of a book review is like mine which is paragraphs of written text that talk to you about character, plot, theme, style, etc., you won’t find that at Booklooks.org.”
“What you’ll get is a number. Like four. It’s a scale of one to five. Four would be a bad score. You know what got a four? Wicked by Gregory Maguire. Not for anyone under 18. How many of you have taken your kids to see Wicked on Broadway? So what you get at Booklooks.org is the number four and then literally a list of bad words and how many times they appear. So that kind of extremely reductive, ridiculous out-of-context information is what is passing for a book review and is easily available online,” Hickson explains.
Anyone who is a lover of both books and film or Broadway theater will tell you that all films and screenplays for theater performances are adaptations of books. They’re never EXACTLY the same as the books they’re based on. The books usually have far more detail than the productions, so to claim Wicked on Broadway and “Wicked” the book is one-in-the-same is Hickson’s way of showing you just how intelligent she thinks you are, or at least how dumb she’s banking on the audience she’s speaking in front of to be.
Know what it reminds me of? Misinformation.
That’s actually not all that is listed under “Wicked” by Gregory Maguire on Booklooks.org. While it does have a number rating system on a scale from 1-5 based on audience, and it does count the number of cuss words in the selections, it also shows individual passages from the books that are inappropriate and copied verbatim. But Hickson doesn’t want to mention that part, because if she had you might actually go to investigate exactly why people are protesting over these books being available to children, and then her whole shtick about Booklooks.org would be eradicated. Quite disingenuous.
Hickson circles back to answer the Gov. Murphy portion of the question and declares that his bill will teach children K-12 how to “stop, interrogate the source of their information, find better coverage of information if that source isn’t adequate and trace claims back to their original source.”
Winslow suggests parents read the books their children are interested in, and maybe “think about reading the book with your kid.” Can you imagine snuggling up next to your child right before bedtime and reading something like “Gender Queer” where you can explain to your child what autoandrophilia is with the illustrations seen above to accompany it? Or how about “All Boys Aren’t Blue” where you can read about intersexuality or “killing people for their Blackness,” that sounds like a great story to read right before sleep. Maybe “Flamer” is more your style, where not only can you discuss the size of penises and “busting a load into this bottle,” but there are images to boot!
“They can have that conversation and read that book with you all. So, if there is a conversation that needs to be had, there’s a book that they want to read and you’re feeling kind of nervous about it, read that book first. Have that conversation with your child or read it with them and have that much-needed discussion. It might make you feel a lot better about what they’re ingesting and what they’re interpreting and taking from that book that they’re reading,” Winslow adds.
Hickson echos this sentiment saying, “The book will also give the kids and families the vocabulary to have that discussion that they might not have otherwise.”
Exactly what vocabulary do kids need in this regard? They’re kids. Allow them to be kids. It doesn’t last long. Stop trying to adulterate and sexualize our children.
How do these panelist not realize what it is that parents are so upset about?
We don’t WANT our children exposed to adult themes and adult sexual acts. We don’t WANT our children to think of any race, especially their own to be looked at as something that they should be ashamed of or pass judgment on others. And most importantly, we don’t want our kids “accidentally” running up on these books when they’re looking for something innocent and fun. These people are FORCING uncomfortable and inappropriate conversations between parents and children far too early.
They want to remove parental rights, and if they could, they’d remove parents altogether from the equation and stand in their place instead. Breaking down trust between parent and child. Earlier, Hickson said “these are my kids,” as innocent as that sounds, in a different context it all starts to make sense. Let parents parent, stop trying to chip away at that sacred relationship.
Hiding inappropriate books on shelves that children may unintendedly run across is very predatory behavior, with the prey being their innocence. These are adult topics for a reason.
Hickson claimed to be surrounded by “a sea of Moms for Liberty types” while giving testimony for the State Board of Education on behalf of the New Jersey Association of School Librarians in Trenton, NJ. “There’s a traveling freak show,” Hickson says that you’ll see protesting at all of these types of events. “It’s the same group of people over and over and over again,” Hickson said.
The panel closes with Hickson saying it’s more important than ever to vote in local elections for who ends up on your local Board of Education. She’s not wrong.
Pay attention to who has access to your children and what curriculum is being taught at your schools. Pay the school library a visit. Get to know the librarian and school administrators. Frequent your local public library and know how easily accessible these books are to minors. Educate yourself and equip yourself with the knowledge necessary to protect your children and other children in the community.
Involve yourself in your children’s lives as if it’s the most vital thing you’ll ever do because it is. The innocence of our children is to be protected above all else, and you’re the last line of defense between the corruption of their hearts and minds that stalks them at every turn, ready to pounce.
Further reading:
Protecting our children has always been at the forefront until recently. This indoctrination has no place in our public school system.