We need more of these laws protecting the representation of minorities and the ideas the fundamentalist right hate, such as female autonomy. The only way to get more states to do this is to elect more progressives, become more vocal over what we want, and to support those who advocate for the full support of equality and inclusion of everyone in society, sometimes called DEI. Hugs
Gov. Phil Murphy, at the Princeton Public Library, signs legislation Monday aimed at barring public libraries and schools from banning books.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, signed a law Monday prohibiting public schools and libraries from banning books and protecting librarians who obey state law.
Murphy’s signing of the Freedom to Read Act comes amid an ongoing push by conservative lawmakers and activists across the country to challenge books they consider inappropriate for minors, particularly those about LGBTQ issues and race. Lawmakers in at least 13 states this year have introduced legislation to disrupt library services or limit their materials, according to an NBC News tally.
“Across the nation, we have seen attempts to suppress and censor the stories and experiences of others,” Murphy said in a statement. “I’m proud to amplify the voices of our past and present, as there is no better way for our children to prepare for the future than to read freely.”
Murphy during an interview in New York on Nov. 22.
In September, PEN America, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting free speech, reported that the number of books being removed from school shelves during the 2023-24 school year had tripled from the previous year, to more than 10,000.
The PEN America report, along with one from the American Library Association released that same month, outlined how frequently challenged books are often about or written by people of color or those who identify as LGBTQ.
In 2023, the American Library Association’s list of the 10 most challenged books nationwide included Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” a novel about a young Black girl who grew up after the Great Depression; Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” a graphic memoir about the author’s exploration of gender identity from adolescence to young adulthood; and George M. Johnson’s “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” a coming-of-age memoir about a queer Black man.
New Jersey -is the third state to sign a law prohibiting the banning of books at public schools and libraries, following Illinois and Minnesota.
The new law is set to take effect in a year from the governor’s signing. However, the state education commissioner and the New Jersey state librarian are permitted to start implementing it immediately “as may be necessary,” the law states.
“Through this legislation, we are protecting the integrity of our libraries that are curated by dedicated professionals and making those resources available to help every student to grow as a critical thinker,” New Jersey acting Education Commissioner Kevin Dehmer said in a statement.
Today the Freedom to Read Act from @AndrewZwicker will be signed into law by @GovMurphy – protecting a reader’s freedom to access information and safeguarding librarians from harassment.
This one address the mistaken idea that anti-trans stuff worked to win the presidency for tRump. In fact it was not a factor according to surveys however the only ones talking about it were the tRump people. Harris never mentioned trans except for one time saying that they followed the law on treating trans prisoners with the hormone care they were prescribed or needed before incarceration. Again it is the law and tRump also did it in his first term. Hugs
More on the trans issues and the bathroom ban for trans people in the capital. Trans issues in the 2022 midterms showed that trans issues was a losing issue for them. It was the same this election. The larger problem is the democrats being too cowardly to stand up for the abused minority. Hugs
We hear about the genocide by Israel of the Palestinians. He talks about hate on the internet by right wing forced paid for and encouraged by people who want to normalize this level of violence and convince people it is good to be this bloodthirsty. Hugs
December 7, 1964 A leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, Mario Savio, was arrested. One-third of the 27,000 students at the University of California campus, along with faculty, were on strike to protect their first amendment right to distribute political literature and to organize on campus. A faculty resolution passed 824-115, supporting the rapidly growing Free Speech Movement. “There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and you’ve got to make it stop.” – Mario Savio Mario Savio as remembered by journalist Robert Scheer ——————————————————————————– December 7, 1993 The arrested: Phil Berrigan, John Dear, Lynn Fredriksson, and Bruce Friedrich Four Plowshares activists were arrested for disarming an F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina. Pax Christi-Spirit of Life Plowshares newspaper article
Randy sent me this. This is what I have been talking about. I hope you will take the time to watch the short one and the 3:31 minute video. Not the most riveting I admit. But it is designed for little kids. Did you spot any mention of the sex of the penguins? In all the book there is only one small hint and little kids won’t notice it. I went looking for it because I wanted to know how so many people were sure the penguins were a same sex couple. One word, one made up word not even in the writings or spoken in the video. Hint it is on the cover of the book. The name of their home and where they baked the cakes. Pengrooms. One other clue is the rainbow colored boards on the tree. Yup for that the book must never be seen or read ever. It is a sin, a horror for kids to see or hear. It is a cute little kids book. Randy informed me that enough people contacted Amazon about the fake negative comments that they were removed.
See it is not about protecting kids, it is not about sexualizing kids, it is not about confusing kids that these people fear and hate. It is about acceptance and tolerance of something different from them that they don’t agree with. To them there is no live and let live. There is no you do your thing and I will do me. To them the world and all in it must be just as they are, do as they do, believe as they believe. And most important worship who they worship. They demand a bland world where only the things they celebrate are seen and heard, where their way is superior to all others.
It is about removing all mention of LGBTQ+ from society. It is about removing everything not straight cis from media of any type. The misnamed one million moms who is one lady with a computer and a printer along with a few thousand followers on social media complains bitterly about any commercial that has even the hint of a same sex couple in it, even a hint. It is hurting the children see. The goal is making sure LGBTQ+ kids, and yes there are LGBTQ+ kids, don’t see or know anyone like themselves anywhere. It is so they don’t feel accepted. They feel they must hide who they are and tell no one. They want those kids who are born different and feel that difference to be deep in the closet and stay there, never to come out and be happy as their true selves. These groups pushing this hate want no anti-bullying programs as they want kids who are different to be picked on, harassed, and beat up. They do not want them accepted by their peers, teachers and fellow students. No they want them beaten up. I know this because one of the co-authors of the Florida don’t say gay bill said it was why he helped write the bill. That gay kids, that trans kids could be accepted by classmates and treated fairly drove him to tears. Yes tears. I saw him weep as he spoke of those kinds of kids finding acceptance in the classroom.
One guy using social media has already gotten a dozen big name companies to roll back and remove their DEI programs and support for the LGBTQ+ including pride merchandise and parades. Because he and the others like him threaten these companies with the threat of accusing them of harming kids and trying to hurt their businesses they give in. One guy is spearheading this but there are others. They are driven to remove us from society, in this guy’s case so his god will love him and give him an afterlife. We need to stand up against this guy and these haters. We have to do that. We must not let them drive the country back to 1950 not even to 1980. We must remain visible and fight for the rights of all of us. We don’t drop a letter here or there from our community to please the haters. We have seen in history they never stop with just the one group, they work to get rid of them all. We must get vocal, we must fight back. Hugs
I am sorry but how does this protect any student or adult … it also includes higher education. Notice this part … About 3% of high school students identify as transgender, according to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That is in a country of 337 million people.
This is only a hate bill based on the absurd idea that trans women want to assault girls. Notice it is always trans girls / women they talk about never trans boys or trans men. It is a made up problem that never happened so they have to destroy a small minority of people’s lives to prove a point of their bigotry. I am so sick of this posturing on the part of republicans trying to do to trans what they couldn’t do to the gays 30 years ago. It is the same tactics and hate they promote. If you want to know the real cost listen to the trans students who quit school because they had nowhere to go to the bathroom, or the trans students who were given approved bathrooms so far from their classes that they missed some and got bad marks for simply needing to pee before the class started. These bills have real world consequences for young people in every state. It is not just the bathroom issue but it makes a trans person a target even if there is a “trans bathroom” assigned. It means any student using it is outing themselves to the ones that want to target them for abuse.
Again this solves no problem but does promote hate and bigotry … and it is driven by religious bigotry because of the fundamentalist belief that their god created them male and female only. They are demanding we run our society, or 2024 understands on the book written by religious leaders 2,500 years ago. Think about it, these people had no idea of everything we take for granted today, yet the fundamentalist who demand we ;deny rights to trans people do it based on that book of people who did not even understand germs! These bills are designed to promote a religion and a religious view of life / morality in the public life. I am an old gay man, this still affects me. Because bigotry against one group’s rights is bigotry against all people’s rights! If these people get the right to exclude trans people from bathrooms what is next? Gay people on the same idea that we are a threat? Or hell watch about the old segregation idea that blacks are a threat to whites in bathrooms? See this is the same playbook. This is not different from black people shouldn’t be in white people’s bathrooms. Hugs
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has signed a bill into law banning transgender students from using school bathrooms and locker rooms that match up with their gender identity.
The law requires people at Ohio K-12 schools and universities use the restroom that aligns with their gender assigned at birth. It also bans students from sharing overnight accommodations with people of the opposite sex from their assigned sex at birth at K-12 schools.
This does not prevent a school from having single-occupancy facilities and does not apply to someone helping a person with a disability or a child younger than 10 years old being assisted by a parent, guardian or family member.
The law will take effect 90 days after DeWine signed the bill.
Several transgender Ohioans, allies and educators called on DeWine to veto the bill. The Ohio Capital Journal recently talked to a family who plans on moving out of Ohio because of anti-transgender legislation at the Statehouse.
The bathroom ban (House Bill 183) was added to a bill that revises College Credit Plus (Senate Bill 104) in the eleventh hour of a House Session at the end of June before the lawmakers went on an extended break.
The American Medical Association officially opposes policies preventing transgender individuals from accessing basic human services and public facilities consistent with gender identity.
Slightly more than half of transgender and nonbinary youth in Ohio considered suicide in 2022, according to the Trevor Project.
About a third of LGBTQ+ students were prevented from using the bathroom that aligned with their gender and slightly more than a quarter were stopped from using the locker room that aligned with their gender, according to Ohio’s 2021 state snapshot by GLSEN, which examines the school experiences of LGBTQ middle and high school students.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine gives his 2024 State of the State address in the Ohio House chambers at the Ohio Statehouse on Wednesday afternoon. (Pool photo by Barbara J. Perenic, Columbus Dispatch.)
Forty-two percent of transgender and nonbinary students were unable to use the bathroom that aligned with their gender and 36% couldn’t use the locker room that aligned with their gender, according to the Ohio GLSEN report.
Transgender youth who can’t use the bathroom that aligns with their gender are at a greater risk of sexual violence, according to a 2019 study published in the journal Pediatrics.
Florida, Oklahoma, Idaho, and Tennessee’s laws have all been challenged. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit blocked Idaho’s law last year.
North Carolina made history in 2016 by becoming the first state to ban bathroom access to transgender people. The law was quickly appealed in 2017 and settled in federal court in 2019, but the state ended up losing hundreds of millions of dollars as the NBA All-Star Game and NCAA events were moved out of state.
This is the hyper Fundamentalist Christian who is radically against trans people and the entire LGBTQ+. He has made it his mission in political life to push bigotry and hate to anything he thinks the Christian god hates while trying to promote Christianity as a state religion at every turn. So here he is trying to shut down a homeless shelter. Really what Jesus would ask his followers to do, right? No this is not based on religion or faith, this is about profit and who gives him money. He pushes religious stuff because his main benefactor and political protector is a billionaire fundamentalist Christian preacher who thinks the government should force every person to be a Christian with his views. And what about the homeless shelter … Well local business don’t like the look or the congestion so more donations to remove them … Get the point. The point is the wealthy people who support this … Ultra Christian simply don’t like the poor around. They want them to go away and never be seen. Hugs.
In this June 22, 2017, file photo, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks at a news conference in Dallas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez, File)
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to shut down an Austin, Texas, homeless center, calling the charity a public nuisance.
The Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center says it’s the largest provider of homeless services in Travis County. According to its website, the center provides a number of services, including physical and mental health care, substance abuse care, harm reduction, housing interventions and benefits enrollment. The center has received over a $1 million from the city of Austin, according to Paxton’s complaint.
“In South Austin, a once peaceful neighborhood has been transformed by homeless drug addicts, convicted criminals, and registered sex offenders,” Paxton says in the complaint, filed in Travis County District Court. “These people do drugs in sight of children, publicly fornicate next to an elementary school, menace residents with machetes, urinate and defecate on public grounds, and generally terrorize the surrounding community.”
In his complaint, Paxton notes the center’s location across the street from an elementary school. The Texas Attorney General’s Office said in a statement on the lawsuit that the school has been forced into lockdown repeatedly due to violent behavior from people receiving services at the center.
Paxton also takes issue with the center allowing a clean syringe distribution program on its property, which he says amounts to facilitating drug use. Part of a “harm reduction” philosophy, clean syringe programs aim to help people who are already using intravenous drugs do so more safely. In Texas, such programs operate in a legal grey area, as they are not authorized by the state and Texas law criminalizes the possession of drug paraphernalia.
“Drug activity and criminal behavior facilitated by this organization have hijacked an entire neighborhood,” Paxton said in a statement. “By operating a taxpayer-funded drug paraphernalia giveaway next to an elementary school, this organization is threatening students’ health and safety and unjustly worsening daily life for every single resident of the neighborhood. We will shut this unlawful nuisance behavior down.”
Paxton seeks an injunction requiring the center to close for a year and prohibiting it from conducting operations within 1,000 feet of a school, playground or youth center. But in a statement, the center’s executive director Mark Hilbelink said the services will continue.
“It is regrettable that Attorney General Paxton took this route, especially during the week of Thanksgiving, but Sunrise intends to keep offering services to people in our community who need them,” Hilbelink said in a statement. “We are committed to being a good neighbor. We will continue to work, every day, to support Joslin Elementary School, our neighborhood, and our entire community.”
He also noted the center is a ministry of Sunrise Community Church and is therefore protected by the First Amendment, the U.S. Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act and the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
“These laws have been tested in court on multiple occasions, always with the same result: churches are protected to do work that is an expression of their religious practice,” Hilbelink said.
The bible lessons were pushed by Jonathan Covey [photo], head of the anti-LGBTQ hate group Texas Values, which has appeared here multiple times in the past. In February 2015, on the tenth anniversary of the Texas state ban on same-sex marriage, Texas Values held a “banniversary” celebration complete with a cake-cutting ceremony. The actual tenth “banniversary” wasn’t until November 2015, but Texas Values held their little party months early because they rightly feared what the Supreme Court would ultimately rule in June of that year.
I had a classmate tell me that Dems would do better if we dropped the “whole bathroom thing.” I educated him that this was not a fight we chose and that trans people have been around for decades using the bathrooms they fit in best. It was Republicans that made it a “thing.”
All of the “hot button social issues” are issues created and kept alive by Republicans. People are just trying to live their lives, and the GQP decides they’re doing it wrong.
Look, I genuinely don’t care who is in the bathroom with me, but the law you’re proposing says the person on the left should use the women’s bathroom and the person on the right should use the men’s bathroom https://t.co/isL1hCofbIpic.twitter.com/drWWVnSyIL
A Trump supporting, anti-trans, anti-gay Republican was elected commissioner of the county where I grew up. He won despite being in jail on election night for a sexual assault in Vegas. It’s now come out that the woman he assaulted was his daughter. fox59.com/news/indycri…
Three wives, adultery with an employee, and an alleged sexual assault is what Jesus would want.
Appearing on a Christian nationalist podcast last night, Pete Hegseth said he's creating a system of "classical Christian schools" to provide recruits for an underground army that will eventually launch an "educational insurgency" across the nation. https://t.co/OnW3oNXoDfpic.twitter.com/dSb0RB8Y5Q
Failure to provide anything close to real, immediate funding for Helene recovery is appalling. Instead, the GOP legislature used financial crumbs to cover for massive power grabs.https://t.co/dsAwcASthH
I spent today with local leaders, business owners, and volunteers in western North Carolina. Many people and communities are hurting and need our help. But instead of stepping up, the Republicans in the General Assembly are grabbing power and exacting political retribution. How…
I saw the email come in and I wondered why I wasn’t blocked from their list.
It was addressed to me from Americans for Prosperity, a group founded and funded by the Koch brothers. Kansas billionaires who changed the American political landscape with their wealth. Kansas brothers who have made this country worse.
There is only one Koch brother still living, Charles, and he continues with the mission of breaking the government. He is anti-union. Anti-public education. Anti-social safety nets. Anti-climate justice.
He is a committed libertarian.
Since the 1980s, the Koch brothers have steadily ramped up their political involvement and have constructed a vast network of organizations that pool hundreds of millions of dollars from their own pockets and other wealthy donors each year in support of the conservative idea generation, leadership training, election campaigning, and policy advocacy. Yet for all the groups the Kochs have created and funded, there is just one group that sits at the center of their network: Americans for Prosperity.
The email I received included an invitation to a local coffee shop about 25 minutes from home. Americans for Prosperity (AFP) was in town looking to connect with like-minded people who value freedom and community.
Free people. Free Missouri. Free coffee.
I decided I would go because if I love anything, it’s freedom. I can afford to buy my own coffee.
You probably already know this, but I don’t mind stirring the pot. I like to cause good trouble when I can. I like to be a burr under the saddle of those in power — a constant annoyance. I like to take up space and get in the way. I do this by giving no quarter and no space to the bourgeoisie who plan to plunder the resources of communities like mine.
I show up.
I knew I wasn’t the first to the meeting at the coffee shop that morning because I saw a car with a dented and battered Missouri license plate — a plate with a Gadsden flag. I knew a libertarian must be in close proximity. I was right.
I saw him sitting in the comfortable leather seat at the front of the coffee shop. I knew he was with Americans for Prosperity because it said so on his green hoodie. The color of money.
I smiled at him as I walked to the back to order my coffee. He smiled back…he looked familiar. He said, “Hi, Jess.”
Ope.
I was caught red-handed. Not that I was trying to attend the meeting incognito, but I didn’t plan on one of the Directors of the Americans for Prosperity calling me by name. My infamy precedes me…actually it’s my big mouth and my propensity for calling out Missouri Republicans. So be it.
I kept walking to the counter in the back.
I never know what to order at a coffee shop and I get a little anxious with a big menu. I drink most of my coffee at home because I am plain like that…steaming hot coffee from my old Bunn, poured into my old Lake Superior mug. I don’t take sugar, but I do mix in a couple of teaspoons of Walmart powdered creamer. Yes, I know.
Poor folks have poor ways.
I decided on a chai at the counter — the barista said she could make it a dirty chai. Who doesn’t like tea with espresso?
I returned to the front of the building to wait for the meeting to start. The AFP Director was on his phone. I noticed another local Democrat walk in. We chatted for a minute and my Democratic friend sat down next to me. We kept looking for folks to come in. They never appeared.
Not one person came to the meeting except the AFP Director and two Nodaway County Democrats.
I asked the AFP Director if I could pepper him with a few questions since there would not be a meeting. He kindly obliged.
He told me his name and I then realized why he looked familiar. He is familiar. He is from a town just west of mine. We know the same people.
He is a small town libertarian.
AFP is a libertarian organization that actually funds the GOP agenda in Missouri. They consistently endorse GOP candidates in races across the state. They also fund some of the most extreme Republicans running for office. Many of the candidates they endorse believe in abortion bans. They believe in book bans. They are anti-union and pro-privatization of institutions like public schools.
That is where I started.
Why do you want to defund public schools? He told me that defunding was not the goal, but that every parent should have a “choice” about where their kid attends school and that a voucher is useful for funding that choice.
I asked him where that choice was in Nodaway County. He didn’t have an answer, but I do. There is no choice. There is a K-8 private Catholic school in Maryville. It does not offer a high school or a non-religious curriculum. They also don’t offer Special Education classes.
There is no school choice in Nodaway County and the libertarian goal of school vouchers would be a death sentence to several rural schools in our county. Rural schools that support all kids, including those with a disability.
The small town libertarian listened politely as I spoke and I listened politely as he spoke. I pointed to a particular habit of speech he consistently used when speaking of public schools: He called them “government schools.” I asked him why he doesn’t refer to private schools who receive taxpayer money as “government schools” and his answer shocked me…
He said private schools receiving taxpayer money are not “government schools” because they don’t follow state standards for schools.
Oh my god.
They don’t have to answer to anybody. They don’t have to take standardized tests and they don’t have to produce results. If they are good, parents will flock. If they are bad, parents will find another school. It’s the market, stupid.
I had to think about closing my mouth. My jaw hung open in horror.
Market solutions do not work in education. Kids aren’t coffee. Or blueberries.
If they attend a bad school that closes, they just lost a year of education. It isn’t a minor flaw in the school choice design. It’s part of the scam. Make money with choice schools…find a community and open a fly-by-night school in an old Pizza Hut or in a church basement. Accept the taxpayer dollars, produce no results, close the school, and then run out of town with the money.
This wasn’t the only topic of our conversation. The small town libertarian relied heavily on philosophers to make his points. He asked me often if I had read this philosopher or that one and I noticed that we actually agreed on several topics.
I was at the coffee shop for nearly an hour. On my way home, the scene played out in my head. I am an overthinker. I came to a very quick conclusion about the reason the libertarian and I had disagreements — libertarians have no plan for poverty. Or disability. Or women. Or any community that is oppressed or marginalized.
The ideal libertarian comes across as selfish. And privileged. They would likely deny both.
I know the only way out of our current political position is to be in our communities. To physically meet folks — to look them in the eye and talk about our shared and common needs.
But, it’s not easy when I know I can’t change their minds — at least not in just one encounter. Maybe I can make them think, though? Maybe I can put a thought or two in their head? Maybe I can also learn not to be so rigid in my own ideas?
The first rule is “do not obey in advance” and in my mind, it looks like showing up and pushing back.
I don’t know that I changed anything with my meeting with the small town libertarian, but I know it didn’t hurt.
The subject may not be for everyone; you’ll be able to tell by reading rawgod’s piece, and then decide whether to read the other blog posts. I am engrossed in this, because of raising a child, and later work in the schools here. Of course, there is another entire point beside that, which is humans keeping an open mind in regard to our treatment of other human beings. Give it a look!
Scottie's Playtime 