Whether it’s Toni Morrison’s Beloved that opened your heart in high school English class or Michelle Alexander’s New Jim Crow that powered a generation of people to fight against mass incarceration, so many of us have been transformed by a book that’s currently on a banned book list.
But it’s more than books. These bans represent a larger swath of chilling authoritarian-style policies that are affecting communities across the country, seeking to divide us along lines of difference, particularly race and sexuality.
And– spoiler alert– the target audience these bans are seeking to stir up and organize? White people. We not only need to fight to protect the stories we love, but fight to put our people at the tables where these policies are decided.
Join Showing Up for Racial Justice and For the People Leftist Library Project for a community conversation on October 10 at 8 pm, “Beyond Book Bans: building power in public schools and libraries” to hear stories about how regular folks are building people power to make decisions about how the libraries and schools in their communities are run.
Opening remarks by abolitionist organizer (and co-founder of For the People Leftist Library Project) Mariame Kaba.
ASL and live captioning available.
