“What the parents of the school district really want and are focused on are very different things than what we're seeing is coming in from the outside,” activist Katie Paris said. Paris is the founder of Red Wine and Blue, an advocacy group that encourages suburban...
Book Bans
Red Wine & Blue on Good Morning America
Look who was featured on Good Morning America. Are you ready to be a #Troublemaker with us?
Parents push for parental rights when it comes to school books
“When our children don't get to see people who look like them in the stories they are reading at school then they have to think well, maybe I'm not a part of this society. Maybe I'm not a part of this world.” Proud of our very own Julie Collins and Katie Paris,...
Book bans and the threat of censorship rev up political activism in the suburbs
On a school night in late January, Stephana Ferrell, a 39-year-old mother of two elementary school children in Orange County, Fla., logged onto a virtual meeting with more than 200 other parents around the country who, like her, have been alarmed to see books pulled...
Suburban moms push back against book bans in schools
Typically quiet school board meetings have turned hostile across in many communities, with heated debates over hot-button political issues like critical race theory, book bans and mask mandates. A nationwide group of women called "Red Wine and Blue" is working to...
Suburban moms call on groups espousing parental rights to condemn death threats
Source: Reuters Investigates. “School officials and their families should never be subject to death threats and harassment. Full stop. No matter where you stand on specific books or school policies, violence and intimidation are never the answer.” Suburbs Across...
Janice Robinson, NC program director for Red, Wine and Blue, on efforts by parents to push back against recent book banning
Radio Interview with Rob Schofield at NC Policy Watch. Listen here.
‘Blue’ suburban moms are mobilizing to counter conservatives in fights over masks, book bans and diversity education
Source: The Washington Post. Dozens of suburban moms from around the country dialed into an Ohio-based Zoom training session last month with the same goal — to learn how to combat the increasingly vitriolic rhetoric from parents whose protests over mask mandates and...
The Network of Suburban Moms Working to Stop Book Bans
Suburban women are a force. Following the 2016 election, it became clear that the contingent of white suburban women could sway the power in the country. But in the months following, other suburban women knew it was time to step up, and in 2018, a group banded...
Mother in Bucks County pushes back against book bans
A mother from Bucks County is pushing back against book bans in school districts across the country. Suburbs Across America said Thursday Stacey Smith of Perkasie has joined suburban moms from around the country to stop book bans with the organization Red Wine and...
Recent Posts
Read This: The Quiet Danger of Soft Censorship
We’ve been fighting the explosion of book bans since Red Wine & Blue started. PEN America reports 16,000 book bans in public schools since 2021 — a level not seen since the 1950s during McCarthyism. This increase has been driven by organized groups with a...
Okay, But Why is Gerrymandering Legal?
Lawmakers in Texas made headlines for leaving their state to protest the unfair re-drawing of district maps, known as gerrymandering. Almost all Americans, regardless of political party, are against gerrymandering. But over the past few decades, it’s gotten worse and worse.
So… what exactly is gerrymandering? Why is it legal? And how do we get back to a fair system where all of our votes matter equally?
Okay, But Why Were The Suburbs Shaped By Racism?
We know that the suburbs have been diversifying over the past few decades, and today “suburban woman” is no longer code for “white woman” – no matter how much the media tries to simplify us. But there’s no denying that the suburbs have excluded families who aren’t white for most of their history, and if we’re not careful, they will again in the future. So why – and how – did the suburbs end up so white for so long? What happened to make them more diverse, and why are some people worried that we’re reversing that progress?
Do This: Start Talking About Racism
Anti-racism is not just a state of mind, it’s an active way of living our day-to-day lives. It’s the intentional practice of taking ongoing steps to confront racism in an effort to end it. Sometimes that might mean calling out overt examples of racism when we see...
Watch This: What Can We Do About Racism?
As we take on the work of anti-racism, we’ll probably run into friends and family who have varying degrees of understanding about it. Some may have their own deeply personal experiences with racism. Their stories are important and can teach us valuable lessons. But...