The day the book banners lost in Pennsylvania’s culture wars
Apr 16, 2023
If you ban it, they will come.
For the better part of an hour Saturday, dozens of teenagers and their parents snaked around the towering stacks of tomes inside Kutztown’s Firefly Books and sometimes spilled onto the sidewalks of this quaint Berks County college town — most of them clutching the book that conservatives on the local school board didn’t want them to read.
Calliope Price, 14 and in the eighth grade, came out to meet Alan Gratz — author of the “banned” young-adult novel about climate change, Two Degrees — after hearing about the controversy and realizing that Gratz had also written her favorite book, which is called, ironically, Ban This Book. Holding her now-signed copy, she weighed in on Kutztown Area Middle School canceling a planned “One School, One Book” program amid conservative complaints a climate book would somehow scare or indoctrinate adolescents.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE. Contact: Maggie Bridges, maggie@redwine.blue, 303.807.8304 Suburbs Across America, February 13, 2025 — Today, Red Wine & Blue’s nationwide local group organizing program, TroubleNation, reached a major milestone by expanding into their 50th...
The other day, I overheard it at the gas station. The day before, I saw it when I opened my local news app. And the day before that, it was on my local TV station, between segments on the weather and the Cleveland Browns. Everywhere I look, MAGA allies are claiming...
CNN — Waves of emotion washed over DeJuana Thompson as she stood in the convention hall in Chicago last month watching Vice President Kamala Harris become the first Black woman nominated for the presidency by a major political party. Battleground North Carolina In...
On night one in Chicago, there was some tittering about the choice to snuggle Ocasio-Cortez’s speech in so close to Hillary Clinton’s. According to the conventional wisdom, Clinton is a depressing reminder of loss, a candidate so bad that she could not beat the worst...
How much do you know about the structure of government and how it works (or is supposed to work)? If your answer is something like “not enough,” you’re not alone. Research last year by the Annenberg Public Policy Center revealed that most Americans can name only one...
