A pack horse librarian delivering books in rural Kentucky in 1938. During the Great Depression, the Pack Horse Library Project was a Works Progress Administration (WPA) program in which the librarians, who were often called "book women" or "book ladies," delivered books to remote parts of Appalachia.
Today in Labor History March 25, 1957: U.S. Customs seized copies of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl" on obscenity grounds. Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and City Lights manager, Shigeyoshi Murao, were arrested on obscenity charges for publishing and distributing the poem. Howl was inspired, in part, by a terrifying peyote vision Ginsberg had in which the façade of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, in San Francisco, appeared as the monstrous face of a child-eating demon. The obscenity charges stemmed from homophobic responses to his explicit references to homosexuality. Ginsberg’s first experience with LSD, as well as Kerouac’s and Burroughs’s, was with acid provided by the anthropologist Gregory Bateson, one-time husband of and long-time collaborator with Margaret Mead.
Now through February 26, the ALA Graphics Gift Shop is offering free standard shipping! Shop for hats, “I Read Banned Books” t-shirts, totes, and much more. Purchases from the ALA Graphics Gift Shop support the initiatives of ALA. bit.ly/GraphicsGiftShop
Today in Labor History February 22, 2004: Education Secretary Rod Paige called the nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association (NEA), a terrorist organization. Meanwhile, the Bush administration was imprisoning citizens and non-citizens indefinitely without trial for being “terrorists” and implementing a massive surveillance program that continues to this day.
Time for us to live up to the moniker:
*Say "Gay" in the classroom
*Refuse to report your trans, nonbinary and GNC students
*Maintain a secret library of banned books
*Teach evolution
*Teach the scientific consensus that neither sex, nor gender, are binary
*Teach about the history of Palestinian oppression & the ongoing Genocide in Gaza
*Teach a people's and a working-class history
*Teach the history of marginalized and oppressed people
*Teach about U.S. imperialism and its myriad war crimes
“Anyone ages 12 – 26 living in the United States can get a San Diego Public Library Books Unbanned card. With the card, the library’s online collection of banned or restricted eBooks and eAudiobooks are available for FREE, no matter where you live in the U.S.”
#DeSantis backtracks, supports limiting book bans proposal
"[Take] appropriate action to deal with some of the bad actors who are intentionally depriving students of rightful education by politicizing this process."
A group of anarchists in North Carolina that run a bookstore took in thousands of books banned in Florida, and are now distributing them to anyone who wants them. Lots of them right back to Florida 😂
Mad props to @firestorm in #NC for accepting #BannedBooks from #FL and sending them back to FL for anyone who asks. It's a huge good deed.
Furthermore: every person in the photo in this story of them boxing up the books is wearing a mask. All the unmasked photos were taken outdoors. This is what real inclusion looks like in the age of #COVID.
Gift link: https://wapo.st/3wdpyCE
"Even if a political stunt, the action is extreme and disturbing, calling to mind a violent history of suppression and denigration of books, ideas, and LGBTQ people."
Whenever you see a news article about #BookBanning that seems unfathomable to you, it's something like this. Something that challenges rigid views on gender, sexuality, or race.
The days where book banning was about bad grammar in Junie B. Jones or potty humor in Captain Underpants aren't what we're dealing with now. Don't let book banners control the conversation by categorizing their efforts as absurd.
How many banned books can a room of dedicated volunteers pack in an hour? Yesterday we found out! 💪📦
At our first Banned Books Back! packaging party, community members turned out in droves to sort through dozens of cartons of books removed from Duval County Public Schools in Florida. Together we prepped 642 chapter books and 936 picture books to return to young readers. Despite the chill in the air—and the Christofascism in the political system—the mood was festive. Participants jumped in, swapping tips and innovating strategies to ensure that each box was lovingly assembled, filled with beautiful stories, and addressed to a child in Florida.
As the pugilistic unicorn puts it in our fave kids zine: "Not everyone fights how I fight, but all unicorns fight because we are magical creatures and as magical creatures we believe in a better world." Yesterday we fought by sending banned books back to kids, because we're also magical creatures who believe in a better world!