Thread by @jonfreadom

NEW. An updated book ban report for the current school year from @PENamerica shows how new state laws are supercharging book suppression in schools, esp in Florida. 🧵 #FReadom #EdScare #BookBans
nyti.ms/41DFeJC

As I told @nytimes: "This is much bigger than you can really count... People need to understand that it’s not a single book being removed in a single school district, it’s a set of ideas that are under threat just about everywhere.” /2
Read and share:
pen.org/report/banned-…

Critically, although the book ban movement began with individuals and groups acting locally, they're efforts have been enhanced by the passage of state laws, which have together created an unprecedented chilling effect on schools, which we @PENamerica call the #EdScare. /3

Ask yourself when teachers & librarians were last so Afraid to give books to students that they suspended access to their entire book collections in one swoop? No, that'd not usual in schools. But such "wholesale bans" are becoming more common. Shutting down whole libraries /4

And the train of new laws continues. Yesterday FL extended the Don't Say Gay provisions through gr12. That law is one of few there that have used fear to drive bans across the state. Many are happening quietly. No one is doing more to shed light on this than @FLFreedomRead /5

Now TN has stepped in with a law heading to Gov Lee's desk to fine and punish publishers if they sell "obscene" books to schools. Like in many laws the sponsors imagine stretching that term to encompass books that contain any sentences describing sex. tennessean.com/story/news/pol… /6

Already we've seen in Utah how its new state law allegedly against 'porn in schools' is being similarly stretched, to ban @MargaretAtwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, or @johngreen's Looking For Alaska among others. These books aren't porn... /7

But that hasn't stopped these mischaracterizations. A similar law is also moving forward in Texas, to force publishers to put new age ratings on books, & threaten punishments if they don't ... with a similar intent to treat any sexual content as illicit /8
dallasnews.com/news/politics/…

This is where this is all heading-- increased, direct government censorship of books. Of a kind not seen in the US in generations. Of a kind that the First Amendment is meant to protect against. Join our movement to #FreeTheBooks! Learn more and support:
pen.org/issue/free-the…