As the right bans books on LGBTQ issues and racial justice, youth are getting a crash course in collective organizing.
The rise of organized attempts to censor school curricula and materials available in school libraries is proving to be a fertile training ground for a new generation of student activists. Facing the removal of books about LGBTQ+ and BIPOC experiences, students are demanding the right to read in schools across the country. Nowhere is this truer than in Texas, a state where equal access to a range of stories has been under attack for years.
In 2019, freshman Cameron Samuels, a student in the Katy Independent School District, attempted to access the Advocate, a longstanding LGBTQ+ news magazine, using a school computer. The page was blocked, according to the message on the screen, because of “Alternative sexual lifestyles (GLBT).” Two years later, Samuels tried to access the Trevor Project, an organization focused on suicide prevention for queer youth. Samuels was blocked again. This time, they took their frustration to a school board meeting where they were the sole voice contesting internet filtering in the district. The ACLU filed a complaint on Samuels’s behalf, leading to the lifting of filters in district high schools.
When Samuels spoke at that board meeting, conditions had changed. Internet filtering continued to be an issue, but books had become the primary target of organized extremists. Attempts to censor and restrict access to LGBTQ+ stories are not new, but their quantity and intensity have rapidly increased in recent years. Between 2020 and 2021, the American Library Association documented 729 book ban attempts, over five times more than the previous year. That number doubled again in 2022, and Texas was home to more book bans than any other state.
The Fight Against Book Bans Is Mobilizing a New Generation of Student Activists – Truthout