ince 2021, the Sunshine State has led the country in advancing the “parental rights” agenda. Contrary to its name, this agenda has used fuzzy, coded language to manufacture moral panic, and to deliver control over what students can read and learn in schools not into the hands of all parents but to a particular segment of citizens — some not even parents but community members. The cumulative effect has been to privilege some parents’ ideological preferences above all others, tie the hands of educators, and limit students’ access to information through curricular prohibitions and book bans.

In spite of a recent ruling striking down book bans, Florida schools continue to pull books from shelves in what this article refers to as “proactive measures” but are in fact, “obeying in advance”. PEN America has an excellent report on their website pointing out that Florida has served as the “test case” for “parental rights”. If a policy is successfully executed in Florida, it becomes a blueprint for Federal policy. The saying “Think globally but act locally” is the biggest truism of book banning. These bans are happening at the school board level in our communities. It is more important than ever that you show up at your school board meetings to speak out in defense of books – even if you don’t have children in the school system. The right to read books of your choosing is a basic human right – the right to decide what others can read is authoritarianism and it must be stopped.