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Post by revirdsuba99 on May 17, 2023 0:14:11 GMT
Eventually into the pockets of politicians, friends, families, supporters and/or donors..
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Post by aj2hall on May 17, 2023 20:28:24 GMT
Love that moms are fighting back www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/17/book-bans-desantis-lawsuit-pen-america/In one of the big political surprises of 2023, pockets of stiff resistance have sprung up to defend teachers, textbooks, novels and libraries against censorship efforts across the country. This liberal counter-mobilization is substantially less organized than the right’s culture-warring, but it has great untapped potential for Democrats.
These efforts just took an important turn, with a lawsuit filed by Florida parents in federal court Wednesday to try to stop book bans in school libraries in Escambia County, red-leaning terrain in the state’s panhandle. The suit could become a model to challenge bans across Florida and elsewhere.
What’s striking is that this lawsuit is being brought by mothers who want their kids exposed to ideas that the censors have decreed are unsuitable. The suit is spearheaded by PEN America and is joined by several writers whose books have been banned, along with Penguin Random House, which published them.
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Post by aj2hall on May 17, 2023 20:33:45 GMT
Love that moms are fighting back www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/17/book-bans-desantis-lawsuit-pen-america/In one of the big political surprises of 2023, pockets of stiff resistance have sprung up to defend teachers, textbooks, novels and libraries against censorship efforts across the country. This liberal counter-mobilization is substantially less organized than the right’s culture-warring, but it has great untapped potential for Democrats.
These efforts just took an important turn, with a lawsuit filed by Florida parents in federal court Wednesday to try to stop book bans in school libraries in Escambia County, red-leaning terrain in the state’s panhandle. The suit could become a model to challenge bans across Florida and elsewhere.
What’s striking is that this lawsuit is being brought by mothers who want their kids exposed to ideas that the censors have decreed are unsuitable. The suit is spearheaded by PEN America and is joined by several writers whose books have been banned, along with Penguin Random House, which published them.
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Post by Merge on May 17, 2023 20:35:20 GMT
Love that moms are fighting back www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/17/book-bans-desantis-lawsuit-pen-america/In one of the big political surprises of 2023, pockets of stiff resistance have sprung up to defend teachers, textbooks, novels and libraries against censorship efforts across the country. This liberal counter-mobilization is substantially less organized than the right’s culture-warring, but it has great untapped potential for Democrats.
These efforts just took an important turn, with a lawsuit filed by Florida parents in federal court Wednesday to try to stop book bans in school libraries in Escambia County, red-leaning terrain in the state’s panhandle. The suit could become a model to challenge bans across Florida and elsewhere.
What’s striking is that this lawsuit is being brought by mothers who want their kids exposed to ideas that the censors have decreed are unsuitable. The suit is spearheaded by PEN America and is joined by several writers whose books have been banned, along with Penguin Random House, which published them.Actual grassroots advocacy, unlike the nationally organized and funded “Moms for Liberty.”
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Post by aj2hall on May 18, 2023 15:06:16 GMT
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/18/desantis-authoritarian-ignorant/Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who earned two Ivy League degrees, has apparently decided that making Florida schools and universities the laughingstock of the country is good politics. The Republican already went after public school teachers with his “don’t say gay” bill, championed an effort to prevent instruction about history that might upset students (make that White students), and banned Advanced Placement classes in African American studies. Now, he has decided to shred the curriculums of Florida’s public universities, inviting students interested in unapproved subjects to go to California (!) or other states that don’t control what can and cannot be taught. This week, he signed a bill banning state spending on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in public universities. The Post reported: “These programs often assist colleges in increasing student and faculty diversity, which can apply to race and ethnicity, as well as sexual orientation, religion and socioeconomic status.” Worse: “The law also forbids public colleges from offering general education courses — which are part of the required curriculum for all college students — that ‘distort significant historical events,’ teach ‘identity politics’ or are ‘based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, or privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, or economic inequities.’” Who decides what “distorts”? How can the state prohibit instruction about, say, the consequences of Jim Crow in a U.S. history survey class? Well, that’s up to the regime DeSantis has installed. We now see the full extent of the governor’s authoritarian impulse to control independent sources of information and to eviscerate professional standards that provide the basis for challenging state action and abuse of power. DeSantis declared, “If you want to do things like gender ideology, go to Berkeley” — or presumably, to some other state system that features quality scholarship about topics that make right-wing purveyors of White male supremacy squeamish. DeSantis might get his wish. Parents, students and businesses seeking well-educated workers might decide it is better to decamp from Florida for states that prepare students for the real world, help them function in a diverse society and foster intellectual excellence. Sadly, that will leave Floridians less prosperous and less capable of performing the obligations of informed citizenry. Perhaps that’s the point.
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Post by revirdsuba99 on May 25, 2023 2:58:18 GMT
Mother who called out Amanda Gorman's poem/book DH is a proud boy... The Florida parent behind the ban of Amanda Gorman’s poetry book ban has ties to the Proud Boys and the ultraconservative Moms For Liberty, The Daily Beast reports. The Miami Lakes (Miami-Dade County) school also pulled two other books (“The ABCs of Black History” and “Love to Langston”) from its elementary school shelves after Salinas complained about them, as well. Salinas, who has two children at the school, is the only parent who complained about the books, according to the report. Salinas cited critical race theory, gender ideology, and indoctrination as the reasons she believed the books to be inappropriate. “Is not educational and have indirectly hate messages,” she wrote in her complaint about “The Hill We Climb.” www.rawstory.com/amanda-gorman-ban/
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Post by revirdsuba99 on May 25, 2023 3:00:28 GMT
Now DeSantis is saying no books are banned in Florida. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis formally kicked off his 2024 campaign for president with a Twitter Spaces discussion with tech billionaire Elon Musk — an event that was widely derided as disastrous after a series of technical problems. But according to The Daily Beast, during the discussion, DeSantis made one eyebrow-raising claim in particular: that all the stories about school book bans in Florida are not true."Ron DeSantis went straight into several diatribes knocking 'the left' and 'the media' for creating false stories about his record as governor," said the report. "Among his claims was that there had been no 'book bans' in Florida during his tenure — calling any report to the contrary an outright 'hoax.” He then admitted that some books have in fact been removed from school libraries — but only ones that include 'pornography' and critical race theory.www.rawstory.com/donald-tr/
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Post by aj2hall on Jun 5, 2023 13:54:29 GMT
DeSantis' latest attack on public school - school vouchers for everyone, even the top 1% www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/05/desantis-florida-school-voucher-program-costs/Florida public schools are having an awful year. Record numbers of teachers have left their jobs, and those who remain face a minefield of ambiguous culture-war dictates about what they can say and how they teach.
And it’s about to get worse for Florida’s beleaguered public schools.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) recently signed legislation that might radically undermine the state’s education system by making Florida’s already robust school voucher program the largest and most expensive in the country.
The conservative rationale for doing away with income caps and sweeping in private and religious school students seems rooted in a twisted sense of “justice for all.” In their view, those parents are paying what amounts to a wasted tax for public schools their children don’t use — and returning that money to them to pay for their schools of choice is only fair.
But in another reading of conservatives’ aims, the voucher policy has nothing to do with fairness. Instead, it seeks to bolster the spread of private schools, especially those offering a Christian, “values-based” education, at the expense of supposedly amoral public schools. Ideology, not academics, seems to fuel the most fervent conservative supporters of school choice, a well-funded national movement with powerful Republican political ties.
In a state infamous as a magnet for schemers and grifters, there’s plenty of reason to worry as millions of dollars in new spending will soon pour into schools that have little accountability. When DeSantis celebrated passage of his vouchers-for-all gambit as a victory for school choice, he was no doubt being cheered on by those with no ideology other than diving into any trough freshly filled with public money.
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Post by revirdsuba99 on Jun 6, 2023 15:33:02 GMT
DeSantis... Florida college left without American history professor after axing DeSantis criticMatthew Chapman June 6, 2023, 8:52 AM ET Erik Wallenberg, a visiting professor at the New College of Florida and a detractor of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' efforts to take over the state's higher educational system, was unceremoniously removed, leaving the campus without a professor who teaches U.S. history, the Miami New Times reported this week. "Though he'd been an outspoken critic of New College's recent anti-'woke' overhaul, the axing of his teaching position made little sense to Wallenberg from an academic standpoint," reported Naomi Feinstein. "'The social sciences department had been supportive of his planned return for another year, he had received positive student evaluations, and he had just published an American history research paper." In an interview with the Miami New Times, Wallenberg elaborated on why he was surprised by his dismissal. "They have no U.S. historians in the department, and they need someone to teach U.S. history," he told the publication. "They asked if I would come back, and I said I would definitely be interested, so they said, 'Great, we'll send over the offer letter to the provost's office,' and then the head of the social sciences division told me that it was being held up by interim president Richard Corcoran.'" www.rawstory.com/new-college-florida-desantis/
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