![]() Republicans have made a concerted effort over the last two years to criminalize, discourage, or ban the teaching of issues relating to systemic racism and LGBTQ+ issues in places like Texas, Florida, and other conservative strongholds. ![]() Most of the targeted books were for a teen audience and were written by or about Black or LGBTQ+ persons. Last year, the American Library Association (ALA) reported the highest number of challenges to libraries and individual book bans since the ALA began gathering this information two decades ago. “Any hope for civil discourse among people of a diverse community requires having access to multiple points of view, and it just makes us richer in the long run.” “Intellectual freedom, the right to read, is foundational to any functioning society,” Higgins told Motherboard. He says that teenagers should not have to walk into a library only to be told they don’t belong because they don’t see themselves reflected in the collections. ![]() Nick Higgins, the chief librarian at BPL, says that in the first two days since the initiative was announced, around 200 teenagers have signed up, with over 700 applications received in total.
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