We have talked here pretty frequently about the foolish little people – small-minded and scared of the world – who are trying (and succeeding) in banning books across the countries.

This is true, and certainly it’s embarrassing for these silly little people. Being so public about their terror of learning is…incredibly sad. I hope some day they read more books, and maybe start expanding their minds a bit.

But they are not the whole story! There are a lot of people who are pushing back against this kind of foolishness. There are librarians, teachers, school boards, and others who say it’s okay to keep your own kid sheltered from ideas and hidden from the world – but it’s not okay to keep information hidden away from the rest of us.

Read! Something different! Grab a book about someone who is different from you!

Check out this group of moms, who actually do care about their communities, and free expression of ideas.

(I’m going to add a small parenthetical idea: too many of the articles on this topic refer to “conservative” people as the ones who want to ban books. This is an incorrect, but commonly incorrectly used, use of the word. A truly conservative stand would be to forbid any kind of regulation of the material people are reading – a rejection of unnecessary rules. This is the same kind of incorrect-but-commonly-used type of definition of “socialist” that too many people lazily use. It drives me slightly bonkers when these words are wrongly used, and I like real information – so just pointing it out here in an effort to build a small groundswell of people who use words correctly!)

Anyway, check out this article excerpt about a group of cool parents who are working to share information and cool books! You can find the entire article here.

“

Katie Paris is an Ohio mom and founder of Red, Wine and Blue, the group behind Book Ban Busters.

“The pandemic is exhausting enough, we don’t need book bans too,” said Paris.

Book Ban Busters is a campaign made up of suburban moms and other partners who aim to fight against banning books from schools and libraries.

Paris feels like the need to fight grows daily as it seems there is new book ban news in the local and national media constantly. She pointed to a book-burning event reported near Nashville as an example of why the fight is so urgent.

“This is horrifying, but hardly surprising,” Paris said. “Because there is a straight line from book banning to book burning.”

Paris claims most books that are being targeted are not actually assigned books, but are simply on school and county library shelves. She said that she understands that parents may not want their children reading books that deal with certain themes, but asks those parents to not take away the opportunity to read and explore those books from other kids.

“I just want to be clear here, be real about what the issue is here,” Paris said. “The books being targeted are almost entirely about Black people and LGBT people. If sexual content was the issue, they’d be targeting Shakespeare or Ernest Hemmingway, the Bible and we’d be standing up against banning those books, too.”

The group has launched the website BanBookBusters.com in an effort to educate and help fight back against the book banning movement. The website includes an interactive map that shows all the attempts to ban books across the country and their status. It also provides a way to procure a banned book and ways to get trained in how to push back.

Red, Wine and Blue is a group comprised of nearly 300,000 moms across the country.”

Keep this kind of movement in mind when this all starts to seem just overwhelming crazy that a few people are trying to yank books off library shelves. Most people are not small-minded lunatics. Most people are okay with sharing ideas, learning new things, and reading about a well-rounded view of history and society. We like these things; we think they are good.

There are more of us than them. Let’s keep working on this, and get through our current disaster together.