It’s National Library Week, so I’ve been thinking a lot about knowledge and the idea that knowledge should be readily available – for all. An informed populace is crucial to the health of the nation and a bulwark of democracy. The ability to think, to reason, to avoid being fooled, all these notions are tied to reading and easy access to the wisdom of the ages.
And this is exactly why libraries – and their contents – are under siege these days.
HuffPost’s Jennifer Bendery recently told readers:
“Librarians are living in constant fear. They have become the targets
of Republican politicians and far-right groups like Moms for Liberty
Liberty that are hellbent on burning books about LGBTQ+ people,
people of color and racism. Some librarians are quitting their jobs
because of constant harassment; others are getting fired for
refusing to clear shelves of books that conservatives don’t like.”
If that’s not bad enough – and it is – Bendery informs us there’s another evil twist in the tale: “The GOP’s censorship campaign has shifted from book bans to legislation threatening librarians with jail time.” Idaho’s tried several times to enact such legislation; this February, West Virginia passed a bill “making librarians criminally liable if a minor comes across content that some might consider obscene.” Idaho, Iowa, Alabama, and Georgia are also considering various means of keeping books they don’t like off the shelves...and they’re not alone.
The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom shared some frightening statistics: “The number of titles targeted for censorship at public libraries increased by 92% over the previous year, accounting for about 46% of all book challenges in 2023; school libraries saw an 11% increase over 2022 numbers.”
Given these ever-more-frequent, ever-more-strident attacks, what can a concerned reader do to stem the tide of book-banning?
PEN America, an organization whose mission “is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible,” offers a number of ways to make one’s voice heard. Whether you’re a student, a parent, an author, or a librarian, PEN America provides advice, assistance, and resources to keep you informed and ready to push back.
The need to support the nation’s libraries is more urgent than ever. In Bendery’s HuffPost piece, American Library Association President Emily Drabinski draws a chilling conclusion: “What gets lost in conversations about book banning is that it’s really about eliminating the institution of the library, period. It’s not about the books. Well, it is about the books, but the books are the way in to gut one of the last public institutions that serves everyone.”
“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture,” Ray Bradbury once said. “Just get people to stop reading them.”
Bradbury was one of the 20th century’s finest fabulists, the author of The Martian Chronicles, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and the worldwide blockbuster Fahrenheit 451. Published in 1952, the novel Fahrenheit 451 is set in a future where books are illegal and firemen don’t put out fires – they start them. Printed matter is what they burn.
Bradbury was writing in the tense, paranoid early years of the McCarthy era. But he might as well have penned those words last Thursday.
Support your local library. Speak up for the voices the hate-mongers would shut down. Before – as history’s proven again and again – they try to shut down yours.
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Students fight a book ban by giving away free banned bookswww.youtube.com
The New York Public Library has also weighed in on the matter, you can find its suggestions here.
Debunking Trump Tweets: Can Trump Delay the Election?
Trump's latest tweet has sparked questions across the nation.
Of all the senseless tweets we've had to make sense of since Donald Trump was elected president of the United States in 2016, one of the most alarming went out on July 30th.
The tweet reads: "With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???"
For obvious reasons, many people around the world reacted strongly to the suggestion that Trump may try to delay the election. It's long been speculated that President Trump will dispute election results should he lose in November 2020, and this tweet seems to support the idea that Trump is priming his followers to question the validity of the results.
Does Trump have the power to delay the election?
Luckily, Trump does not actually have the power to delay the election, and it's incredibly unlikely that Congress would allow a delay.
By law, the presidential election is held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. For that date to be changed, both houses of Congress (the House of Representatives and the Senate) would need to approve the delay. The constitution is very clear on the matter of election date change, and Congress would have to undertake the arduous process of amending the constitution in order to change the date.
As The New York Times points out, "Article II of the Constitution empowers Congress to choose the timing of the general election. An 1845 federal law fixed the date as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. It would take a change in federal law to move that date. That would mean legislation enacted by Congress, signed by the president and subject to challenge in the courts."
Prominent law experts have also spoken out and confirmed that Trump doesn't have the power to move the election, including Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias.
Is universal mail-In voting a bad idea?
Not at all. In fact, mail-in voting has been a major part of elections since the Civil War when soldiers voted by mail from the battle field. Voter fraud is extremely rare in any case.
According to a study by the Brennan Center for Justice, incident rates of voter fraud in mail-in situations are between .0003% and .0025% nationwide. Oregon, the first state to institute universal mail in voting in 2000, have only documented about a dozen cases of proven fraud in the last two decades. According to The New York Times, "Numerous studies have shown that all forms of voting fraud are very rare in the United States. A panel that Mr. Trump established to investigate election corruption was disbanded in 2018 after it found no real evidence of fraud. Experts have said that voting by mail is less secure than voting in person, but it is still extremely rare to see broad cases of voter fraud."
Does mail-in voting disproportionately benefit the Democratic party?
It's unlikely. As the Brooking Institute points out, "The first state to adopt a universal mail-in ballot program was Oregon in 2000. Shortly after it was enacted, Adam J. Berinsky, Nancy Burns, and Michael W. Traugott sought to explore the impact of the new law. They found that voting by mail did not bring substantial numbers of new voters into electorate, nor did it have any effect on whether the electorate was more Democratic or more Republican. The only effect they found was that it helped keep regular voters in the electorate."
A Stanford study on the subject found: "(1) vote-by-mail does not appear to affect either party's share of turnout; (2) vote-by-mail does not appear to increase either party's vote share; and (3) vote-by-mail modestly increases overall average turnout rates, in line with previous estimates. All three conclusions support the conventional wisdom of election administration experts and contradict many popular claims in the media."
In summary, it is incredibly unlikely that Donald Trump will be successful in delaying the election, and he is incorrect about mail-in voting being subject to widespread voter fraud.
Check out this helpful graphic for more information:
- Donald Trump ›
- Donald Trump Is Encouraging His Supporters to Spread Death ›
- When Will We Know The Results of the 2020 Presidential Election? - Liberty Project ›