PEN America
Governor Ron DeSantis has banned hundreds of books across the state of Floridacensoring themes centered on race, history, sexual orientation and gender in an effort to silence the voices and stories of marginalized communities and further his MAGA vision of a “Great American Comeback”.
Just last month, Florida school banned ‘The Hill We Climb,’ the moving poem Amanda Gorman recited at President Joe Biden’s inauguration, saying it would now be banned for young readers after a parent claimed the poem was “indoctrinating” students. The school, which claimed the poem was “not educational,” also banned “The ABCs of Black History,” a book aimed at readers aged 5 and up.
In response, Gorman, the first National Youth Poet Laureate, described feeling “emptied,” explained that she had written the poem “so that all young people could see each other in a historic moment” and said: “We must fight back”.
And we fight back.
With Ron DeSantis officially in the running for president, MoveOn is launching a “Banned Bookmobile,” filling it with books that DeSantis and other MAGA Republicans have banned in recent years, and driving it around the country to distribute those books for free. . We are able to make the Banned Bookmobile a reality thanks to the generosity of MoveOn members.
This answer matters because in the last year alone, DeSantis has instituted all of these extremist policies in Florida:
- Instituted sweeping book bans targeting books written by or about people of color and the LGBTQ+ community, books about anti-Semitism and the rise of the Nazis, and accurate depictions of American history, leaving classrooms and entire school libraries “suspended, closed, or emptied of books, permanently or temporarily,” according to PEN America.
This is DeSantis and the MAGA movement’s vision for America: a place where our histories, identities and communities are banished. The stakes are high: we must come together to fight for our freedom of expression, to build community, and for young people to see themselves reflected in the classroom through their stories and identities. DeSantis’ bans are an attack on all of our freedoms, but he can’t erase us.
This is where our forbidden bookmobile comes in.
Our members have come together to fund the Forbidden Bookmobile, which will be launched this summer. We will use this as an opportunity to have conversations with voters about MAGA’s vision for our country, provide resources for people to get involved to help defeat the GOP in 2024, and keep the topic of bans alive. of books surrounding DeSantis on the campaign trail.
While distributing as many banned books as possible to students and others who no longer have access to them thanks to MAGA politicians like Ron DeSantis.
Your dollars could expand the banned bookmobile route to follow DeSantis on campaign stops across the country in early primary states if enough funds are raised. Because MAGA Republicans aren’t just passing bans in Florida, they’re staging attacks on classrooms and instituting bans on our bodily autonomy across the country.
Here are the first 10 books we buy and donate in our forbidden bookmobile. All of these books are banned in Florida, and five were among the top 10 most banned books nationally in 2022:
- “The 1619 Project: Born on Water” – Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renée Watson
- “Not All Boys Are Blue: A Memoir Manifesto” – George M. Johnson
- “And the Tango Makes Three” – Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
- “The Bluest Eye” – Toni Morrison
- “Gender Queer: A Memoir” – Maia Kobabe
- “The Hill We Climb” – Amanda Gorman
- “I Am Jazz” – Jazz Jennings and Jessica Herthel
- “In Search of Alaska” – John Green
- Maus – Art Spiegelman
- “Out of the Darkness” – Ashley Hope Pérez
“Gender Queer: A Memoir,” a graphic novel about non-binary author Maia Kobabe’s journey to self-discovery, was the most banned book in the United States in 2022 and also received the most challenges of any book in 2023.
We want to make sure that as many people as possible get a chance to read these books and that we spread the message widely that DeSantis and the Republican Party support book banning and censorship, in addition to their other dangerous and extreme policies. which restrict our freedoms. These policies attack our bodily autonomy – from abortion to trans rights and gender-affirming health care. They carry out voter suppression and stage attacks on the poor. Our rights, our histories and our identities are all under threat.
How you can get involved:
Tick monthly to support the forbidden bookmobile. With just a monthly donation of $5, you can help fuel MoveOn’s Banned Bookmobile Inter-Country Tour so that we can continue to buy as many copies of DeSantis’ Banned Books as possible, giving them away for free, informing voters on the MAGA Republican agenda for our country, and hammering DeSantis and the GOP with bad press for as long as it takes.
We cannot wait on the sidelines while politicians like Ron DeSantis attempt to erase history and silence Americans. The more we can get the word out not just about DeSantis but the GOP as a whole, the less they can hide from the consequences of their own actions.
