When They Come for the Books, You Know We're in Trouble

Hold on to your book, here comes Moms for Liberty! a group of extremists spawned in the Florida swamps.

They are among similar groups across America with a burning mission; ban all books they disagree with.

These groups have made it their mission to undermine educators, sabotage students' freedom to read and stoke divisive battles that distract from teaching and learning.

Some of those groups espouse Christian nationalist political views. 

Their goal is to infiltrate public schools with religious education despite the fact it's a violation of the Constitution - regarding separation of church and government.

An alarming report was released by PEN America on Monday that updated how many books were banned in the last year. There were 2,532 book bans directed at 1,648 different titles.

Johnan Friedman, the director of PEN America's free expression and education programs and author of the report, said that in the past decade "there was never organization at this scale with this much momentum." 

Particularly pernicious is the fact that the groups are not led by concerned parents. Instead, extreme conservatives who only learned about the books online without reading them are demanding officials remove them from the shelves.

The majority of the groups can be found online from local Facebook pages or groups of established conservative organizations.

The groups all have one thing in common, they're angry and frustrated over school closures, mask mandates, and vaccines. 

Throw in an extra dose of racism and anti LGBTQ beliefs, and you have one toxic brew spreading through the nation's school systems.

We must not forget history when Nazis infiltrated Germany's schools and taught little children to hate Jews. It's the same thing here.

As it stands, when they come for the books, you know we're in trouble.