A Sign of Hope in the Fight Against Authoritarianism
How marching as the books you love and want to protect may build the pro-democracy movement
Saturday evening in Doyleston, Pennsylvania, a group of residents put on clunky pasteboard outfits each depicting the cover of a different book: Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison, All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. They were out as part of Banned Books Week, a nationwide campaign to insist on the freedom to read that is pushing back against rising efforts to ban books or limit access to them because they address sexual or racial topics in ways that conservatives want to suppress. In addition to marching, organizers also collected dozens of copies of targeted books and distributed them to Little Free Libraries around the region.
I love it. Those of us who are worried about the future of American democracy have been looking for ways to act tangibly and positively in response to the rising wave of antidemocratic fervor in the country, and these Doyleston marchers may have found a great new tactic. Walking as the books we want to protect is a wonderful way to visibly say what we are for. It takes the conflict over the freedom to read into the public square and it does so in a way that is easy to replicate. And anyone…
