Libraries are important public resources where free speech is practiced and supported

Florida's Republican Governor Ron DeSantis Doesn’t Want You To Learn About Real Black History

Echo opinion letters published on Yahoo.com:

Gov. DeSantis moves to ban social-studies books. Florida wants to 
whitewash history by refusing to buy social-studies textbooks that teach concepts it deems objectionable.

Echo opinions to protect libraries!

To the editor: I have a question for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has been at the forefront of the right-wing culture war against schools and libraries.

Have you met Martha Hickson, who was mentioned in The Times' recent piece on librarians? In case she is under your radar, Hickson is a high school librarian in New Jersey who has come under attack. Where she lives and works, individuals demanded that the libraries be cleansed of books, and hence ideas, that don't meet their definition of safe thinking.

She was quoted as saying, "These people wanting to ban books have a whole political machinery around them, and are using books as proxies to attack people."

Hickson is a person with a clear manner of identifying the true reason for such loud intransigence. She is a "soldier" of a nation that was founded on ideas — ideas such as all people are created equal, and they have the right to express those ideas without politicians twisting the mechanics of democracy to further their own careers.

You could learn something.

Andy Siegel, Santa Barbara, California

Being on TikTok tells young people that “we’re here, we hear you, we feel you,” said Celia Greer, left, a teen coordinator at the Kankakee Public Library, with her colleague Tamara Martinez. Credit...Lawrence Agyei for The New York Times

To the editor: What a contrast — in one article, we read of efforts to control free speech and thought in American libraries, and in another we read about France's efforts to fight racism and build tolerance.

Ours is a very backward country in many ways, and this is one of them.  My mother, as the only woman at the time on the Yucaipa school board, endured similar harassment in 1990, because she supported keeping an English book series that had stories about witches.

This is not about the books. It's about political control to advance an agenda that disenfranchises people and keeps the white Republican male in power.

Sandy Mishodek, Running Springs, California.