In high-school, my friend Charlie and I once poked into an abandoned Victorian house in our hometown. Up in the attic, we found a secret door to a space containing several boxes of books.

One held 50 copies of The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine’s 1794 treatise ridiculing the myths of Christian theology and the Bible. Hot, forbidden stuff! In Paine’s day, the book had been widely banned. Charlie and I each took a copy to read, found Paine’s thoughts mind-opening, and then did something that would be dangerous today: We gave the box of books to our town’s library for public distribution.

Amazingly, no one’s head exploded and no gaggle of fanatics demanded that our town’s librarian be fired. The library just quietly and gladly received the books.

Today, though, a few right-wing extremist groups roam our country trying to foment panic over books that critique everything from Christian Nationalism to the corporate order, as well as books written by or about women, people fighting racism, or the LGBTQ community. Such maniacal book bans nearly tripled in the last school year, taking some 10,000 titles off school bookshelves.

But these ideological pecksniffs now face blowback from a growing “freedom to read” movement, with gutsy local activists defying the screeching, self-appointed censors in communities across America. Especially impressive are young people themselves who’re attending local library and school board meetings, telling officials they will not obey political dictates on what not to read or believe. They’ve even launched a movement urging people to read  “Read Banned Books.”

This is Jim Hightower saying… To join the grassroots “freedom to read” rebellion, go to the American Library Association: ala.org.

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