INDIVISIBLE Lambertville NJ / New Hope PA

Category: Education

ILNH Gathering March 19, 2023 | Speaker Martha Hickson – Resources

Indivisible-Lambertville resources

March 21, 2023
Keep an Eye on the North Hunterdon-Voorhees Board of Education
by Amy Barrett

You may have seen articles about hundreds of books being banned in Florida and photos of empty classroom bookshelves in Manatee County. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis claims that books are being removed from school libraries because they are “pornographic, violent, or inappropriate.” In reality, dozens of books are being banned because they touch on LGBTQ+ themes, include protagonists of color, portray the ugliness of racism, or even discuss climate change. Closer to home, books with LGBTQ+ themes have been challenged in Central Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

You might think this couldn’t happen here in New Jersey, where we have a Democratic governor and state legislature. Unfortunately, it is already happening here. Members of extremist groups such as Moms for Liberty are filing complaints against books and school librarians, railing against sex education curriculum and equity in education policies at school board meetings. They’re running for board of education seats – and winning since so few people actually follow school board candidates.

I am a member of the North Hunterdon-Voorhees Intellectual Freedom Fighters (more about us later). My family has lived in the North Hunterdon-Voorhees area for 35 years, and the events in that district is first of a series focusing on similar activities in our area schools.

Book Banning

In September 2021, during Banned Books Week, a parent complained at a board of education about two LGBTQ+ themed books in the North Hunterdon High School library: Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison and Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe. She also mentioned North Hunterdon librarian Martha Hickson by name, accusing her and
the board members of “grooming our kids” and promoting “child pornography.” Soon complaints were made against three additional LGBTQ+ themed books.

Martha Hickson was harassed with hate-filled emails and attempts to file criminal charges against her with the Hunterdon County Prosecutor’s office and local police department. Hickson’s doctor put her on medical leave due to stress-induced physical and emotional issues. Within a few weeks, however, she returned – reenergized with a mission to save the books and support the students who needed them.

Many members of the North Hunterdon-Voorhees community—students, alumni, parents, friendly colleagues—supported Hickson and spoke at board meetings in favor of keeping the books. They revived a community group called the North Hunterdon-Voorhees Intellectual Freedom Fighters (NHVIFF), which had been formed two years earlier, when the superintendent tried to remove Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home from the school libraries. This time, school policy required that a committee be appointed to review the challenged books. The committee recommended keeping four of the five books, without providing much detail on why the fifth book, This Book Is Gay by Juno Dawson, should be removed. Students spoke out in defense of this book, and in January 2022, a board majority voted to keep all five books.

For her efforts in preventing censorship, supporting librarians under attack by censors, and raising public awareness of book banning, Martha Hickson was awarded the American Library Association’s Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced with Adversity and the National Coalition Against Censorship’s Judith Krug Outstanding Librarian
award.

Racist Videos

In 2021, LGBTQ+ students spoke about how they felt marginalized by book-banning efforts at North Hunterdon. In 2023, black students told their stories of experiencing racism at the school. Several videos, showing students at North using racial slurs, were circulated among the student body. During the almost hour-long public comments segment of the February 28 board of education meeting, a young black man who recently graduated from North described his wrestling teammates parading around the locker room in towels wrapped as KKK hoods after competing against an all-black team. A young woman was reduced to tears as she repeated some of the names she has been called at school. All speakers agreed that the school’s letter to parents about one video and unspecified disciplinary action were not enough. The board promised to form a committee of community stakeholders, including students, to make recommendations on how to change the culture.

2022 BOE Election

Defeat of the North Hunterdon-Voorhees book-banning attempt was not the end of the story. Some of the same people (or their spouses) who spoke in support of banning books ran for the North Hunterdon-Voorhees board of education in November 2022. Their official “Education with Purpose” platform was “transparency” between school and
parents, “parental rights,” and the “safety” of all children, but their comments on Facebook pages such as NJ Fresh-Faced Schools refer to critically acclaimed LGBTQ+ themed books as “pedophilia” and “filth.” Their Facebook comments were more concerned with curriculum standards that “discriminate against whites” than with actual racism directed toward black students at school, and their concern for “parental rights” was only for the rights of parents who shared their extremist views.

Two of these candidates were defeated, but a third, Nicole Gallo (representing Lebanon Township and High Bridge), was elected to the North Hunterdon-Voorhees board. Gallo, who wore a Mom’s for Liberty t-shirt to one board meeting before she was elected, spoke at a board meeting last summer where she called Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion curriculum “ racist ” because it “excludes white males.” Based on last year’s votes on book banning, Gallo has some allies on the 12-person board, though not a majority.

As voters, we need to stay vigilant and involved. We need to know who is running for our local and regional boards of education. North Hunterdon-Voorhees area residents need to be informed voters when four seats (Califon/Tewksbury, Clinton Town/Franklin Township/Glen Gardner, and two seats representing Clinton Township./Lebanon Borough) come up for election in November 2023.
What Can I Do?

If you live or work or attended school in Hunterdon County and care about these issues, what can you do?
- Attend board meetings regularly. A once-a-month meeting is not a major time
  commitment.
- Speak at board meetings. Speak about your commitment to racial justice or soli–
  darity with LGBTQ+ students or support for students’ right to read. Or just thank
  the board members (if the majority are not extremists) for their continuing com–
  mitment to these issues. You can be brief (20 seconds to 3 minutes), and you
  can read something you wrote in advance if you aren’t comfortable with extempo–
  raneous speaking.
- Be aware of who is representing your town on the board and their position on
  these issues. BOE elections are important, not just an afterthought at the bottom
  of the ballot. Be skeptical of “parents rights,” “students first,” and “transparency”
  rhetoric. Vote knowledgeably. Contact groups such as North Hunterdon
  Voorhees Intellectual Freedom Fighters, Action Together New Jersey, or even
  the Hunterdon County Democratic Committee for candidate recommendations
  (though not all moderate candidates will affiliate as Democrats).
- Run for the board of education in your town or regional high school district if
  there is an open seat or if the incumbent has values different from your own.
March 21, 2023
We can’t get to equality if we don’t teach Black history | Article by George O’Connor

Founded in 1906, the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma was one of the most prosperous African-American communities in the United States, and was nicknamed “Black Wall Street.” However, on May 31, 1921, the community became the target of two days of racial violence, resulting in 300 deaths, 800 injuries, and the destruction of 35 city blocks, leaving 9,000 homeless. The community never recovered, and the survivors and their families never received reparations. Despite the devastating effects, the event was largely unknown to white Americans – and even many Black Americans – until it was portrayed in the first episode of the HBO series Watchmen, premiering nearly a century later. Even showrunner Damon Lindelof did not learn about it until a few years before writing the series.

TV shows like Watchmen are picking up the pieces in covering black history because the American school system has failed to do so. Oklahoma schools weren’t required to teach about the Tulsa massacre until 2002. In 1996, Chris Rock famously joked about how he once failed a Black history class, saying “When you go to white schools you learn about Europe up the ass, but you don’t learn that much about Africa… All I learned in school about being Black was Martin Luther King.” According to Education Week, “Since January 2021, 44 states have introduced bills or taken other steps that would restrict teaching critical race theory or limit how teachers can discuss racism and sexism… [of which] Eighteen states have imposed these bans and restrictions either through legislation or other avenues.”

Meanwhile, even schools that do teach Black history usually do it poorly. An analysis by Johns Hopkins University found that coursework often “emphasizes the negative aspects of African-American life while omitting important contributions made by people of color in literature, politics, theology, art, and medicine… Lessons will typically cover slavery and the Civil Rights movement, but omit the Harlem Renaissance, the sociology of the Great Migration, and some of the most important novels of the 20th century.”

Ashley Rogers Berner, director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, said that the teachers of these courses lack the resources to adequately cover these topics, often resorting to using Google, Pinterest, and the online marketplace Teachers Pay Teachers. The institute evaluated the English curriculum of various schools in Baltimore – the population of which is 62.4% black – and reported “36% of your secondary school texts are about the African-American experience, but the majority of them are about police brutality and incarceration… You’ve got representation; that’s not the problem. The problem is the tone and the quality and the omissions.”

Educators have also pointed out that curriculums often omit the thriving empires Africans inhabited before they were enslaved by colonizers. American history professor Daina Ramey Berry said “Those that populated the colonies were free people from communities in Africa with large scale civilizations that had tax systems, that had irrigation systems, that had universities – they came from civilized nations that were advanced. That’s where the curriculum should begin, that’s the biggest omission from my perspective. It’s an erasure of culture and heritage so that identities of African Americans for some are that of slaves and those fighting for their freedom.”

Educators like Berry have also criticized the lack of coverage of the Jim Crow laws passed by white politicians that created a racial apartheid from 1877 to the civil rights movement in the 1960s, banning African Americans from voting, attending the same schools as whites, and buying real estate in white neighborhoods. Courses also don’t cover the racial violence inflicted on prospering Black communities during Jim Crow, such as Tulsa or a similar attack waged in Ocoee, Florida the prior year. Florida schools were not required to teach the Ocoee massacre until 2020.

Professor LaGarrett King said it was important to teach about June 19, 1865, called Juneteenth, the day slaves in Texas were first informed they were freed, over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. He said “What is historically important to white people is not historically important to Black people. July 4, 1776, means nothing historically to Black people.” However, Juneteenth is not widely taught in schools, and in 2020, the Harris Poll found that 48% of Americans were mostly or completely unaware of the holiday.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is among the most vocal and active opponents of teaching Black history in schools. In 2022, DeSantis signed into law the Stop WOKE Act, which, among other things, restricted how racism could be taught in the state’s schools. That same year, the College Board introduced its first Advanced Placement course on African-American studies that was set to be implemented in about 60 high schools beginning that fall. Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr., who served as a consultant for the project, said “These are milestones which signify the acceptance of a field as being quote-unquote ‘academic’ and quote-unquote ‘legitimate.’” The Florida Department of Education rejected the new AP course in early 2023, and shortly after, the College Board significantly reduced the course’s content, including removing “the names of many Black writers and scholars associated with critical race theory, the queer experience and Black feminism.”

DeSantis was himself a history teacher at the private Darlington School in Rome, Georgia for one year, after he graduated from Yale but before he attended Harvard Law School. In 2022, a black former student of his alleged that “in history class, he was trying to play devil’s advocate that the South had good reason to fight [the Civil War], to kill other people, over owning people – Black people. He was trying to say, ‘It’s not OK to own people, but they had property, businesses.’” Another student claimed that DeSantis’ defense of the Confederacy was so widely known among students that he became the subject of satirical videos.

DeSantis and many other conservative politicians and activists claim that teaching America’s history of racism would instill in young minds a hatred of their country. However, CRT scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw said being open about this history simply teaches Americans to “pay attention to what has happened in this country, and how what has happened in this country is continuing to create differential outcomes so we can become that country that we say we are… [CRT] is not anti-patriotic. In fact, it’s more patriotic than those who are opposed to it because we believe in the 13th and the 14th and the 15th amendment[s]. We believe in the promises of equality, and we know we can’t get there if we can’t confront and talk honestly about inequality.”

March 21, 2023
Taking Action: Protecting and Supporting Unfettered Access to Education for All
What can you do to help protect diversity, equality and inclusion curriculum and materials and the boards, faculty and administrators who are under fire as they do so?

DO NOW:

TELL MARRIOTT HOTELS TO JUST SAY NO TO HATE! Sign a petition to ask Marriott Hotels to refuse to allow Moms for Liberty to hold its national convention in Philadelphia.

TELL THE NJ STATE LEGISLATURE EVERY STUDENT NEEDS A SCHOOL LIBRARIAN – Sign a Petition to PASS S1903

TAKE THE PLEDGE: SUPPORT THE FREEDOM TO READ WITH PEN America

REPORT ATTEMPTS AT LIBRARY CENSORSHIP! Report any attempts to remove materials from any library based on content to the New Jersey Library Association

REPORT QUESTIONABLE SCHOOL BOARD ACTIVITY to New Jersey Public Education Coalition

REPORT VIOLATIONS OF CIVIL RIGHTS! File a complaint WITH ACLU-NJ

WHAT ELSE?

SHOW UP:

Show up to school board meetings, even if you don’t have children in that school district. Education is a community effort, and we need to make sure our voices are as loud as theirs.

Organizations like HC Rise and NJ Public Education Coalition provide information about dates, time and location of school board meetings, encouraging like-minded folks to show up to counter RW extremists and be aware of topics and discussion. Often, a group showing up can cause the vocal minority to pull or modify their comments.

BE INFORMED, INFORM OTHERS:

Meet with school board candidates, make them specify their priorities, and ask them where they stand on issues of censorship, curriculum, and diversity, equity and inclusion. It can be difficult to find this information, and sometimes to contact the candidates, so engage your local media in trying to shed some light on these elections. That’s their job.

If you are part of a local organization, try to schedule a candidates’ forum, or ask the media to do a Q&A with each candidate. Make sure information is as widely available as possible.

RUN FOR SCHOOL BOARD

They are fielding candidates for every school board election they can. For them, school boards are the gateway drug to local and then national elections. It should be the same for us. If you have thought about running for office, or about ways you can serve your community, this is a great way to get started. Here is some key information:

New Jersey
- Information: New Jersey School Boards Association information about how to become a school board member:
  - How to Become a School Board Member
  - Becoming a School Board Member: Candidate Kit
- Petition filing date for Hunterdon County school board candidates: Monday, July 24, 2023
- Petition and candidate forms are available on the Hunterdon County clerk’s website under information for candidates (the current form is from 2022 so check for updates or call).
Pennsylvania
- Information: Pennsylvania School Boards Association: https://www.psba.org/
- Petition deadline to appear on the May 16 primary ballot has passed, but write-ins for the general election are still possible.
Organizations

ACLU: The ACLU has taken on numerous cases fighting censorship in violation of the First Amendment and Title IX and protection of LGBTQ+ student rights.

FILE A COMPLAINT WITH ACLU-NJ: https://www.aclu-nj.org/en/complaint-form/
- Read: Lessons Learned From Our Classroom Censorship Win Against Florida’s Stop W-O-K-E Act
Action Together NJ: One of NJ’s largest grassroots organizations is taking on the initiative to provide more information and transparency about school board members and candidates

Defense of Democracy: Defense of Democracy advocates for inclusive public education, fighting to protect students’ civil rights against hate groups. It supports legislators, educators, and administrators. It launched in November 2022, and has been effective in blocking Moms for Liberty’s efforts. It has chapters in various states, including New Jersey and Pennsylvania. DoD is organizing Chapters in NJ and PA
- Who is Defense of Democracy?
- DoD blocks Moms for Liberty school donation
Districts for Democracy: Tom Malinowski’s new PAC supporting efforts to fight censorship at the school board level.

EveryLibrary is the first and only national political action committee (PAC) for libraries.

New Jersey Library Association: REPORT ATTEMPTS AT CENSORSHIP TO THE NEW JERSEY LIBRARY ASSOCIATION. NJLA categorically rejects any efforts to censor or remove materials from any library based on content. They strongly affirm the Library Bill of Rights and the Freedom to Read Statement, first published by the American Library Association in 1953.

New Jersey Public Education Coalition: A coalition of educators, administrators, education professionals, municipal leaders and representatives as well as concerned and involved parents. The organization’s goal is to protect public schools from PACs and dark mMoney that seek to disrupt and adulterate education with hate, intolerance and racial bias. It shares information and ideas to ensure that parents are organized in each municipality and prepared with information and defenses to oppose these groups and discredit them.

Read: The radical right’s latest target: School diversity, equity & inclusion programs

HC RISE: A Hunterdon County group of concerned students and citizens organized to defend school boards, staff and administrators against attacks on DEI policies, instruction and materials. Their goal is to be a regular presence at school board meetings, and to vet school board candidates and support good ones. They are currently looking for information from districts for BOE candidate planning:
- What seats are up in November?
- Who is planning to run that is currently seated?
- What seats are at risk (running unopposed to extremists, no one running, etc.)?
OUR SCHOOLS USA: Offers a number of resources and online training for empowering parents, students, and community members to protect quality public education for all students including school board issue organizing. The organization will hold a SB candidate training April 4, 2023 at 5 PM Pacific via Zoom.

PEN America, standing at the intersection of literature and human rights, this 100-year old, global organization works to ensure that people everywhere have the freedom to create literature, to convey information and ideas, to express their views, and to access the views, ideas, and literatures of others.

Unite Against Book Bans: A national initiative to empower readers to stand together to fight censorship

On Twitter: Extremist School Board Watch – Pennsylvania: Bringing awareness about extremist school board candidates/incumbents in Pennsylvania.

Write a Letter to the Editor – Example

I write to express my deep concern about the imminent threat that extremist organizations, under the guise of “parental rights,” are posing to the quality of education we value in our public schools. By lobbying to censor books and curriculum, threatening educators, administrators and school board members, and marginalizing vulnerable students, their assault on diversity and freedom of inquiry amounts to an assault on democracy itself.

The benefits of diversity in education are well-documented. The American Psychological Association provides a breadth of research showing that “experience with issues of privilege and systemic inequity lead to positive changes in students’ attitudes and values”. In addition, an inclusive classroom provides global academic benefits, such as improved critical thinking and higher overall achievement levels for both majority and minority group members. Overall, when young people have positive diversity experiences, their interest in improving the lives of people in their communities increases. But that is increasingly under threat.

Historically, school board elections have been non-political, and perhaps for that reason, haven’t drawn a lot of interest. This apathy has enabled the election of extremists who would actively work to deny our children the education they deserve, and which they need in order to participate in our democracy.

If we want to instill in the next generation the core values on which this country was founded, we cannot let this happen. We need to show up, stand up and speak up. Anyone who is concerned about this creeping threat can, and should, take a stand in support of diversity in education:
- Show up at board meetings
- Vet school board candidates to be sure they support the values of a robust public education
- Write letters to the media, and to municipal, county and state public and school officials
- Run for a school board seat
- Report censorship and exclusionary attempts or incidents to the American Library Association and the ACLU.
- And especially, if you have children or are close to children, talk to them about what’s happening in their school and their own experience.
Holocaust survivor, author, educator and Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel said:

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”*

Take sides for students, for a better community, and for open, unfettered education that respects everyone.

*This quote was temporarily removed from a school library in Bucks County as a violation of the school’s policy banning “advocacy activities.”

(Gurin et al., 2002)

(Bowman, 2010)

(Elicker et al., 2009)

(Bowman, 2011)
March 16, 2023
Schools Under Fire: Halting MAGA’s Hate Grooming
The numbers are stunning:
- In 2022, conservative groups attempted to ban or restrict access to 1,651 individual titles according to the American Library Association
- 69% of principals in a recent survey reported ‘substantial political conflict with parents or members of the community’ over teaching about race; LGBTQ policies and practices, access to books and social-emotional learning
- Reported attacks on LGBTQ+ students increased from 15% in 2018 to 24% in 2022. More surprising is that number more than tripled in purple communities
Rarely does a week go by without hearing of yet another attempt to ban books in yet another school district, or about a mob of ‘concerned parents’ storming a school board meeting to attack members, staff and administration. Under the guise of ‘parents rights,’ conservative extremists are attempting to wrest control from educational professionals and narrowly define what is permissible curriculum and content – and far worse.

But make no mistake, what is ‘permissible’ transparently mirrors the underpinnings of white supremacy. As a matter of fact, one of the major groups behind these efforts, Moms for Liberty (M4L), is an off-shoot of the far-right conservative movement in American politics and frequently linked with groups like the Proud Boys. In the past two+ years, there has been a concerted effort by groups like M4L across the country to attend school board meetings to call for banning books and rolling back support for clubs, activities and curriculum that broaden understanding and acceptance of diversity.

Just ask Martha Hickson, North Hunterdon-Voorhees Regional High School librarian, who opposed efforts to ban five LGBTQ+ books from the school library in 2021. The attacks on Hickson were so vicious, so personal, that she took a leave from her job. She has since returned to her position and been recognized by several organizations, including the National Coalition Against Censorship. She continues to speak out about censorship and the importance of including diverse materials, and will join us at our March Gathering.

It doesn’t stop there. Extremist groups have been gaining control of school boards. While school boards are supposedly non-partisan, it cannot be denied that influence and money from MAGA Republicans is focused on recruiting and promoting candidates. The Central Bucks School Board (CBSB) majority, with ties to a Christian Nationalist group, has become so notorious in its efforts to ban books and enforce anti-inclusionary policies, that 52 school board directors from 25 PA school districts have openly condemned it for “fostering intolerance, discrimination, and targeting LGBTQ+ students for political purposes.”

Thankfully, not far behind the rise of these concerted efforts by right wing groups, comes the rise of organized resistance to counter them. The ACLU has had success filing suits under First Amendment rights to protect free speech. In October, the ACLU of Pennsylvania filed suit with the US Department of Education against CBSB under the 14th Amendment and Title IX on behalf of seven students who allege a widespread culture of discrimination against LGBQ&T students, particularly transgender and nonbinary students.

Grassroots groups are pulling people together to share strategies and resources that may virtually run the extremists out of town. Just roughly a year old, Defense of Democracy, is a non-partisan group advocating for an inclusive public education system. The organization was started by two moms to fight back against three school board candidates endorsed by M4L, who ultimately mobilized the community, doubled voter turnout and defeated the candidates. The bipartisan group now has chapters in several states, including NJ and PA.

More locally, RiseUp Doylestown has been on the front lines advocating for LGBTQ+ students for years, although it has lately been a focal point for the wrath and egregious tactics of MAGA extremists in the area. They need your help standing up to white supremecist bullies. In Hunterdon, HC RISE emerged in Fall 2022 following backlash to an LGBTQ+ club activity that threatened Hunterdon Central Regional High School’s superintendent, club advisor and board members. The growing organization now works across Hunterdon to support school boards, staff and students as they stand up to MAGA extremist demands and to vet school board candidates.

Students have a role as well. North Hunterdon-Voorhees librarian Hickson urges students to get involved and be vigilant to protect their right to read books of their choice including starting or joining ‘right to read’ school clubs, volunteering to attend library, school board and First Amendment events, and contacting state and federal legislators. In addition, The Anti-Defamation League offers a student-led program called ADL: No Place for Hate in collaboration with teachers and administrators that provides access to tools and strategies to proactively, effectively address bias and bullying incidents against any minority or marginalized group.

The irony of MAGA accusations of ‘grooming’ by providing books, curriculum and safe spaces for BiPOC and LGBTQ+ cannot be understated when the sources of those accusations are overtly grooming young members of our communities to shame, marginalize and hate. It is on us to take action and loudly proclaim that every student is valued and belongs. Come hear more at the March 19 Community Gathering!

Additional reading:
March 6, 2023