Here's a recent piece on Texas' medieval “book ban law," or House Bill 900, that passed in the regular 88th (2023)Texas Legislative Session. The short of it is that banning books violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and is just plain bad for business—or as Molly Ivins used to say—"bid-ness," in Texas. This specific piece addresses the converting of some Houston Schools' libraries into detention centers referenced in the piece I just posted to this blog.
What distinguishes us as a democracy is freedom of speech, thought, and equal protection under the law. I wish those filing suit a successful day in court, beginning with a preliminary injunction hearing in Federal Court on August 18th here in Austin, Texas. If we can't win these battles in the legislature, we must turn to the courts.
-Angela Valenzuela
Texas' book ban law isn't just bad. It's bad business. (Opinion)
Valerie Koehler, owner of Blue Willow Bookshop, is part of a lawsuit aimed at stopping a law that would require bookstores to label books with sexual content.
Brett Coomer/Staff photographer
It is only fitting that the battle over House Bill 900, Texas’ new “book ban law," would start at the Alamo — or, to be more specific, across the street at the historic Menger Hotel. In April, more than 75 booksellers had gathered there to preview and celebrate the year’s forthcoming books. The star writer in the room that day was Houston’s Bryan Washington. Among those on hand to take it all in were more than a dozen new booksellers who have opened stores in the state in recent years, including David and Dara Landry, owners of CLASS bookstore.
The booksellers were concerned. The Texas Legislature was about to vote on and pass the new law that demands, in part, that “library material vendors,” including booksellers and publishers, create and implement a rating system for books sold to Texas schools and school libraries based on the book's “sexual” content. The intent, said lawmakers, was to protect children and keep pornography out of schools. (A cause that would be better served by taking away their phones and shutting off the school Wi-Fi.) The consequence of not doing so or getting the rating wrong, according to the state, is to be blacklisted from selling books to any Texas schools.
What’s ironic is that for all of Texas’ flag-waving talk about personal freedom, independence and freedom of speech, this law is akin to those in China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Turkey or Russia — all countries where the government controls what books can be published and put on sale.
That’s some nefarious company.
Something had to be done about this intimidation, the booksellers agreed. And the fight was on.Last week, Houston bookseller Valerie Koehler, owner of Blue Willow Bookshop joined Charley Rejsek, CEO of BookPeople bookstore in Austin, in filing a lawsuit in federal court to try and get the law struck down. The pair were joined in their case by the American Booksellers Association, the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund — a group that represents pretty much anyone and everyone who writes or sells you a book.
Their argument is that not only does the law violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments, but that it is vague, sweeping and, frankly, untenable. As Koehler put it to me for an article about the lawsuit in Publishers Weekly, “The hours, the payroll that it would require for us to check and rate every book we sell, and then do it retroactively for the all the books we’ve ever sold, as the law implies we must do, is just absurd. Our job is to sell, not rate, books.”
If you’re not familiar, Koehler’s store, Blue Willow, is nationally known and considered one of the best in the country. It runs hundreds of events a year, including numerous author visits to schools and three book festivals for children and teens, including Bookworm Festival, Tweens Read, and Teen BookCon. She estimates sales to schools account for 20 percent of her annual revenue. For bookstores that operate on extremely thin margins — 3 percent profit is considered good — this lost revenue could be catastrophic.
To call this law foolhardy is to be kind to it. It’s simply ignorant. Rejsek told me that in the debate on the floor of the Legislature the lawmakers presumed this would only impact a handful of vendors, 50 or so at most. Instead, it impacts hundreds. No company, not even Amazon, could comply with this law. It’s an exercise in existential bullying, simply put. Or maybe the lawmakers are hoping AI can step in and take over the job.
The chilling effect of the law is already being felt. The Katy ISD school board has said that it will not put any new books in circulation until the books are reviewed for content. Expect this to be the case more and more often in other Texas counties. And sometimes, the educators themselves take the lead on curtailing access to books, such as new HISD superintendent Mike Miles who is converting the libraries of some challenged schools into centers where disciplined kids will be sent. That’s the way to promote a lifelong love of reading and literature: Equate being among books as punishment.One cannot help but think that the passage of HB 900 reeks of grandstanding and currying favor. Why go after booksellers and librarians, and not, for example, the large media and telecom companies that pump the internet and its trillions of sexually explicit (and worse, much, much worse) images and content directly onto our phones, iPads and computers? Could it be that this would, by extension, implicate every parent who ever bought their child a mobile phone? Or more likely lawmakers probably thought the bookish people were soft targets; after all, the tech companies have deep pockets and, let’s be frank, are pumping billions of dollars through the Texas economy. The booksellers? They don’t account for nearly as much.
What’s more, I suspect there’s a certain amount of self-congratulation among the politicians that they outsmarted the smarty-pants people. Readers are to be viewed as suspicious; after all, they might learn to think for themselves. This isn’t new: look up the late Houston comedian’s Bill Hick’s routine from the 1990s, “What are you reading for?” on YouTube.
Koehler and her colleagues in bookselling and publishing are fighting uphill. They also know that the only argument that politicians will listen to is one that concerns money. “To be honest, I never thought this law would pass. No one in their right mind did,” Koehler told me. “Clearly no one thought this through. In one of the most business-friendly states in America, this is one of the most business-unfriendly laws ever passed.”
A preliminary injunction hearing is being held in Austin on Aug. 18. What can you do to help in the fight? In the past, I might have told you to “write to your legislator.” But it appears our legislators don’t like to read and at this point, that option is passed.
Ideally, I’d urge you to go to Austin and show your support for our freedom to read in person. I know I’ll be there. But if that is not an option for you, how about this: Go to a bookstore. Talk to a bookseller. Ask for a recommendation. Buy the book. Read it. And repeat. You get extra points if you share it with your children, their teachers, friends and family.
It’s easy. That’s it. Buy books. Read. Repeat. Vote with your dollars. Then, when the time comes, vote the knuckleheads responsible for this out of office.
Ed Nawotka is a Houston-based writer and the international editor at Publishers Weekly.
No comments:
Post a Comment