LATINO Book Festival

 

We Deserve Democratic Education

 The only reference to public schools in DSA’s Workers Deserve More program is a line pledging “free quality public education,” without explaining what “quality” might mean. At a time when MAGA is spreading reactionary ideas of what young people should learn, DSA needs to pay much more attention to this issue. 

Workers Deserve More calls for “a real democracy” in a “new political system” and “democratic control” of the economy. This assumes the American people are well-versed in the democratic ideals, values, and practices needed to actively and intelligently participate in such a society. Today this is obviously not the case. Maintaining a democratic socialist society will require a citizenry with a democratic socialist consciousness. The institutions most likely to build that consciousness, at least for the next generations, are public schools. It’s time for DSA to develop thoughtful, detailed proposals for how to restructure — indeed, revolutionize — the public education system to produce a generation of young people prepared to make all this democracy work.

Fortunately, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We just need to go back to the future and take a new look at the largely forgotten, misunderstood, and politically suppressed revolutionary pedagogy of the early twentieth-century progressive education movement. The movement’s founding father was the renowned educator John Dewey (1859–1952), a democratic socialist. His classic work, Democracy and Education, first published in 1916, laid out the principles of progressive education. 

Dewey envisioned schools not as places set apart to learn lessons, but as laboratories of democracy, with the curriculum organized entirely around democratic values. He advocated making the outside community a classroom. Education would no longer be rote instruction of academic subjects. Instead, teachers would connect it to students’ life experiences in their home communities as a foundation for learning basic skills, and a basis for actively exploring and understanding the world around them. 

Discussion and debate would be classroom practice. Students would be encouraged to question and challenge, and to advance their own suggestions about how to examine and test what they were studying, inside and outside the classroom. This would ultimately empower students and give them a sense of collective responsibility and personal involvement in the life of the school. They would work together to develop their abilities and talents and to understand they had the right and responsibility to apply what they learned to change conditions around them for the better.

Dewey and his daughter had previously published an illustrated book, The Schools of To-Morrow [sic], that described what the school curriculum should look like if the goal was education for life in a democratic society. The Deweys rejected focusing on the “Three R’s” and dividing the curriculum into separate academic subjects. They approvingly presented an example from what they called an “experiment” in Fairhope, Alaska: The usual curriculum was to be replaced with “physical exercise, nature study, music, hand work, field geography, storytelling, sense culture, fundamental conceptions of numbers, dramatization, and games.” Out of this would come, in its own time, knowledge of those “three R’s.” The charming pictures in this book depict students working in groups at all kinds of hands-on activities inside and outside the classroom, including building their own school, thereby creating a direct connection between their studies and the real life of the community.

This approach required a rethinking of theories of how children learn. Boyd H. Bode (1873-1953), a professor of education at Ohio State University and a disciple of Dewey (and a clearer, more readable writer), discussed this in several books, including How We Learn (1940). After presenting sophisticated critiques of dominant approaches to learning, he proposed instead what he called “pragmatic education,” which would establish student experience as the basis for learning. The task of the school, he said, is “to modify or ‘reconstruct’ the background of experience which the pupil brings with him … our chief reliance in this connection is on thinking.” The point would be to help students navigate new experiences in real life. Education becomes dynamic rather than static. 

To Bode, democracy was a matter of cooperation, respect, and mutual understanding among divergent groups to achieve a better social order. So then “the task of democratic schools is to develop individual capacity with a specific reference … to the issue of democracy as a way of life. The life of the school should embody this .., the school is a form of social living, in which every pupil has both rights and responsibilities … it is precisely this spirit of democracy for which the schools must assume specific responsibility — in the organization of school life, in community relations, and in the promotion of insight or understanding of the meaning of democracy.”

How Monopoly Fascism Came to Power : Nazis and Trump

 https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/82/how-monopoly-fascism-rose-again/

Trump Hides the Truth

 

An Architecture of Ignorance

Gas prices were hovering just below $3 a gallon in late February before Donald Trump decided to attack Iran. Due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the national average peaked in early May near $4.50, a 50 percent increase. When Trump capitulated in June and paused bombing, the average price dropped to just above $4. With expectations of protracted conflict ahead, it’s now around $4.40. We know all of this because gas prices are public and easy to monitor, and because the AAA motor club keeps a well-respected calculator. We also know that fear of measurables—the price of gas, the cost of food, the stock market—is the primary, perhaps the only, discipline on Trump’s anti-democratic instincts. Numbers gave citizens ammunition to apply political pressure. That is what numbers are for. They show us where the problem is, and whether anything we did about it worked. But the numbers that matter most to a democracy are not as easy to track. Unemployment, educational attainment, what pollutes the air outside a chemical plant; this data needs to be primarily collected and distributed by the federal government. And over the course of his second term, Trump has systematically dismantled this capacity. He is building what we call an “architecture of ignorance,” and its cost is the slow disabling of democratic accountability itself. One of us is a historian, the other an engineer who spends his days inside the small discipline of observability, the science of inferring a system’s internal state from its outputs. The distinction that discipline draws is between monitoring and seeing. Monitoring tells you the server is powered on. Observability tells you whether it is doing its work as intended. A system that loses observability has not necessarily failed; rather, it has become unknowable. It may be running correctly, or it may have begun to fail an hour ago. From the outside, there is no way to tell. In airplane terms, an altimeter goes dark, and whether the aircraft is at 30,000 feet or 600 is a question that admits no answer until impact. That is how the systems analyst sees Trump 2.0. Monitors all over the place are going dark. The historian’s eye runs the other way, toward precedent. Societies that lose the ability to measure themselves rarely register the loss as it happens. They register it afterward, in the accumulated weight of consequences that only become legible once it is too late to do anything about them. Between the two of us, we are terrified by what we are watching. One of us can see the mechanism failing in real time; the other knows how this kind of story tends to end.

Fascists Oppose Literate People

The Banned Books Week Coalition encourages us to stand up for library staff, students, educators, writers, publishers, and booksellers by “Letting Freedom Read”

The forty-fourth annual Banned Books Week (BBW) takes place October 4 through 10 this year, but given the significant, sustained efforts to restrict what young people can read, Banned Books Week should likely be observed every week. We are living in a time of increased attacks on the free press, free speech, academic freedom, and the rights to read and know. This year’s BBW theme, “Let Books Be: Protect the Freedom to Read,” reflects these concerns.

A recently published five-year report compiled by the American Library Association (ALA), Book Riot, Florida Freedom to Read Project, and the Freedom to Read Project chronicled an explosion of book bans beginning in 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The surge was the result of what they called “a full-blown, organized political movement” led by groups such as Moms for Liberty and No Left Turn in Education. Censors have had the most success in Florida and Texas, where state legislatures have passed laws requiring schools to purge their libraries of books that attract complaints from parents. But they have increasingly targeted local school board positions across the country to embed members who advance their censorious policies.

While book challenges were once focused primarily on individual books or authors and were brought by concerned parents or family members acting on their own behalf, the past half-decade shows a shift to sweeping challenges from organized interest groups. These efforts have been successful in red states and beyond, which should alarm anyone who supports the right to read and learn.

According to Betsy Gomez, coordinator of the Banned Books Week Coalition, ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom “tracked 4,235 unique titles challenged in 2025, the second highest ever documented by ALA,” and “713 attempts to censor library materials and services, 487 of which targeted books.” In 2025, the ALA found that “92 percent of all book challenges were initiated by pressure groups, government officials and decision makers, up from 72 percent in 2024” and “less than 3 percent of challenges originated from individual parents.”

Tactics and Targets

Books being yanked off the shelves at schools around the country include a number of acknowledged literary classics such as Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, usually singled out for their violent or sexual content. But the most challenged books in recent years invariably tell stories about people of color or LGBTQ+ characters.

According to PEN America, public school libraries banned 3,743 unique titles during the 2024–2025 school year. Roughly 44 percent of those titles featured characters identified as people of color. Another 36 percent featured characters identified as LGBTQ+, and some 19 percent of the banned titles dealt with characters depicted as trans or genderqueer. A typical book targeted for featuring LGBTQ+ characters and themes is Malinda Lo’s Last Night at the Telegraph Club, a National Book Award-winning young adult novel about two women who fall in love in San Francisco’s Chinatown against the backdrop of the Cold War. According to PEN America, it was banned nineteen times in 2024–25.

Some books have been banned merely for acknowledging that the United States has a past marred by slavery, oppression, and exploitation, or for depicting struggles for social justice. For instance, Veronica Arreola’s J is for Justice: An Activism Alphabet, an illustrated picture book introducing youngsters to social justice activism, was one of nearly 596 titles removed from Department of Defense school libraries earlier this year. It was also removed from a Virginia school library.

Book banning at the K-12 level is bad enough, but increasingly brazen censors are also trying to restrict the sort of books that can be read in college as well. Early this year, Texas A&M University barred a philosophy professor from assigning an excerpt from Plato’s Symposium, his famous dialogue about the nature of love, because it allegedly contained “gender ideology.” The University of Nebraska at Kearney announced in June that it would discontinue the textbook Discovering Human Sexuality in courses after fielding multiple complaints from conservative critics, including Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen. The critics particularly bemoaned a training module in the book about empowering transgender students.

Although most of the book challenges around the country in the past few years have been perpetrated by right-wing groups and politicians, not all the titles being targeted are “progressive” or “woke.” For instance, two books by former Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly, about Jesus and Ronald Reagan, were removed from shelves in one Florida school district.

These extraordinary efforts to control student access to works about specific academic subjects or marginalized identities are problematic on their own, but a separate challenge exacerbates all of this: declining literacy and interest in reading.

A Decline in Literacy

 

Be prepared to vote. Each vote is vital.

 

Many states have voter registration deadlines coming up. Even if you think you're registered to vote, we encourage you to check your voter registration status now so that there is time to update it in case you have been dropped from the voter rolls. We've also made it easy to make your plan to vote. We've put all the information in one place: your early voting options, polling place location, sample ballot, and more.  Check out our easy tool to make your plan to vote!

Make Your Plan Today  ➤

We deserve pro-public education leaders who work together to solve problems, not make our lives harder. From gas prices to groceries, housing to health care, and nearly everything in between, it has never been so expensive to raise kids or teach them. The best way to protect our freedom to vote is to turn out in record numbers.Check your registration, make a plan to vote early, and ensure your friends and family do the same. Be sure your voice is heard and your vote is counted in the midterm elections. Confirm your voter registration and make your plan to vote. In solidarity, The NEA EdAction Team

Political Reforms

https://youtu.be/sjAlkvjdhww?si=xNYqad8sx7EuypNP

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Education Voters Guide

EDUCATION VOTER’S GUIDE

for the most critical education-related races in Sacramento County

CREATED BY EDUCATORS FOR EVERYONE

This list informs voters about which candidates stand for democracy in public education.

This is a vetted list. To see the candidates endorsments, priorites and experience see our online guide here.

STATEWIDE EDUCATION POSTS

State Superintendent for Public Instruction (SSPI)

RICHARD BARRERA

LOS RIOS COMMUNITY COLLEGE BOARD

Los Rios Community College District Governing Board Member, Trustee Area 1

DEVON GRAVES

Los Rios Community College District Governing Board Member, Trustee Area 2

ORANIT LIMMANEEPRASERT

REGIONAL PREK-12 SCHOOL BOARDS

San Juan Unified School District Governing Board Member, Trustee Area 3

ROXANNE STELLMACHER

San Juan Unified School District Governing Board Member, Trustee Area 7

MURAD “MOE” SARAMA

Elk Grove Unified School District Governing Board Member, Trustee Area 2

MICHAEL VARGAS

Elk Grove Unified School District Governing Board Member, Trustee Area 4

DELIA BAULWINEDUCATION VOTER’S GUIDE

for the most critical education-related races in Sacramento County

CREATED BY EDUCATORS FOR EVERYONE

REGIONAL PREK-12 SCHOOL BOARDS

Elk Grove Unified School District Governing Board Member, Trustee Area 5

VARINDER SINGH

Folsom Cordova Unified School District Governing Board Member, Trustee Area 1

KARA LOFTHOUSE

Folsom Cordova Unified School District Governing Board Member, Trustee Area 3

SUSAN CUNNINGHAM

Natomas Unified School District Governing Board Member, Trustee Area 4

LENG LAI

Dry Creek Joint Elementary School District Governing Board Member, Trustee Area 3

TONYA HARRIS

Robla School District Governing Board Member (Vote for 3)

JORGE E. MENDOZA

SABRINA OLIVER

WHO PUT THIS TOGETHER? This guide was thoughtfully put together by members from

Educators Resist, Coalition Against Project 2025, & Sacramento Indivisible with critical help

from teachers’ unions and other local educators.

EDUCATION VOTER GUIDE:

Detailed Information

GUÍA EDUCATIVA PARA EL

VOTANTE: Información detallada

ENGLISH SPANISH