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

 

No Kings : The Resistance Grows

You and I make the difference, We make the road by walking. 

 Indivisible 

It’s been a long harsh winter, but the ice is melting, and it’s time for No Kings Spring. In these newsletters, I try to inform with a bias towards action. The only way out of this mess is by recruiting a lot more people to do a lot more organizing in a lot of more communities. There’s no bigger or better opportunity to make progress against the fascists in the month of March than No Kings 3. 

No Kings 3 will be historic because we will make it historic. Less than two weeks out, I can now confirm that there will be more No Kings protests on March 28 than on any previous day in American history. 

But, as with Hands Off last April, No Kings last June, and No Kings 2 last October, I know this isn’t done until it’s done. We need this to be an enormous, historic rebuke to Trump’s regime. But whether it’s successful depends on far more than just me or Indivisible -- it depends on the leadership, courage, and commitment of millions of people around the globe. 

This is a grassroots-driven event, which means it will succeed or fail because of what we all do to organize, recruit, and prepare. There are no corporate sponsors, there’s no massive advertising campaign, and despite what the right-wing wackjobs obsess about, nobody’s sending big checks to protestors. It’s up to us -- all of us. 

The good news is we’re not alone.

Momentum is building -- you can hear it. Last weekend, Leah and I went down to Selma for the Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee's commemoration of the 61st anniversary of Bloody Sunday and the fight for a real, multiracial democracy. We were there because Indivisible received the Freedom Flame award, and we wanted to experience the history of that pivotal moment in Civil Rights History first-hand. I’d recommend anyone and everyone go next year. You’ll learn from and be inspired by the leaders who paved the road for our democracy with blood, sweat, and tears. 

You’ll also find lots of friends.

We were humbled when Faya Ora Rose Touré, the civil rights legend who cofounded the Jubilee, came up to us and shared a song she'd written for No Kings. You can see the lyrics here.

All of us can organize. I love that No Kings is becoming so well-known that talented people all over the world are creating art in support of the movement. Nils Lofgren -- guitarist for the E Street band with Bruce Springsteen -- sent us his new song: No Kings, No Hate, No Fear. Neither he nor Springsteen had planned to write new protest music or even go on tour this spring, but after the crackdown in the Twin Cities, they decided they had to do a No Kings protest tour, kicking off in Minneapolis after the flagship No Kings protest there on March 28. 

But you don’t have to be a world famous artist to help make No King 3 into something historic. I’m not talking about money -- I’m talking about effort. With twelve days left to go, here are the three things I’d recommend:

1. Register your local No Kings events! If your No Kings protest isn’t yet on the map, you’ve got until Wednesday, March 25 at 11:59pm PT to register it. Rule of thumb: if you go to the map and can’t find a protest within 30 minutes of where you live, start planning your own! 
2. Train up. If you’re looking for training on safety, de-escalation, marketing, digital, or constitutional rights, we’ve got you covered. If your Indivisible group needs support, reach out to your organizer to walk you through the esources we provide. Ultimately this is up to you and your group, but you’re not alone and we can help!
3. Recruit. Yes you should post to social media, but don’t just rely on the largely regime-friendly tech platforms to spread the word. At your favorite coffee shop, on Nextdoor, or among friends -- invite folks to join you. Find three people who didn't attend No Kings last year. Have a conversation about the moment we’re in, and ask them to come with you on March 28. This is old-school and more time consuming than just posting online -- but nothing is more effective at actually building the movement.

As Faya Rose put it, without democracy, we cannot be free. That’s why we march, that’s why we sing: No kings, no kings.

In solidarity, 
Ezra Levin 
Co-Executive Director, Indivisible

The Resistance Continues for us all.

 Six days from now, next Saturday, on the third No Kings Day, we will proclaim our refusal to submit. We will march against this vile regime in larger numbers than have ever protested in America. 

This alone won’t bring down Trump, of course, but it will show lawmakers on both sides of the aisle the breadth and depth of the opposition to him. This is essential to strengthening their backbones against him. 

It will also show each of us that we’re not alone. It will show hope and determination all around us. 

It will show us that our communities won’t submit to Trump’s vicious police state. That we won’t allow his goons to arrest and imprison our neighbors without due process of law. 

It will give us more courage to stand up against his senseless war. Against his attacks on the environment and on public health. And against his attacks on the freedom of our teachers to teach the truth, on the media to reveal the truth, and on our own freedom to speak and spread the truth. 

Our march next Saturday will demonstrate that we will not be silenced. 

We will continue to build the resistance. We will enlarge our movement. And months from now, we will get out the largest midterm vote in history — giving control of Congress to senators and representatives who will join us in standing up to Trump’s tyranny. 

In doing all this we will honor the memories of Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and others who have died or been wounded at the hands of ICE and Border Patrol agents. 

We will show solidarity with our neighbors who continue to live in fear of ICE. 

We will demonstrate our concern for the nearly 70,000 immigrants now locked in detention facilities coast to coast, and our opposition to the Trump regime’s plans to convert warehouses in several states to lock up tens of thousands more. 

We will show our respect for the families of the 42 people who have perished in ICE custody so far under Trump, such as Afghan asylum seeker Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal — who had worked with U.S. special forces in military operations in his home country and who died in an ICE facility in Texas last week. And 19-year-old Royer Perez-Jimenez, from Mexico, who died in an ICE facility in Florida last week in what ICE calls a “presumed suicide.” 

In our resistance to the Trump regime we also honor the service members and all others who have been killed in Trump’s war in Iran and his invasion of Venezuela. 

And we honor the law enforcement officers who defended the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and others who have given their lives protecting America from tyranny. 

Above all, our resistance affirms that America does not belong to strongmen, greedy billionaires, or those who rule through fear. 

America belongs to us, We the People.

Robert Reich

Share

Cooperation /Unity in the Resistance

 Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.

Ezra Levin, the co-founder and co-executive director of Indivisible, one of the many groups behind the nationwide “No Kings” protests, describes himself as “a cynical political organizer.” But still, Monday night got to him. 

That evening, just days after federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Indivisible and other groups, which included the ACLU, put together a “Know Your Rights” training on how to document violent incidents by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection in response to the violent occupation of Minneapolis and around the country. According to the coalition, over 200,000 viewers attended the Monday “Eyes on ICE” training, the first in a series of trainings dedicated to protesters’ First Amendment rights. These people, Levin told me, “saw secret police force assault and murder fellow Americans, and one natural response you could imagine would be people could do what the regime wants them to do, which is to be quiet and go home and not show up.” 

00:02

03:12ad More

“But instead,” he continued, “we have, by several orders of magnitude, the largest number of people ever to attend a training to learn how to do exactly what Renée Good and Alex Pretti were doing.”

It’s against this backdrop anger that another round of “No Kings” protests is being planned for March 28, with a flagship event in the Twin Cities. Levin expects the next “No Kings” protest to see the largest turnout.

I caught up with Levin on why this moment demands such pre-planned big tentpole events like “No Kings,” the agility it takes to respond to violence from the federal government with rapid mobilizations, and more below.

When we spoke on Friday, we talked about the “No Kings” coalition being able to mobilize if federal agents shot and killed another person. The next day, Alex Pretti was killed. What happened next internally?

We had talked about this on Friday, Katie, because it was entirely predictable. We all saw what the regime was doing. They’re using violence to intimidate and bully the population into submission. The murder is heinous. The slander that followed is really chilling because it is a very clear message to foot soldiers of the regime that it does not matter how many people are taping you. It doesn’t matter how clearly what you’re engaging in is illegal. It does not matter how heinous your crime is. The response of the top levels of this regime will be the circle of bandwagons, call your victim a terrorist, and protect you from all consequences.

In response to these murders, we had 147,000 people register for the “Eyes on ICE” training planned for Monday, and these are mostly not Minnesotans. These 147,000 people saw secret police force assault and murder fellow Americans, and one natural response you could imagine would be that people could do what the regime wants them to do, which is to be quiet and go home and not show up. But instead, we have, by several orders of magnitude, the largest number of people ever to attend a training to learn how to do exactly what Renee Good and Alex Pretti were doing. [A press release from the coalition behind the training said that the number of viewers ended up totalling over 200,000.]

How did that get put together so quickly? 

We’re not starting from zero. I think it’s the same way that we were able to, in 48 hours, put together 1,200 protests for “ICE Out for Good” in the wake of Renée Good’s murder, where it took us six weeks leading up to Hands Off protests in April of last year to put together 1,300 events. The point of these mass mobilizations and this broad national coalition building through “No Kings” is, yes, in part, to pull off big one-day protests. And those are important. But they’re not the whole shebang. It’s not all about just a one-day protest. We are developing organizational capacity that allows us to pull off historic levels of engagement in between these tentpole events. The “No Kings” coalition is not just Indivisible, not just 5051, or MoveOn, or Working Families Party, or ACLU. We’ve all been working together now for over a year to figure out how we can organize collectively, bringing all of our skill sets and all of our tools to tackle the same problem. Indivisible would be the wrong group to hold a Know Your Rights training. We don’t have a lot of First Amendment lawyers on staff. But the ACLU does. 

What does the number of RSVPs for the training this week communicate to you? 

The attendance tells me that there’s real demand for this. Look, a lot of us have been paying attention to the fascist threat for a long time. This has been what we eat, sleep, and breathe for a while. Also, we recognize that most people are not like us. Most people are not paying attention to the demise of American democracy on a daily basis. A successful movement depends on welcoming new people and meeting people where they are and accepting them when, whatever that moment is, whatever that event is, brings them into the movement—accepting them at that point and not saying ‘Where have you been up until now.’ 

What it tells me is that there are a lot of people who, for the last year, may have been upset about what was happening, may have opposed what was happening, but may have not been actively engaged in pushing back at the level that we’re seeing in the Twin Cities, who are now going through the process of imagining a situation in which their own personal constitutional rights are under threat. They are working through what they personally will do in that moment to defend themselves and their community. That is crazy powerful. That is an inflection point.

“When it comes to actually defending your community, you should not be looking to some talking head on TV. You should be gathering community with your neighbors and figuring it out yourself, because nobody’s going to save you but you. “

It’s different to go up to a group of ICE agents on the streets in New York, where there are 50 people within spitting distance, versus places like Tucson, Arizona. How do these trainings address how to encounter federal immigration agents in different towns and cities? 

I think with the news being as inescapable as it is, it’s easy to imagine this coming to your own community. I think one of the really important lessons that we should be learning from the Twin Cities is that the opposition is not nationalized; it is very much localized. And the single best thing that you can do in this moment—we’ve been preaching this for 14 months—is not be alone. Refuse to be alone and to join in a community where you are geographically, because the challenges and opportunities available to you are based on your geography or based on what your community actually looks like. 

This is a movement that is being led and directed at the local level, and I think that’s why it’s been so successful. There’s no email list at the national level that is sending in a direction. When it comes to actually defending your community, you should not be looking to some talking head on TV. You should be gathering community with your neighbors and figuring it out yourself, because nobody’s going to save you but you. 

The coalition that Indivisible is a part of is launching another national mobilization: “No Kings” 3 for March 28. How do the “Eyes on ICE” trainings that y’all announced and No Kings 3 complement one another, and how are they unique?

Each “No Kings” has had a different focus, responding to the moment. “No Kings” one was an effort to provide a stark narrative contrast to Trump’s version of reality. He was throwing himself a ridiculous military birthday parade for himself, as authoritarians do. We wanted to make clear that he was small and weak and that the people were against him. The second “No Kings” was largely in response to sending the National Guard to invade and occupy American cities. 

I think the third “No Kings” is a response to the secret police force that’s terrorizing American communities. I reserve the right to say that this is in response to whatever more recent atrocity the regime commits. It’s lashing out quite a bit, so we’ll see. They’re still constructing more detention camps. They’re still acquiring weapons. They’re still picking out target cities to occupy and terrorize. So, I would expect to see more, unfortunately, of the darkness that we saw in the Twin Cities over the last several weeks. But I’d also expect to see more of the kind of righteous, non-violent, organized opposition that we saw in the Twin Cities, too. 

I’m incredibly proud of “No Kings” and also, protests are a tactic. Tactics should fit into a strategy. Strategy should be designed to achieve your goal. Our goal is to safeguard democracy and protect our communities from an authoritarian threat that’s seeking to submit it to power for good. Our strategy is mass, non-violent, organized people power. “No Kings” three is in the tactic within that strategy. “Eyes on ICE” training is a tactic within that strategy. Rapid response, mass mobilizations like “ICE Out For Good” are a tactic within that strategy. Pushing Democrats to unify and fight back against DHS funding is a tactic within that strategy. We need a multiplicity of tactics. 

“What I found over the last 14 months is that the framework that many of these Democratic leaders have is not a framework built for this moment.”

So on Friday, we also talked about Democratic leadership—Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer—not meeting this moment. Since the killing of Alex Pretti, leading Senate Democrats have threatened to block the DHS funding bill; some Democrats are mentioning different reforms, etc. It’s a different situation than it was on Friday. What do you make of that?

My goal here is a unified, strong opposition party to the regime. That is what I would like to build. I think there is a real disconnect between some Democrats who dominate leadership in both the House and the Senate, and rank-and-file Democrats around the country who want to see a real fight back against the regime. What I found over the last 14 months is that the framework that many of these Democratic leaders have is not a framework built for this moment. The framework goes something like: second term presidents decline in popularity over time; that naturally leads to the opposition party winning seats in the midterms; our role is to not rock the boat too much; communicate as much as we can about people’s top concern, which is always the economy; and then allow political gravity to run its course so that we win in the midterms. I understand that framework. I understand how it could make sense for a certain kind of political era. I do not believe that the political era we’re in, and that’s not where the people on the ground believe we are. 

We believe instead in what the anti-authoritarian experts call an “authoritarian breakthrough moment,” a moment where an authoritarian regime tries to consolidate power as quickly as possible through attacks on pillars of democracy, not just through the legislature, not through just executive functions, but media, law firms, and universities, etc. And it builds up a force across the country in order to ultimately subvert elections and prevent any kind of threat to their continued political power. And if that’s your framework, you’re not waiting for the Midterms and you’re not trying to avoid attention. You are looking for every piece of leverage you have to excite the public to the dangers that are coming, so that you can successfully push back against the authoritarian escalation. 

I’m happy that they are fighting back now, and I’m not convinced that without sustained, overwhelming pressure and a threat to their continued grip on power within the Democratic ranks, they will continue to fight.

Right, it was nice to see from Dems. But you’re not sleeping with both eyes closed, ready to rest.

I’m old enough to remember last November when we were winning popular support for the shutdown fight. People wanted Republicans to give on the health care subsidies, and suddenly the Senate Democrats surrendered. Those are the same Senate Democrats. We got the same party. They’re responding to the news of the day, and when the news of the day moves on, they’ll respond to that. The question is: Is it the grassroots opposition that is driving the news of the day, or is it something else? 

 

We Resist Together : Or

 We resist together, or we will each die alone.

https://snyder.substack.com/p/lies-and-lawlessness? Timothy Snyder, 

It is not just the moral horror. It is the political logic.

People are dying in American concentration camps, unseen. And people are being executed on American streets, seen by all of us.

This is enough. The radical is the pragmatic.

The president should be impeached and convicted, as should everyone responsible for these outrages. ICE should be disbanded. So should the Department of Homeland Security. The other agencies within it should be redistributed across other departments. And the people who have killed should be investigated and brought before judges and juries.

But we have to see the logic of the killings as well as the killings themselves. The horror is a truth in itself. But it is also a sign of a political logic, one known from the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century, Soviet as well as Nazi, and from attempts to replace the rule of law with personal tyranny.

It is the logic of lies and of lawlessness.

In a constitutional regime, such as ours, the law applies everywhere and at all times. In a republic, such as ours, it applies to everyone. For that logic of law to be undone, the aspiring tyrant looks for openings, for cracks to pry open.

One of these is the border. The country stops at the border. And so the law stops at the border. And so for the tyrant an obvious move is to extend the border so that is everywhere, to turn the whole country as a border area, where no rules apply.

Stalin did this with border zones and deportations in the 1930s that preceded the Great Terror. Hitler did it with immigration raids in 1938 that targeted undocumented Jews and forced them across the border.

And just what is Trump doing now? By his own admission, as well as by the admission of cabinet members, he is using ICE, nominally a border authority, to enforce his own whims on an American state of his choosing. It is not legal to attack a city because its policies work. It is not legal to threaten a state to gain information about its voters.

The border becomes the pretext to undo the law everywhere, at all times, and against anyone. It is the crack that can be opened. The wedge is the lie.

The lies begin as clichés, memes that are pounded into our heads by the government and by those in the media who repeat them, mindlessly or with malice.

One of these cliches is “law enforcement,” which is uttered over and over like a incantation. “Law enforcement” is not a noun. It is not a thing in the world. It is an action.

And action is something that we have a right to see and judge for ourselves. People enforcing the law do not wear masks. And people wearing masks who trespass, assault, batter, and kill are not enforcing the law. 

They are violating it.

It is indeed the job of some local, state, and federal authorities to enforce the law. It is a disservice to them when federal employees carry out public executions. It is a greater disservice to them when such actions are defined as “law enforcement.”

The lies continue as provocative inversions, as what in On Tyranny I called “dangerous words”: these are, precisely, “terrorist” and “extremist.” These two words are known to us from history as those used by tyrants. And these are the words used by the Trump people to defame those killed by their polices.

This is their “messaging,” their banality of evil, as Hannah Arendt called it.

Or the evil of banality, as Václav Havel said. Words turned into reality with the complicity of those who hear them.

Those who actively lie are directly complicit in the deaths that just happen and in any deaths to come. But those in media who choose to treat propaganda as the story, to begin from lies rather than from events, are also complicit. The border is the crack, the lie is the wedge, and the wedge is made up of people — of us.

Words matter, uttered first or repeated. They create an atmosphere, they normalize — or they do not. We can choose to see, to call things by their proper names, to call out people who lie. We have to.

The moral horror of those killings is enough. But there is a political logic as well. And the two are connected. Those who resist the lawlessness and the lies are doing right. And they are giving a second chance to the endangered American republic.

Share

MLK and the Authoritarian State

 

Dr King and Our Authoritarian Crisis

Only when we refuse to accept the mythology around King and the Movement can we comprehend the legacy entrusted to us

WILLIAM J. BARBER, II AND JONATHAN WILSON-HARTGROVE JAN 18

READ IN APP

At memorial celebrations across the nation this weekend, Americans will cross arms, grasp hands, and sing, “We Shall Overcome.” Many will bow their heads in prayer for our country. Some – and more than many of us care to admit – will look down to consider a question that has haunted them since last Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, which coincided with the inauguration of Donald Trump. 

Can America survive four years of authoritarian captivity?

Some of our fellow Americans spent the past year trying to dismiss this nagging question with the hope that things wouldn’t be as bad as it seemed they could be. But their hopes have been dashed. The White House is waging a propaganda campaign that openly lies about things everyone can see. Congress has funded a paramilitary force to occupy US cities and enforce the regime’s version of reality. Anyone who objects has been labeled a “domestic terrorist” and shown that they will be attacked, fired, defunded, arrested, or killed if they do not get out of the way. 

America has descended into a full-blown authoritarian crisis faster than almost anyone expected.

Still, millions of people have resisted – not just at mass protests in the streets, but by telling the truth as journalists, standing for the rule of law as lawyers and jurists, refusing to bow to the regime as universities and corporations, refusing to obey unlawful orders, and practicing hope as people of faith and conscience. 

We are in the midst of an authoritarian crisis and a majority of Americans are still resisting.

But for those who have not bowed, the question is often more pointed. We gather this weekend to remember Dr. King and the movement standing against authoritarians like Bull Conner, Jim Clark, and George Wallace in the South. As America marks its 250th anniversary, we recall the founders who reused to bow to a king. We remember the Union holding off the insurrection of the Confederates when, as Lincoln said, a great civil war tested whether this nation, “or any nation so conceived, can long endure.” 

But can America survive authoritarianism when it has the power of the federal government?

This is the unuttered question that many Americans who have not bowed to Trump bring with them to this year’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. We know because this is the question people on the front lines have whispered to us in quiet moments over the past year. We know because we’ve had to wrestle with this question ourselves.

It is an important question because, when we face it honestly, it can pierce through the mythology that keeps us from receiving the tradition that made Dr. King and offers us a way out of the authoritarian crisis we face.

We deceive ourselves if we believe King was able to face down Southern racism because he had the full support of the federal government. The fact that we are living in a national security state that has labeled people who resist authoritarian extremism “domestic terrorists” can help us understand the context Dr. King was born into almost a century ago. Most people know Dr. King was surveilled by the FBI at the end of his life, but in his new book Martyrs to the Unspeakable, James W. Douglass reveals that King’s family and community were marked as a threat to national security a dozen years before Martin was born.