Hate Sausage
Hola amigues,
¿Cómo están? I’m feeling re-energized by the incredible Day Without Child Care actions that happened across the country earlier this month. It was amazing to see so many powerful early childhood organizations, from Zero to Three to the National Association for Family Child Care, working together to demand dignified compensation for our essential work educating and caring for young children. Thank you Community Change for your leadership!
This week I’m focused on the United States House of Representatives which is expected to vote tomorrow (Wednesday) to pass H.R.2616/2617, a bill aimed at ensuring that our country’s public schools comply with Trumps’ executive order to make trans kids less safe and to indoctrinate all children into oppressive and untrue ideas about gender. Wednesday, May 20th is also a day of action for the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA). As a part of the the National Coalition to End Family and Child Detention, our favorite librarian, Mychal Threets (and many others) will be installing 620 teddy bears and paper dolls on the National Mall — one for every ten children arrested by ICE — and demanding an end to all family and child detention. For folks in D.C., you can organize a drop-off, and for those of us participating virtually, it’s not too late to record a video reading a children’s book and post it to social media like this.
But if you do nothing else this week, PLEASE CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVE TODAY and urge them to vote NO on H.R.2616. I am particularly concerned about this hateful legislation not only because it would make it even harder for teachers to use books like Being You in the classroom, and nearly impossible for school leaders to hire organizations like Team Gender Anarchy to help teachers create more inclusive early childhood programs, but because the trajectory of this bill mirrors my experience organizing against Moms for Liberty (M4L) in New York City public schools.
As a reminder, there are a few school board leaders in NYC’s District 2 who really hate First Conversations. In 2021, after years of community organizing, the Department of Education (DOE) had begun to make real progress toward the development of a culturally relevant reading and math curriculum for NYC students. This proposed curriculum included lots of wonderful books about all different kinds of children and families, including Our Skin: A First Conversation about Race. This small group of wealthy white moms didn’t like that at all, so they made a big stink and a few months later, the project was tanked. And now schools are required to use one of three corporate, scripted literacy curricula instead. But I digress…
When I decided to get involved and confront these jerks face-to-face, I started showing up at monthly school board meetings (which, in NYC, are called Community Education Councils, or CECs). Almost immediately after they began to confront any push-back around their efforts to ban books, these same parent leaders switched gears and started to go after trans kids. The council passed Resolution #248, calling for the DOE to reconsider the existing protections for transgender children in schools. It took us about 18 months and a few hundred volunteers, but we ultimately succeeded in increasing voter engagement in District 2, ousting two M4L ringleaders, and electing a new council that rescinded #248 at the beginning of this school year.
In response, they took matters to the City Council level, spearheading legislation (175-B) aimed at curtailing everyone’s ability to protest at future school board meetings. Luckily, Mayor Mamdani vetoed this bill, but the fight isn’t over. On Wednesday, while things are heating up in D.C., a huge coalition of grassroots organizations including Aunties for Liberation will be rallying to defend free speech in New York City. The May 20 City Council meeting is the last scheduled meeting before the deadline to override the Mayor’s veto of this dangerous bill. We need to show up in force to send a clear message to the Council: protect our First Amendment rights and vote NO on overriding the veto.
Meanwhile, in Feburary, the fight against censorship went federal when Rep. Miller from Illinois introduced H.R.7661, which would ban any book that features a transgender character from every public school across the country. For the past few months, Authors Against Book Bans (AABB) and the whole #FreedomToRead coalition have been working hard to get the word out about this terrible bill and we’ve been doing a great job. So in response, the bills sponsor’s are shifting gears and concentrating their efforts on attacking trans kids.
In a very similar move to what happened in New York City, the bill’s sponsors are now throwing their weight behind a new bill, H.R.2617, the so-called “Say No to Indoctrination Act.” This bill was introduced earlier this month by Representative Burgess Owens of Utah—one of the co-sponsors of H.R.7661. This new bill would forbid all public school educators from teaching “concepts related to gender ideology.” In order to equip you with a clear sense of where they’re heading with all this, I want you know that in Utah, right now, banned books are literally sent to the shredder. The Utah State Board of Education has specified that school dumpsters aren’t considered acceptable means of legal disposal. Furthermore, donating, reselling or in any way distributing “sensitive materials” is not allowed under state law. So books like The Bluest Eye are literally being destroyed.
I’m learning that this is how the hate sausage is made. Far-right extremists exploit our widespread disengagement with the democratic process at every level to advance an unpopular, fascist and Christian nationalist agenda. When they start to face organized resistance, they respond with strategic attempts to splinter our coalition, stoke public panic, and scapegoat vulnerable groups. It’s our job not to let them. It’s our job to get engaged and demand that our representatives protect BOTH our #FreedomToRead AND our trans siblings from these ongoing and escalating attacks.
Ways to take action:
For everybody: contact your House Representative and tell them you oppose both HR 7661 and HR 2617. If your Representative is a Democrat on the House Education & Workforce Committee, specifically ask that they show up at the June 10th hearing ready to defend our students’ and educators’ access to books with a full spectrum of gender identities.
For folks in New York, while we’re still working on passing the Freedom to Read Act (which is absolutely essential given the way things are looking at the federal level), the fight over our state budget is still not over. That means there is still time to put pressure on our state leaders and legislators to do right by New York’s families and child care educators. Our elected officials need to hear that the child care workforce can’t go another year without compensation. They need to hear that Child Care Assistance Program waitlists are impacting 34 counties PLUS New York City. And they need to hear that the Foundation Aid formula must be updated to ensure schools are able to meet their students’ growing needs. Use the script below to call the "three people in the room" — Governor Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie.
Governor Hochul
(518) 474-8390
Senate Majority Leader Stewart-Cousins
(518) 455-2715
Assembly Speaker Heastie
(518) 455-3791
For folks in NYC: please show up at tomorrow’s rally to protect student protest (City Hall at 12:30pm), amplify the action on social media, and come to the next CEC meeting in District 2 next week, Tuesday May 26th!
In other news…
Life updates:
I met with a staffer in Rep. Ayanna Pressley’s office alongside the wonderful Maggie Tokuda-Hall (a founding member of Authors Against Book Bans) to talk about H.R. 7661 last week. As some of you may already know, Rep. Pressley is one of three Democrats who have each introduced different, positive #FreedomToRead bills. As an organization, we’re looking for a champion in Congress that we can really rally behind, so we asked whether any of them have spoken to one another or expressed any willingness to combine their efforts. The staffer said Rep. Pressley is focusing on other issues right now like voting rights but expressed a willingness to pick up the conversation after the midterms.
I was honored by Public School Strong for Teacher Appreciation Week! It really meant so much to me to be publicly recognized as an educator and leader, especially by my own community and organizing home <3
Job updates:
I applied to a bunch more jobs and had lovely interviews with the Erikson Institute and the University of Vermont.
I’ve been working with a rad group of queer Black early childhood teacher educators and our paper was accepted to the journal Pedagogy, Culture & Society! Keep your eyes peeled for an upcoming Special Issue on “teachers’ safety, belonging and thriving.” Our manuscript is titled, 'They Not Like Us’: A Kitchen-Table Talk on Black Queer Thriving in Early Childhood Teacher Education.
A different piece was rejected by Rethinking Schools, but they shared some valuable feedback. The main reason they didn’t feel like the article was a good fit was that the piece didn’t include examples from my current classroom practice. It’s fair feedback, but it hurt because I don’t really feel like I had any control over why I’m not in the classroom right now. Oof. But the good news is that the full piece is up on the Teaching for Change website. I am so grateful to Deborah Menkart who had the vision for this project and has been a wonderful guide through the whole process. And want to express so much pride and gratitude for each and every early childhood educator who contributed. On top of your essential, rigorous and highly-undervalued work in the classroom, you made the time to share your expertise with others as one way to support the collective flourishing of all children and families on Turtle Island. Thank you! I love how it turned out (including some really helpful formatting suggestions from the Teaching for Change staff). The piece includes the collective wisdom of educators from aross the United States, who work in a range of settings and with a variety of age groups. Please help me share this piece far and wide. We must work together as a whole community to ensure that all of our children are protected from the harmful America 250 propaganda that is coming our way. #TeachTruth
I’m working with Alice Levine on a professional development course that we’ll offer in July through the Massachusetts Teachers Association called “Exploring Issues of Justice and Resistance with Multilingual Learners.” I first met Alice as a summer fellow with Boston Public Schools, where I evaluated her innovative family literacy programs. We quickly connected over our shared passions for children’s literature and Jewish approaches to social justice, and we recently reconnected at Let My People Sing!
I’m excited to share that I’m collaborating with some researchers at Arizona State University on the First Conversations summer camp for families of young children! I’ll keep you posted with ways to participate and support the work.
What I’m reading/listening to:
Talking to Young Children About America 250: Considerations and Strategies by Megan Pamela Ruth Madison
A Relational Children’s Rights Approach to Sexuality Education with Young Children by Noah Kenneally
Facts & Fiction Stories Stripped Away by Book Bans from PEN America
Who Decides What’s “Age Appropriate”? The Quiet Power Behind Book Bans from the Freedom to Read Project
Early Childhood Experts Expect to Hit ‘Tipping Point’ in 2026 by Lauren Coffey
Black People Have Knowledge, Not Just “Lived Experience” by Dayvon Love
The Power of Diverse Kid Lit on the Children Deserve Better podcast