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My hometown, Newtown, Connecticut, is within the midst of a book-banning controversy which additionally consists of Curato’s e-book, “Flamer.” His letter to the editor of the Newtown Bee is directed to college students of the native highschool—the place his e-book stays in circulation, at the least for now—and reprinted right here in full, with Curato’s express permission.
The next letter to Newtown Excessive Faculty College students has been acquired for publication by The Newtown Bee:
To the College students of Newtown Excessive,
This letter is for you. Whatever the consequence of this e-book problem, and the opposite challenges that may come, there are issues I want you to know.
Keep in mind you will have company. It’s exhausting to have others making selections for you. However your life is in your arms. You have got a voice. Use it. Don’t let anybody silence you. Let it out. Communicate it, sing it, write it, paint it, dance it. Censorship is fought with expression. That’s your first modification proper, irrespective of your age or station.
Keep in mind you’re the future. Keep in mind this second. Keep in mind how you are feeling. Keep in mind what everybody mentioned. Quickly you may be an grownup member of the group. What rights will you uphold? What injustices will you battle to restore? Who else in your group has been relegated to the margins? How are you going to assist them? Lead with info and compassion.
And above all else, know this: You need to be right here. Irrespective of who you’re, what you consider, or who you like. Once I was younger, it was implied that there was no room on this world for somebody like me. Not except I adopted their guidelines. I attempted to be the particular person I believed everybody needed me to be, and it broke me. Don’t do this. Don’t let anybody use disgrace to dictate how it’s best to dwell your life. I virtually misplaced my life to that lie. However I survived, and in dwelling my fact, I’ve discovered the best pleasure. Flamer is my fact and my pleasure. It could make some individuals uncomfortable, however their consolation is NOTHING in comparison with your security and happiness.
Keep in mind: They’ll ban my e-book, however nobody has the best to ban YOU.
Thanks
Mike Curato
Writer and illustrator of Flamer
Nonetheless within the information:
Simon Rosenberg/”Hopium Chronicles” on Substack:
Final Few Weeks Have Been Good Ones for Democrats
Sturdy Biden Launch, Vital Electoral Wins, Rs All Types of Ugly
All of because of this I feel this election is all about enlargement. Rs are giving us an unimaginable alternative to develop; we have now the infrastructure to do it; now that the marketing campaign is up it’s time to get going. A lot is feasible for us now.
We Simply Maintain Successful, In every single place– As we did in 2022, to this point this yr Dems are performing on the higher finish of what’s potential. We’ve gained Supreme Court docket races, mayoral races, state rep races. We’ve gained in Colorado, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. We’ve flipped two cities, Jacksonsville and Colorado Springs, which have been Republican for many years. Simply take a look at how terrible the GOP model is now (under). These are horrific numbers. We have to keep on offense and hold taking extra political actual property away from them.
Will Bunch/The Philadelphia Inquirer:
From Philly to Colorado Springs, America voted no on extremism Tuesday
Voters in cities and suburbs — within the Philly mayor’s race, Jacksonville, and Colorado Springs — selected moderation Tuesday.
In Pennsylvania’s Delaware County, in a particular state Home election that might decide whether or not lawmakers in Harrisburg would have the votes to place their very own model of an abortion ban earlier than voters, a surge in mail-in ballots was the primary signal of a landslide victory for the pro-choice Democrat. Simply north in Montgomery County, Republican main voters determined they’d lastly had sufficient of right-wing county commissioner Joe Gale, a rabid Donald Trump supporter who’d needed to ban mail-in ballots and survived requires his 2020 ouster after labeling Black Lives Matter “a hate group.”
It was a foul evening for extremists throughout America. In Colorado Springs, Colo., identified for conservative politics (and because the web site of six high-profile mass shootings since 2007), Yemi Mobolade, a Nigerian immigrant, shocked the native Republican institution to change into town’s first elected Black mayor. In Jacksonville, Fla. — the nation’s largest metropolis with a GOP mayor, run principally by Republicans for 30 years — the candidate backed strongly each by DeSantis and the ultraconservative, book-banning Mothers for Liberty misplaced to Democrat Donna Deegan in an enormous upset.
Ronald Brownstein/The Atlantic:
Why Outspoken Ladies Scare Trump
Mocking the sexual-harassment reckoning is a characteristic of Donald Trump’s political persona.
Partially, the laughter demonstrated the energy of Trump’s grip on his supporters. However the response additionally displayed one thing mentioned a lot much less usually: how a lot of the GOP coalition is proof against extra assertive roles in society for ladies, which has produced, amongst different issues, extra frequent and visual accusations of sexual impropriety in opposition to males.
The beautiful laughter when Trump belittled Carroll underlined how for a lot of Republican voters, skepticism about girls’s claims of unfair or improper therapy now intertwines with hostility to different types of cultural change, together with rising racial variety and calls for for equal therapy from the LGBTQ group. “We’re in the midst of a backlash to racial and gender progress, by which Trump has normalized the expression of racist and sexist beliefs,” Tresa Undem, a pollster for progressive organizations who makes a speciality of attitudes about gender and race, informed me. “He’s continuously tapping into these beliefs.”
Julia Azari/POLITICO:
Trump’s Dominance within the GOP Isn’t What It Appears
He’s presiding over a motion, not a celebration.
For years, political scientists have judged presidents on their energy as occasion leaders — how they’ve been in a position to develop a coalition and cement a majority — however Trump is altering the way in which we take into consideration politics.
As an alternative, it now appears that Trump will not be a lot a celebration chief, however a motion determine. This may look like the form of distinction that solely lecturers care about. However it’s key to understanding the present state of American politics, and the dilemmas now going through GOP leaders because the MAGA motion threatens to fully overtake the Republican Social gathering itself.
Invoice Scher/Washington Month-to-month:
Republicans Need to Impeach Mayorkas. How About Giving Him a Medal?
The Homeland Safety secretary and Cuban refugee is being pilloried by the best and a few on the left for his immigration insurance policies, however the Biden administration is succeeding in slowing the inflow of refugees and ending the cruelty of the Trump period.
What the administration was as much as over the previous two years could have appeared complicated. First, the Biden administration tried to rescind Title 42, upsetting conservatives. Then federal judges stayed the order whereas it was being litigated. Within the meantime, the administration expanded using Title 42, upsetting progressives. After which, the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention ended the whole COVID-19 public well being emergency. Conservatives applauded the top of Dr. Anthony Fauci-era restrictions however not the top of Title 42 powers which disappeared together with them.
As a result of Title 42 was getting used as a deterrent to migration, the Biden administration’s strikes to finish it had been seen as willfully—to some, recklessly—inviting extra migration. However that was an oversimplification. The aim has all the time been to craft a extra orderly system of migration.
Greg Sargent/The Washington Submit:
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s impeachment stunt wrecks a giant MAGA fable
Greene’s name for Biden’s impeachment is a joke: It’s unlikely McCarthy will search it, and it’s under no circumstances clear that Republicans would have the votes for it. Nonetheless, as Greene informed reporters, GOP leaders have engaged in critical dialogue together with her about what impeachment would appear like.
What’s extra, McCarthy reportedly feels real strain to question Mayorkas, partly due to Greene’s marketing campaign in opposition to him. All this reveals that Republicans should take severely her potential, as a pacesetter of the occasion’s MAGA wing, to faucet into sentiments surging contained in the GOP base.
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