Long story short: tell Florida to teach the AP African-American studies course, tell North Dakota to stop targeting gay and trans books in book bans, and tell Pennsylvania to reject proposed sore loser constitutional amendments. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your state legislators' phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
Organize For helps you tell the Florida state Board of Education to let high schools there teach African-American studies. The AP African-American Studies program may be new, but that doesn’t mean it “significantly lacks educational value,” as Gov. DeSantis says. And don’t take it for granted that Florida already teaches the Black experience, not just because Florida Republicans have created a lot of education drama lately, but because a lot of Floridian crybabies pretend to be “offended” when someone points out the South embraced slavery and Jim Crow with both arms. But facts are facts, and Americans face them.
North Dakota residents, take note: state legislators want to throw librarians in jail if they don’t remove “sexually-explicit” books from public school libraries. And “sexually-explicit” includes any book about gay or trans issues, though those books aren’t “sexually explicit” just because of their subject matter. Another way of putting it: sexuality isn’t “explicit,” let alone “obscene,” merely because it’s different from yours, and certainly not if you’re not actually watching it. So Openstates.org helps North Dakota residents find their state legislators. And remember we have a word for book banning efforts that target folks oppressed due to race or sexuality, and that word is fascist.
Finally, Pennsylvania residents, take note: Common Cause still helps you tell your state house Reps to reject the Republican suite of sore loser constitutional amendments that would enshrine Voter ID in our state constitution – remember when Tom Corbett’s government couldn’t make Voter ID work, even before our state Supreme Court struck it down? – and put the state’s (Republican) Auditor General in charge of elections. That latter item, especially, isn’t just sore loser thinking but short-term thinking – what if a Democrat wins the Auditor General race in 2024? Then Republicans will amend our state constitution again, I guess. You’ve heard that power without wisdom is evil? Republicans prove it every day.
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