Anatomy of a book banning
Dave Eggers,
Washington Post, Wayback Machine,
Jun 30, 2022
This is an archived copy of a Washington Post ("Democracy dies behind a paywall") article by author Dave Eggers on his experience having a book banned in South Dakota schools. The article recounts the influence of funding and lobby groups on the school board election, but the most telling sentence, to my mind, is this: "voter turnout was low — less than 13 percent of the electorate cast ballots." Now Eggers talks about some of the things I've seen elsewhere - the "the mass exodus of teachers... 157 vacant positions in a district that employs 1,680," a district that is "disintegrating and imploding." But: 13 percent. It's not all voter suppression. It's an abdication of responsibility. People complain (and quite rightly) about what happens at the other end of the system when the Supreme Court makes a raft of controversial decisions. But democracy begins in things like school board elections - the hard work on the ground that it takes to build skills, networks and social knowledge. Never forget that.
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