Tag: Equity

Danger: Libraries Cause Literacy

Schools and libraries under assault in the name of ideology.

Some folks are born made to wave the flag
Hoo, they’re red, white and blue
And when the band plays “Hail to the chief”
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord

It ain’t me, it ain’t me
I ain’t no senator’s son, son
It ain’t me, it ain’t me
I ain’t no fortunate one, no

-“Fortunate Son” by Creedence Clearwater Revival

Banned Books List 2025

PEN America has documented nearly 16,000 book bans in public schools nationwide since 2021, a number not seen since the Red Scare McCarthy era of the 1950s. This censorship is being mobilized by conservative groups— and has spread to nearly every state— and predominantly targets books about race and racism or individuals of color and also books on LGBTQ+ topics as well those for older readers that have sexual references or discuss sexual violence. 

In the 2023-2024 school year, PEN America found more than 10,000 book bans affecting more than 4,000 unique titles, with about 45% of the bans occurring in Florida and 36% in Iowa. The most banned books in the 2023-2024 school year, according to the PEN America Index of School Book Bans, include bestselling novelist Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes, about the moments leading up to a school shooting, and John Green’s Looking for Alaska. The list also includes The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, and The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini.

-From Banned Books List 2025 by Lisa Tolin

Fly Your Kite!,

Pastor Jim

Up Next “DOGE Audit: Day One”

“Move Fast … and Break Things:” The Game Played in the Devil’s Basement

While a sitting President’s adoption of “Move Fast and Break Things” might work for teenage savants in Silicon Valley, this process does not work for a Nation which lacks the shelter of a parent’s basement. Bulldozing government agencies and enterprises, citing that Advanced AI will save us, actually forces us into the servitude of AI.

“Move Fast and Break Things … Before You Get Caught”

“Service Animal Delay“

“Dog Inefficient.”

We Salute The U.S. Marine Band! Courage is gender and color blind. The United States is not the President’s play thing to break like some rich brat whose Daddy will buy another … unless it’s Greenland.

While “Move Fast and Break Things” may work for 20 year-old’s who can hide in their parents’ basements upon failure, the real world requires care and due diligence. Due diligence does not mean unnecessary delay but proceeding circumspectly when addressing critical infrastructure. A brain surgeon removing a tumor entwining speech and higher reasoning would likely not run the ad, “We Move Fast and Break Things.”

Follow All Rules While We Break Them

“Follow All Rules While We Break Them”

The inspiration for this post was the following 60 Minutes Story :

“We are suppressing the very essence of what makes us human…”

Unbroken,

Pastor Jim

See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Ephesians 5:15-16

RESPECT: In a Land of Daddy Warbucks, Be a Rosa Parks

The Spirit of Rosa Parks

In a land of Daddy Warbucks, be a Rosa Parks.

Aretha Franklin’s 1967 song Respect captured both the rights of women and civil rights.

 Last week my wife and I visited both Montgomery and Birmingham, Alabama. We saw where the local Birmingham Fire Department turned fire hoses, and the local police released their German Shepherds and batons on black children. The person in the image is the “Spirit of Rosa Parks” who faces the same forces today ordering her to “Step to the back of the bus or step off!”

As I stood in the same pulpit where Rev. Martin Luther King addressed 5,000 to launch the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It was this pulpit that introduced the world to Rev. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. This was the start of the “Freedom Riders,” who road buses across the U.S. to express their right to peaceful enjoyment of the United States.

At the 16th Street Baptist Church, we gathered around the black stone memorial where a Ku Klux Klan member, who was also a city employee, remotely detonated dynamite under the church steps and killed four little black girls. This was the same church where Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream!” speech before he gave it at the Lincoln Memorial that resonates through our years.

This Little Light of Mine,

Pastor Jim

Up Next: “Neobigotry: A Genteel Racism”