Banned Books Week continues through Saturday, and the Brooklyn Public Library has a program for teens facing book bans in their states.

The Books Unbanned program, which began in mid-April, is a catalog of banned books available for teens across the U.S. to access. Since the program began, the library has received 5,000 requests for access to the program.

Fritzi Bodenheimer, spokesperson for the Brooklyn Public Library, said one of the bigger challenges for librarians has been reading all of those requests. While reading all the notes can be labor-intensive, it can be emotionally difficult too.

"The noted that we're getting are sometimes really poignant," Bodenheimer recounted. "Like a teen will write in and say, for example, 'I identify as LGBQT and there are no books about people like me on the shelves. They've all been removed.' "

She added recent book bans have a different flavor than others, citing them as more political. Some of the books ending up on banned-book lists predominantly have themes relating to the LGBTQ community, and issues of race and racism. Some books being honored for Banned Books Week include Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird," Juno Dawson's "This Book is Gay" and Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye."

People who have enrolled in the program have taken to using their library cards often. Bodenheimer said banning books goes beyond just books, but deals with democracy. Given the U.S. Constitution provides for freedom of the press and freedom of speech, she thinks freedom to read goes along with this.

"When you don't see books on the shelf that represent you or are written by authors that look like you, you disappear," Bodenheimer explained. "In other words, if we don't have books that look like you, that have characters that seem like you; we're erasing people's identities."

Bodenheimer thinks reading about people different from ourselves can help people understand different identities. Being able to understand each other is something she feels libraries and books can help with.

This week, a bipartisan group in Arizona officially launched its campaign to do away with the state's current system of primary elections - which are only open to people in the two major political parties.

The goal is to get a measure on the 2024 ballot to make the state's future primary elections open to all candidates and all voters, regardless of their party affiliation. But first, it needs more than 389,000 signatures by July of next year.

Chuck Coughlin - treasurer for Make Elections Fair AZ - called this week's kickoff "an emotional launching point," for what he describes as their effort to "create fair elections in Arizona."

"Our election process has been hijacked by two extreme parties," said Coughlin. "The two parties have become much more extreme over time in their views of how elections are run, because it attracts money and influence. A majority of people have chosen to disassociate themselves from those two parties."

He said Independent and unaffiliated voters now comprise the largest registered voter bloc in Arizona, at 35% of the electorate.

Coughlin said changing the system would, in his words, "reinvigorate competition, so ideas and change can fuel American democracy again."

Former Phoenix Mayor Paul Johnson is now on the Make Elections Fair AZ executive committee.

He said the current, partisan primary system can be "easily manipulated," and lead to a disproportionate advantage for groups with extreme viewpoints.

Johnson also said he sees the current system as discriminatory toward Independent and unaffiliated candidates.

"It actually discriminates directly against voters," said Johnson. "It requires them to file a special card to be able to vote in one of the two primaries, which Democratic and Republican voters don't have to do. And then, in presidential primaries, they are outright excluded - even though their taxpayers' dollars are utilized to be able to subsidize it."

Johnson is referring to the card people can fill out stating "no party preference" that allows them to vote in an Arizona primary.

Supporters of closed primaries say they're an important part of keeping political parties healthy and relevant.

Recent polling from The New York Times and Siena College found President Biden trailing former President Donald Trump in five of the six most crucial battleground states, one of which is Arizona.

In the Grand Canyon state Trump leads Biden by five-percentage points.

Elaine Kamarck, director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institute, said the question is - if polls are showing Biden slipping, compounded with his unfavorable approval rating, does that mean voters won't vote for him and other Democrats in the upcoming election?

She said it isn't a simple answer.

"Maybe there is just no relationship between the president's popularity and down ballot voting," said Kamarck. "That voters vote on very different things and maybe because we have a 'president-centric' kind of culture, maybe we just get that wrong all the time."

While The New York Times/Siena College poll comprised just over 3,600 registered voters among all six states, Kamarck said other state-based polls - which struck fear in many Democrats - are composed only of about six hundred participants, which she says likely aren't grasping the entirety of voter's preferences and true attitudes.

Kamarck said looking at the special elections in 2021, the midterms in 2022, and the most recent set of elections this year, President Biden's unpopularity does not have much to do with democratic votes.

She contended that Democrats "over performed expectations," in all three years and increased their margins.

She argued that abortion is a huge motivator for democratic voters. Arizona is among one of several states looking at a possible proposed abortion rights measure on next year's ballot, which could boost Democrat's chances.

"Where the right to choose is front and center on the agenda, abortion is an incredibly powerful motivator," said Kamarck. "I think in my lifetime in politics which has been pretty long, it is probably the biggest push I've ever seen, really."

Arizona for Abortion Access is supported by a coalition of reproductive rights advocates who are currently working on getting the close to 400,000 signatures from Arizona voters by July of next year.

Currently, abortions are legal in Arizona up to 15 weeks with no exceptions for rape or incest. The law does have an exception to save the life of a pregnant mother.

Support for this reporting was provided by The Carnegie Corporation of New York.

In just over a week on Nov. 29, state lawmakers will return to Atlanta to decide on Georgia's new congressional voting district maps. Grassroots organizations focused on voting access are stressing the importance of the process.

In October, a federal judge ruled the state's 2021 maps diluted the voting power of Black residents and violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

April Albright, national legal director for Black Voters Matter, emphasized the decision is crucial in promoting equity for often overlooked communities.

"Our communities don't get that infrastructure," Albright observed. "We see it in our education and we see it in our roads, and we see it in economic opportunities in the form of opportunity districts, where the state makes a decision about how much money they're going to provide as subsidy to invite industries to come and create businesses."

The judge's ruling called for lawmakers to create an extra congressional district in west-metro Atlanta with a majority-Black population. It also calls for two new majority-Black Senate districts in south-metro Atlanta, two majority-Black House districts in south-metro Atlanta, and two in and around Macon-Bibb.

Albright pointed out the significant population shifts in the South over the past decade, which highlight the need for people to have the option to vote for candidates who truly represent their beliefs. As voting districts are being updated and challenged throughout the South, she stressed the importance of safeguarding democracy.

"We've got to keep our eyes on the prize," Albright urged. "We've got to understand the power of the 'drip, drip,' organizing all year around issues that matter to us. And if we do that, then it doesn't matter what the courts will do. We know that we can still bring the changes that we want."

Census figures show Georgia's population has surged by more than 1 million since 2010, with significant increases in Black, Hispanic, and Asian residents, particularly in Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties.

The ruling in Georgia comes after a historic decision in Alabama to create two majority and near-majority Black voting districts.


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