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Members of organizing group Red Wine & Blue staged what they called a “banned book read-in” on the lawn of the General Assembly on Tuesday to symbolically oppose House Bill 636 and other related bills in the North Carolina legislature.
Red Wine & Blue is a “national community of over half a million diverse suburban women working together to defeat extremism, one friend at a time,” according to its website. The North Carolina organization comprises over 37,000 members, said North Carolina Director Janice Robinson, who coordinated the visit to the legislature.
HB 636, titled “Promoting Wholesome Content for Students,” remains in the rules committee of the Senate after it passed the House in April. Among other things, the bill would establish committees of parents and educators that would review library media after objections from “parents, teachers, and residents of the county in which the public school unit is located.” The proposal — which opponents commonly refer to as a book ban bill — would also allow parents and residents to sue a school that fails to comply with the bill, up to $5,000 per violation.
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The bill would classify content that “includes descriptions or visual depictions of sexual activity or is pervasively vulgar” as inappropriate for school libraries. In floor debates, Democrats have said the phrase “pervasively vulgar” is not well defined.
“I think it is probably by design that it is ill-defined, because anything that offends anyone could potentially be called that,” said Shivani Kohut, a member who participated in the read-in.
Earlier this session, Rep. Neal Jackson, R-Moore, a primary sponsor of the bill, acknowledged there is some subjectivity in deciding what is “pervasively vulgar,” but pointed Democrats to General Statute 14-190.13, a state law that defines terms related to offenses concerning minors.
Torrie Oglesby, a community organizer with Red Wine & Blue, said that reading teaches empathy.
“I can only live my one life, but through literature, I can see other people’s experiences,” she said. “That is never anything to censor, that is never anything to ban.”
During the event, the group also opposed a trio of bills that would ban diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices in schools, higher education institutions, and public agencies, as well as House Bill 127, House Bill 66, and House Bill 411, which they called “voter suppression bills.”
Senate Bill 227, “Eliminating ‘DEI’ in Public Education,” would prevent public schools from engaging in “discriminatory practices” or teaching “divisive concepts” to students, which are enumerated in the bill text. Senate Bill 558 is similar but would apply to universities and community colleges.
Finally, House Bill 171 would ban DEI in state agencies, local governments, and any other non-state entity using state funds. Each of the three bills has passed its originating chamber, but not the other legislative chamber.
“The DEI stuff does not surprise me — I’m so underwhelmed by it. I want to say it’s not American, but sadly it is,” Oglesby said.
After the read-in, the group entered the Legislative Building and met privately with legislators. Robinson said most legislators that took the meetings were Democrats and already supportive of the effort to vote down the bills.
Regardless, Red Wine & Blue members left folders with information at the offices of “all 50 senators and all 120 House members,” Robinson said.
“And members that were not in, we left their folders under their door,” she said.
Outside the legislature, Oglesby, a mother, said that advocacy is one way of caring for her children.
“Sometimes (motherhood) looks like holding them and being present with them,” she said. “Sometimes it looks like protesting banned books.”
