Texas Book Ban Law Is the Target of Youth Organizations Like SEAT, Booksellers
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Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed the Restricting Explicit and Adult-Designated Educational Resources (READER) Act into law in June 2023. The law, also known as HB 900, requires vendors to rate books, and those rated with "sexually explicit material” will be removed from Texas public school libraries.
But there has been heavy pushback from booksellers and youth activists who argue that the bill lacks clarity, is an affront to free speech, and will result in state overreach into businesses. Some activists also argue that the law is a thinly veiled attempt to censor books that explore LGBTQ+ representation, race, and identity-themed narratives.
“The book banners are using HB 900 as a cudgel to go after any book that they are uncomfortable or fearful of, and the law was written so vaguely and so broadly to encourage them to do it,” Maggie Stern, program and policy manager of youth engagement for the Children’s Defense Fund of Texas, tells Teen Vogue over Zoom.
After booksellers brought a lawsuit, Texas’s Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals declared that key parts of HB 900 are likely unconstitutional and halted aspects of its implementation.
Stern, who works closely with student-led organizations across Texas, says books that deal with race, sexuality, identity, and bullying are all being targeted. These bans, she asserts, are essentially suggesting that “students’ lives and experiences are inappropriate.”
Youth activists such as Cameron Samuels, executive director and cofounder of the youth-led organization Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT), say they can’t sit back and watch as books that are specifically relevant to their identity be removed or challenged by the state. “Personally, I feel compelled to stand up for my freedoms as a student who is Jewish and queer in Texas when my rights are being taken away,” Samuels tells Teen Vogue. “When policy-makers are depriving students of our education and targeting the most vulnerable and marginalized students, we need to stand up."
Samuels continues, "And it should not be our obligation as Gen Z to stand up when we should be focused on learning in the classroom. But we’ve become compelled to do so because if we don’t, then who's going to stand up for our rights?”
As the legislature in Texas considered HB 900, youth activists within SEAT took action. On the Senate floor, the group presented amendments that would institute nondiscrimination and accountability standards. They also grabbed the attention of the media, and published several op-eds addressing HB 900's potential harms.
Teen Vogue speaks with Samuels about how the bans are impacting young Texans and how students can take a stand.
This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Teen Vogue: You’re presently enrolled at Brandeis University in Massachusetts. How do you stay connected to Texas and your work there with SEAT?
Cameron Samuels: If I was in Texas with my colleagues, I would not have the affirming space that I have here. Texas still very much feels like home. I’m still emotionally invested in making the community and my home better for future generations. Decisions are happening in Texas. So we’re organizing in communities, holding events, having protests, demonstrations, mobilizing people for testimony. At the same time, we're trying to be examples for students nationwide.
Many of our organizers are speaking at conferences. I'll be speaking at SXSW, which is in Texas, but I've also delivered testimony to the US Senate in DC and elsewhere for different events and conferences.
We're building coalitions with the ACLU, Texas Freedom Network, the American Library Association, GLAAD, and state partners like Children's Defense Fund in Texas. SEAT, and our movement, is about creating a student-centered approach to policy-making by building relationships with students and policy-makers.
TV: Do you consider yourself an activist?
CS: I do. I mean, that's certainly how I started, just as an individual activist, [eventually] becoming more vocal and more confident, bringing in other people, and being an activist for this social movement to defend intellectual freedom.
TV: How did your activism develop?
CS: As a high school student, I faced book bans and censorship in my school district, and I stood up at a school board meeting as the only student in the room while others were calling for censorship. I showed up and spoke my mind. After that meeting, it went from just me to hundreds of people showing up to school board meetings consistently through the remainder of the year. And we got books back on shelves. We got websites unblocked from the internet filter. We distributed hundreds of banned books. We got students involved in the decisions that impacted us.
TV: You mentioned certain websites being banned at school. Which sites?
CS: It was my freshman year when I learned that LGBTQ websites were blocked by the school district. The Advocate, which is an LGBTQ news source, was blocked. I was just doing some research for a school project, and I saw that the internet filter said it was blocked for “alternative sexual lifestyles,” and in parentheses, GLBT.
So many different websites are blocked for very frivolous reasons. But in this case, it was the first time I saw the actual discriminatory category used. That really hurt me as a student, seeing that an educational institution dedicated to supporting me was instead blocking a website.
After that I learned that many other [sites] were also under this category, including the Trevor Project Suicide Prevention Lifeline. That's a matter of life or death, and it's the school district's choice for blocking this website. When I returned in person for my senior year, I needed to do something about it. I was older, had learned the ropes of high school better, developed better communication and advocacy skills, and had more understanding of the political scene in Texas.
Also, this was at the same time when books were being pulled off shelves in this unprecedented wave of censorship in Texas.
TV: What was it like for you as a queer high school student to see this targeted attack on books and resources that are made for people like you?
CS: I was a junior during the pandemic. I had virtual school. My high school experience was just totally up in the air. Then going into high school, discovering my LGBTQ identity, not really finding those safe spaces, having some very hostile interactions — all these microaggressions, even larger aggressions, and hostility. I had people who were making classroom spaces and the school environment unsafe for me. There were people who were making assumptions, who were talking to other people about me using the f-word, telling people not to hang around me because I'm queer. Seeing all of that really affected me personally.
That was coupled with [my] Tourette syndrome, having motor tics and dealing with questions like, “Why does your face move like that?” That was my entire experience in elementary and middle school.
But I love learning. I was so passionate about learning. Other people would kind of judge me for being too interested in learning. I was put into these boxes both educationally and socially, making it so I didn't receive the support I needed when facing a hostile environment for being a disabled student and for having to defer from norms of society and being LGBTQ.
I didn't really have that comfort in school. But when I was in kindergarten, I used to ask, “Why can't school just be year-round?”
TV: You're also working to combat Texas’s Senate Bill 763, which will allow religious chaplains to serve as school counselors. Can you describe this bill and some of your concerns around it?
CS: Senate Bill 763 is yet another attempt to enforce what some see as the purpose of education: to instill self-proclaimed Christian-nationalist values in public education of the diverse state of Texas. Generation Z is the most openly queer generation in history, and Texas public schools enroll roughly 75% students of color. We come from unique cultures and faiths, and we're facing unprecedented mental health challenges as a generation. Uncertified school chaplains who are not required to refrain from proselytizing will not empower students with the resources and support they desperately need.
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Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
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