We've all heard that "children are our future," but few organizations have connected that sentiment to democracy building like Generation Citizen. Their CEO Elizabeth Clay Roy shares her passion for education, civics, and the power of "action civics" to build a better democracy in this episode of the How to Win Friends and Save The Republic podcast.
Sam Daley-Harris founded the anti-poverty lobby RESULTS in 1980, co-founded the Microcredit Summit Campaign in 1995 and founded Civic Courage in 2012.
Originally named the Center for Citizen Empowerment and Transformation, Civic Courage was founded to empower citizen action. It does so by teaching strategies to organizations so their members can create champions, in Congress and the media, for their causes. RESULTS has become known for its creative strategies for empowering grassroots citizen action. In 1987, RESULTS volunteers were able to gather editorial writers from 28 U.S. cities on a conference call with Muhammad Yunus, 19 years before he received the Nobel Peace Prize.
The 2024 edition of Daley-Harris’ book “Reclaiming Our Democracy: Every Citizen’s Guide to Transformational Advocacy” was named an editor’s pick by Publishers Weekly BookLife. The book outlines 13 “principles of action” and uses case studies of successful advocacy to show evidence of their efficacy. Many of the case studies come from Daley-Harris’ work as the head of RESULTS. The original version was published in 1993,
He is also the co-editor of the book “New Pathways Out of Poverty.”
Early in his life, Sam Daley-Harris was a music teacher and a percussionist for the Miami Philharmonic.
I had the wonderful opportunity to interview Daley-Harris a couple of weeks ago for the CityBiz “Meet the Change Leaders” series. Watch to learn the full extent of his democracy reform work:
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMrY_H1maw0
Balta is director of solutions journalism and DEI initiatives for The Fulcrum and a board member of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund, the parent organization of The Fulcrum. He is publisher of the Latino News Network and a trainer with the Solutions Journalism Network.
If the Trump administration eliminates the Department of Education it would mean that less money will go into public schools, which already don’t receive enough funds and serve more children of color than private schools.
The quality of education in our public schools, particularly education for Black and Brown children, is at stake if President-elect Donald Trump follows through on what he said in September while campaigning.
“I say it all the time, I’m dying to get back to do this. We will ultimately eliminate the federal Department of Education,” he said during a rally in Wisconsin. “We will drain the government education swamp and stop the abuse of your taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate America’s youth with all sorts of things that you don’t want to have our youth hearing.”
If the Trump administration eliminates the Department of Education it would mean that less money will go into public schools, which already don’t receive enough funds and serve more children of color than private schools. With fewer resources heading to schools, high-quality public education will be even more out of reach for Black and Brown children than it already is. Research has long indicated that access to high-quality, well-resourced public education can serve as a buffer against negative child outcomes, especially among children of color. If public school funding is funneled into private schools, the harsh reality is that Black and Brown children's potential will be severely constrained.
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Project 2025, if implemented, would ultimately eliminate Head Start, a federal program that helps millions of low-income families and their children access high-quality, comprehensive early education, health care, nutrition and other family services. Head Start has demonstrated for decades its lifelong impact on Black and Brown children’s success.
It is impossible to ascertain at this juncture if Trump and his administration will follow through with some or all of the campaign rhetoric. Hopefully that will not be the case, but if they do, the opportunity gap that currently exists between Black and Brown children and their white peers will grossly widen, stunting the opportunities for children of color to reach their potential in school and in life.
Trump has also repeatedly expressed that as early as day one of his presidency, he will remove public funds that support diversity, equity, and inclusion training for staff, initiatives for students, and curriculum. He has proposed this despite a bulk of education studies consistently demonstrating that DEI is important for positive development for all children.
Several states have already banned many of these DEI training, practices and curriculums. If federal funding is further reduced or eliminated altogether, Black and Brown children in particular can expect fewer learning experiences and materials that affirm both their cultural backgrounds and very existence. Teachers would certainly be barred from DEI training or teaching it in their classrooms; curriculum on African-, Asian-, Latin-, and Native American history would be eliminated; and classroom materials embracing the experiences of Black and Brown children in all likelihood would be removed. When there is a focus just on white history, culture and principles, Black and Brown children don’t have the same opportunities and meaningful resources to help them reach their fullest potential.
In the coming months I will be watching closely to see what plans are instituted, what are modified and what was just rhetoric to get votes. Depending on what changes are enacted teachers will be less equipped to understand and support our nation’s rapidly diversifying child population. A focus just on white history, culture, and principles will have the harmful result of ostracizing Black and Brown children and making learning irrelevant to them.
All of us must be watchful and understand that education is not the only agenda item that could severely impact Black and Brown children. Negative plans have been discussed in health care, environmental protection, immigration and the economy. It’s possible that these policies will be enacted shortly after Inauguration Day on the so-called “day one” — and thus the reason for attention now.
It’s ironic that Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Inauguration Day are the same day. But in some ways the overlap encourages us to have some hope. If we harken back to MLK’s famous “I have a dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial, we can recount the words, “I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream.”
If your dream is to protect the lives of children, you still have the tools to fight against potential harmful executive orders or legislation in the next four years.
You can make a difference.
At local levels, speak with your district’s school board; provide comments for or testimonies at your board’s public meetings; work with coalitions of parents and other adults in children’s lives to push back on Trump’s plans. Within your state, contact your Department of Education, governor’s office and elected representatives to ensure that all children, including Black and Brown children, have equitable access to high-quality education.
For federal or national impact, get in touch with the staffers of your House members or senators to share your concerns and donate to civil rights organizations like the NAACP and ACLU, as well as nonprofit organizations like Start Early and the National Black Child Development Institute, who will fight in legal battlegrounds and continue to provide the resources our Black and Brown children deserve.
Siskind, is a Senior Research Scientist at Start Early, a researcher with the Educare Network, and a Public Voices fellow with the OpEd Project in partnership with the National Black Child Development Institute.
When I bumped into my neighbor recently in the hallway of our apartment building, she innocently asked, “How are you?” Such a simple question, the conversational equivalent of “Hello.”
I could have simply said, “Good,” and walked back into my apartment. But this response didn’t capture my feelings, and she sensed it immediately. I am worried about our world — American democracy, intense political polarization, distrust of the government and the war in Israel.
What ensued from my hesitation was conversation, initially protective and cautious because, essentially, we are strangers. We live just down the hall, and yet, we don’t know much about one another beyond which sports teams we root for.
Truthfully, this hallway dialogue was a bit bumpy, as we expressed our views about what’s going on in the world. We do not see the world in the same way, for our backgrounds, politics, generations, religions and even our sports teams could not be more different.
When the conversation started to feel like a Thanksgiving dinner as the focus veered away from poultry and pumpkin pie to politics and policies, I thought it might be best if we wrap up and just walk away.
But something extraordinary happened. Rather than walk away, we kept talking. Instead of waiting anxiously to get our point in, we listened. The questions we asked indicated our investment in the encounter.
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Too often conversation feels like debate, and, even worse, a winner-takes-all gladiator sport. In “Talking to Strangers,” Danielle S. Allen writes: “Distrust can be overcome only when citizens manage to find methods of generating mutual benefit despite differences of position, experience, and perspective. The discovery of such methods is the central project of democracy.”
The organization I work for, Civic Spirit, prepares the next generation to participate in and lead our democracy, and listening represents a vital civic skill. We provide training for teachers and students in structured dialogue, intentional listening and guided conversations, so the students learn how to talk with one another and to transform hesitation into understanding, difference into connection, and strangers into friends. Just like what happened in the hallway outside my apartment.
When I got home a little later than expected, my wife asked, “Where were you?”
With renewed hope that real dialogue can bridge deep divides, I responded, “I was talking to a friend.” My Thanksgiving prayer this year is that our neighbors become friends and partners in strengthening the bonds of civic life.
Savenor is a rabbi and executive director of Civic Spirit, a nonpartisan organization that provides training and resources to faith-based schools across the United States
Book bans are skyrocketing in America, finds a new report from PEN America, a non-profit organization that champions free expression in writing. During the 2023-24 school year, over 10,000 books were banned across the country, more than double the number that were banned the prior year.
Those in favor of bans argue that books depicting LGBTQ+ characters, gender diversity, sexuality, and racism are unsuitable for children. Working together, conservative pressure groups and politicians have successfully banned a historic number of books across the nation. The number is expected to increase in 2025.
In July alone, Utah enacted a bill to create a “no read list” across the state, while Florida enacted a sweeping bill giving parents the power to veto books in public schools and libraries. More recently, a large county school board in Tennessee voted to ban six books from public libraries, including "Beloved" by Toni Morrison.
Book bans may have mushroomed in the Trump era of reactionary politics, but they have a well-established history in America. Battles over what books can be read, and by whom, dating back to the ban on "Uncle Tom’s Cabin" by abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852, reflect larger political battles over America’s moral and cultural values.
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Women have been powerful drivers of book controversies. One woman in particular, Norma Gabler, re-defined the current strategy and logic behind modern book bans. Called “education’s public enemy number one,” by critics in 1980, Gabler led the crusade against the so-called secular trend in school textbooks throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Even though Norma and her husband Mel worked together, Norma was the public face of their efforts for decades.
It all began in 1961 in Longview, Texas, when Gabler’s son presented his school textbook and pointed out that the words “one nation under God” were missing from the Gettysburg Address.
“Well, I’m Irish, and that got my Irish up,” Gabler reported in a 1982 article.
Angered by what she considered a factual and moral omission, Gabler, a devout Baptist, drove nearly five hours to Austin, the state capital, to complain to the State Board of Education.
After her trip to Austin, Gabler’s activism snowballed. She began regularly raising objections at the Texas textbook committee hearings, which advised the state’s Board of Education on which textbooks to adopt. It wasn’t until 1974, over a decade after she began, that she saw the fruits of her labor. That year, science textbooks contained a notice stating that evolution was a theory, not a fact. Her persistence, and ability to rally other Christian women to complain at committee hearings, had finally started to pay off.
At the same time as Gabler, other American women—from the left and the right—led disputes over educational material. In West Virginia, mother and school board member Alice Moore protested textbooks she considered anti-American, anti-God, and anti-white. Over the course of a year, thousands of other parents and organizations joined Moore’s protests, which eventually turned violent. Elsewhere, second-wave feminists argued that schools needed to rid curricula of gender stereotypes, and that women’s accomplishments ought to be more prominently cited in history books.
Norma and Mel Gabler went on to sway which books Texas adopted for the public-school curriculum. At the time, Texas was the largest textbook buyer in the nation and books for the entire state were selected centrally by the State Board of Education. As such, publishers relied on the Gablers’ evaluation of textbooks for sales. Because the Texas market was so big, other states also adopted their approved textbooks, meaning Texas—and the Gablers—often decided the curriculum for other states too.
The material Norma Gabler opposed included what she deemed “gutter language,” “secular humanism,” evolution, women’s liberation, and socialism. She advocated for the free market and Christianity. At the same time, other right-wing Christian women across the nation also became politically mobilized. They sought to curb the erosion of so-called Christian values from different areas of American culture, including education, television and movies, and books.
In California, Beverly LaHaye launched an organization to combat feminism, Phyllis Schlafly campaigned to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment, Anita Bryant went to war against gay rights, and Dr. Mildred Jefferson rallied against abortion. These women, and others, operated independently, yet labored toward a common goal: to protect conservative Christian values, which they felt were under attack.
Even though she rose to the forefront of America’s educational politics, Gabler endorsed traditional gender roles and wanted to see this reflected in school textbooks. She consistently referred to herself as “just a housewife and mother” without a college degree. Gabler framed book censorship as a matter of “parental rights.” Once, during a heated face-off with a State Board of Education member, Norma asserted: “My sons belong to us; they do not belong to you and the state – yet.” Similarly, giving a public talk to parents, she passionately stated: “If you don’t fight, nobody else will!”
Hasis on being an everyday concerned mother was a political strategy that aided her success. Precisely because she was described as “plain folk” from small-town Texas, Gabler’s activism was difficult to counter. Additionally, by staking her politics on her identity as a mother, she and other right-wing activists such as Schlafly and LaHaye, appealed to other Christian women, drawing them into the political fray.
In 1973, the Gablers founded Educational Research Analysts, a non-profit organization. They hired six staff members who helped them review textbooks and disseminate regular newsletters with their findings to a mailing list of over 10,000 people. That year also marked a turning point as the Gablers achieved a broader, more national influence, leading seminars on textbook evaluation for conservative groups across the U.S. During the 1970s and 1980s, Gabler lectured before various audiences about textbook monitoring, from women’s organizations to government bodies. She appeared on national television, including on CBS' "60 Minutes," and radio shows. In 1985, the Gablers published a book called "What Are they Teaching Our Children?," which detailed the ruinous effects of secular textbooks.
Today, America’s book bans have changed slightly. As literature has expanded to include more stories about gender and racial diversity, conservative women have also adapted their political targets. Whereas Gabler targeted school textbooks, pressure groups and politicians currently focus on literature such as "Gender Queer" by Maia Kobabe, the most challenged book of last year.
Norma Gabler’s objections spanned various topics, and often centered on factual inaccuracies, not just moral debates. Today, bans center entirely on upholding conservative Christian values. Even still, the topics under attack reflect historical antecedents. Books featuring LGTBQ+ relationships are the most heavily targeted, recalling Bryant’s virulent attack on gay rights in 1977.
And whereas Gabler waged ideological battle with the state’s public education system, today’s battles have expanded to include public libraries as well.
Despite these differences, much of the same rhetoric persists. As Gabler argued 60 years ago, today’s book banners continue to emphasize that parents hold the right to decide what their children read and learn about. This logic finds purchase during periods of marked social and cultural change. Just like the early 1970s, today’s politics are characterized by an intense moral backlash, and parents—more specifically mothers—strive to protect the established moral order.
Gabler’s legacy lives on in Florida’s House Bill 1069, which mentions “parents’ rights” six times. And Donald Trump’s campaign promise to abolish the Department of Education rests on the reasoning that parents—not the federal government—should govern all aspects of children’s education.
Moms for Liberty, which claims to have 130,000 members in chapters across 48 states, is a driving force behind recent book bans in America. Led by Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich, the group stresses parents’ right to choose what their children read, just like Norma Gabler did decades ago. And just like Gabler, Justice and Descovich present themselves as everyday “moms on a mission.”
They have been highly effective. The recent Moms for Liberty annual conference, headlined by Donald Trump, focused on education, alongside gender identity. As Gabler once exhorted her audience of conservative women: “Let’s show them that we know how to win!”
As U.S. politics grow ever more contentious and the conservative backlash mounts, it is prudent to remember that the battle over books is nothing new. And that sometimes the most unsuspecting actors wield tremendous political power.
Gaddini is a visiting researcher in Stanford University's History Department and an associate professor of sociology at University College London. She is a member of the Scholars Strategy Network.
This aarticle was first published in Time.
