Florida Teachers Threatened With FELONY Charges Over Class Libraries

Teachers in Manatee County, Florida have been ordered to remove their personal classroom libraries, or at least make them accessible and not visible to their students, or they face the threat of felony prosecution by Ron DeSantis' administration. Under new Florida laws, teachers are no longer allowed to provide any books that have not been approved by the administration and their acolytes, severely restricting what teachers are even allowed to have in their classrooms. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins talks about this chilling effect on public education.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Teachers across the state of Florida have been ordered under penalty of the law to either remove or make inaccessible their individual classroom libraries. These are books that have either been donated to the teachers or that they have just compiled in their personal collections over years and years of teaching that they leave in their classroom. Of course, for their children to read during free time, you know, whatever it is. They have their own personal libraries. I know I see it in my son's elementary school. Every time the teachers are very proud of their, their books. They ask for donations, and those are now illegal in the state of Florida. Under Ron DeSantis, fascist government teachers are not allowed to have books in their classroom unless each and every one of those individual books has been personally vetted by a certified librarian. Certified librarian. So if a teacher, and this law just went into effect, as we all know, it was signed many, many months ago, but it's now in effect, teachers in the state are being warned by their administrations, get the books out because if you don't, you will face third degree felony charges.

So we're not talking about, oh, it's just a misdemeanor. Oh, it's a warning. It is a fricking felony in the state of Florida for a teacher to have a book in their classroom that was not vetted by whatever the hell a certified librarian is. Ron DeSantis signed that into law here in the state of Florida. Oh, and by the way, if it turns out that that librarian who certified your book, if they make a mistake, then the librarian gets hit with the felony criminal charges and could be hauled out of that school in front of all the children in handcuffs.

This is Nazi Germany. I'm sorry. There is no other way to say that. Ron DeSantis is a frigging fascist, and any and every Republican in this state who supports him, guess what? You are also a fascist. You're about two steps away from being a full-blown Nazi at this point. And I'm tired of dancing around. I am tired of holding my tongue. I am. I'm. As a parent, I'm. As the spouse of an educator, I am as a resident. This cannot continue. The fact that this law has even been able to go into effect is frigging mind blowing. The

Courts need to overturn this. Again, shocked that it hasn't been overturned, but we have teachers who will end up being arrested. There will be plenty who didn't get the memo. There will be angry right wing parents who go to schools just to find a book that wasn't approved to get a teacher arrested. That's how vindictive these sobs are, and it's gonna happen, and it'll be in the headlines. We'll talk about it here and I'll be even more off them than I am now. But you wait and see, you will see armies of these little fascist Republicans going school to school, knocking door to door, making sure there's no books that they disapprove of in those classrooms. Our children face very real threats in school. One of the biggest one, obviously, is a lunatic walking in with a high powered assault rifle. Republicans are doing nothing to stop that.

Like they don't care if a kid dies at school, but God forbid they read a book about Billy having two dads. They don't care that teachers can't afford supplies for their own classrooms. They don't care that our textbooks are old and outdated. They actually love that crap.