I am queer and I don’t identify as male or female. I am somewhere in between. I feel like myself. I’m Cameron, and I want a community where people can be themselves, be true to themselves and to others, and receive support for those identities.
But there is discrimination happening in my community right now around the country. Efforts to ban specific books are on the rise.
Students addressed concerns that the books removed are largely topics of slavery, the Holocaust, L G B T Q, and mental health.
I did not expect that a small town like mine would become national news, but when my school district began banning books, I began speaking at school board meetings.
I built partnerships with local bookstores and grew a movement of students to distribute banned books across the district.
There has never been a time where book banning has been on the right side of history. Books can change people’s lives, change perspectives, and we are standing strong and speaking above the flood line of censorship.