ms. butler: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from california. ms. butler: mr. president, i rise today on the final day recognizing plaque history month to bring attention to this chamber and to the american people watching the very harmful

and antidemocratic practice of book banning happening or being attempted in states all over our country. mr. president, the first amendment in our constitution is clear. congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or the right of the people to peaceably assemble and to petition the government for redress of grievances. this amendment gives all americans the right to speak, publish, and read what they wish, free from government censorship, but a nationwide campaign in states like florida, utah, north dakota, and even california has been deployed to limit our children's learning and enforce restrictions on one

of our most fundamental freedoms. right now extremist politicians are working overtime to strip our nation's book shelves of essential literature that help to tell the complete story of america, including the stories of great sacrifice, contribution, and pain of black americans. these include stories of struggle and triumph against hatred and bigotry. they recount efforts to reconcile the promise of american ideals with the reality of our most pervasive challenges a authors who have long been criticized -- been recognized as chronicles of our nation's journey has been written off by lawmakers who seek to narrow the scope of what our children can learn about our history. now the organizers of these

state-by-state battles would have you believe that they are upholding parents' choice, that imposing these book bans would somehow protect the innocence of our children, but i and so many others that have been watching this, we contend that the masked effort to shield young learners is an utter slap in the face to communities who have too long had to fight to have their very stories told. our nation's most ethnically and racially diverse generation have seen themselves reflected in these pages and for these extremist adults to deem these stories inappropriate is a direct attack on their experience and their very existence. over the past two years, these blanket attacks on our books

have become more organized and well-funded. in 2022, more than 22, 500 -- more than 2,500 books were target add. according to the american library asoldiers, the -- association, the majority of those books were about black or lgbtq + people. as only the 12th black senator to serve in this chamber and the first openly lgbtq senator to serve, i will not stand by silently as our stories get erased. that's why i'll be joining the freedom readers in their efforts to ensure the freedom to learn by regularly taking to the senate floor and invite my colleagues to join me to read excerpts of books that tell the story of our nation, its legacy and the people who contribute to america's character of imperfection, of resilience and

of progress. i'll start today, mr. president, by offering excerpts from an essay in the book "sister outsider" by audrey lord. anyone who is remotely familiar with lord's exceptional body of work can attest to her genius as a writer, a poet, a philosopher, and civil rights activist. her book "sister outsider" is a collection of speeches and essays in which ms. lord explores the questions surrounding race, identity, life, community, and meaning from her lens as a black queer woman from harlem, encouraging readers to do their own self-reflection and inviting this emto draw -- them to draw new conclusions about the world around them, to speak and to take action. ms. lord's work, the transformation of silence into language and action, first

appeared in the cancer journal where she shares of her journey of having breast cancer, which ultimately led to a mastectomy. it reads, in part, in becoming forcibly and essentially aware of my mortality and of what i wished and wanted for my life, however short it may be, priorities and omissions became strongly etched in a merciless light and what i most regretted were my silences. of what had i ever been afraid of? to question or to speak as i believed could have been meant -- could have meant pain or death but we all hurt in so many different ways all the time, and pain will either change or end. death, on the other hand, is the final silence. test.

and that might be coming quickly now without regard for if i have ever spoken what needed to be said or contained myself into small silences. while i planned someday to speak or waited for someone else's words. and i began to recognize a source of power within myself that comes from the knowledge that while it is most desirable not to be afraid, learning to put fear into perspective gave me great strength. she writes within those weeks of acute fear came the knowledge within the war we are all waging with the forces of death, subtle and otherwise, conscious or not, i am -- i'm not only a casualty, i'm also a warrior. what are the word you do not yet have? what do you need to say? what are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own until you will

sicken and die of them still in silence? perhaps for some of you today i am the face of one of your fears because i am a black woman, because i am a lesbian, because i am myself a black woman warrior poet doing work who has come to ask you, are you doing yours? ms. lorde continues that it is never without fear of visibility or the harsh light of scrutiny and perhaps judgment or pain of death, what have we lived through all those already -- but we have lived through all those already in silence except death. and i remind myself all the time now that if i were to be born mute or had maintained an oath of silence my whole lifelong for safety, i would still have suffered, and i would still die. and where the words of women are

crying to be heard, we must each of us recognize our responsibility to speak out those words, to read them and share them and examine them in their pertinence in our lives, that we not hide behind the mockeries of separations that have been imposed upon us and which so we often accept as our own. we can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. for we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition. and while we wait in silence for the final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us. the fact that we are here and i speak these words is an attempt

to attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. and there are so many silences to be broken. in closing, mr. president, the writings of ms. lorde and the transformation of silence into action are not only a beautiful articulation examining the cost of being cost of being silent, she gives us a better gift. she invites us to acknowledge our commonalties as well as our differences in order to give them voice and to deepen our understanding and expand the power of our words. and turn those words into action. while ms. lorde first wrote and delivered this essay in 1977, i think we could all agree that it

could easily have been written just yesterday. shamefully enough, school administrators in tennessee took steps to target this book and to i shall yew educational gag orders with the goal to suppress hundreds of other stories from being told. now more than ever, mr. president, we must heed ms. lorde's call to speak into the silence, to raise our voices and reject the intimidation of those who would have the history of our nation, the beauty of our differences, and the complexity of our humanity disappear from generations of learners to come. i invite all my colleagues to join me as freedom readers, to challenge those who attempt to undermine our history and uplift the diversity of our stories against the attacks to erase