Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis this week released his new book “The Courage to Be Free,” which is largely seen as the soft launch of his yet-to-be-announced presidential run in the 2024 election.
Though Donald Trump has a competitive edge over DeSantis in recent polling, the Florida governor is increasingly commanding headline attention for his political crusade against “woke” culture – including his efforts to ban Black history and LGBTQ+ discussions in classrooms.
As DeSantis appears poised to announce his bid for the White House, Black Democrats and community leaders are sounding off against him.
“There’s a new group of leaders who are emerging that are a clear and present danger to democracy as we know it,” U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, the former chairman of the Jan. 6 Select Committee, told theGrio.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass – and former U.S. congresswoman – described DeSantis as “very scary” in a recent interview with theGrio.
Bass said the Florida leader is “bold enough to essentially try to erase our history to say that our history doesn’t matter because teaching it is dangerous [and] because it might ‘make white children feel bad.’”
The new mayor of the City of Angels added, “He did this without any regard for how Black children would feel.”
While accepting the social justice award at the 54th annual NAACP Image Awards, famed civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump vowed to go after the state of Florida and Desantis for recently banning an advanced placement African-American studies course in the Sunshine State. Crump vowed “never to stop fighting racism and discrimination” in and outside the classroom.
Crump was met with thunderous applause as he shouted out a roll call of Black history luminaries: “Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas, Ida B. Wells, Thurgood Marshall, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Shirley Chisholm and…
Read the full article here
