'Your Freedom, Your Power: A Kid’s Guide to the First Amendment'
“The First Amendment is FIRST for a reason,” the authors exclaim. Before all, it guarantees “not just one freedom, but five!” Namely: religion, speech, press, assembly and the right to petition the government.
Your Freedom, Your Power is written for middle school kids and serves as a primer on how the Constitution (and Bill of Rights) was composed and the structure of America’s legal system. It explains that there are exceptions to free speech “to protect people from really bad effects of certain kinds of speech,” including incitement to violence, malicious falsehoods and theft of “speech owned by other people” (e.g. copyrights). Your Freedom gets into contested areas of “expression,” including politically provocative clothing worn in schools (the courts have sent mixed signals). On the Your Power front, the authors recount cases of kids rising in protest—during the Civil Rights Movement and recently, walk-outs over gun violence and a suit filed against the U.S. government over its failure to halt climate change. That last one made it through district court but failed on appeal.
Likely, Your Freedom, Your Power will be banned in Florida.
