Over the past two years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of books being banned or challenged in school districts across the country. The majority of the stories that are being censored contain LGBTQ storylines and protagonists of color, including All Boys Aren’t Blue, a story about growing up Black and queer in New Jersey and Virginia and one of the top five most banned books in the country. The author, George Johnson, joined At Liberty this week to talk with us about what makes Black queer voices so threatening, the unique power of books, and their resolve to remain true to their story despite the attacks.

Q: You’ve said in prior interviews that you always knew your book was likely to be banned. Why did you think that?

I just saw the landscape of the country we live in, and it seemed obvious to me that someone was going to take issue with my book. I had already seen rumblings around books like The Hate U Give, Dear Martin, and the 1619 Project. So as I was going through my process of writing the book, in my mind, I was like, “Okay, if they’re coming for those books, they’re definitely going to come for mine, too.” I knew the myriad topics I was covering in my book, including racism and anti-Blackness and sexuality, was not going to make a particular group of this country happy.

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Their Memoir Is One of the Most Banned Books in America | American Civil Liberties Union

George M. Johnson talks about book banning and how we can all show up in the fight against censorship. Listen to the podcast now!

Q: Did that change or shape how you approached writing it?

No, I think it just made me [think], I might as well tell the truth. I might as well go all the way out with it. Because regardless of how I try to write this, frame it, sanitize it — which there were times I did think about sanitizing it — it wouldn’t have mattered. They were going to find issue with this book [anyway]. So it only inspired me to write it in its totality with full vulnerability and transparency.

Q: Many banned authors are among the most well-regarded in American literature. How does it feel to be among the company of your idols?

It’s bittersweet at times. I can’t believe they’re still attacking Black writing after all these years, but yeah, it feels great. When I’ve talked to those who have been in this industry for a long time, they’re like, “If you’re getting banned, you’re probably saying something really, really important, because look at the company you’re with.” And so I do take a lot of pride in it. It would be one thing if [the people trying to ban my book] were actually reading the story, but they’re not reading the story. They read the same four passages at every meeting. They’re always shocked when people bring up other passages and they’re almost like, “What book is that from?” Because [they] actually have never read the book.

Q: What do books give us that other mediums can’t, that makes them such irresistible targets for this kind of censorship?

Books stand the test of time. I think that’s pretty much it. Books are a time capsule. It’s not like a tweet that went viral that you may be able to pull up 10 years later … Toni Morrison’s books from the 70s, the 80s, they are still here. They are still widely being adapted. They’re still being turned into movies and films. When these books come into the world, they don’t go away. And I think that’s also the thing … You can block [students] for maybe two or four years from reading it in high school. But then they exit and can go grab it. Amazon doesn’t go away. It exists in multiple languages. It actually just makes [the book] more irresistible.

Q: Why are queer and Black stories so threatening and therefore so powerful?

Because they are an educational tool that builds empathy between communities of people who never knew that people outside of their bubbles exist. And I think that’s a real fear because Gen Z is the first generation in this country that’s more non-white than white. Generation Z is already identifying nearly 20 percent LGBTQ and they are going to be the next biggest voting bloc, as well as the next future senators, governors, presidents, and CEOs. If you empower them with the knowledge that other people exist outside of them … then they actually want to give equity and equality. I think that’s dangerous in the minds of the older generation of white men who continue to run this country.

Q: What would you say to people who have a story to share but are perhaps reluctant due to the climate that they would be publishing in?

When my ancestors had a story to share, the climate they were published in was extremely dangerous. You had slave narratives where they had to change their names, change some of their locations because of fear of being caught by slave catchers, even if they had moved to cities where slavery had already been abolished. So I think in every period of time in this country, [there have been times when] writing was dangerous. But I don’t think it should stop us from writing and telling our stories. It makes the landscape tough and it does make you more reluctant. But I think if you have a story to tell, you should just trust yourself enough to tell that story.

The recent launch of a new mobile phone service introduced significant new privacy protections into the mobile phone system. This exciting new approach highlights the failure of the existing mobile phone infrastructure to protect privacy, and points the way forward for a wide variety of technologies besides mobile phones.

Today’s cellphones are generally a privacy disaster. Partly that’s the result of the two companies that control the operating system software on the vast majority of the world’s pocket computers. The most common operating system, Android, is controlled by an advertising company (Google) and is notorious for leaking information about its users. Apple, which controls iOS, while excellent on privacy in many respects, is also becoming increasingly interested in monetizing its customers’ data, and lacks adequate controls to prevent rogue apps from many forms of spying. The result is that a lot of the activity we engage in on our phones is tracked.

There are already solutions out there for the privacy problems posed by Android and iOS: privacy-focused operating systems such as CalyxOS and GrapheneOS. Widespread adoption of those would be a step in the right direction. But the operating system can’t defend against another major obstacle to phone privacy: the architecture of the cellular network itself. In order for your carrier to route calls and data to your phone, the network needs to constantly know which cell tower your phone is near. And when you make a call or use data, the provider can see where that traffic is going. Cell carriers track and store this accidental byproduct of the technology in order to record people’s location history and network activity for marketing purposes and, in certain circumstances, for sharing with law enforcement.

This tracking happens through a standard identifier tied to each SIM card called an Internal Mobile Subscriber Identifier (IMSI) — basically an account number used, among other things, to verify that a phone’s mobile service is paid for. The new phone service, called Pretty Good Phone Privacy (PGPP), uses encryption techniques to deliberately blind itself so that it can’t know that the user of a mobile device is you, or what data you are sending from that phone. You connect to the PGPP service for payment, and that’s all.

The service has some limitations. It covers data only, not voice calls. For complex technical reasons (that Apple could fix if it wanted to), it doesn’t work on iPhones, which represent about half of U.S. phones but only 16 percent of phones globally. And certain other techniques for tracking phones remain in place. Nonetheless, it is an important step forward in protecting privacy.

Location data is so sensitive that the Supreme Court agreed with the ACLU that law enforcement should not be able to obtain it from the carriers without a warrant. Such data can reveal things about our associations, our habits, and our political, sexual, religious, and medical lives that no telecom provider has a right to know just because of the way cellular technology happens to work. With PGPP’s approach, the carrier simply does not have the data to turn over to anyone. It cannot be sold, leaked, or hacked, let alone offered to overreaching law enforcement agencies.

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Carpenter v. United States | American Civil Liberties Union

In 2011, the Detroit government gained cell phone location data without a warrant. The Supreme Court ruled the action violated the Fourth Amendment.

And the fact that this service has been created by two determined technologists shows clearly that Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, and their smaller competitors could be offering such a privacy-protecting service, but don’t want to.

This service is also a harbinger of broader trends when it comes to privacy protection — namely, the expansion of privacy protection through the use of innovative developments in cryptography. Some of those developments are brand new, while others — including one used by the PGPP service — are decades old and just now being applied. With names like “zero-knowledge proofs” and “blind signatures,” these techniques can let us enjoy all the features and benefits of technology while still protecting our privacy. We can have our cake and eat it too.

For web browsing or messaging systems, for example, they allow us to exchange encrypted communications with anyone on earth, even though we haven’t previously met those people to agree on a secret code or encryption key. When it comes to identity systems, they can let us prove that we’re over 18 (or anything else) without actually revealing who we are. And now, in the case of the phone system, we know it can allow a service provider to send data to our phone through the cell tower that is closest to us, without the provider knowing who or where we are.

Originally, tracking our phones was the only way to deliver the service, but that’s not true anymore — now it’s just about the cell carriers lining their pockets by tracking us while turning a blind eye to readily available encryption techniques that can protect our privacy.

Where it is technologically possible to achieve legitimate administrative aims (such as making sure that a phone is authorized to connect to the network) while at the same time protecting privacy, there is absolutely no reason not to do so. That’s true for phones and for many other technologies as well. Despite the selfish desires of companies to monetize our data and the unbalanced and constitutionally suspect interests of security agencies in mass tracking of people’s activities, we need to insist that privacy be built into the architectures we depend on.

Few people know that paramedic ambulance services as we know them today originated in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the 1960s. And even fewer know that a group of Black men organized and founded the country’s first emergency medical service (EMS). The Pittsburgh-based group, called Freedom House, wrote a training book that still serves as the basis for EMS training to this day, and pioneered life-saving practices in the field. Not everybody knows about this Black-led service that revolutionized emergency response, but I do: I served as a paramedic with Freedom House from 1972 to 1975.

I’ll never forget the excitement I felt when I first traveled in an ambulance with its siren blaring, or the feeling of satisfaction when we’d drop patients off at the emergency room and let the doctors take it from there while we moved on to the next call. We were saving lives — Black lives. You see, back then, you had to rely on the police for medical emergencies, and unfortunately, there was not a good relationship between Black residents and the police, so we wouldn’t call them in emergencies. Even if we did call them, they often wouldn’t come to Black neighborhoods, at least not quickly. Freedom House was founded by and for Pittsburgh’s under-served Black community for that reason. And not everybody in Pittsburgh liked it.

The rest of the city’s residents had to rely on the police to respond to all emergency calls. When it came to medical and mental health emergencies, it was clear the police were not the right ones for the job. When police would transport a patient to the hospital, they’d throw them in the back of a police wagon while both officers sat up front. If something happened to you on the way, nobody would notice until you got to the emergency room, when it might be too late. Police didn’t have the medical training we did, and their vehicles didn’t have the equipment ours did — defibrillators, monitors, battery-powered EKGs. Sometimes our ambulances would pass by the police on our way to the hospital, beating them to the same place they were trying to get to.

The police were not equipped to respond to people in mental health crises, either. On one occasion, the police were called on a man screaming at people on the street. I actually knew the man; he was a former paramedic who had fallen on hard times and was suffering from mental health issues. So I got on the scene shortly after the police arrived and managed to calm him down and de-escalate the situation. If the police were left to respond, the outcome would not have been good.

It’s situations like these that show that a critical part of emergency response is compassion and community bonds. It’s easy to throw a person down and handcuff him and take him to jail without actually knowing why that person is acting out. Until first responders start making de-escalation a priority in all cases, then I think we will keep seeing the tragedies we see so often today, when a situation that is mild in nature escalates and a person ends up losing their life.

“It’s situations like these that show that a critical part of emergency response is compassion and community bonds.”

First responders need to see the communities they serve as allies. You need to have compassion and empathy for these communities; you need to build a level of confidence and trust that they will get care when they call you, not trouble.

Freedom House ended up being a victim of its own success. When Pittsburgh’s white residents realized the Black community was getting better emergency care than they got from the police, they complained to the mayor. They didn’t want to rely on the police for emergency response. They wanted something like Freedom House. The mayor eventually caved to pressure and disbanded us.

As a consolation prize, the mayor agreed to hire Freedom House paramedics for a new service he started. Like many others, I joined the new EMS, but it was not the same. The new EMS paramedics refused to accept any type of training that we had to undergo. Even on call, I wasn’t allowed to do anything. I couldn’t talk on the radio. I couldn’t examine patients. I couldn’t treat them, nothing. I was the third person on a two-person crew. All the while, the city was buying them brand new vehicles and equipment — the same things that we had invented or put on our truck or tested.

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I almost threw my hands up and said, “Y’all got this, I’ll look someplace else.” But once I realized that the department was trying to prove that we were not qualified to do this kind of work, then I had to rethink my method of operation. I chose to step up my game, and became twice as good.

One time, we walked into a person’s home to find them unconscious, not breathing and with no heartbeat — they were in cardiac arrest, and if we didn’t do anything, the person was going to die. But the crew I was with didn’t know what to do. They didn’t have a clue. So they looked at me and said, “You take over.” I told one crew member to monitor the patient’s oxygen, the other to start CPR, and we ended up saving that person’s life. That wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t asked me to take charge. From that point on, I decided that I was going to be a little bit more outspoken and take on a more proactive role in day-to-day operations of whichever unit I was working on.

Despite all our success and innovation, Freedom House has become a literal footnote in history. Freedom House published a book in 1977 that is required training for every paramedic in the country to this day. I came across the ninth edition in Tampa one day and flipped through. I read about the greatness of EMS in Miami and Jacksonville and Seattle and whatnot. The only mention of Freedom House is in a footnote saying only that we were a group of Black men that didn’t have an opportunity to get a high school education. What we did from 1967 to 1975 has been swept under the rug, has been forgotten or deleted from history.

“Despite all our success and innovation, Freedom House has become a literal footnote in history.”

That’s why it’s my heart’s desire to make sure that the legacy of Freedom House is made known to everyone in this country, especially members of today’s EMS. If I had my way, our history would be required reading for every EMS paramedic, EMT, and emergency physician in this country. They all need to know where the foundation of EMS began: as an alternative to police, in a Black community, led by Black people.