‘Banned Together’: New Documentary Highlights the Power of Organizing Against Book Bans

Book banning and youthful hope don’t usually go together. But in the new documentary film Banned Together, from Atomic Focus Entertainment, they do. The film dissects contemporary book and curriculum bans in the United States and offers a roadmap for resistance by zeroing in on the efforts of three young activists from South Carolina: Elizabeth Foster, Millie Bennett, and Isabella Troy Brazoban.

Banned Together begins while Foster, Bennett, and Troy Brazoban are high school students in Beaufort, South Carolina, and ends after they’ve graduated and gone on to college. The three attend different high schools but eventually join forces through a local group called Diversity Awareness Youth Literacy Organization (DAYLO). 

In this era of attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, simply belonging to a group like this might seem radical enough. It becomes clear, however, that these high school students and their adult allies are not afraid to speak up publically in the face of censorship. Bennett’s mother serves as a mentor and organizer for DAYLO and helps those in her charge find their voices when book bans arrive on their doorstep.

In October, 2022, book banning fever began to take over Beaufort school board meetings after a man read an excerpt from an unnamed book that depicts sexual activity. Soon, according to a school board member who appears in the film, a group of people from the community demanded that close to 100 books be removed from the public schools for their alleged pornographic content.

Initially, they got their way. Beaufort County school librarian Karen Gareis notes, chillingly, that she and her colleagues were “given a list [of books] and told to pack them up and send them to the district, no questions asked.” The quick buckling in the face of pressure from a few upset community members spurs DAYLO into action, and the teens soon begin attending local school board meetings in matching black t-shirts with the words “READING IS NOT A CRIME” in bold white letters across the front.

It is impossible not to root for Foster, Bennett, and Troy Brazoban. Each one has a story that makes the push to censor books feel very personal. For Troy Brazoban, it is her brother’s accidental overdose that drives her to the podium during a later school board meeting. During a December 2022 meeting to discuss the removal of books from Beaufort’s public schools, Troy Brazoban called out the ridiculousness of banning books because they reference drug use. 

Her brother, she told school board members, had already attended a school where books that included drug use were banned, and yet he still overdosed. Thankfully, he did not die. But this example makes a clear point: Suppressing books that deal with difficult topics, from gun violence to drug use to sexual identity, does little but further the feelings of shame and isolation that tend to cause problems in the first place. 

The personal is compelling in Banned Together. But of course, that’s not the whole story. Beaufort, South Carolina, is one outpost in today’s war against democracy, education, and enlightenment. One way for supporters of the Trump Administration to justify the extreme actions mandated by Project 2025—such as dismantling the U.S. Department of Education, a process that is already underway—is to spread fear and misinformation about what goes on in public schools.

If parents and community members can be convinced that teachers, librarians, and the books and lessons they share with students are concerned with little more than liberal indoctrination, then maybe they can also be convinced that we don’t need taxpayer-funded schools after all. The key organizing faction for this idea is Moms for Liberty, a wealthy, Republican-backed advocacy organization posing as a grassroots group of concerned parents.

Banned Together profiles the rise of Moms for Liberty by tracing its roots to a contentious school board election in Brevard County, Florida, in 2020. There, Democrat Jennifer Jenkins had the rare honor of beating an incumbent Republican candidate, Tina Descovich. Descovich then went on to found Moms for Liberty along with Bridget Ziegler, whose husband, Christian Ziegler, is the head of Florida’s Republican Party.

In short, Moms for Liberty is one well-connected, well-funded outfit. Numerous state and local chapters have sprung up since 2020, and Banned Together documents how the group has helped fuel the book and curriculum bans seen in communities such as Beaufort. 

The young activists in Beaufort did manage to get nearly all of the ninety-six books that were removed from the public school system in 2022 back onto their district’s shelves. But Banned Together makes it clear that this threat is far from over, for Beaufort and for all people who value information and education over fear and ignorance. The time to speak up is now.