Sarasota Film Festival revives memory of a sad moment for Manatee County schools

My wife Marie Masferrer featured in "The Librarians," a new documentary about librarians on the front lines of the fight in Florida and elsewhere for intellectual freedom and against book bans.

The School District of Manatee County in January 2023 abruptly ordered its teachers to remove or otherwise make inaccessible to students unvetted books and other materials from their classroom libraries, in reaction to a new state law going after the porn that doesn’t exist in public schools. If they didn’t comply, the district warned they risk being ch…