Holding up a pink and blue “Trans People Belong” poster, I marched alongside 150 fellow high school students in the heart of Washington D.C this summer. Angered by the direct attack on either themselves or their trans siblings, we linked our arms to protest the approximately 500 anti-LGBTQ bills that have been introduced across the nation.

As an intern and a participant in the ACLU National Advocacy Institute (NAI), I had spent the past week learning alongside other young activists about major ACLU issues. The NAI is an annual program that engages high school students like me in grassroots organizing, professional advocacy, and legal activism. To prepare for the rally, which took place on July 5, we learned the principles of organizing and about the bills at large. Chase Strangio, deputy director for transgender justice with the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, taught us how they harm or affect young people, whether by not allowing trans kids to use the bathroom and receive gender-affirming care, or by banning drag queens from reading to children in public libraries and schools.

After seven days of learning, I found myself chanting in front of Capitol Hill. The first rumble of thunder resounded, and a steady drizzle fell upon us. Despite the weather, the energy remained strong as we waited to hear our speakers.

Chloe McKeown, an intern with the ACLU LGBTQ+ Campaigns team, introduced the speakers who were as young as 17 and as wise as 73. “If we had more intergenerational events and collaboration it would be phenomenal,” they said, reflecting on the experience. “All forms of leadership come together that way.”

Some students came to the Institute as experienced advocates for trans rights back at home. Others knew less. Despite their previous knowledge, however, all the students listened to the speakers with an open mind — each speech was interrupted by bursts of claps and enthusiastic cheers.

The first speaker, 17-year-old Meeks Annillo from Texas, blew me away. I had the privilege of speaking to them a week later, when I learned they were initially hesitant to go onstage. In 2022, Anillo attended the NAI virtually, and heard Amber Hikes, deputy executive director for strategy and culture at the ACLU, speak at a panel.

“I was in tears. It was the first time that I felt like I had a place in this world,” they said. When Anillo returned to the NAI in 2023, they were able to meet Hikes in person. “Talking to Amber is what gave me motivation to speak at the rally,” they added.

Another student speaker, 17-year-old Fynn Remhof from Illinois, came from a town with 3,000 people. “I wanted to speak because we hear about gender- affirming care in the big cities, but not a lot in the rural communities,” she said. Since NAI, she has been working on creating a proposal to introduce a student advocate to serve on the school board in her hometown. She is hoping that that youth advocate will be an ally for trans kids. “I just want one gender neutral bathroom,” she said.

The final student speaker, Alia Cusolito, was a 17-year-old from Massachusetts and the co-president of Queer Youth Assemble, a nonprofit led by and for queer youth. They helped organize marches across the country and spoke at the National March for Queer and Trans Youth Autonomy in the same exact place in March. Cusolito shared an anecdote during that time.

“We were contacted by a mother in Kansas who had never organized a protest before, but she wanted to,” they shared. “She had lost her son the year before to suicide. She told me that she believes that it was because of how afraid he was of the threat of anti-trans violence and legislation. The work we do every day is a step closer to a world that Kai would have stayed in.”

Annillo and Remhof also shared other people’s stories. Annillo used their close friend’s experience of transitioning as a testament to the powers of gender-affirming care, saying that this was their source of “trans hope.” Remhof told the story of her friend, Noah, who attempted to take his life and was institutionalized after, hoping to foster urgency and bring awareness to the fact that it is not an uncommon experience for trans kids, especially those from rural areas.

The older speakers captured me as well. Rayceen Pendarvis and Diego Sanchez, who are both trailblazers in the queer and trans community, taught me how long the fight has been going on. “We have to love those who do not understand us,” said Pendarvis. “I was you, and you will be me,” said Sanchez.

Earlier in the week, the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project Director Ben Wizner and Senior Staff Attorney Emerson Sykes repeatedly told us during their Student Free Speech keynote, “Behind every brief is a story.” It was the stories of the speakers and their loved ones that touched me the most and helped me understand the magnitude of the issue.

In turn, sharing those stories helped speakers feel seen. “It was crazy to just be listened to and to be heard,” said Annillo. Remhof agreed. “There were people fighting for me [at the rally]. I was not familiar with that.”

The ACLU is leading the fight to end classroom censorship and protect our right to learn. We filed the first case in the country to challenge a law that censored instruction about systemic sexism and racism in Oklahoma, survived a motion to dismiss in New Hampshire, and obtained an injunction to block the State of Florida from enforcing the higher education provisions of the Stop W.O.K.E. Act.

As a former high school history teacher and a lawyer on the ACLU team litigating these challenges, the threat these laws pose to society is truly terrifying. Conservative politicians pushing these bills are advocating for nothing less than a re-whitewashing of history. If these revisionist efforts are successful, the next generation will be compelled to believe a version of history manufactured to fit the so-called patriotic views of a vocal, discriminatory minority. Students will not be taught, and may never learn, to trace the deliberate impact of historic oppression on institutions today. This will reinforce the salience of racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia as unavoidable, and prevent the next generation from achieving justice.

Efforts to silence discussions about race also invalidate the lived experiences of BIPOC students. Instruction about racism and sexism belongs in schools because it equips students to process the world around them and to live in a multicultural society.

Two years into this fight, a few lessons stand out:

The push for classroom censorship ignited as backlash to progress towards racial justice following the unprecedented protests in 2020 sparked by the murder of George Floyd. To curtail efforts to expand instruction and materials about racial justice and our discriminatory history, 45 states introduced bills to limit instruction about racism and sexism. These bills, essentially education gag orders, passed in 17 states. By January 2022, 35 percent of all primary and secondary (K-12) students, or 17.7 million students, attended school in districts that experienced some form of a local campaign to end “critical race theory” in classrooms. To date, almost 700 efforts to exclude “critical race theory” have been identified at the local, state, and federal levels. Last year, nearly 40 percent of classroom censorship bills targeted higher education.

Parents overwhelmingly agree that “lessons about the history of racism prepare children to build a better future for everyone” and that students should “learn about the ongoing effects of slavery and racism as part of their education.” In a 2022 study, 87 percent of parents agreed that “lessons about the history of racism prepare children to build a better future for everyone as opposed to feeling that lessons about racism are harmful to children.” Another study from 2021 found that more than 70 percent of Americans agreed that high schools should teach the impacts of slavery (78 percent) and racism (73 percent).

Initially, conservatives called for the exclusion of “critical race theory,” but actually excluded so much more. All forms of race-conscious instruction have been erased from classrooms, despite their documented benefits for students. This includes instruction about racism and discrimination (distinct from critical race theory) and culturally-relevant teaching techniques designed to build upon students’ lived experiences. Additionally, conservatives banned books — like “All Boys Aren’t Blue” and “And Tango Makes Three” — and classroom instruction that highlight the experiences of LGBTQ+ people or the impact of sexism.

Educators report that they have restricted classroom discussions, curriculum, or content as a result of the laws, despite a desire from students to learn about censored topics. They described a culture of fear and intimidation in schools, marked by constant surveillance, scrutiny and second-guessing.

In accordance with Florida’s Stop W.O.K.E. Act, which prohibits instruction on systemic racism and sexism, the Florida State Board of Education introduced outrageous African-American history standards that rewrite and whitewash history. These standards require teachers to instruct students that enslaved people developed skills that could be used for their personal benefit, blame enslaved people for violence during massacres, and misrepresent the role of the Founding Fathers in perpetuating slavery.

Judge Mark Walker, who heard the case in the Northern District of Florida, accurately described the Stop W.O.K.E. Act as “positively dystopian” because it limits instruction to the viewpoints approved by the State, regardless of truth.

The conservative activist Christopher Rufo manufactured the frenzy around critical race theory in the government and schools. He reportedly described the fight against critical theory as “the most successful counterattack against B[lack] L[ives] M[atter] as a political movement.’” It was never driven by concerns about the best interests of students.

The fight to regain or protect the status quo has obscured meaningful discussions about what was missing from education all along: the narratives and experiences of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ people and women.

Over the past two years, I’ve watched attacks on education morph from demands to exclude critical race theory from classrooms to even more dangerous demands to erase entire concepts from American history. Book bans, so-called transparency laws designed to intimidate educators into compliance and attacks on individual expression have left our education system at the mercy of a hostile and discriminatory minority. Students can’t learn in that type of environment.

Our future depends on educational institutions that value instruction about systemic racism and sexism. We need to expand culturally relevant instruction and increase funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion in schools, not attack it for its role in uplifting the systematically oppressed. We can’t afford to lose our education system as we know it. We must fight back.