Andrew Carnegie was such a believer in public libraries that
he spent a large portion of his fortune to build public libraries. By the time
he was finished, he had built 2500 libraries.
http://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2022/01/fun-fun-fun.html
http://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2018/07/amazon-bookstores-should-replace-public.html
Today, public libraries (as well as public schools) are under
attack by today’s Republican Party. The fact that the attacks are occurring in
many states around the country are driven, in part, by the American Legislative
Council, the same organization that sends “model laws: to legislatures around
the country.
ALEC is pushing the American Transparency Act, which is an
attempt to limit what can be taught in schools. The full details are in the
link below, but the real targets are Critical Race Theory and books related to
black authors or “queer” books.
Critical Race Theory is NOT TAUGHT in public schools but is a
college level course that examines the role that systematic racism has had in
our society.
Since FOX ‘news’ mentioned the term more than 2000 times during
2021, it gained a lot of traction. As a result, it eventually allowed Greg
Youngkin to get elected as the governor of Virginia. It also led to Florida
banning MATH books because they apparently included “social feelings”
https://alec.org/model-policy/academic-transparency-act/
The funding for at least some public libraries is in jeopardy.
The Huff Post released a story about the
situation on August 6, and I have posted the entire article below:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gop-llibraries-culture-war_n_62ed58cfe4b09fecea4defc3
In Jamestown, Michigan, the local public library has about six
months until funding runs out and it may be forced to shut down.
Last week, residents voted against passing a millage, which raises
property taxes, to fund the Patmos Public Library. What could make a town turn
against its own library? Homophobic and hateful rhetoric —
specifically, the false idea that kid’s books with LGBTQ characters are
secretly about pornography or being used to abuse children, which has exploded
in the conservative worldview over the last year.
“50% millage increase to groom our kids? Vote no on library,” read
one sign seen around town before voters went to the polls.
Debbie Mikula, the executive director of the Michigan Library
Association, said she believes the millage didn’t pass because the library has
books with LGBTQ themes. “This is a full-out campaign against the library,” she
said.
Two library directors at Patmos left this spring. One said it was
because of online harassment and accusations of abusing children.
The library board has less than two weeks to get the millage back
on the ballot for a vote in November. If they don’t, it’s likely the library
will have to shut down permanently.
Conservatives’ scorn for
most government institutions — like schools or public health agencies — is not
a new phenomenon. Consider the way right-wingers
treated government officials who attempted
to blunt the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. But now,
perhaps emboldened by openly right-wing extremist politicians, they’ve set
their sights on our public libraries.
“I have seen Republicans
try to take over school boards my entire lifetime, but this is totally
different,” Alison Macrina, the director of Library Freedom Project, a
nonprofit organization, said about the shift to public libraries.
In the same way that
parents in the ’80s and ’90s fretted about their children being swept up in a
satanic cult, suburban moms are now tossing and turning at night over the
horrors of books that might depict anything but conservative Christian morals.
“In the last few years,
public libraries have taken a stronger stance of racial justice and queer
rights and representation,” Macrina said. “This is reactive to that,
certainly.”
And it’s a reaction being
seen around the U.S.
A public library in Vinton,
Iowa — a small town with about 5,000 residents — temporarily shut down in July
after most of the staff quit because of threats against its LGBTQ members. People
in the town complained that there were not enough books about
former President Donald Trump, that LGBTQ books were on display, and
that members of the LGBTQ community worked there, according
to the Iowa Starting Line. The library reopened with an all-volunteer
staff.
In Llano County, Texas, the
county commission made the public library system shut down for a few days in
December in order to review
the books available to children and remove any deemed
questionable. They specifically targeted the 850 books that GOP
state Rep. Matt Kruse had personally deemed inappropriate for kids earlier that
year. He said his
list of books included those that “might make students feel discomfort,
guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their
race or sex.”
Suzette Baker, a librarian
in the county, reportedly refused to go along. She told local reporters in
March that she had been fired
from her job for not removing books, including a memoir by Jazz Jennings,
a transgender teen. “It is her biography of her life growing up as a
transgender teenager, and obviously this group thought that was too much for
their children to read,” Baker said. “No one is forcing their kids to read
anything.”
Now, residents are suing the county, saying
book bans are censorship and violate their First and 14th Amendment rights.
Free speech advocates have noticed that the targeting of public
libraries isn’t just confined to one or two states.
“It cannot be a coincidence that multiple people around the
country are getting the same message,” Jonathan Friedman, the director of free
expression and education programs at PEN America, told HuffPost. “They’re
taking some of that ‘stolen election’ energy and directing it towards public
schools and public libraries.”
But there isn’t really a singular group leading the charge —
instead different groups, including Moms for Liberty or Catholic Vote, are
pushing the same narratives.
“The nature of their organizing is that the ideas are bouncing
from group to group on Facebook,” Macrina said.
Moms For Liberty is a
right-wing group with an unassuming name that two former school board members
launched in Florida in 2021 to fight for “parental rights,” including battles
against mask mandates and “critical race theory.” The group now claims to have
160 chapters in 33 states.
As Media
Matters reported, Moms For Liberty is partnering with conservative groups to flood
public libraries with children’s books they approve of, like
an anti-trans children book or a book that paints Rush Limbaugh as hero — with
no regard for how parents of LGBTQ or Black children may feel.
For Pride Month, the
conservative political advocacy group Catholic Vote launched a campaign dubbed
“Hide the Pride.” In June, the group encouraged parents to go to their public
libraries and check out any LGBTQ or other books conservatives don’t like — to
prevent other people from reading them. “Do you see rainbow-trans-BLM flags
everywhere? Including in your public, taxpayer-funded spaces? We do. And we are
meeting the challenge head on,” read one online flier with instructions on how
to “reclaim” the library.
The group encouraged people
to go to their libraries in groups and record themselves checking out the
books, then posted photos online of people doing just that. The
group argued its campaign was fair because parents hadn’t been consulted before
these books were put in their libraries.
The obvious solution for these parents is to
just not allow their own children to read about LGBTQ issues or racial justice.
But that’s not really why they’re targeting libraries.
“They’re not interested in compromising,” Friedman said. “Their
aim is to shut them down and stop them entirely.”
There’s a long tradition of book-banning in the U.S.
In the 1980s, the Moral Majority, the group founded by Jerry
Falwell, was leading the charge in book banning. Thanks to
the election of Ronald Reagan, Christian evangelicals’ influence was growing in
public life — and they objected to any books that didn’t reflect their beliefs
back at them.
But while the movements have echoes of each other, the new effort
to ban books has definitely changed.
The right-wing culture warriors also have the support of elected
officials. As they began their crusade, laws about book banning began showing
up in state legislatures.
“I’ve never seen that kind of effort to change laws,” Macrina
said. “You’re seeing that down to the really micro level now.”
Even Trump and Florida Gov.
Ron DeSantis (R) have spoken about book bans in speeches, making book
censorship red meat for Republican voters.
“Reactionaries are now
advertising themselves as Christian Nationalists. They used to
vehemently deny that they were,” Macrina said. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
(R-Ga.), a popular figure in the right-wing movement, is now selling
T-shirts identifying herself as such.
These groups want to not
only rid public libraries of books they don’t like, but also to reshape public
life as we know it. That’s why they claim they’re being censored and are
promoting liberty but are only concerned with conservative views.
“It comes from a kind of
Trumpian playbook,” Friedman said. “All public institutions are enemies of the
state.”
And it’s only a matter of
time before they set their sights on another institution.
I recently wrote about Christian Nationalism because it is a
very dangerous philosophy.
http://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2022/08/christian-nationalism.html
We aren’t going to be able to save all the libraries that are
under attack, but there are two things that we can do to save most of them.
1)
Use them. Since moving to Tucson, I have checked
out over 600 books.
2)
Vote, but vote Blue
Andrew Carnegie would appreciate your efforts.
Yes
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