Who’s Really Directing Your Local Libraries?
By Gretchen Garrity
Many taxpayers believe their local library, funded mainly by local dollars, is under local direction. It makes sense to believe that, since library staff and governing boards are usually local citizens.
But right under our noses libraries are being colonized by ideologies and agendas that are foreign to the local community. Policies are being put in place that have more to do with the political goals of leftist organizations than our Republic.
In fact, local libraries have become community change agents, pushing such things as Critical Race Theory (CRT) , Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and the LGBTQ+ agenda. Specifically, sexually explicit books are being actively displayed and pushed on children in thousands of libraries across the nation.
How has this come about?
POLITICAL CAMPAIGNING MEETS LIBRARY FUNDING
Welcome to the progressive world of the American Library Association (ALA). There are about 50,000 members of the ALA, including many state library associations like the Missouri Library Association (MLA).
Depending on the size of the local library or library association, the cost to join the ALA can be anywhere from $175 for a very small library to $2,000 for a very large library. In Christian County, the cost would reflect a medium library of $500. For Greene County the cost would be $1,300 for a larger population. As can be seen from the link there are numerous divisions and round tables that can be joined for a fee, and then there are individual memberships for librarians and library staff.
Assuming these fees are paid out of the local library’s budget, taxpayers are footing the bill to have their own communities indoctrinated. Additionally, the ALA has a legion of organizations either spun off or closely associated, that promote any number of extreme left agendas. One such organization is a group named EveryLibrary, a 501(c)4 that was founded by John Chrastka, who previously worked for the ALA.
According to Dan Kleinman of Safe Libraries, who has written about EveryLibrary previously, “It has a history of deceptive training. It guided librarians how to silence parents who complain about p*rn in the library… Librarians were trained to use a ‘very common political ploy.’ Another technique is ‘never mention or directly oppose or attack the person making the original claim. Simply bury their claim in great stories that tell a counter account of their experience.’ We will see below that’s exactly what they do when they attack Moms For Liberty without naming it. ‘The last technique you can use is to simply ignore them.’”
Read the whole article here to see how the tentacles of the ALA have reached into local libraries to ensure that books such as Gender Queer and Blankets are pushed on minors. Kleinman writes, “…EveryLibrary’s most recent move is, like ALA itself, to partner with GLAAD to promote s3xually inappropriate books to children in schools, which has been ALA’s mission for over a half century.”
EveryLibrary’s founder, Chrastka, has written a pair of books that teach librarians how to gain funding during political campaigns. According to the introductory description of Before the Ballot, “Let’s be blunt: library funding is political. And the struggle to secure funding is ongoing; the work that librarians need to do to influence local politics doesn’t just pop up in the few months before Election Day. It should span the years before or between elections. [Bolding added] The authors’ previous book ‘Winning Elections and Influencing Politicians for Library Funding’ targeted library ballot committees and advocacy organizations. But their new book speaks directly to librarians, library staff, and boards. It is designed to help library leaders understand and navigate the political nature of their work in the years leading up to a ballot measure or political initiative. Sharing the tools and tactics developed by their organization EveryLibrary, the nation’s first and only Political Action Committee for Libraries…”
Why have libraries–historically understood as apolitical and dedicated to promoting reading in their communities–become political?
Short answer: The American Library Association.
THE TENTACLES OF THE ALA
For most of its history, the ALA has had a decided leftward slant. But in recent years, and especially with the election of an openly Marxist president, Emily Drabinski, the ALA has militantly advocated for the LGBTQ+ agenda, CRT, and other hard left positions. Through policies not having the force of law like the “Right to Read” and the “Library Bill of Rights” the ALA is pushing a radical agenda that is having real impact on local communities.
Through advocacy and a quiet colonization of library staff and boards, local libraries are carrying out a political transformation of communities on behalf of the ALA. It has come to the point that, in defiance of state laws, libraries are promoting open access to obscene, sexually explicit and even pornographic materials to children.
James Lindsay, of New Discourses, has been at the forefront of identifying and opposing the colonization of our public institutions by Marxists like Emily Drabinski. Below is an excellent introduction to the Marxist roots of DEI:
Speaking of Drabinski, here she is featured in an interview titled, “Creating a Socialist Vision for Public Libraries: A Conversation with Emily Drabinski.”
She speaks about using her socialist vision to expand out from the local library to the community:
“I’ve been thinking more and more about the public library as, every square inch that is the public library isn’t a store or a private equity office building, so if we expand the public library in terms of both space and the networks that it can take up in a social space, the more we have for the public. If we think of the public library as the public square, we want more of that. If we fully fund and expand the libraries we would reclaim more of the city for the public.
So, can I do that as President of the ALA? Obviously not, all of these struggles and fights are local, but helping people access the language of a socialist vision of what the city could be and the role of the library I think is something I could do.”
SEEING THE CONNECTIONS
Once the connection is made between increasing library funding via political campaigns to implementing the socialist vision that the new president of the ALA is envisioning, it is clear that public libraries have become a focus of infiltration for Socialism/Communism/Marxism.
Later in the interview Drabinski says about campaigning, “I think the socialist project, along with a range of other movements against white supremacy, patriarchy, and others, has played a role in the fact that we can now talk openly about the abolition of the carceral state. The public conversation about defunding the police, and thinking about different ways of organizing our relations to one another. To me, that’s something that’s only possible through deep organizing and is the ethic that we brought to the campaign.”
And this:
“I tweeted that I was a “Marxist lesbian” when I won, and I absolutely am a Marxist, and absolutely am a lesbian, but I got a ton of blowback, which is not great, but I don’t know. We have to be brave, we have to be willing to fight, and the right has no compunction about being completely out there with their totally hardcore racist ideals, and their white replacement theory bullshit. We have to be as brave as they are and as public as they are, I think…”
SEXUALIZING CHILDREN IS A FEATURE, NOT A BUG
It is this political perspective that has overtaken many public libraries in the United States. A strategy of Socialist goals is the demoralization of a community, including advocating the early sexualization of children, the de-funding of police, the dividing into opposing groups of local populations, and other strategies that will be addressed later.
In short, citizens are paying for the destruction of their communities and the sexualization of children through taxpayer-funded local libraries.
The ALA also provides a deep well of resources, training, consulting, and legal aid to assist librarians and boards. There are extensive ALA resources provided to libraries to keep sexually explicit books in the children’s sections.
In Christian County, the Christian County Library Board of Trustees voted unanimously to reject a ratings system for books at the June 20, 2023 monthly meeting. After being approached for months by concerned parents and citizens, the board decided the idea of a ratings system would be too expensive and too time-consuming. So citizens are left with 333 books of varying degrees of objectionable content seeded throughout the county’s four libraries, and easily accessible to children.
To quote Dan Kleinman:
“The real question is do you trust librarians to decide what your family is allowed to read. Librarians have a “Library Bill of Rights” that contains the Marxist idea that all ages can access all materials. That’s why they allow kids to read pervasively vulgar materials. So kids would get anything at all from a librarian, and indeed that’s what we are seeing again and again in the news. That “Bill of Rights” sham is in almost every library. That’s the every library in EveryLibrary. To them EveryLibrary means every library will allow kids access to inappropriate material because some Marxists added the word “age” to the “Library Bill of Rights” over fifty years ago, no one’s yet realized, and we’re going to damn well keep ramming it down people’s throats, especially the easy targets: school kids away from their parents. So actually yes, parents ultimately decide what goes on in schools and libraries—that’s why they elect board members to carry out their wishes, not the wishes of some Marxists from Chicago, IL, called American Library Association.”
ACTION ITEM:
Contact your local library and request via the Sunshine law whether your library is a member of the ALA (sample request here). Read here about a Wyoming community that voted to have their library sever ties with the ALA. It can be done!
