That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America

if we only talk about things that make us comfortable, we can never grow.

In the words of author Stephen Chbosky: "Banning books gives us silence when we need speech. It closes our ears when we need to listen. It makes us blind when we need sight.

I have heard a lot of white people say they don't see color. I used to think that was a good thing, as in we don't consider the color of someone's skin when deciding how we feel about them. But then I started to realize it's okay to acknowledge our differences. Also, it's a lie. We all see race, and that's fine. If we deny someone's race, we're denying a part of who they are as a person and not acknowledging the person as a whole, and that can slip into dangerous territory. If we ignore someone's race, we're ignoring the different perspectives they bring.

I understand that some parents don't want their teens to read about sex. Those parents need to police their own children's reading and stop policing mine.

When politics and image are more important than standing up for colleagues and friends, we are in a world of trouble.

Running your mouth on social media is weak, but collecting knowledge is power.

It seems to me that the people labeled woke are those who are empathetic, are open-minded, and challenge the world to be a better place.

Having the metaphorical shit kicked out of you tends to change the way you view life. It forces you to focus on the positive to survive.

These people decry government overreach as they try to use the government to dictate what citizens can and cannot read.

I figured if they wanted to call me an activist, and I was being given a platform on a national stage, I might as well pick up the gauntlet. Again, while I don't have to go low, I also don't have to be silent.

True power is the ability to live rent-free in someone else's head when you don't think about them at all.

The current wave of book banning sweeping the country has created a chilling effect on our education system and the purchasing of books in our libraries, the effects of which will be seen for decades even if we somehow get it under control in the next year. This is a huge movement that has been in the works for a while. It is well funded and well coordinated. It is about marginalizing and erasing cultures and groups of people, it is about defunding public institutions, it is about dumbing down society for a more easily led population, and it is about using libraries for political gain. At the end of the day, the pro-censorship movement is about privatizing education and privatizing libraries for a group of people who are seeking to line their pockets. And to achieve those goals, otherwise well-meaning people have been enlisted in a social movement that goes against everything America stands for. That's the really sad and tragic thing.

I reminded the board that the citizens of the parish consist of taxpayers who are white, Black, brown, gay, straight, Christian, non-Christian--people from all backgrounds and walks of life, and no one portion of the community should dictate what the rest of the citizens have access to.

What the general public needs to know is that these people won’t just stop at censoring books or ruining libraries. They will continue to wreak havoc on our public education system until it is irreversibly broken. White Christian nationalists want to decide for everyone what is allowed.

the challengers often have never even read the books.

why random strangers go online to put down, troll, threaten, and defame people who they’ve never met. Do they wake up and think to themselves, “I wonder who I can ruin today to make myself feel better to fill the hole in my life?

It’s basic human decency, but the United States seems to be lacking that.

I have learned that we must dwell on the highs and not the lows.

What I see is a society growing more open-minded to people who are different from them, and a backlash from a segment of people who are uncomfortable with this. These folks see it as a zero-sum game. Any movement toward openness and acceptance somehow takes something away from them. This is where all the victim talk comes from, and the steady raising of volume and distortion in their claims as the truth fails them and they reach for fearmongering. America was founded not as a Christian nation, as they like to believe, but as a pluralistic democracy guaranteeing freedom of worship and the promise of equality. We still have a long way to go in the equality department, but the progress we have made should be celebrated, not feared. White Christian nationalists want nothing to do with this celebration. They want to turn back the clock to a time and place that never was.

According to [U.S. Representative Clay Higgins] it is libraries that are grooming children for sexual abuse. Not the church, where abuse is actually happening. No, we're going to make THOSE the libraries... It makes no sense whatsoever and ignores actual abuse.

But staying silent is a kind of complicity, and when people don't push back, censorship efforts gain traction, and one day I'm afraid it will be too late. What the general public needs to know is that these people won't just stop at censoring books or ruining libraries. They will continue to wreak havoc on our public education system until it is irreversibly broken. White Christian nationalists want to decide for everyone what is allowed. They claim their parental rights are being taken away, but they're taking away the rights of other parents.

This is consistent with many conspiracy theorists in my community, and across the country, who think there's always some hidden agenda in the school system. The only hidden agenda here isn't so hidden. These folks want to gut the public school system and privatize education so they can further exclude groups already marginalized.

But as MLK Jr. said in his blueprint speech, "When you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Don't just set out to do a good job. Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn't do it any better.

A grandmother said, "Despite whatever pretty words I think we've all heard about being concerned about what's in our collection, I want to make sure that we're being honest about what this discussion is. It's an attempt to remove content from the Public Library system and an effort to censor the voices of historically oppressed and marginalized communities. The board in this system has a responsibility to make decisions that align a library with mission and vision statements listed on the library website. I believe the content that Erin took offense to, and maybe some of the other parents and elected officials, are specifically LGBTQIA+. Those stories and voices are being targeted nationwide.

Reading a death threat - my death threat - has left me changed.