They were overwhelmed, and I wasn't helping them.
A while ago, I decided to become a member of the Board of Directors of the Friends of Shorewood Public Library. I don't even live in Shorewood, though I'm pretty close. I just came to meetings until they couldn't turn me back.
Not only that, but I also became Advocacy Chair. It became my duty to inform the other Board members of challenges rising to public libraries, including school libraries.
This isn't my latest effort to change the world. But I figured that if it was possible to get involved in the kind of effort Americans need to function properly, I would try to do so on a small, almost unnoticeable level that involved no suits, no flights, and meetings just once a month.
I was nominated for the position by the outgoing president, who noticed (I'm sure others had, too) that my comments at Board meetings were directed toward those who would try to moralize public libraries to the extent that they're becoming apologists for the excessively religiously afflicted. Public institutions aren't supposed to be like that, stupid laws passed in Louisiana notwithstanding (I'm sure you've heard that there they want the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom.). They're supposed to reflect a pluralistic, secular society, which we still are, despite the efforts of the excessively religiously afflicted to "fix" it.
By "fixing," that means that things that are considered "sinful," like being or writing or reading about being gay or transgender are condemned and eliminated from notice. Libraries are being attacked for making "sinful" books available, like about transpeople or others of the LGBTQ+ type. The attackers want them taking off the shelves forever, as if either the books or the people they depict don't exist.
It's my task to track articles that are being written about those nefarious (as we see it) efforts. That's where an active Internet comes up. Once you dial up Google and make it clear you're looking for a particular type of article, it's only too happy to send you as many of them as it can find. And it's finding a lot of them.
The articles disappear as other types of things impinge, so I quickly forward them to my personal e-mail address for safekeeping--that is, for exposure in my report, which is expected once a month. But I received a complaint about it recently.
No, nobody on this Board of Directors has turned tail or become a traitor to the things we're supposed to be standing for. They're overwhelmed, that's all. So are many of us.
Stuff continues to happen in many states, most of which are red in political leanings. Those folks that are excessively religiously afflicted, those with minds that have closed long ago, are leading this charge to the bottom. And, of course, they do it in places that are safe for them, in which they aren't likely to be in the minority and have to personally face the foolishness of their intensity.
Those places are usually small towns, in which an ethos well imagined has been, according to them, previously established. Which is: being gay is a sin. It says so in the Bible. We shouldn't even be discussing this obvious fact.
Being trans- is worse. Your body is a temple of God, they say, and you're maligning it because you don't like it. Shame on you. No books about it should be within eyesight of any library, because people shouldn't be paying taxes to support these exposes. Books should be about, well, 'normal' things. And 'normal' people. The definition of which they decide.
This branch of the indoctrination plague, the cult, that is upon us has spread like rumors do--haphazardly, quickly, and with a certain taint as time has settled in. There are now selected books that some people are now looking for, and others that have occurred to them now that they think of it. Either way, they sometimes even confess their 'sins' to expiate their guilt, then set out on a holy crusade to rid the rest of humanity of the 'filth.'
Being a small town will get you there much faster than a large one, where there are processes already established to review books and discuss their possible impact. Small towns don't, and still don't, see this coming. They assume that such trouble will dissipate and disappear. They think the otherwise impregnable consensus will swallow up the dissenters. It won't. It hasn't.
Because like in the larger political realm in which we find ourselves, people with bad ideas can get organized just as well. Sometimes better, if they're really angry.
Moms for Liberty is just one example. Deceptively named, they represent a love not liberty but its opposite, a repression of whatever thinking it might oppose. Not opposition, repression: They don't want to talk about it. They don't think they have to. As a result, sometimes, once you pull the Oz-ian curtain back, they can't even tell you what they're against. An interview with 60 Minutes not too long ago revealed that they were actually against the teachers' unions, which, I suppose, protect public school librarians from being automatically fired for having the above types of books on the available shelves without due process. You know, that tacky thing that gets in the way of quasi-religious justice and the will of God--as they and they alone see it.
I've read enough of these articles to tell you that. I also send them along to my board, and they pile up month after month. The previous advocacy chair, now the new president, did that, too, but in much reduced volume.
I decided against that. I decided to show everyone just how much that stuff was going on out there and the various strategies involved in trying to hold back perfectly good books about things that kids are going to think about and discuss, anyhow. They continue in state after state--except for states that are now catching on and whose legislatures are starting to pass bans against book bans, to stop these fools in their tracks.
In any event, the volume has risen in recent months. I think that at least from here to November, it will continue. It may even boil over, especially if ex- is re-elected, which would be an even bigger mistake than it was the first time around. But I also think that these attacks are increasing in anticipation of that re-election, as if righteousness has gained its deserved momentum and will carry this complete idiot back into office with it. It's a different kind of "bandwagon" effect, but I think just as telling.
So to the suggestion that I scale back these articles to five or six a month instead of the couple of dozen I keep finding each month--because you know, enough already, we get it--my response was: Which five or six? Could someone then help me with this? Would this be helpful gatekeeping? Or whistling past a graveyard? And wouldn't deleting one town's troubles about this in favor of another's create a priority that needn't exist?
I know people are tired. Worn down. Fatigued of the endless challenges in the name of the wrong things. But I'm going to keep going. Because the nonsense peddlers do. They are driven by a phony sense of religious mission that guarantees to them and only them that God is on their side. As if God couldn't be on any other.
My goal is to enlighten as thoroughly as possible. Because the library I represent is in a small town, too. And Moms for Liberty, as shown in one of those articles, wants to smother Wisconsin and a few other states with a media campaign connected with the election. That's bad enough, but once it has established that presence, I find it difficult to believe that it will stop there and not try to infiltrate small town libraries--like ours--with frontal attacks. People are often caught off-guard by the intimidation attempted by these people, first with disbelief and then with unpreparedness. I want this library prepared to say one of the most important words in our language: NO.
NO. We really believe in liberty, not disingenuous dolts like you who say they do but actually don't. Nobody's forcing anybody to read anything. What's more, you know that.
NO. We really do think the right to read uncomfortable things matters far more than your idea of morality.
NO. We aren't going to fire anybody or take down any books we now have on our shelves. Ever. Period. They held value yesterday, they hold the same value today and any day you and anybody else happen to be here or anywhere else. Freedom of the press and speech either include the freedom to read or they are empty, pointless vessels.
NO. Forget it. These things will be repeated until you understand, and leave.
I hope that if or when the time comes, the people with the responsibility to do so will stand up and say these things, or words to that effect. That would not be my duty, but I'm not running from it. I'd be very, very happy, in fact, to say these things, if asked, to whomever came out from under their rocks and tried to make Shorewood into yet another MAGA service model.
I'm going to send the Board members other articles, too, in the two months in which they are on summer hiatus; not many, because everyone needs something of a break. But the people undermining libraries seek no breaks. They look for weaknesses to exploit so they can get their way. Anyone who's been watching them has to have assumed that by now. If they win, they won't even know what they're winning until someone else swoops in and holds them just as captive in ways they can't foresee because they're too involved in winning for its own sake.
That's not only sad, it's dangerous. I can't fight them by myself. But I can do what I can where I can. Here I will do so, continuing to remind others that care that these people are coming on and will have to be confronted and turned back. Our very way of life--tolerant, secular, progressive--depends on it.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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