[csusbpeace] The Conservatives Who Attacked School Boards in 2022 Are Now Going After Libraries

From: "raccoon" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> ("bigraccoon1")
To: "CSUSBPEACE@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <CSUSBPEACE@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2023 07:34:48 -0800

https://newrepublic.com/article/169946/moms-for-libraries-public-schools?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tnr_daily

The Conservatives Who Attacked School Boards in 2022 Are Now Going After
Libraries

Moms for Libraries is set to inject right-wing politics into school reading
shelves.

January 11, 2023
Conservatives have made libraries a target of extreme ire over the past
several years, as in the moral panic over drag queen story hour events
<https://newrepublic.com/article/162289/republican-war-trans-youth-drag-queen-story-hour?ref=refind>,
now common from Idaho to New York. But it’s school libraries that are likely
to get an extra level of right-wing scrutiny in the year ahead, thanks to a
group born from Moms for Liberty. Courting a child star, former Trump
officials, and a tech billionaire as their North Star and potential
influencers, “Moms for Libraries” is hoping to entrench itself this year in
libraries across the country.

The Moms for Libraries campaign, which appears to have been launched
<https://twitter.com/moms4liberty/status/1485672662420578311?lang=en> in 2022
but driven into a new gear last month and during the early days of 2023, is
part of that much larger and better-known national group Moms for Liberty,
whose financial backers
<https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2022/07/09/just-who-is-behind-moms-for-liberty-column/>
are largely unknown and which is organizing
<https://newrepublic.com/article/166373/moms-liberty-schools-nightmare-midterms>
conservative women to influence and/or take over school boards. On the
surface, Moms for Libraries prompts supporters to purchase copies of books
from a handful of small conservative publishers it’s chosen, such as Heroes
of Liberty, which released
<https://www.facebook.com/HeroesOfLiberty/posts/pfbid02em53GH571Yom8KjU6FesqGL46TP9qjAuqavbE63zzbTp7Px3cKpf4R2MgDQpfpw3l>
a book in December valorizing Elon Musk. “This month has been an amazing
month for freedom, thanks to Elon Musk and the Twitter Files,” a post
<https://www.facebook.com/HeroesOfLiberty/posts/pfbid0Vi6h2WbjcD1SSmjUHLm5npxZqeo7xG61sLjGdyaiFMgg7Q7KTMVUDx3HT7Dydst6l>
promoting the book on the publisher’s Facebook page begins. Moms for
Libraries said
<https://www.facebook.com/Moms4Libraries/posts/pfbid02ge4ZJYJBXNPw289HeVLnqqG2XLPnV5ujdE2fYtywHpWy9KEKAQCgLcqz8kKd2X7il>
in January that it will be distributing the book to students “across the
U.S.,” joining several other titles it’s promoted as ways to inject its
agenda into libraries.

Another Moms for Libraries partner
<https://www.mediamatters.org/critical-race-theory/moms-liberty-placing-right-wing-propaganda-public-school-libraries-while>,
Brave Books, recently used a book by former Growing Pains star Kirk Cameron
to fuel a misinformation campaign that libraries are discriminating against
Christians. Late in December, Cameron alleged
<https://www.wishtv.com/news/local-news/christian-childrens-author-kirk-cameron-alleges-racial-religious-discrimination-by-indypl/>
discrimination by the Indianapolis Public Library, which he said refused to
host a promotional reading for his book. Cameron had previously complained
<https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/kirk-cameron-pushes-public-libraries-story-hour-reading-assert-rights-court>
that if a library hosts drag queen story hours, why won’t it host him?

The Indianapolis library refuted
<https://www.wishtv.com/news/local-news/christian-childrens-author-kirk-cameron-alleges-racial-religious-discrimination-by-indypl/>
Cameron’s claims, stating that it is their programming staff who organize
library events such as story hours, not outside publishers, who are welcome
to rent rooms for their own promotional programs. Contrary to Cameron’s
statement, Brave Books had rented a room for an event. And indeed, the
Indianapolis event went ahead
<https://nypost.com/2022/12/30/kirk-cameron-exaggerated-record-turnout-at-book-reading-library/>
as planned in the rented room. Afterward, Brave Books celebrated by
castigating other libraries, posting
<https://twitter.com/BraveBooksUS/status/1608549486833577984> on Twitter, “No
longer will Christians be silent,” and Fox News hosted
<https://deadline.com/2022/12/kirk-cameron-book-reading-fox-news-interview-1235208813/>
Cameron, during which he threatened
<https://archive.org/details/FOXNEWSW_20221230_140000_Americas_Newsroom/start/3420/end/3480>
legal action against the library anyway, a victory lap over nothing. Before
leaving the library, though, Cameron posed
<https://www.facebook.com/Moms4Libraries/posts/pfbid0hjBoU95BPjiWH9n3z2WzxMFStubFSSE2Fzw6uKA32fJSruzXqLsNnoACe9tqHRjgl?__cft__%5b0%5d=AZXAUBwdqtCAeWv21ptsJvVRhQHTMcBJhrBEYQyhmjlBhlwE_57MWp6-2lBhX1PuVNgpPN6GPZl0lohkKcKKPrj5nn5JHfbzQ5yBqZnk5z3e0xP34tOVsJuJDZE2KUU57PlUwNYCD60r9aVS5y_jkhZdTQgJSgRW7msKGCay8CyuKPa84JMqRA35SZn9kH2lxCQ&__tn__=%2CO%2CP-R>
for a duo-selfie with a Moms for Libraries member, who said he offered his
thanks to their group.

Catherine Rahimian, founder of Moms for Libraries, started off as the founder
<https://www.momsforliberty.org/news/concerned-parents-launch-moms-for-liberty-chapter-in-orange-county-ca/>
of the Moms for Liberty chapter in Orange County, California. “Catherine’s
roots in the liberty movement date back to her teen years volunteering for
local campaigns in her home state of Indiana,” reads
<https://web.archive.org/web/20221229151929/https:/www.thegavelproject.com/our-team>
her board member bio for the Gavel Project, “an Anti-Woke non-profit” which
has sued schools to block masking and vaccine policies. In a January
interview on the Moms for Liberty podcast, Rahimian paints a dire picture,
positioning Moms for Libraries as the solution. Children aren’t interested in
reading, she argued <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B2ZG0zjcsQ>, the result
of a lack of library funding. At the same time, she claimed that when
libraries rely on private donations, that money can come from certain unnamed
organizations that aren’t doing good work. “It’s disappointing we don’t have
the library funding we need to really get kids into reading.”

Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice, the podcast host, echoed
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B2ZG0zjcsQ> Rahimian’s claim of outside
interference in libraries, but she named names. “Some of the things that I’ve
seen as far as the American Library Association and some of the folks that
are involved today, I know they have a new president who is a self-proclaimed
Marxist—literally, saying in a tweet, I can’t believe how exciting it is to
have a Marxist that has been elected to head up the library association.… You
want kids that are reading, but what’s in the libraries?” In response,
Rahimian promoted books by her organization’s partners, like Why America
Matters by Ben Carson, on “unity,” and another book that she said is “a
counter to gender ideology books,” called Elephants Are Not Birds.

Aside from using new ALA president Emily Drabinski’s politics to do some
straight-up red-baiting, the main reason Moms for Liberty is focused on her
and now on libraries more directly is that Drabinksi has been vocal about the
anti-democratic aims of groups like Moms for Liberty. “What the right gets
right about libraries is that they matter,” wrote
<https://truthout.org/articles/disinvestment-poses-as-great-a-threat-to-libraries-as-book-bans/>
Drabinski last September, “and that any vision of a fully privatized and
corporatized society requires dismantling those institutions that have
survived, if barely, from the Reagan era until today.”

“Moral panics often serve as cover for organized abandonment and violent
attacks,” Drabinksi continued. Moms for Libraries, like Moms for Liberty
before it, uses the reality of disinvestment in public libraries as an
opportunity to argue for the private control of libraries. No wonder they
have attracted allies like Betsy DeVos, Trump’s secretary of education, who
said
<https://www.salon.com/2022/07/19/moms-for-liberty-joyful-warriors-in-the-fight-to-demolish-public-school/>
in July at a Moms for Liberty national conference, “I personally think the
Department of Education should not exist.”

On one level, Moms for Libraries may seem to be not much more than a way to
push
<https://www.facebook.com/Moms4Libraries/posts/pfbid0vgt1K6uwMrAoRQSxuGUT8LiZpf1zXoLEi8QLhmK7TpNb8RU5VXFQXTSdYXhCgrtUl?__cft__%5b0%5d=AZX26TE9oCfqlEItaIBuYpdQib3NMcNrets7Lq9nMY9PxhTX3klLVLglnJ7mjDgSvBT4wU3308Hpd-ESiCbx9gSfoFCETSGbOes7ocCMw8DOV7fGUemejv2qZ4FtAn2H0hihIrlFNZfZ9au9J3c0t-JBSw-1G4SO0ZUsi000jGyUpfMulqMVCVjav64enY4D2UU&__tn__=%2CO%2CP-R>
a promo code for conservative publishers—one that has managed to get only
about 5,000 books donated to it to distribute to schools. But the group’s
mission is to turn libraries into the kind of battle fronts it can command,
from social media to Fox News, as it has before with school boards. School
librarians witnessed
<https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjbg9v/the-group-banning-lgbt-books-wants-to-replace-them-with-anti-gay-propaganda>
the toxic environment that Moms for Liberty has stoked, and on which Moms
for Libraries is now focused, using the massive, apparently well-resourced
network that Moms for Liberty has built so quickly. This is not a
conservative bookmobile. Parents “woke up,” said
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B2ZG0zjcsQ> Rahimian in the Moms for
Liberty podcast interview. “The lockdowns and the virtual schooling really
opened parents’ eyes,” including her own. “That’s how I was born into the
Moms for Liberty world.”

[csusbpeace] The Conservatives Who Attacked School Boards in 2022 Are Now Going After Libraries

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