As America’s public schooling system has become a vehicle for radical progressive indoctrination of our nation’s children, public libraries have followed suit.
The American Library Association (ALA)–the largest library organization in the world with nearly 50,000 members, primarily located in the United States–officially states its mission is to “provide leadership for the development, promotion, and improvement of library and information services and the profession of librarianship in order to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all.”
Yet, rather than adhering to its mission statement, a September expose from the New York Post indicates ALA has become a Marxist bastion bent on transforming children as young as two into progressive ideologues. Its leadership and rank-and-file consistently push their often outrageous and inappropriate-for-children cultural positions, aided and abetted by substantial funding from progressive donors such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and George Soros’s Open Society Institute.
Some of the article’s more eye-popping quotes are listed below:
“Supporters of so-called ‘woke’ libraries say they simply want their facilities to be more diverse and inclusive when it comes to gender and race ideology. Opponents say that young children should not be exposed to books like Juno Dawson’s This Book is Gay, (a current No. 1 bestseller on Amazon), Genderqueer, and Lawn Boy, which they say depict too-graphic illustrations of gay sex and are freely available to youths at public libraries.”
“Drag Queen Story Hour, which was launched in San Francisco in 2015, has become a mainstay for children at libraries all over the US and the UK. Drag queens in full regalia perform for children as young as two and three. Though at least two registered sex offenders were found to have been among the drag queens performing at a Houston public library in 2019, the program is still going strong.”
[Quoting retired science teacher Robert Judge, president of a local library board in Lafayette, LA]: “’The ALA indoctrinates people getting their library degrees and they are pushing books in libraries that should just not be accessible to children,’ Judge told The Post. ‘We don’t let children drink or drive or smoke or get married because they don’t have the cognitive abilities to handle all that yet. It’s the same with some of these books they are forcing on them. So if protecting the innocence of children and the rights of parents to rear their children as they see fit makes me an extremist, then yes I am an extremist.’”
“The Rev. Jonathan Lange has weighed in over the past year with essays about books he and others feel are too extreme in Campbell County, Wyoming, where parents complained about books with ‘obscene’ sex and LGBTQ themes placed in the children’s section of their libraries. ‘Libraries aren’t responsive to their communities anymore,’ Lange told The Post. ‘They’re totally beholden to the ALA and its policies and agenda. The ALA obliterated the distinction between adults and minors. They fight for kids of all ages to have access to everything in the library. When parents object, the librarians just invoke the ALA’s policies and refuse to remove them.'”
Clearly, all is not well within our public libraries. And yet, things are almost certainly about to get worse.
Newly-elected ALA president Emily Drabinski offered a particularly revealing “Vision for ALA” during her campaign, which included, “So many of us find ourselves at the ends of our worlds. The consequences of decades of unchecked climate change, class war, white supremacy, and imperialism have led us here. If we want a world that includes public goods like the library, we must organize our collective power and wield it.”
After winning, she further revealed her true colors, posting on Twitter: “I just cannot believe that a Marxist lesbian who believes that collective power is possible to build and can be wielded for a better world is the president-elect of @ALALibrary. I am so excited for what we will do together. Solidarity!”
It is likely not a coincidence that ALA’s “Top 10 Most Challenged Books” list, recently celebrated during the ALA-promoted Banned Books Week, is almost entirely comprised of sexually explicit, LGBTQ material. In fact, many of these books contain pornographic content–and they are being disseminated and praised to children in elementary school. Number one on the list is the aforementioned Gender Queer, which, as Independent Women’s Forum Education Freedom Center senior fellow Nicole Solas opines, “is a graphic comic book-style autobiography by Maia Kobabe containing cartoon images of children performing oral sex, numerous penises, pedophilia, masturbation while driving, and ‘bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction.’ Although these images sound objectively sexually explicit, the ALA still pouts that these images are merely ‘considered’ to be sexually explicit, presumably by pesky parents protecting their children from the trauma of pornography… One must ask the ALA: if pictures of children performing sex acts in adult books are appropriate for children in school libraries, is there any book that isn’t appropriate? Saturating pornography in diversity does not sanitize pornography for children’s eyes.”
When one considers Drabinski’s history, it is exceedingly likely she will weaponize libraries even further than they already have been.
As reported by The Federalist, Drabinksi “posts openly on her Twitter feed in support of sexually exposing children, union-led political strife, socialist politicians, and libraries pushing explicit and far-left material on unwilling taxpayers.”
She enjoys the support and endorsement of labor and teacher’s unions, which have historically been a fertile recruiting ground for socialists and communists.
A 2021 YouTube video, titled “Teaching the Radical Catalog,” is just one of Drabinksi’s many videos teaching other librarians how to introduce progressive politics and sexuality into their work. In this specific lecture, she talks about “queering” the library as “critical thinking,” and even states of her first librarianship position, “There were so many ways to be gay… And it was my job to teach those students how to find themselves in our library catalog.” Later in the presentation, she declares, “And we can also help build a way of shaping students as agents of change both inside the library and out.”
An endorsement from former ALA Council member Jenna Freedman exclaims that Drabinski’s professional accomplishments include “queering the landscape of library publishing and scholarship.”
This queering of libraries and students is a deliberate attempt to deconstruct western civilization and radically alter cultural values, including the American family. This is a fundamental tenet of Marxism. If one destroys the family, the state and its indoctrinating institutions fill the vacuum.
Only time will tell what Drabinksi concocts during her tenure as ALA’s president, which begins in 2023.
Librarians (and teachers) should have one overarching job: fostering an environment in which children can safely seek knowledge and develop a greater understanding of the world, free of bias, censorship, political innuendo, and cultural indoctrination. Sadly, this sacred duty has been abandoned in favor of catering to the woke totalitarian ideology sweeping across our nation, incrementally destroying us from within.
Jack McPherrin ([email protected]) is a managing editor of StoppingSocialism.com, research editor for The Heartland Institute, and a research fellow for Heartland's Socialism Research Center. He holds an MA in International Affairs from Loyola University-Chicago, and a dual BA in Economics and History from Boston College.
