CHICAGO (ChurchMilitant.com) – The Marxist-dominated American Library Association (ALA) is not happy with the increasing pushback it’s receiving from parents and watchdog groups.
Deborah Caldwell-Stone
In its most recent report, the ALA repines “the record number of demands to censor library books and materials in 2022.” The report indicates an almost 40% uptick in challenges to books in the last year “written by or about members of the LGBTQIA+ community and people of color.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” exclaimed Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom, to the Associated Press. “The last two years have been exhausting, frightening, outrage inducing.”
Not Buying It
Not everyone can sympathize with Caldwell-Stone’s — and the ALA’s — distress call over the increasing number of people becoming aware of its promotion of the Marxist, LGBT agenda.
A librarian retired from the Detroit Public Library system, wishing to remain anonymous, tells Church Militant he was perplexed by the ALA’s consternation.
“The number of LGBT books being pushed on society is ever increasing,” he said. “Why shouldn’t there be a corresponding increase in pushback, especially by parents and others concerned about the ALA’s move to the dark side?”
Deborah DeGroff, a leading authority on children’s literature, is also not willing to let the ALA play victim while it targets children. The author of Between the Covers: What’s Inside a Children’s Book? tells Church Militant:
It’s fascinating to me that the ALA is so incredulous about the current number of book challenges. If parents knew what was in some of these books, the numbers would be significantly higher.
When you read some of these books marketed to children or listen to some of the parents who speak out about them at School Board meetings, you must wonder why Deborah Caldwell-Stone seems so baffled. Does she — and the rest of the American Library Association — really believe that these books are appropriate for minors?
DeGroff, who holds workshops for parents and grandparents to raise awareness about agendas craftily tucked into children’s books, explained that it’s not just profane or obscene books that are being foisted onto children. She said many books push a certain worldview under the guise of appearing neutral.
The author gave as an example the children’s book Joey: The Story of Joe Biden by Jill Biden, which was published four months before the 2020 election. The book, on its surface, is an innocuous retelling of Joe Biden’s early life. But it can also be seen as a way to sway children — and the adults reading the book to children — of the virtues and innocence of the Democratic presidential candidate.
Another critic of the maneuvers of the Marxist organization is self-identified “library watchdog” Dan Kleinman.
Kleinman, who runs a website called SafeLibraries dedicated to raising “public awareness of crime, sexual harassment in libraries, and inappropriate books and websites in schools due to American Library Association policy,” spoke to Church Militant about the report.
“The American Library Association creates a crisis, then complains about the parents who tried to intervene,” he said. “They are even attempting to pass legislation to codify a library Bill of Rights into law, which would forever take away from parents, the ability to complain about any school books whatsoever.”
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“The average person has no idea of this but librarians have been targeting children in recent years and trying to turn them into political activists,” the watchdog added.
Libraries’ Leftward Lurch
The concerns of parents — and the advocacy groups now supporting them — about a politicized ALA are not unfounded. The ALA has been making a move toward the far Left, encapsulated in the words “equity, diversity and inclusion,” for decades.
The retired Detroit librarian said he witnessed the ALA’s gradual but sure turn leftward.
“It became more pronounced,” he said, “when the big unions started coming in the late 1960s and ’70s — they provoked workers to look out for themselves, who, in turn, forgot about serving the public.”
Incoming ALA President Emily Drabinski, who self-identifies as a “Marxist lesbian,” makes her leanings clear.
On a website outlining the platform for her presidential run she posted: “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.”
On Monday, the ALA celebrated “The Right To Read Day,” designed to poke in the eye anyone who opposes its agenda.
Sounding like it had taken a page from Karl Marx’s “Communist Manifesto,” the ALA urged: “Unite Against Book Bans is a national initiative to empower readers everywhere to stand together in the fight against censorship.”
Dan Kleinman
Kleinman isn’t buying into the ALA’s positive spin of the Marxist event.
He tells Church Militant:
The Right To Read Day is just one more effort of propaganda to promote American Library Association’s half-century efforts to sexualize and propagandize America’s children. That they do it by faking claims about LGBT discrimination that only harms LGBT communities is par for the course.
The tug-of-war between parents doing due diligence regarding who and what influences their children, on one side, and on the other the ALA, intent on propagandizing them, is not about to end anytime soon.
DeGroff urges parents and grandparents to arm themselves by becoming more aware of what’s really going on. She also urges concerned parties to follow the money and stop supporting libraries and publishers pushing the dark agenda.