Neo-Nazis and Proud Boys are targeting libraries, as legislators and conservative lobby groups are trying to remove books from shelves and change how library board members are appointed
‘Twenty masked neo-Nazis recently protested outside a library in Boston hosting a Drag Queen Story Hour event.’‘Twenty masked neo-Nazis recently protested outside a library in Boston hosting a Drag Queen Story Hour event.’ast month, I went to a library in more or less the exact middle of America, and everyone was there – kids, elderly people, students of all ethnicities and ability levels – quietly doing their own thing, together.
The ALA has been tracking bans for two decades and reported that 2021 was the worst year for attempted censorship yet, with 1,597 books challenged. As long as there have been books, there has been censorship. Often censorship is demanded under cover of vague “public decency” concerns, but the truth is these are simply a veil over a darker motive – silencing unwanted perspectives and protecting the status quo., with many of them about LGBTQ+ rights or racism, often written by people of color.
The battle against intellectual freedom has escalated from the legal into the physical world. Twenty masked neo-Nazis recently protested outside a library in Boston hosting a Drag Queen Story Hour event. Last November, members of the Proud Boys, a far-right group, showed up at a school board meeting in Downers Grove in Illinois.
“Our core is figuring out how to provide information and providing access to information, in whatever form that looks like – whether it’s paper, whether it’s audiobooks, whether it’s digital literacy, we are here for that,” Pelayo-Lozado said. She believes this mission and libraries’ stated core values of democracy and diversity are what is so challenging to some. “We are trained to make knowledge and ideas available so that everybody has the freedom to choose what to read.
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