Hello everyone. This is Diane Rasmussen Makati
with UK column. I'm delighted to be joined today
by Dan Kleiman of Safe Libraries.
He is based in New Jersey and the United States, and in my
opinion, he's been doing some wonderful work over the last
several years trying to make sure that things are safe in
libraries for our children over in America.
And I hope today that he can give us some inspiration to do
some similar work that needs to be done just as much over here
in the UK as it needs to be done still in America.
So, Dan, again, thank you. Welcome to UK column.
I'd like to just hand it over to you a little bit to maybe
introduce yourself and give our viewers a little bit of
introduction to what you've been doing over the past several
years to try to keep children safe.
I'm Dan Kleiman. I'm and I run Safe Libraries and
I, I also happen to run World Library Association, which is
new and growing, and I've been doing this for about 25 years.
It started when my kid went to kindergarten and began to read a
book that was completely inappropriate and brought it to
the principal. The principal said it's twice as
bad as what you said, and I'm removing it from the library.
And that began my journey as to what's going on in schools with
books and children. And it just kept going downhill
from there. The things that I have learned
over the course of these decades, frankly, have come to
basically maybe ahead right now because I'm actually being sued
at the moment by a librarian for the statements that I make in
which I basically respond or report on what the librarians
are saying. And I pointed out to the public.
And that's not favored right now.
So who am I right now? I'm the, I'm not liked by a lot
of librarians in in the United States, but only those that are
part of the problem that we have with giving inappropriate
material to children. Other than that, I'm just a dad
like everybody else. I do this in my spare time like
probably everybody else does who does my kind of thing.
And you know, we're up against an organization that's well
funded, has offices, has a donations in the millions of
dollars in which they specifically say they're going
to help librarians, soup parents.
Well, now I'm on the receiving end of that and that's who I am.
I'm just dead like everybody else.
I've just been at it for 25 years.
That's really amazing. I mean, that's a long time to be
working on A cause and and we just see it unfortunately
getting worse. It seems to me that the pressure
from these these groups that you're talking about and these
types of librarians has become more and more over time.
And I have to say myself, I've been a qualified librarian since
2001, and having worked as a practicing librarian for several
years and then a professor teaching future librarians.
As someone who never worked directly in children's
libraries, I've always worked in university libraries and never
had a really desire to work with children's materials or
children. Nothing against children, it was
just that always my dream was to work in universities and work
with all of the knowledge and the information available in
university setting. This has all.
Yeah, this has all come to a big surprise to me in the past few
years as I've started to look into it and, and as as a result
of me discovering what was going on, I've been cancelled from the
profession myself. And as someone who loved my
profession and still does, it's been very painful for me to have
these people kind of pushed out, pushed myself out because I'm
here saying, I don't think that this is this is the right thing
to do necessarily and that it should be left up to the
parents. So I think it just shows us how
how pressure filled these groups can be.
There aren't very many full professors of librarianship in
the world. And I'm one of them.
And I'm losing my career in that as we speak.
So I'm sort of reshaping myself as in a different direction with
UK column in other ways, in other ways like that.
And it But I think, you know, you've done some research as
well into what's funding the organizations.
And I think our viewers in particular would be interested
to hear what you have learned about how the American Library
Association has funded, what's actually going behind, what's
driving the agenda financially. Can you talk about that a little
bit? Believe it or not, I'm not an
expert on that, but the I think the majority of their money,
well a lot of their money comes from membership dues, although
the membership numbers have been shrinking.
They've even just acknowledged that in a recent message, I
forget where I saw that, where they're talking about other
library associations making a dent.
Maybe they're referring to World Library Association, but I think
the Do's is a large portion. But they also get lots of big
donations from the Ford Foundation, from the Open
Society, from George Soros, $1 million came in from Jay-Z and
$1 million from Robert Kraft who owns the Patriots.
And the Ala dedicated that money specifically to suing parents.
And so they're also a a tax free organization.
So they're getting lots of benefits just by being tax free.
Yeah, I'm not an expert on where they get their funding.
I'm I'm, I'm more focused on what they're doing to
communities and especially children and even librarians,
frankly. But but that's that's where it
comes from lots of donations that they use as they choose, so
to speak, and they choose to do it to well, what what happened
to you? You got like pushed out of the
out of your professional organization.
Syllabi believe that's kind of what they that's what they do.
This is a standard practice over here.
This is why a lot of people who are in favor of these kinds of
policies that harm children are outspoken.
But the other ones who are not in favor, and there are plenty,
they noted, kind of keep silent. And what's interesting to me as
well is the hypocrisy of it all. I, I don't know so much about
this part of it going on, what's going on in America right now.
But I know for example, in Scotland where I am the all of
these things are in the books. I do want to get into a little
bit about some of the books. I've covered it some on the
news, but I want to hear from you because I know you know
quite a bit about that. Unfortunately for you, but for
example, there's been pressure over here from librarians and
booksellers in Scotland to not provide gender critical books in
the adult sections, which is where, you know, in my opinion,
if you're over 18, you can read anything that you want.
And if you want to read people against the trans, the
transgender kind of agenda and those things, you should have
the right to do that. But they're saying, well, that's
offensive to the trans people. And so we can't have gender
critical books, as we call them in the adult sections of the
bookstores and the libraries in Scotland.
But we can put anything that we think we want to put in front of
children and hypocrisy and all of it just is incredible to me.
If we're really about fighting censorship, then we should allow
people who have The Who are of age to decide what they want to
read to do it. And, and I, I really don't, it's
hard to not get past the idea of this sexualization of children
and, and, and grooming that you talked about.
It's hard to really start to see it as anything else.
It is hypocritical, but it's not like a hypocrisy thing.
It's more like they have an intentional, they're making a
potential, I'm sorry, an effort to politically change things
because they believe that librarianship is not neutral and
they're there to promote their view of the world, which is not
really the view of the world. It's just their view of the
world. And how they do it is with these
kinds of books and the balance of books in, in school libraries
or bookstores, as you mentioned, and, and things like that.
That's what's going on here. It's a, it's a ideological war
that's been going on for a long time and lots of institutions,
not just the, you know, the libraries associations.
Yeah, I've had conversations about this with Brian Garish,
who's one of the, he's the founder of UK column and he's on
the news with me on Mondays and he's been seeing my reports on
libraries. And as Brian has said, libraries
are central to knowledge, right, to information, to learning
about the world. And so it's to him, it seems
like a logical place where they would start to attack and would
have really strong attacks and go in through the librarians and
through the organizations. Because capturing the libraries
means that you've captured the knowledge.
And if, and if you don't want the world to have the, you know,
the right knowledge, whether it's age appropriate or anything
else, then you, you know, you've kind of got society right there
by attacking the libraries. And I, I think that's why
they're starting there. That's exactly right.
That's why, for example, you might have a community, let's
say they're mostly people who don't want to harm children, but
there are always going to be a few who do.
And those people somehow coincidentally get on the
library boards or the school boards.
That's that's why you have a, a mostly fine community, but the
people that want to push the inappropriate stuff on kids,
they somehow find themselves on the boards.
That's why the principal thing that people need to do to
reverse this trend is to get on the boards and and keep those
other kind of people out by taking your own body running for
election or getting selected or whatever it is and getting
yourself a seat on a board. That is the number one way to
make change going on. Once you get the board and
you're in control, so to speak, then you can remove the policies
that are harmful to the children.
Just because our British audience might not be familiar
with how our our systems work in America, can you maybe explain a
little bit about the sort of the city councils and the library
boards and how well that works? Yes, libraries in the United
States have been around for a long time, something to do with
some kind of a war that England and America used to have.
But so some of those libraries are are are built like
differently than most libraries. Most libraries are now kind of
instruments of law. They were created by a law
somehow, usually for the use and benefit of the public, not just
for anything goes, but that's what it is.
And the laws usually set up a means of taking care of the
library like trustees, boards of trustees.
And so under the law, those trustees may be selected or they
may be elected, depending on how the law is set up.
So some boards are selected and some are elected.
And then the boards kind of have defined duties within the law of
what they are supposed to do in order to take care of the
library. That has caused a lot of
problems because sometimes the library directors who are hired
by the boards feel that they control the libraries.
And don't worry, board, we'll take care of it and we'll do
whatever we think is appropriate.
And whatever we think is appropriate is often not
appropriate. And the board has just given up
its rights to somebody who's just taken over, so to speak.
So boards need to, when they become board members, look at
the law, find out what powers they have under their existing
laws and apply them and make sure somebody isn't taking them
away from them. So that's how you get on boards
here in the United States, either by selection or election,
under some kind of a statute or law generally.
And so once you get onto the boards, I, I've read some of
this in, well, Amanda Jones is very hard to follow, very hard
to read book, not because it was at a high level of, of, of
intellect, but because it was just hard to follow and hard to
read. She mentioned some things about
the boards and that's what she has said was the, when she made
her her big proclamation about censorship in at her local
Public Library board. And then that's when she said it
all started with Michael Lunsford.
So if you went to a board meeting and you spoke out
against these, these kinds of things, I, I've seen some videos
of someone both in the US and in Canada that has a similar system
and it's, it seems like they can get quite intense in terms of
people arguing on either side. Have you ever seen those, those
kinds of, I know you've been to some of these meetings.
If you can maybe explain some of that, because I don't think
politics are quite as outwardly obvious in British politics.
People aren't quite the same over here, but it seems like
some of them can get quite heated in some of the
discussions. I've seen some of these videos
of people actually reading out the text of some of these books
and showing the pictures and they get shut down.
It's it's incredible. Have you had any of those kinds
of experiences? I've had numerous those kinds of
experiences and part of and, and I'll tell you about some of them
in a moment, but I just want to tell you how it happens.
It happens because the American Library Association essentially
works with multiple other organizations and with their own
people to get out a lot of people to show up at these
meetings to crown out the local crowd, essentially.
I was involved in one in Glen Ridge, NJ, for example, where
there were hundreds of people out there all supporting keeping
some kind of an inappropriate book in the library.
It was a Public Library. They can have whatever books
they want. A school library is kind of
different. But anyway, there were so many
people there with signs and, and, and people cheering and
people wearing the same shirts. And then people when they would
line up, they would say get in line.
So we get the first tickets so that we can speak first.
And, and they wanted to make sure that they crowded out
everybody. That's what they do.
I met somebody. And then they have people show
up. The librarians get people to
show up, like the mother of George M Johnson, who wrote This
Boy Ain't Blue or wherever that book is.
I was the one who saw the mother at the at this Park Ridge, NJ
library and recognized who she was, had a delightful
conversation with her because she's adorable.
And then as soon as that happened, the media realized who
it was and began taking photographs of her.
The media was probably called out by the American Library
Association too. She gets to speak for three
minutes, even though everybody got everybody else got to speak
for two minutes. And this is the kind of mass
gang up that happens because the American Library Association has
been creating local organizations, has been a
funding and helping and and building up local organizations,
hundreds of them throughout the United States to then pressure
and bully boards. And in fact, in that particular
case, there was so much bullying going on that the people who
were in favor of the action they wanted on the books were too
intimidated to even show up at the meeting.
I was the only person who spoke up in favor of those people, not
necessarily in favor of their point, but just the in favor of
them having the right to have a point.
And for my speaking up at that meeting, the New Jersey ACLU
decided to say how awful it was that somebody spoke up.
And the other side right, They're all for free speech, but
when you use free speech, suddenly they don't want to hear
it and they crowd you out. This is what these meetings are
like. Some of them can get very
violent. Some people can be removed from
rooms by police and things like that.
I was with John, John Amanchakwu from I think it's I know God dot
US and he goes around the country here in the in the
United States to various school boards to read these books to
them. And sometimes he gets escorted
out. I was there at one of those
meetings. I, I filmed the whole thing,
frankly. And they just don't want to hear
anything that that goes against what the majority of people are.
And that majority is created by the American Library
Association. The locals aren't activated to
get in to get this active. No, it's just the American
Library Association. They get out their ACAACLU
people, they're PEN America people, they're National
Coalition, they get censorship people.
It goes on and on and on. And suddenly you're a school
board that gets inundated with hundreds of people for a
meeting. And sometimes things that you
say in these meetings will get you sued.
Parents in Roxbury, New Jersey, for example, were sued by the
school librarian because they said these books were
inappropriate and shouldn't be in the library.
And somehow they use that as the excuse to sue the parents
because the American Library Association funds these
lawsuits. So on the QT quietly.
And so even if you do show up and speak out, you could be
sued. Oh, look at that.
I was just sued a few days ago for speaking up at board
meetings. What do you know?
This is how they operate here in the United States.
It can be wild. That's incredible.
We, we don't have those kinds of things over here in, in the UK.
So I, I tried to tell people over here, you know, American
meetings are, are quite different and it's the same with
the campaign. I know I was sharing a lot of
clips with people just selection that just happened of, you know,
the Trump rallies and the Kamala rallies and and we just nothing
like that happens over here. But it's it's quite entertaining
to to people that I've shared it with them trying to imagine what
it's like to be at some of these things.
It's just, it's just so incredibly different.
But I mean, at least I would say that you have an advantage over
there because you do have people that are speaking out.
You have Moms for Liberty, you have all of these groups that
are trying to do something. And I think that's a cultural
difference over here, which is people are less likely to want
to speak out. And it's it's not anything
negative. It's just a difference in how
people do things over here. But I think we need more of it
because we're getting in some of these these same books, we're
having the same situations, but if we don't have anyone speaking
up, then it's just going to continue to get worse.
So I'm hoping you can give some people some inspiration through
through this discussion. You have to speak out and there
has to be enough of you to make a difference, right?
Right now, people in England, I can't believe you could say
something online and then you can go to jail for more time
than somebody who raped some kids.
That's England is crazy right now.
So I don't know what to say about that.
I'm not an expert on England, but it looks like you're having
a lot of troubles over there. But I think if enough parents
say something and come out, they can't possibly jail all of you.
So, so you need to come out, you need to make Moms for Liberty
types of groups, get people, you know, organized.
So this is what the librarians do.
They, they're now into community organizing in the United States.
Right in, well, I won't get into that right now, but you need to
get organized too. Essentially make groups like
Moms for Liberty. Who knows, maybe call them Moms
for Liberty and and start getting into these school boards
or whatever you call them over there and make some changes.
Yeah, we have a few, a few people doing things.
We have our viewers will be familiar with the chemistry wood
in Wales, for example, who's been calling out things, not
just library books, but just, you know, that we have these
things over here called basically relationship, sexual
education, health curriculum. They're slightly different
throughout the UK, but. We have things like, we've seen
examples through Kim Isherwood and Wales, for example, that
they have exercises where they're teaching teachers to use
play dough to mold genitals together.
And that's supposed to be a classroom activity just so you
like. These are things that are
absolutely ridiculously disgusting in my opinion.
And, and children have absolutely no, no, no reason to
do this. But these are the kinds of
things that are happening. But it takes people like him
around the country, I think, for more of us to get organized.
And that's what I'm trying to help advocate for.
And remember when you're getting organized, who, who's the person
you're protecting here? You're protecting children.
They have nobody else to protect them.
It's just you. And you have these groups that
are trying to indoctrinate them. So it's not like somebody else
can take care of himself. You don't have to get involved.
It's children. There's nobody else who can take
care of them. You need to get involved.
You need to do it for the children.
That's why you do it. That's why I do it.
That's why everybody does it. And we keep it.
We keep at it and we keep doing it with a smile because we're
doing the right thing and we're going to eventually get our way
and stop these children from being indoctrinated.
Somebody's got to stand up there and do it, and you're doing it
for kids. Just keep that in mind and
you'll keep doing it. But that's what I try to keep in
mind. I, I guess if we could get into
some examples of some of the books that are in your mind.
I've done some of this myself on some of my previous UK column
reports, which I will link to in the final description, I think
for our interview when it goes out.
But what are some examples that just come to your mind that
maybe you've, you've spoken out about?
Because I know you share a lot on your on your Twitter X
account. There's a book called This book
is Gay. No, no, no, let's talk about it.
Let's talk about well, there is a book called This book is gay,
but I want to talk about let's talk about it.
This book is pervasively vulgar and educationally unsuitable. 2
words I use because they come from the United States Supreme
Court case in 1982 called Board of Education versus PICO,
whatever. They're educationally unsuitable
and pervasively vulgar. Now, in New Jersey, there's also
an obscenity law for children under 18, and these books
violate that obscenity law. And the obscenity law would
basically make a crime out of what everything that school
librarians are doing and put them in jail, which I think is a
great idea if they're breaking the obscenity law.
In fact, it is so well known that it breaks the obscenity law
that the American Library Association is trying to get
legislation passed all throughout the United States and
in New Jersey, which specifically adds an exemption
or librarians against the obscenity law so that they can
continue to teach them anything they want and violate the
obscenity. So what am I talking about
violates the obscenity. This book, for example, you
know, I'm thinking to myself, how do I say this without being
cut off by the sensors or whatever, but there is material
in there that is absolutely so inappropriate for children.
It may be fine for adults who are really into this kind of
stuff that whatever, but but children, it's really
inappropriate. For example, how to use objects
with regard to your behind, shall we say, and, and how to
make sure that you don't get harmed by them and how to make
sure you clean them and how to make sure you have fun with them
and what to do with them. I mean, it goes into such great
detail. It's, it's unbelievable.
It's just inappropriate for a school book, which is the issue
basically, right? In a Public Library, that's
anything goes almost. But in a school library, that is
inappropriate. And the school board approved it
because the American Library Association got hundreds of
people to come out. And not only that, the American
Library Association was so proud of its effort in that particular
community that it's. It's multiple presidents talk
all the time about how community organizing really works to sway
the thoughts of the local community boards and things like
that. Yeah.
They use it as an example of how to better indoctrinate and
sexualized children is essentially what they're doing.
So that is I think that answers your question.
Yeah, I, I know you can't get into a lot of detail because
I've had similar, similar concerns when I've tried to
cover it on new segments of how much can I show?
But I think, you know, it is important to, to get people to
see these things. And there's been a couple of
suggestions that well, Michael Longsford gave me that is it the
book looks website, some other websites where you can actually
look up these books and see exactly what's in them.
And the the thing for me that's interesting is as an educator,
when I see that it says, well, this is age appropriate.
It might be age appropriate in terms of the level of the
language or maybe it's a picture book, but the content is not age
appropriate at all whatsoever. So it really bothers me when
they say, well, this is for three to six year olds, but
actually when you look at what they're doing, they're starting
to explain, you know, pride parades and these kinds of
things that they really don't need to know about when they're
that age in. Addition when when the
librarians talk about age appropriate, what they don't
tell you is that the American Library Association works for
decades to ensure that any information parents can get
about the age appropriateness of books is removed.
The American Library Association, for example,
censored its own website once it realized that it was giving out
ratings to Common Sense Media, which was providing a rating
from 1:00 to 5:00 on the explicitness of books.
So the Ala had censored from their own website and sent out a
message that library schools must remove common sense media
links and a state library associations must remove common
sense Media links. So they're not only using a
weird definition of of age appropriate, but they're
actively ensuring that organizations like
booklooks.org, which provide information to parents about the
sexual explicit nature or the inappropriateness of these
materials are actually kept out of libraries, out of everywhere.
It it's almost like diabolical almost to think that not, you
know, not only do parents have enough time making up a decision
about something, but there's a library association that's going
out of its way to remove materials and information that
the parents could use to make up their own mind for their own
children. That's the real problem here is
these people are pushing their way into communities nationwide.
It's just their view and it's harming people.
So what do you think is at the heart of why they're doing this?
There is an article written by a professor at the University of
Houston called Rita Koganson which goes into details as to
why the Ala is doing this. And they, the Ala is doing it to
take away rights from parents in order to better indoctrinate
children for political reasons related to the 60s movement.
I know that sounds crazy. That is what's in the article
that did you know that I make available to people.
I'm not an expert on, you know, the 60s movement, shall we say.
But that is an article that I have read which goes into detail
about how this stuff did start about 60 years ago within the
American Library Association. This is why we're here today.
You and I are talking now because this, this inappropriate
stuff is sweeping the United States.
So then it sweeps other countries because we have
somehow big influence. Our wonderful library
associations, which are harming children, have somehow swept
into other countries. That's why we're here.
This is why they're doing it. It's for political gain, just
like lots of other organizations have been taken over for
political gain. The Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts.
Maybe they're the Girl Guides in England, churches.
Lots of things have been taken over by this kind of ideology.
Well, now it's. It's in libraries now and and
it's targeted at our children. So, Speaking of political gain,
what can you tell us about Emily Drabinsky?
Emily Drabinsky is the current immediate past president of the
American Library Association. Last year, when she became Two
years ago, when she became the president-elect, she tweeted out
how happy she was that a Marxist lesbian, her words, not mine.
A Marxist lesbian became the president of the American
Library Association. And something like, imagine the
power that we can wield to make things better or something like
that. Solidarity.
I love you, mom. She's eventually removed that
tweet and sort of said, I'm sorry I ever tweeted it because
it brought too much attention to what we're actually doing in the
American Library Association. Emily Drabinsky has gone on to
attend attend a socialism conference in in in Chicago
where she met with socialists and communists and said we need
your help in turning libraries into sites for socialism
training. This is the head of the American
Library Association going to a socialism conference saying to
actual hundreds of actual socialists, we need your help.
Fortunately, we, you know, how do I make these statements?
I got to tell you, I make all these statements because this
stuff is recorded and reported. In this case, this was recorded
and reported by Doctor Karlan Borisenko.
So you can go to my website or her website.
Add here Emily Drabinsky saying this to all these people.
It's quite remarkable. That's the problem at the
American Library Association. The next library president
elected happens to be Marxist. The president-elect right now
happens to be Marxist and non binary.
So kids are in for a real treat soon.
And the next set of people who are being elected, they're,
they're considering for the next election, they are openly out
and Marxist as well too. So this is what's happening in
the American Library Association.
And they're bragging about it. And then when they get caught at
it, they say, oh, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that.
It's a little bit too late at that point.
That's the the problem because yeah, conferences are recorded.
That's just a common thing. Everyone does it now.
So whatever you say at a conference, it's it's out there
and it's probably everywhere on YouTube for everyone to find.
I'm gonna give you a tip. I'm gonna here's a tip for
everybody out there in England and everywhere else listening to
this on how to how to find out information about what these
librarians are and what's they're doing.
What are they doing? I'm, I do this, A lot of other
people don't, but I do it. And therefore I find stuff which
becomes newsworthy. So I'm going to tell you what my
secret is. The secret is just what you just
said. They record things, go to the
library conferences online, look them up, listen to the speeches,
and after a while you'll get used to what's going on and
maybe you're going to actually hear something that is truly
unbelievable. Then you report it.
That's what I've done. For example, I've heard the the
director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom and the
Freedom to Read Foundation at the American Library
Association, training librarians, that before stuff
becomes legislation, we need to have sustained messaging, like
lying about the materials that the kids are reading.
And we need to take away the idea that these are, and then
she says inappropriate for minors and corrects herself
sexually inappropriate for minors.
And we need to reframe it as diversity and inclusion.
This is the training that I found on a YouTube video by just
looking at all their stuff at all.
You guys can do this too. And that thing that I found and
published became the subject of a U.S.
Senate review on banned books in the United States.
There's no such thing since 1963.
And and it became the subject. And Senator Mike Lee talked
about that. He played that video that I just
told you and he said, look, they just said the quieter part, the
quiet part out loud. They are grooming students and
they know it and they're sexualizing them.
So frankly, when I say they're grooming and basically using
what a senator said during a hearing on a banned books
hearing, that's that's what they're doing.
So I'm not making it up again, I'm just following what the our
elected leaders are saying about this.
But the point of this is you can go into where your library
associations are having their conferences and you can look at
them. Nobody else does, just
librarians. And you can look at them and
they say things that are damning in those in those tapes, and
then you can find your own stuff and make your own way in, in
exposing what's going on in your own areas.
Yeah, I, I do that now as well, which is interesting.
I feel like I'm spying on my own profession when I see these
things that they're, they're coming out with.
And you know, just, I, I know that obviously you're focusing
on the safety of children. But one of the things that I see
as watching what the universities are doing, which is
all of this changing language decolonization, which is really
destruction. If you listen to James Lindsay's
work at New Discourses, that they're changing what things are
called in library catalogs at the university level so that
ultimately nobody will be able to find anything, right?
But my favorite example that I use is from a university here,
and it's in England, the University of Manchester.
And they talked about in a webinar how they were
decolonizing their catalogue and their collection.
One of the things that they did, for example, was change the word
costume to traditional dress because costume is now an
offensive word. And so it's fine to give sexual
materials to children, but it's not fine to use the word costume
because the word costume is offensive.
I. Don't know what to say, It's
hysterical. I know that's all you can do is
laugh at it sometimes because it does actually get this
ridiculous when you start to see what what is going on and what
is considered to be a problem of what is no longer considered to
be a problem. It's it's yeah, it's very
strange. But that is a very key point for
people to see what's going on out there is to see what you
know, if you have state library associations as well are have
also the annual conferences. I, I lived in Texas for a long
time. That's where I did my education
and I worked as a librarian in Texas.
And that's the second largest library association just after
Ala. So they have quite a bit of
coverage of what they're doing in Texas.
At the same time, that's a question I have for you
personally. The World Library Association
lists itself as being based in Texas, but you're in New Jersey.
So I'm wondering what what connection you have to Texas
just to someone who lived in the Dallas area for a very long
time. Texas Library Association is the
largest library association in the United States.
As you mentioned, State Library association.
I reported something about them that was so unbelievable by
listening to recordings and, and I'm I'm getting to your point in
a moment. I reported that because I just
said you got to listen to tapes, that they're training the
librarians how to keep the parents and legislators from
knowing what's in the books by intentionally using their
private devices and private Wi-fi's and private e-mail
addresses in order to talk about school business.
But do in a way that the public can never get under open public
records acts or open government laws.
So I was shocked by this, to have somebody just say it out in
the open, but they're talking to themselves.
You see, I just happened to look at it too.
And so I reported on it and they made a big story and so big that
the Texas Library Association itself protected its Twitter
account. It was Twitter at that time.
It protected its account for I think like 3 weeks or something
like that. And then I guess after they
cleaned it up, came back online again and they blocked me.
So now I said, look, I'm a disclosing this inappropriate.
I'm sorry. I'm disclosing the stuff that
they know they're doing to basically harm children.
That's why they're having this conference.
It's coming from the head of the Texas Library Association, who's
also a member of executive member on the Freedom to Read
Foundation. And, and, and they're blocking
me and they're exposing me. Oh yes, I also exposed that they
had a drag queen for their keynote speaker, a keynote
speaker at a library conference that had just come back from
COVID. I think the keynote speaker was
a drag queen. It's like, look at this.
And so they blocked me. I decided at that point I was
going to base my library association in Texas because
it's the biggest library, state library association.
They're doing terrible things to children.
And it's going to be based in Texas because I want to be there
when the time comes to finally, after years of growth as a new
organization, to finally, you know, make sure that people are
now actually supporting local control, local standards and
local law instead of law standards and control that comes
from Chicago, IL. But, and it's the World Library
Association, right? Just so our viewers can look it
up. What?
worldlibraryassociation.org. Yeah, you, you should, you have
to realize, why are we doing this?
Why is mom's celebrity out there doing this?
Why am I? There's Monster America, There's
mass resistance. There's no left turn in
education. There's International Women's
Foundation or something. Why are we all doing this?
Because, because the American Library Association has been
pushing this inappropriate stuff on kids.
If they weren't doing this, if they weren't sneaking things
behind parents backs, if they weren't taking away the rights
for parents to see what's explicit, we would not be here.
We would not be having this conversation.
There wouldn't be a problem. They've brought this on
themselves. We're here because they're doing
these inappropriate things. Then, by the way, they call us
extremists, right? That's how it works.
They push this inappropriate stuff on kids for 60 years by
design, and then when parents finally catch on and fight back,
the parents are the extremists. I'm a member of a group here in
Scotland where I published my book review of Amanda's book
called the Scottish Union for Education.
And that our, our bases are sort of, our tagline is education,
not indoctrination. So we're trying to inform
parents because the, this, the governments here are all sort of
in lockstep with providing this out there.
And I think Scotland is is probably even worse than England
and Wales and Northern Ireland at this point.
And one of the things that I was cancelled for out of Scillop was
because I posted an article a few months on the Scottish Union
for Education about these issues and of an anonymous complaint
was raised against me. And I was asked to come in for a
formal disciplinary hearing through Scillop.
And I said I'm not paying you guys my money to be disciplined.
So that was, you know, part of how I got pushed out of the
organization. But Scottish Union for
Education, although we're trying to do similar things and get
this stuff out of the schools in Scotland, we're being called far
right, alt right extremists, all of these things that you've
said. And yeah, we get, we get the
same treatment from certain groups and people.
So completely understand where you're coming from there.
We get called white supremacists, Chris don't
fascist, all because we don't want kids to have in school a
book about tushy toys and shall we say.
Can we say that? So I just want, I just got my
book review up here and I, I will probably link to this again
in our because I'll write a short article to go along with
our discussion. And it's, it's interesting
because I, it's reminded me of some of the things that I put in
this review that come directly from Amanda's book that she has
said, and I quoted these. So this is not defamation
because these are Amanda's words.
That doesn't mean I am ashamed to be white or that I have white
guilt. That's the first thing the
Whitey Nick Whites like to say when the term white privilege is
brought up. So I read that to a Scottish
person and they said, well, that's offensive to me because
I'm Scottish. And that's how is that not
offensive to a Scottish person? Have you ever just wanted to
punch someone in the face with all your might?
Maybe someone has said something awful to you and the thought
crossed your mind that a good ass whipping would wipe the
smirk off the face and teach them a lesson?
I don't advocate violence, but I have thought about how good it
would feel to knee my haters in the groin.
How is that not hateful? Nobody was asking to interview
her haters, as she called them, except wackadoo alt right
bloggers and in reference to Moms for Liberty, she wrote.
Groups like Moms for Liberty are popping up like zits all over
the country and provided names for the group such as Planned
Karen Hood Mini Van Taliban, Assholes with Casseroles and Cue
Imams. So she can say those things but
you can't say anything about her?
What? What's your response to that?
You know, I thought you were initially asking me the question
and I was about to say I would never hit anybody.
You do this through the political process, right?
And then I realized you were reading from her that we're just
two different people. I mean, we're not really two
different people. Those, the people who are like
her, have been infected by the mind virus.
As we say, that's how this happens.
That's why people, you know, our that's why there's division in
the country intentionally set up between people with the mind
virus in order to get them to fight with each other.
And she's, she's infected by it and she's basically saying it
right there. Actually, I've exposed a lot
about her by once again, just listening to the broadcasts that
are that are published by her and she said she wanted to
detail. I have to, you know, maybe I
won't refer to anything I discovered.
I'll just talk about New New Louisiana, who reported on her
and New New Louisiana headed by Michael Lunsford reported that
she said that, you know, she knows these works are
inappropriate for children and that the parents and the school
administration doesn't want these parents to get these
inappropriate works. But she's going to give them to
she's going to give them to the children anyway just by calling
them something different. If you know my if you know what
I mean, if you read between the lines, these are things that she
said. So that's what I think about
her. She's she's making these
statements that are obviously in improvement.
I mean, who would ever hit anybody like that?
That wasn't my first thought. And meantime, the reason why
she's making them is because according to New Louisiana,
she's planning to push inappropriate material on
children without the parents or their or the legislators knowing
what's going on. This is a big problem.
It's in a lot of live school librarians.
These are all these people are all heroes to each other.
They back each other up. They high 5 each other.
They especially love what's going on now that she has sued
me. I mean, they really love it.
So that's what I think about about that situation.
And we have to remember, ladies and gentlemen, that these
schools are public schools. They're not Chicago, IL,
American Library Association schools.
We have to control what's in the public.
And if these people are working overtime to ensure the public
isn't finding out what's going on, then we need to find out.
Well, that's what I've been doing for 25 years.
I told you my secret just by listening to their broadcasts
and then reporting them. And somebody has to do
something. And it looks like it's, you
know, with lots of these groups popping up, it looks like
something's going to be happening.
So I'm I'm happy. Looks like from the the School
Library Journal article that you sent me reporting that this has
happened to you, that they're you.
You can almost feel the bias in the article, right?
Like look please, it's you. Didn't even call me.
You know, as as someone who works in independent media, the
point is you're supposed to just report what you see and but the
bias is just is just so clear. They reprinted everything that
she said, like half the about 1/4 of the article is is what
they what she said. Nothing from me, no interview
from me, and they came out so quickly.
Look how fast between the time that thing happened and the time
the article appears in School Library Journal.
I'm going to tell you there's an organization in Ala called Unite
Against Book Bands. The Ala created it a few years
back after parents were successfully getting gender
queer removed from schools because it was educationally
unsuitable and pervasively vulgar.
And they created it to create the false lie that Pico doesn't
apply to school books, so you can't.
And that rather that nothing can be removed under the Pico case
because every book has to do with an idea and and books can't
be removed for the ideas they contain.
So part of that Unite against book bans includes many
organizations, including School Library Journal and they all
working together as a giant group to to push this material.
Even her book, the idea came to her like in a day when somebody
came up to her who's a part of the Unite against book bands,
Bloomsbury's publishers and said, Hey, you know, we want you
to think about writing a book. OK, I did so outcomes this book
really quickly. The average writer would would
have like a hard time getting into into bookstores and things
like that. This person was just pushed
right along because of this giant industry.
And that includes, for example, the School Library Journal that
puts out an article that's completely biased, like you
said, and you like you saw. This is what's going on.
It's a giant pile up amongst all these organizations against
parents and people who oppose inappropriate material in
schools. People who oppose age
inappropriate material are the problem to the librarians.
And you know, it, it really it, it bothers me just as a
librarian, and I still think of myself as a librarian.
And regardless of what's happened to me, I always will.
But it's it, it, it bothers me that this is what's the exemplar
of our profession, right? So if this woman is the one
who's got these OM school Librarian of the year, I've got
a book, I've got a book tour. And then you read the content
where she says things like haters gonna hate.
And it just, you know, we're supposed to be educated people
as librarians, right? You're supposed to have a
master's degree, to be, according to the American
Library Association, a master's degree, a set of qualifications,
experience, and and to have a book that goes out like this
that's meant for the public. Is this is this really what we
want us people to know about our profession, which has always
been known as, oh, those are the brainy book people that, you
know, sit behind their books all day.
So that's one thing. And now we've got haters going
to hate. They hate me, those outright
conspiracy theorists. It's just, it's just not a good
look for the profession at all. And I would we already have an
image problem anyway. But I, I really hate it that
this is something that has come out to say, Oh, here's a leading
librarian, school librarian of the year has written this
wonderful book. And it just sounds like to me a
teenage girl texting her friend. When you say she's the school
librarian of the year, how did that happen?
Well, I know how it happened. It happened because you can self
nominate yourself. And she self nominated herself
for three years until she was finally selected.
Gee, she awarded herself a gift. A school library of the year
essentially is what happened. That's how that happened.
And then you mentioned the MLIS degrees, the masters of, you
know, whatever, and those degrees now which are approved
or accredited by the American Library Association, the
American Library Association has required those degrees to teach
diversity, equity and inclusion in every single class taken in
library school. Not just a single class, not
just how to deal with the people in the library.
Every class has diversity, equity and inclusion in it now.
So when you have an MLIS degree, you sort of have a degree that
specializes in Emily Drubinsky's favorite topic.
Difference from when I did my degree back in 2001 and I left
America in, I guess I moved to Scotland in 2015 and I taught in
library programs before then. It was even back then.
It was not a requirement, wasn't even something we talked about.
So it's amazing how much things have changed in 10 years.
The more that these librarians get away with this stuff, the
more that they see that they can and the more that they do.
So what do you think about the Michael Lunsford case?
Because, you know, I read about it in Amanda's book.
I've read about it, but I know that you and Michael and I've
interviewed Michael as well. Just wondering your perspective
on what he went through and do you have any updates as well?
Because I know he was waiting for word from the Supreme Court,
I believe, about if they were going to hear it.
He's still waiting. I'll tell you what I think about
that Michael Lunsberg case. Along comes an anonymous
donation. I think it was the first one to
the GoFundMe for Amanda and it was $11,000.
Somebody gave an $11,000 anonymous whatever for Amanda to
sue parents, which is what the American Library Association
trained people to do. And it just so we're clear when
I say AALA trained people to do this, I want to let you all know
that this was discovered in a Freedom of Information Act
request where notes from that librarians took at a training
given by the American Library Association included that
parents that librarians should sue parents for defamation
because it will waste their time and run them up to a $500,000 in
money and costs and basically put them out of the game, which
is basically what they're trying to do to me right now.
So the Ala trains people to do this.
Now, it happened to Michael Lunsford in New Louisiana, and
suddenly there's an $11,000 donation.
That's just the first one that appears there.
And I can tell you that I have been sued for defamation before
by a, by a librarian. And the request was that I would
delete my article on the homophobia within the American
Library Association, which I refused to do.
The case went away. They lost.
There was no defamation. And they're now suing in New
Jersey against the parent in a case that I am involved.
I'm, I'm not named party, but I'm in the case they're they
sued Michael Lunsford, they're suing me.
They're going to lose. They have so far.
They've lost everywhere. And they're going to keep losing
because there's no there there. They're just doing this because
the American Library Association is urging people to do that.
And then when they do, it kind of like harms them to a certain
extent. One person who sued and ended up
losing her job and is now working in a nature reserve
somewhere or something like that, I can't remember this
exact details. It like ruins their lives.
If you librarians, if you follow the American Library Association
advice to sue parents up for defamation, you're going down a
long road that is going to not be fruitful.
So that's what I you asked me what I thought about this.
That's what's going on. Michael Lundsberg has won four
cases out of four so far, and it's now in the Supreme Court.
So that that's where we are with this.
This is what we're dealing with, a giant organization that gets
lots of funding. In fact, that brings up another
thing. One of the things that I would
like to do at World Library Association as we eventually
grow is to provide funding for parents who are sued or who want
to sue because there is no equivalent.
It is just unfair that a giant organization with huge funders
can can load money on people to cause them to sue, and there's
nothing equivalent on the other side.
There's nothing. I want to get people on the
World Library Association to somehow be able to identify the
parents being sued and then to provide them with legal and
financial support needed to stop this actions by the American
Library Association to continue to promote their ideology across
America and the world thereby. That's a really good point.
I I didn't think about that and it's really sad that parents
would even have to think about soothing just to protect their
own children. It's just absolutely ridiculous.
You just reminded me of a quote from page one of Amanda's book,
which just relates to what you just said.
And this is what she said when she first got this e-mail after
her board meeting where she made her speech.
And she said, I've been spending a large portion of the previous
weeks pondering why random strangers go online to put down,
troll, threaten and defame people who they've never met.
Do they wake up and think to themselves, I wonder who I can
ruin today to make myself feel better, to fill the hole in my
life? I believe that anyone who does
this kind of thing suffers from some type of trauma or that
something elemental is missing from their lives.
That's. What I mean by the mind virus,
they're not even aware of reality.
They're not aware of what's happening to the children if
they're not aware of what. What parents are thinking about,
they're not aware of the other librarians who are too scared to
speak up to Save the Children that they're trying to help
because they don't believe in it.
They only think about themselves.
And I guess that's maybe part of this mind virus, as you call it.
Yeah. I'm just wondering if you have
any other final things that you would like to say.
I hope I can interview you again as we get maybe on the other
side of of what you're now just been what you're going through
with the the defamation. But is there is there anything
else that you want to share now? And I'm specifically really
anything you want to say, but I'm really interested in any
final tips that you can give to parents or anyone who wants to
try to go out there and fight for the safety of our children.
I'm most interested in providing final tips for the safety of
children. That's the goal of all this
stuff and that is you need to get involved.
You need to learn what's what's going on.
You need to look at what they're saying and see how it applies in
your situation and see if it's harming your community and your
children. You need to get together in
groups and try to do something to stop it from happening.
These are actually your schools and your children and your
governments. It's suspect to me.
I think it would be especially worse in England or other
countries, not the United States, because the United
States has this giant Ala. Well, it's only 48,000 members.
It's shrinking. The Ala has has this big
organization that it kind of leads all the other world
organizations. So it's even worse, I would
imagine in England where you're not only following the law, the
dictations of your or the dictat of your local library
associations, but you're also following the one from America
in Chicago, IL. I mean, just that would really
annoy me. People need to just become aware
of that and and remember that you control your libraries, not
some organizations that want to make sure that your children
have inappropriate material as you go through this.
Another tip would be that you were going to be accused of all
sorts of things. You're going to be homophobic,
you're going to be anti black, you're going to be just a piles
and piles of names. None of this are none of this is
true. The issue here is age
appropriateness. Keep your focus on that.
Another thing to consider is when you're doing your research
and you're finding out things that are unsavory and you want
to talk about it, be aware that libraries and librarians will,
and library associations will look at what you've done and
then delete it if they can. So make yourself screen copies.
Make yourself a copy on archive.org.
Make yourself a copy on archive dot pH OK, two different ones
and and get prepared. Get your ducks in a row, so to
speak, before you say something about it.
Because many times, for example, when I pointed out that the
American Library Association sample policy for libraries
across the United States included that librarians should
ignore child pornography, the American Library Association
deleted that page and put up an old version that didn't have
that and then said I was lying, but too bad, I already had it on
archive.org. And there it was.
So that's, that's the kind of games that they play and do.
So get your ducks in a row. Back it up.
Everything you do, get together with other parents.
Don't be intimidated by these people.
That's what they do. We're all new to this.
And then we go up against an organization that's been working
together behind the scenes for decades and we get whacked out
fast. So you got to not be intimidated
by that and keep pushing ahead and do the right thing.
Ultimately, it's the children you're protecting here.
You want them to have age appropriate information.
Simple as that. Thank you so much.
I think that's a great place to end.
Thank you again, Dan for your your time today and I hope to
keep in touch with you as this progresses and and no doubt
we'll speak again. So thank you very much again.
Anytime. Nice to speak with you.
Thank you.