librarypunk - 080 - Moms for Liberty/Moms for Libraries

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's her. Look at that crazy bitch. I'll scratch your freaking eyes out, bitch. I'm Justin. I'm a Skalkan librarian. My pronouns are he and him. I'm Sadie. I work IT at a public library, and my pronouns are they then. And I'm Jay. I am a music library director, and my pronouns are he, him. Yeah. It's just a Coke Zero. Grip it and rip it. A little gay bitch drinking my Coke Zero. Pretend it's something harder if you really need to.

Starting point is 00:00:56 I feel like I should have a drink for this episode. Only alcohol I have in my house right now is absent and champagne. I have vanilla vodka. I was looking up appetifs and digestives. Oh, I love those. And why they, and apparently one was invented just because quinine was so gross that they're like, we need to put this in liquor because no one will drink it otherwise. And they're going to keep getting malaria.

Starting point is 00:01:24 Janitonic. Yeah. But it was like he. created his own little dry vermouth kind of thing. Oh, is it the Kampari? No, it's not Kampari, but that was how I got onto it, because I saw, I was looking

Starting point is 00:01:36 up the recipe for a Nogroni, and then I was like, oh, what's Kampari exactly? And so I was looking up the Wikipedia of Kampari, and then I was looking up Pepper Teifs. Nice. I love a... Wikipedia. Wikipedia got

Starting point is 00:01:51 yassified. That was my favorite reaction. You can always count on humans to find a way to make alcohol. So, you know, preventing the malaria is just a side perk. Yeah, people are mad about Wikipedia's redesign. That's what we're here to talk about. Wikipedia's redesign. No one likes it. Now I have to.

Starting point is 00:02:08 Yeah. I think it's good, actually. I only use Wikipedia. Like, I just use the app. I don't think I've actually gone to it in a browser in a really long time. Oh, I've used that because like you can always change. There have been multiple themes of Wikipedia and you've been able to switch between them this entire time. And they've just switched to one that people.

Starting point is 00:02:26 we're already using. It's more mobile friendly, probably. Oh, I love this. It takes the outline and just moves it to a sidebar, like a Google Doc. It looks like one of those really well-made lip guides. Yeah, the ones that people won't make, even though I keep telling them to stop using the top tabs. Yeah, like the really nice, clean ones. Yeah, baby.

Starting point is 00:02:50 I like this. Librarians, go to Wikipedia right now, delete all your lib guides. and then start making them to look like how Wikipedia looks now. Official Library Punk recommendations. Although it looks like, hmm, yeah, because it's got the sidebar and then it's got the contents below it. But earlier, I was just seeing only the contents. I'm here for it.

Starting point is 00:03:15 But I don't know. It looks really good. I don't know. It's a better use of the space. Yeah, I like it. You'll get used to it. Suck it up, people. It's also like a big, bold link on the left side.

Starting point is 00:03:26 It says switch to old look. Yeah, like there are multiple themes that people have been able to switch between them this entire time. I'm not seeing a switch theme. Yeah, I think it's because I went to the main page. You have to be logged in and you have to go into your settings. Oh. Mm-hmm. Editors use different themes to make life easier.

Starting point is 00:03:48 Makes sense. Let's see. We've got, I had a tweet, do pretty good. Got us some followers. Oh. I tweeted about a job in New York City. So it said outside New York City, but it's not. It's on the outskirts of the city, but it's in the Bronx.

Starting point is 00:04:06 The Bronx. It's archivist and Scarlet Communications Librarian, and it was 50 to 60,000 a year in New York City, which I don't know. Let's see, like average rent in the Bronx. $1,980 for a one-bedroom apartment. So that's more than double, like a two-bedroom. room where I live and I get paid the high end of that. Wait, say, say how much the average run was again?

Starting point is 00:04:34 1,980. Yeah, I have a two-bedroom duplex and I pay less than that. Not by a whole lot, but. And I live in. Does jazz hands of living outside Boston. Yeah. I pay more than that. It sucks.

Starting point is 00:04:53 And I live by myself. Oh, I'm a two-bedroom. Yeah. If you had to move there, you would lose money for like a year because it costs thousands of dollars to move. So I was just the thing about this job that kept getting to me, the more and more I thought about it. First, I was like, okay, let's look up average arc. First, it's two jobs. It's two separate jobs. Like, if you are big enough that you need an archivist and a Skullcom librarian, that's two jobs. That is two jobs.

Starting point is 00:05:19 Like, I get it if you're a smaller institution and it needs to be like one person has multiple hats, but you're going to have half an archivist and half a Skalk-Con person. This is like imagining, like an archivist is just always a full-time job. I mean, a lot of, like, special collections people have it tacked on, but still. And people like started coming in the, in the comments and were like, oh, yeah, I've applied for this job. It seemed really awful. And they're like, oh, yeah, this job's been having huge turnover for years. And someone's like, oh, this sounds like a SUNY job. Oh, it is. It's the exact college I was sneaking of. So apparently this place just really underpaid. their librarians.

Starting point is 00:05:58 And yeah, I don't know how you would afford to move there. Putting down a deposit, finding housing in New York City, moving. I was like, the only way you could take this job is if you already live there so that you wouldn't have to have any moving costs. Because even if they gave you a little moving stipend, that'd cover the truck. Maybe. There's tons of stuff that even if you have a lot of money to get reimbursed, like there's lots of stuff that you don't get receipts for or, you know, like you've got to buy a new

Starting point is 00:06:26 couch because you've moved and like the couch wasn't yours or something like there's a reason i have so much credit card debt yeah it's where all mine is from right now just from i just moved one city over yeah moving and like you know i had to buy that because i had built in shelves and shit in salt lake city and i didn't have that here so suddenly i had to buy like shelves and shit yeah i have lots of opinions on shelving now because i had a very modern, brand new apartment where all the shelvings built into the walls and everything. And then I moved into an old person house

Starting point is 00:07:03 that's like everything is no open concept, closed concept, block concept. Close it down. It's very annoying. A little living room is just like a closet on the stairs kind of situation. It's just a tiny little block. This is now a shelving podcast. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:07:26 Welcome to the shelf zone. Librarians. If you need shelves of various types of difficulty to assemble and aesthetics, hit me up. I can tell you ones that are good for garages. I can tell you ones that look nice and have basically no setup. I can tell you which ones are awful, mostly the wire ones, because those have like a million little plastic clippy things. If you need things for your vinyl records and you're not a snob who,

Starting point is 00:07:54 and you're not like a collector and they're delicate and stuff, get the IKEA one that looks like a checkerboard. It is a calyx. A calyx, baby. We have two of those and they are stuffed full of yarn. Can we have the only sponsorship we ever get? Can it be IKEA specifically for the calyx? I mean, if I could get meatballs for life, that would be good too.

Starting point is 00:08:16 Those vegetarian ones? I have tried those. Yeah. We moved near an IKEA after having not been near an IKEA for like years and years and years. so we've already gone like half a dozen times. It's really pathetic. Literally the only furniture I own. It's not IKEA is my coffee table, I think.

Starting point is 00:08:38 Anyway, welcome to the IKEA zone. Because no one wants to talk about stupid moms. That sounded awful out of context. Yeah. Just clip that and put it on the internet. Get J. Canceled. Women hold up half the world.

Starting point is 00:08:55 Thank you, Maoist Biden. Baste Biden. Oh, Christ on a cracker. He's so funny. His brain is potato soup. He just says things. Remember when he talked about fucking... Shaking hands with ghosts.

Starting point is 00:09:15 Poppers. And bathhouses? No, but I'm going to get that now. Reminder myself, I'm going to get that. When he talked about, like, he was talking about HIV. beat. I tell you what, man, I tell you. debate, too.

Starting point is 00:09:34 Jack. My buddy. I tell you, we would go down to the Russian spa. Back in the 70s, man, no one would ever hassle you. You give them a wink and a whistle. What kind of what brand of poppers would Biden do? I don't know. I can't find poppers near me, so I don't have, like, I've gotten to little head shops,

Starting point is 00:09:52 they don't carry them. Do you have a sex shot near you, or is there a weird Texas thing because of the Dildo law? Oh, yeah. You know what? Maybe. Well, no, they must have poppers in Texas. I've just never run across them. You can also buy them online. I looked into that and I couldn't find any that would ship to me. I did just buy a bunch of cratim.

Starting point is 00:10:10 Oh, nice. So, I don't want to talk about this. You were the one who picked the cause. This is your idea, Justin. You've done this to us. I got fixedated on it once I pitched it as an idea. So we're going to talk about Moms for Liberty, Moms for Libraries for Library. and my research I've been doing into them.

Starting point is 00:10:35 And it's all connected. So I posted that meme, the, it's always sunny meme, because that's literally what it was once I realized, like, oh, these are all just front groups for each other.

Starting point is 00:10:46 They're like, so the TLDR and this. All of it is just a front group for Florida Republicans. That's it. It's all just a front for Florida Republicans. How do you feel about that as a Florida, as a native Florida? not surprised

Starting point is 00:11:01 it's just you and Kyle and Leslie in a trench coat like do it all this oh and people who do not live in Florida right Louisa was Florida too right yeah yeah yeah of our little Florida well the original the OG Florida

Starting point is 00:11:17 like yeah y'all moved out for yeah back in the day when Florida was I yeah so Moms for Liberty if you've heard about it is is a county specific it has county specific chapter all across the country that target local school board meetings.

Starting point is 00:11:33 They run school board and they back school board members. Some of them are school board members. And they harass administrators and teachers. They started sort of as anti-COVID-19 measures and anti-critical race theory and sex education. And they do this all in the name of parental rights. So they have like wild ideology and sloganing. So they're like, we want our right to choose back. And they're talking about parental choice.

Starting point is 00:12:01 So that was one placard I saw. These people have like no sense of irony. Like they weaponize like progressive rhetoric. They, yeah, they kind of will give themselves this plausible deniability cloak of progressive. Progressivism, which is really reminding me of like turf stuff. Like turf did this for a long time. They were like using the language of radical feminism. And then they're all just like conservatives now.

Starting point is 00:12:26 They're not even like radical feminists. So, you know, they'll be like, they'll sort of like co-opt, you know, some conservative lesbians they might be able to find. But normally it's just like Graham Linneham in a trench coat pretending like in his like puppet accounts with like 20 women. It's that guy the as a gay black man. Do you know, do you know that guy? That guy is the dude who's who won the Republican seat. And he's like going to jail, jail now. You want to know something really funny.

Starting point is 00:12:57 Santos. Another instance of that happening, and this time it was like a black woman, was a white man professor, the University of New Hampshire. Yeah, baby. Oh, boy. While I worked there. And his name was Jay. Uh-oh. Now I work at a cool place where one of my student workers is going to be on SNL this weekend.

Starting point is 00:13:23 Oh, cool. Right? Yeah. Don't worry. That's not like giving them. their name away or anything. My grad student worker is Sam Smith. Your grad student worker is the weekend. Yes. So they were started in Florida and they are connected to Florida Republican politicians.

Starting point is 00:13:44 And one of their things you want to keep an eye out for is promoting anti-trans pseudoscience. So there is this phrase that they use called rapid onset gender dysphoria. It's basically, it's from a discredited paper. that has been retracted, but that doesn't stop anyone. But it's basically treats transness as contagion. And it says, like, kids catch transness from the internet. I wish that's how it worked. And in particular, so quick derailment,

Starting point is 00:14:14 but it is relevant to talking about how, like, turfs and conservatives and fascists tend to talk about transness. If we're talking about children being trans, it's normally transmasculine people. Rapid Onset Gendersphoria is about little girls thinking they're boys, and so you're losing a possible womb. That's even why the cover of that like irreversible damage, the transgender craze seducing our daughters is the picture of like a little girl with a whole cut out of the body. Whereas when we're talking about trans adults, it's always trans women because they're viewed as predatory. trans masculine people are infantilized unless they are black and then they are also seen as predatory.

Starting point is 00:15:00 But white transmasculine people are seen as infantile and as lost wombs. And so Rapidon Gender-Sophore is like, oh, all the little girls because of misogyny and they can't handle it are wanting to be boys now. And all their friends are doing it. And so they think it's cool. That's, it's normally referring to transmasculine people. It's stupid. Justin, I don't know if you said this. on a podcast or if this wasn't a different conversation,

Starting point is 00:15:26 but you said something about how like, you know, like giving a preteen double mastectomy and I was like, ha, ha, and then, no, that's actually what somebody fucking said.

Starting point is 00:15:36 Like, that makes no sense. Why would you give somebody who is not hit puberty a double mastectomy? Breast cancer. That's an actual quote. Maybe. That would be the only reason I would think of. A preteen?

Starting point is 00:15:49 You still have, because like I know trans men who have gotten breast cancer still, still because the tissue, the cells, the tissue is still there, even if you get a lot of it slooped out. I think. And like, Sisman can get it too. That's true. That's true.

Starting point is 00:16:06 Yeah. But yeah, no, it was, it was, I think it was in the context of puberty blockers. And they were saying repubescent trans boys would be getting double mastectomies for aesthetic reasons. for, I don't know, it was, yeah, I don't know if I was talking about that, but it might be something I link to. Let them be anime princes. It's fine. We all end up growing out of it for the most part. We all start out that way a lot of the time. Oh no, T will make me hairy and gross and I just want to be an anime prince. And then you start getting body hair and you're like, yeah, this rules. And then you kind of grow out of the fairy prince thing. But, you know, There's nothing wrong with that. So I listed out a bunch of people who are related in all of these organizations because I wanted to see what the overlaps were.

Starting point is 00:17:01 Because when I started, so actually, I'm just going to start with Moms for Liberty because that started out in 2021, I want to say. and that's Tiffany Justice, Tina Descovic, Marie Rodgerson, and the main interesting person here is Bridget Ziegler, who is not listed on their website anymore and hasn't been for a while now because her husband is vice chairman of the Florida Republican Party Christian Ziegler, and he owns a political marketing firm called micro-targeted media, which Moms for Liberty spent $21,357 on according to, campaign finance disclosures. So I guess like Ziegler has to disclose things as being a politician in Florida. So that's how you find out how much money, Moms for Liberty can kind of throw around on a whim. So they claim that all their money comes from t-shirt sales, which is funny because you make about a dollar per t-shirt if you sell t-shirts. So that means they had to sell 21,000 t-shirts just for this one expense, which I think would mean we'd be flooded with these things. They have, They claim 50,000 members, so if every one of them bought a t-shirt, they would have $50,000.

Starting point is 00:18:13 So that would spend half of all our budget. There's an article from the Tampa Bay Times. They're clearly related to Alec, which is Coke-funded dark money, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and fundamentalist organizations. So they've got a lot of connections to Florida Republicans. And as we spread out, we're going to see like the same act. coming up. So the mams for Liberty had a national conference. Two of their sponsors for their national summit was the Council for National Policy's Leadership Institute and the Heritage Foundation which are, and the Heritage Foundation is linked also to the Council for National Policy. So these

Starting point is 00:18:57 are all just like front groups for Christian billionaires and particularly like of the fundamentalist variety. Parents Defending Education is another co-connected group. They are related to, again, Alec, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which claims credit for the anti-critical race theory legislation. And then the Council for National Policy's Leadership Institute has its own program for taking over school boards. And they are related to Turning Point USA, which make all those shitty lists for, they're like the college Republicans kind of all-right group. So they're very like connected to Ben Shapiro. They have like identical. Yeah, I have a friend who got targeted by them in grad school.

Starting point is 00:19:47 Yeah, marketing. Their color schemes are always identical. The fonts are identical. The marketing's all identical. All of these. There was a TPP USA guy at my university like a couple years ago. And I was like, that looks familiar. He was holding a sign.

Starting point is 00:20:02 And then I looked at my podcast app. And it's because I kept getting this Ben Shapiro. as podcast, add, and it's the exact same font and color. Jesus Christ. And I was like, oh, okay, yeah, that makes sense. They've got, you know, they all went to business school. They're good at making a marketing kit. That's the thing.

Starting point is 00:20:20 All of these fuckholes are really good at propaganda and marketing and shit. Branding. And branding. We got to beat them at their own game. Well, this is the thing because they basically have more or less unlimited money to throw around, which is why these are all front groups doing the same thing, but they're all doing the same thing because none of these have real membership behind them. So something I'm going to talk about in a moment, like, Moms for Liberty definitely has on the ground level support from people, but all

Starting point is 00:20:52 the people running it are basically like in on it. So they're the ones who know like where the money comes from. They're the head. They're the founders of these local chapters. And it's like one from Florida will be doing work in like South Carolina. It's like, why are they traveling the country if they have chapters in South Carolina? That's part of it is they can just create these onending front groups. But yeah, I was thinking like, could you just create like more and more front groups for like leftist organizations? I don't think it would work simply because like these groups sometimes just like die out because one person is too embarrassing for them or something. It's actually, there is, There is a phenomenon like this on the left, though, which is for sex past leftists.

Starting point is 00:21:33 So those are the kind of people who will start a group and then get kicked out and then start a group and get kicked out and start a group and get kicked out and get kicked out and get kicked out. It's a whole bunch of dewees. Early history of the ALA joke. Hey. That keeps opening up a tab and brave for some reason every time I hit up one now. We're having browser issues. That's hilarious. Related to Moms for Liberty, there is.

Starting point is 00:22:02 is a connection with DeSantis. So there's this thing in Florida where they are creating a task force to train school librarians, like media specialists, on how to comply with the new don't say gay bill and the Stop Woke Act, which is the fucking dumbest name for legislative. I'm doing like a Mr. Robot in my head because someone made a tweet one time. They're like, just replace Woke with the N-word and you will get how people are using it, half the time and said, I'm just doing a Mr. Robot in my head every time. I see Republicans use the word woke.

Starting point is 00:22:38 And I'm like, yeah, no, they're right. They got it. So this person, Michelle Bevers, there were several nominations in Brevard County for this task force to train people on compliance with this law. Michelle Bevers self-nominated herself and got appointed by DeSantis. She's the head of a local chapter of Bombs for Liberty. She was focused on getting. getting schools to ban the coming-of-age graphic novel this one summer for mentioning lesbians and crude

Starting point is 00:23:08 teenage humor. She supports revoking county school policies allowing parents to individually block their children's access. She prefers statewide bans on titles instead. So she doesn't want to do the opt-out thing because that leaves the books in the library. And her argument is it's pornography. Of course. It should be illegal. It can't be in there. Because porn is, you know, illegal. So there's another front group called Mamas for DeSantis, which is just another front for Moms for Liberty, which is run by DeSantis's wife. The name just makes me like make something in my like core curl up and want to die, right? It's real nasty. So they also got someone on that work group that DeSantis is in charge of picking for, even though people get nominated, the people

Starting point is 00:23:59 who are getting the nominations are all self-nominated people from like these front groups. So this is Jamie Merchant, who's a member of Mamas for DeSantis, got onto this board. She's against CRT, gender ideology, which is, I like in quotes for this article, just in brackets, the existence of trans people. Yeah. Social emotional learning and is also training candidates to take over school boards. And this group, Mamas for DeSantis, gets money from Heritage Foundation and turning Point USA, the same two groups I just mentioned earlier. It's been promoted by Moms for Liberty,

Starting point is 00:24:33 and on their reading list is a book called Crimes of the Educators, which called on Citizens to End the American Public School Systems. Which is the end goal. Yeah, this is all old evangelical stuff. For those listening, that is the end goal. Yeah. And then one more Boms for Liberty connection, their press is being handled by Calvary Strategies, whose CEO is a former campaign manager and chief of staff, two then governor Rick Scott. So again, Florida Republican connection. So their press agency, but they also are paying that other micro-targeting strategies, people. So they've got two press industries.

Starting point is 00:25:11 Yeah. Why Florida? Because all the worst Yankees move there when they get old. Oh, I mean. Fair. Yeah. This is all New Jersey's fault, ultimately. New Jersey.

Starting point is 00:25:24 So, yeah, stop sending them our way. So, yeah, that's more or less the basic connections for moms for liberty. And it's not easy to keep them all straight, but mostly they're just based out of Florida. They're connected to Florida Republicans. There are a couple chapters where these leaders are like prominent marketing people and they just start these groups, these moms groups. But they're all like former press workers for Republican like candidates. It's just so dumb. Yeah, it is.

Starting point is 00:26:00 So, Moms for Libraries, this confused me. This is what kind of got me interested because I was like, all right, Moms for Libraries is founded by Catherine Rahimian, who founded the Orange County, California chapter of Moms for Liberty. And they had to say Orange County, California, because there's an Orange County, Florida, too. So Orange County, California, other side, so I thought, okay, maybe she's not that related to them.

Starting point is 00:26:22 And if you go to the Moms for Libraries Facebook page, it's all like buy these books from this publisher called Brave Books. And there's also buy these books from Heroes of Liberty, which is not as big of an actor, right? Like, it's a publisher that they partner with that has a book about Elon Musk. And it has like a, I copied the promos that they give. So if you go to like the Heroes of Liberty page, they conflate moms for, like, Liberty and Moms for Libraries in their page. So they use it interchangeably. Oh.

Starting point is 00:26:58 And their promo code is Moms for Liberty, but the project is basically called Moms for Libraries. So Moms for Libraries is basically just not a group. It's just a project of Moms for Liberty. It's like a promotional thing to buy these shitty books and donate them to libraries. Well, they go back and forth on this. They're like, we're donating them to libraries. No, we're donating them to teachers and students. So I don't know what they're going for, but I have an idea because Moms for Libraries, Partners with Brave Books.

Starting point is 00:27:31 Brave Books has an author that we talked about recently named Kirk Cameron. Kirk Cameron is a child actor and nothing else. Fuck that guy in particular. Kirk Cameron is the funniest Christian grifter because he has changed his theology so dramatically based on who he hangs out. out with. It's very much like a last person he's in the room with situation. He went from like being in the left behind books movies that are clearly like guilty pleasures. Free, yeah. Well, they're like pre-rapture theology. So post-millennial, they're pre-millennial theology. And now he was hanging, well, last time I checked in on him, he was hanging out

Starting point is 00:28:14 with post-millennialist theology people who are Christian dominionists who believe the, the millennium is now and it's America to create Christian nationalism. That's a whole very, very different theological position to take on the end of time. So it's a pretty big shift for him. And then he also hung out with creationist's slop. So we mentioned him because he was going to libraries and he wanted to partner with them. And then he threw a fit when they said, no, we do our own programming. You can rent a room though. So I said, we were all like, this seems staged. Like, he they knew the policy how it worked. And I looked into it, and it's very staged.

Starting point is 00:28:56 So it's a program through Brave Books called Brave Book Story Hour, which is obviously a play on Drag Queen Story Hour. And he basically approached them and said, I want you to officially partner with me for Brave Book Story Hour. And the library said, no, we choose our partners. And then they told him, you can rent a room. And he had already booked it before he went and said, they told me they wouldn't partner with me. So he'd already booked the room already, and then went and said they didn't want me to want to partner with me. And then after they had to, after he, hang on, there was a great little. Contrary to Cameron's statement, Brave Books had rented a room for event. And indeed, the Indianapolis event went ahead as planned in the rented room. Afterward, Brave Books celebrated by castigating other libraries posting on Twitter. No longer will Christians be silent. And Fox News hosted Cameron, during which he threatened legal action against the library.

Starting point is 00:29:49 away a victory lap over nothing. I bolded a victory lap over nothing. Can we put that in our list of, like, library punk stencils that people can download. A victory lap over nothing. And it's just Kirk Cameron's face. Yes. Yeah, basically. Incredible.

Starting point is 00:30:07 So. And so. So this was clearly just meant to get traction for Kirk Cameron and libraries and brave books. PR stunt. Yeah, it's a PR. our stunt for Brave Books. So I look and look at Brave Books because I'm thinking, I'm still thinking, Moms for Libraries is just a small-time grift that someone who's like married to someone

Starting point is 00:30:29 from Brave Books is doing. And Brave Books is just some shitty little publisher. No, Brave Books is not a publisher. It's a fucking front. So do you have a law and order drop? Yeah. What is this one? No. I just do this. Oh, damn it, wrong one. It's like the bad laugh tracks off of Friends reruns. I have never seen an episode of Friends in my life. Oh, enjoy that piece while you can. Oh, it's lovely. Thank you.

Starting point is 00:31:08 I hate you. So I looked at their most popular books from Brave Books. And basically, one of the books is created by the Brave Books president, which is some guy called Trent Talbot. I don't know if he's well-known for anything else. He's a guy who likes to take pictures of himself in a cowboy hat. You know the type. It sounds like a porn name.

Starting point is 00:31:30 It's like a Dirk Diggler-ass name. Trent Talbot, Dirk Diggler, like... Trent Talbot. I just thought this was someone's grift. But no, every single book is authored, quote-unquote, by a different right-wing person who is like a recognizable name. They're not children's authors.

Starting point is 00:31:49 So we've got Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Johnston, who's a homeschool activist, Ashley St. Clair, who was a T.P.USA. anti-trans person until she was photographed with Nazis, and then she had to get kicked out. There's Jack Pro Sobeek, who's an alt-right grifter. There's Dan Crenshaw, who's the Texas Republican representative from, like, the most gerrymandered electoral district in the country. He's the iPatch guy. Fuck that guy, too. Yeah. Dan Alosh, who is an NRA spokesperson, former, but still basically is. Graham Allen, who's a podcaster and a TPPUSA guy, Missy Robertson, Duck Dynasty Guy's wife,

Starting point is 00:32:24 Mike Waltz, a Florida Republican, who replaced DeSantis's seat, Robbie Starbuck, he's a Gusano Grifter, Bethany Hamilton, motivational speaker, who got her arm bit off by a shark. I really could not figure out why she's in there. She already has, like, she has, like, memoirs that were, like, really popular for a while there.

Starting point is 00:32:44 Did the shark comrades get to her? Comrade sharks Comrade sharks Yeah, that one, I could not figure out what her real angle is, except that she's just known. I couldn't find any right-wing stuff on her. Kind of rules, by the way.

Starting point is 00:33:02 Yeah. I don't know. Shark lady, surfer lady. I don't know. General Michael Flynn, who's a Trump cabinet member, Denesh and Debbie DeSuzza, and Sheriff Mark Lamb, who's like a border security guide.

Starting point is 00:33:15 So they've got like every flavor of Grifter. They've got Texas border, they've got Florida conservative Cuban guy, they've got Duck Dynasty, they've got the podcaster, Jim dudes. The worst of all. They've got the homeschoolers.

Starting point is 00:33:31 And they've got Shark Girl. That's for the Californians. Comrade sharks come finish the job. I don't know. I think her book is about overcoming adversity. I'm like, I think this is probably just fine. But I think it's just like, because it's a front, I don't know, they just need name recognition or what. But anyway, it's clearly like these are all ghost written by the staff.

Starting point is 00:33:56 So the whole publisher is just a front for T.P. USA, basically, and Florida Republicans. And it keeps coming back to them. So that's kind of the locus of all this. So there's some other stuff about moms for libraries that was kind of weird to me in terms of their means of outreach. Their Facebook group is where they do most of their posting. They don't have like a separate website for Moms for Liberty. They're very closely tied to Brave Books. So people buy books from Brave Books to have them donated to teachers and students directly.

Starting point is 00:34:29 And then the sales money supposedly goes back to moms for libraries to so they can spend those, they can spend more money on more donations. Allegedly. So that's why I thought this was just a small time grift, right? I thought someone's married to someone from Brave Books. They're using this whole moms for Liberty thing. But no, it turns out both of them are front groups for Florida Republicans. In Orange County, California. Yes, they got confused.

Starting point is 00:34:55 So their self-described agenda is they focus their restrictions on public school libraries. They're very specific in that phrasing everywhere I saw it. I read a lot of different little messages from them. It's very deliberate phrasing. It always includes the public part. I'm guessing it's to conflate school libraries with public libraries so that they can censor the public libraries as well in the name of school-aged children. And also because in a private school library, you can do whatever the fuck you want. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:35:25 Well, and also, if the end goal is to close all public schools, then... And public libraries, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And libraries are just an arm off of that. Basically, yeah, that's how they see it. They tend to avoid talking about public libraries when they're on the defense. defensive. So if they are defending themselves against everyone being like, we're not funded by

Starting point is 00:35:47 the Koch brothers. We're just moms who care about school libraries. That's the only time I've seen them drop. Well, they'll still say public school libraries, but they're very much like parental choice in public school libraries. They're probably also like big supporters of charter schools and homeschooling. There was that one homeschooling author. So these are definitely like very specific types of Christian right wing rich people. who are also cozy with like the TPUSA guys who are just like culture war grifters. So they've got every kind of grift going on. But the people really running this are Florida Republicans who are like evangelicals.

Starting point is 00:36:24 That's really where it keeps coming back to over and over again. For the moment, they are supportive of early literacy and funding for libraries. So they say like it's really important for early literacy. Children, they say like boilerplate liberal stuff. They're like, education is important. literacy helps you get a job kind of stuff. And I think that's just a cover for them to get in more moms without sounding too scary. And also that is a sign that liberal politicians saying that it's all just lip service. Yeah. No politician who says this means it and it's also vague enough that they can not do it and still be like, but I did what I promised by not doing anything. Yeah. Yeah. The whole claim to the whole claim of education is the gate. way to a better life. Anytime I hear any refrain on that, it's instant suspicion. Yeah. And another thing, so I think it's like they're trying to wedge the issue when they're trying to get a lot of like middle

Starting point is 00:37:23 of the road, just like moms who don't think about this as a political organization. They just think that like school choice is like a cool thing to be into and parental rights is like a cool thing to do when you're all hopped up on like riddle in or whatever that you swipe from your kids. homeschoolers often use public libraries a lot too. So they're the kind of people who are bringing their kids to story hours, where literacy is talked about and stressed. So it makes it seem as if it's all aligned, but it's not really in the end.

Starting point is 00:37:58 So I think a lot of the chapter members believe these are legitimate grassroots organizations. I'm going to actually, for this episode, like post all the notes because they're pretty long. So you can look into these articles because one of them really did. did a good job at explaining how astroturfing works, which is kind of an interesting thing. It's like you get basically a handful of media trained people who live in various places. They start these chapters and then encourage other people to start chapters. They have a really good website right off the bat where you can sign up for your own chapter. It fills out their little map that says, here's every place we have a chapter.

Starting point is 00:38:33 And you also don't have to pay dues. You don't have to keep the organization running. You just join it, right? So that's why all this dark money that flows into it, it makes it seem very grassroots very quickly. But he was also saying, I think this is the Tampa Bay Times guy. He was saying that's why these groups sometimes just collapse because the three people running it get bored or do something else or they get too. These people aren't meant to be too famous because then people start looking into their backgrounds. And that's why one of the ladies who created Moms for Liberty is not on the website anymore.

Starting point is 00:39:06 even though she is still on the Sarasota County School Board or I don't know if it's a county but she's on the school board in Sarasota. Shout out to Florida boys Sarasota Half a Dream. Derek and shit. Mitchell. Yeah, Mitchell and Derek. Yeah, Florida excellence. Two Florida boys who do not live in Florida anymore.

Starting point is 00:39:23 Does anyone we know who still live in Florida? I don't think so. If you live in Florida, call in. Yeah. The poor people who are still stuck in Florida, you can get out. I think I have an e-resources librarian friend who lives in Florida. Yeah, I know librarians in Florida. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:39:43 Can you truly ever call a librarian a friend? No. What are we doing here then? Making enemies. Obviously. Moms for Liberty were already our enemies. They just didn't know it yet. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:39:59 Well, I kind of wanted to do this so people, like, it makes sense because it was getting confusing about what these organizations are and like where they're coming from because watching kind of half paying attention it's like wow they really seem to come out of nowhere really fast and it's like yeah they did because they're just a front group for florida republicans like that's literally just all they are yeah and a couple other conservative organizations like t p u.sa but i mean if you grew up in areas like this like i you know i grew up in florida all these fights over school boards aren't new. The homeschooling movement has been infiltrating public school boards for decades. It's pretty common. You don't have to have a kid in the school system to be on the school board.

Starting point is 00:40:42 And so, you know, this is how, this is why, like, every rural area is very conservative because this is, like, organized through churches. And then they're like, hey, you should run for school board. And then if you have, like, a trad set up and, like, only one person works, then that's a lot of conservative moms. You can just run in local politics. because they don't want to be bored and they don't really want to be housewives. Yeah. They want their older kids to raise their younger kids for them so they can go play politician on the local school board.

Starting point is 00:41:12 Yeah, this is like, and I don't know, is that considered like, you know, I once have heard it from other anarchists, friends of mine, especially from grad school. It's like electoral politics, garbage, except in your town, getting involved on like school boards and library boards and like getting on like the boards. Because that's actually where like change and stuff can happen within a town. Obviously like do mutual aid and what's not. But like the only people who go on boards are moms and they all suck. So like.

Starting point is 00:41:45 Yeah, it's a tradocracy. Where are the anarchist moms? Where are the anarchist moms? Colin. Colin. Colin. DM us. Put like cool.

Starting point is 00:41:58 Milfs on school boards. Yeah. Oh, we should, moms. I like freedom. Moms in leftist factions. There we go. There we go. Moms in liberatory frameworks.

Starting point is 00:42:19 Love it. Moms and lesbian families. Yeah. Look at us. I saw a tweet the other day. That was some. saying that they were explaining their family to like one of their child's, like, classmates and said, oh, yeah, she has two moms. And the kid looked and said, well, why not three?

Starting point is 00:42:38 The person tweeting was like, you know, that's a good question. I'll go ask my wife about that tonight. Hey, more the merrier. Why not four? We love moms, don't we folks? We do, except when we don't. Love them, milk. Yeah, anarchist milves, get on your school boards. It's food not bombs, but it's milk's not moms. Milf's not moms. Fuck. Broke J. Gonna go hang a banner in the public park, put out a table.

Starting point is 00:43:24 Just sit on the street corner outside of a school. Do we, don't we have the bam, bear down? Like, we got to do the drop just. Oh, okay, okay. Crazy bitch. It's her. She. Can we do an episode about Milfs?

Starting point is 00:43:48 Yeah. Milfs, not moms, the episode. Folks, it's really important to support your local milfs and their local elections. If you're in line for a milf, stay in line. We did it, Joe. Women hold up half the world. So I put a lot of action-oriented stuff because this is all local politics. And, like, yeah, what you were saying, Jay, about anarchists being into local politics,

Starting point is 00:44:14 If you had an anarchist society, that's how they describe politics as like, yeah, everyone would run stuff locally and then confederate with other people if you needed to. So like cities would cooperate with the countryside, that kind of stuff. But you would all just basically make small local governments. Yeah. And so in the meantime, go infiltrate your library boards. Yeah. Plus you will. It's not hard.

Starting point is 00:44:36 Yeah. So run for school board, even if you don't have a kid in a system, the homeschoolers don't. And I hear librarians feeling like they can't join their life. library boards for like a conflict of interest or something. You know, that's bullshit. You can join your library board. Yeah, don't let the vendors do it first. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:44:55 Yeah, volunteer for your libraries board. Finding the information can sometimes be a little hard. But if it's like an appointment model where the mayor appoints you, you just have to fill out a form and submit it. Like, you don't have to go through the whole signing up for an election process. So library board is way easier than getting on school board. So you can do that tonight. I know that.

Starting point is 00:45:15 Yeah. And like you might not get called. So you might as well just do it. And it's like they're not going to force you to do it if you change your mind. So like if you think you might want to, just put it in there because I put it in for the last city I lived in. And it took like a year and a half before they called me to offer me a position on it. And then I was like, well, I'm moving out of the city limits. So I couldn't do it.

Starting point is 00:45:34 But as soon as I moved into this city, I just send it off again. So it's been nine months, haven't heard back. So it'll be a while. So you might as well do it now. Also, they need young folks. It's mainly like grandmas. Yeah, there aren't many people who are pounding down the doors except the worst people. So most of the people who are involved are just kind of not interested in how libraries are run. They just think it's cute.

Starting point is 00:45:56 Yeah, they're just usually like prominent people who feel like they need to be involved. Yeah, or people who think librarianship is children's librarianship. And that's all they do librarianship as. It's like, oh, look at all the events we did for the kids this quarter. Yeah, it's usually just like local business owners and like landowners and legacy families and stuff who will, someone from that family will want to spot on the library board because they know everyone who runs the city government. So it's, you know, it becomes a small little social circle, really. So make yourself known. Just go out there and apply.

Starting point is 00:46:32 If you're a teacher, get active in your union. I have seen some teachers unions are actually informing their members about moms for liberty and sort of prepping them for. what can happen, like, you know, what they're going to say to you, what they're going, what their talking points are going to be. So your union might have some training on that. If not, ask them if they're thinking about making some. But really, this is your best defense. If you're already a teacher, I would say start there. Also run for your school board. I mean, if you can, I don't know if there's any rules about that, but I, there probably isn't. Proactive support for queer and especially trans youth is important. Don't play defense.

Starting point is 00:47:09 We've been talking about this a lot with like circulating collections. Trans people. are cool. You don't have to wait to play the defensive. I mean, I suck, but don't use me as an example. As a concept. Yeah, individual trans people, we're judging you fuckers. Yeah, I'm the worst. Yeah, don't

Starting point is 00:47:28 cross us. You'll be, we're going to write you down in the milf book. If you write it down in the milf book, you don't get to fuck the milfs. Yeah, I don't know. It's a moose band book. It's counterintuitive. You want to animate things, because I keep playing this thing from this dubbed hentai.

Starting point is 00:47:45 It's her. Look at that crazy bitch. I'll scratch your freaking eyes out, bitch. That's from a hentai. Is it Bible black? Not that I know the names of any hentai. I don't know. It was just on Tumblr, and I got out of my chair, and I was like, I got to go make a drop right now before tonight.

Starting point is 00:48:06 I have a little thumbnail. I don't think I can post on the account. We should have a library punk circle where we get to post it. the naughty things. Post a circle. Post a circle. Don't tell anyone, but I think librarians suck sometimes. And act DEI policies now before they come to take them apart, because that's your first

Starting point is 00:48:29 line of defense. If you've just gone through all the process of getting a policy put in place, when people come and say, hey, we want you to get rid of your DEI policy, you can go, we just got it up. So put it into your strategic plan. Those go for like five years. So you can keep it on the books for five years or two years, however long your strategic plan is. They'll have to undo it first.

Starting point is 00:48:52 So put up as many bureaucratic barriers in place. Make policies hard to undo. So you might put in some kind of ratification process, like three people have to ratify a new policy in the library or something. That could be risky because they could vote it down, I guess. But if you think you've got it, lock it in and make it annoying to get rid of. Yeah, it's be annoying. Yeah, which is actually my last thing. Drag your feet if you are asked to comply with any anti-trans inquiries.

Starting point is 00:49:21 So this is, I think I posted some of this stuff, but basically Florida professors who are asked like, do you do any DEI in your course? And he just got out the statute and goes, well, you wrote the statute very badly. So I can't comply with this until you tell me more. and they just keep doing that. Don't tell them you're doing that. But, like, misunderstand the question on purpose. Throw up every bureaucratic barrier you have. Malicious compliance.

Starting point is 00:49:49 Yeah. You are protecting people. Yes. Especially if you work directly with, like, children in public schools. Yeah. It's fine to, you know, drag your feet. Throw yourself in the path, especially cis people. Yeah, I mean, especially if you're making, if you're in a position where you're making policy

Starting point is 00:50:08 and you can put them in place. Because a lot of these things, you can ride out some of them until they find a new political target. I mean, they're always going to come back for queer people. It's going to circle around. But, you know, you can ride out waves. Like, I think I mentioned before that, like, view policies as, like, protection and not as being a cop.

Starting point is 00:50:30 Like, and you write policies from that angle. It's like, I am protecting my student workers. I am protecting my patrons, et cetera, et cetera. And then also I can be like, oh, you know, hey, student workers, if someone get mad at you, gets mad at you, you can be like, but the policy. And if they're still mad, you can give them my business card. And when they come get mad at me, I can be like,

Starting point is 00:50:54 but the policy, ignoring that I wrote the policy. But just the nebulous, the policy. And a lot of people, like, kind of don't go further than that. They're like, oh, but the policy. and it takes them forever to go try to figure out who wrote the policy. I wrote the policy. Just the policy. Policies are protection for yourself.

Starting point is 00:51:15 A lot of this stuff is focused on like transparency. So make sure that you are being transparent and write DEI into your collection development. Write it into your hiring practices and just be like, well, there is your transparency and it's the policy. Did you read the policy, by the way? It's in the policy. Can't change the policy. That's not for another two years. Write it into your vision statement, your leadership qualities, write it into everything that you possibly can.

Starting point is 00:51:44 I know Callan posted a really good example of a short, sweeten to the point, little way of including this into your collection development of like, you know, yada, yada, yada, freedom, whatever. We will not purchase things that promote whatever, whatever, whatever. and it was like, I guess, like, not specific enough to be like, oh, this is some like leftist bullshit. But it was like, still, it's like this won't promote like hate towards other or exclusion, but towards like other human beings based on whatever criteria. And like, I remember she posted that from her own collection development policy that she wrote and like on Twitter or something.

Starting point is 00:52:24 I can go find the exact wording of it. But it was like a good short suite to the point language to like throw into your collection development. I've thrown it into mine. So once I post mine, I can fucking share it, I guess. We have it written into our DEI. But, I mean, you can do the same thing that like prisons do when they say, like, we will ban a book because it doesn't, it doesn't do penological objectives. You can say we're not going to buy books that don't follow our higher education objectives.

Starting point is 00:52:56 And you can make those whatever you want them to be. But at least you can point to that policy and be like, yeah, well, this book is full of pseudoscience and we've assessed that it's not relevant for our collection. So you can be vague and use the policies in a way that are going to protect you as well, because I've seen several responses to Moms for Liberty and the responses have literally included like, here's a link to our collection development policy. There you go. Go read it. So they just throw a policy at them, which is exactly what you should be doing. Or if they say, because like the the critical, the anti-critical race thing is so poorly written that it's like, well, we don't

Starting point is 00:53:33 promote any of that stuff because you wrote it to sound evil. So you wrote it's like racism against white people. It's like, yeah, well, none of our programs do that. So we're good. Bye. Thanks for writing. So just get real legalese on them. You work in a bureaucracy. You know how it works. So that's everything I have about moms for liberty and libraries. Do you guys have fun? God willing, this will be the last time we ever have to talk about them. Yeah, hopefully they'll just peter out and, like I said, lose momentum and interest. And, you know, you don't want to, as long as they don't get a whole lot of concrete wins long term before they lose interest. Do you think we're going to get harassed?

Starting point is 00:54:11 Who? What? Us? Yeah, we're going to get canceled for our milf takes. If we haven't gotten canceled for the John D. Fuxmith and everything else, then I think we're probably good here. I think John D. Fuxmith is my favorite bit of ours, that. And then the Comrade Sharks. It's like...

Starting point is 00:54:29 Comrade Sharks really do need to become a bigger part of the lore. The John D. Fuxmith Institute for Getting Your Dick Wet. Yeah, well, I think he probably invented Comrade Sharks, or they were invented to, like, stop his evil submarine business. So he was like a Cold War weapons contractor, I think. And the Soviets had to make Comrade Sharks. We're getting deep here. And they all live in the ocean. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:54:59 And they try to eat the internet because all evil in the world comes from the internet. Including podcasts. It's true. Yeah. That was actually one of the villains's origins on Buffy was they made fishmen in the Soviet Union. And this guy was turning the swim team into fishmen. And then at the end, they let him free into the ocean. And so they were swimming into the ocean.

Starting point is 00:55:25 They're like, go free, fishmen, Soviet fishmen. Maybe she didn't get her armpit off by a shark. Maybe it was a Soviet fishman. So, anyway. I salute you, Comrade Sharks and Milfs. Everyone, go support your local Comrade Shark and Milf. What about Milfs who are also Comrade Sharks? And librarians.

Starting point is 00:55:48 And librarians. Where are you? I will change my sexual orientation for this magical one. Where's that Venn diagram? I want to see the- I love it. Where is she? Who is she?

Starting point is 00:55:58 Who is she? Colin. I'm going to plug the email. Email us at library punkpot at gmail.com. Send us whatever. I don't know. You want us to read your email? We'll read your email.

Starting point is 00:56:13 I don't know. That can be fun. Right in. Good night.

librarypunk - 080 - Moms for Liberty/Moms for Libraries

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