librarypunk - 098 - It’s bad news roundup, pardner 2

Episode Date: July 20, 2023

It’s a bad news roundup pardner! We’re talking public library leases, book ratings, and Montana being a shit to Emily Drabinski. Open letter in support of Emily: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fgz9ITvekfCCtVspicgbaCM0Go2YzkaSrYGtR6s9lHo/preview Sadie https://www.kcur.org/news/2023-07-11/a-kansas-town-is-threatening-again-to-kick-out-the-public-library-unless-it-removes-lgbtq-books Justin https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/04/business/texas-sexually-explicit-books-law/index.html OSTP memo https://docs.house.gov/meetings/AP/AP19/20230714/116251/BILLS-118--AP--CJS-FY24CJSSubcommitteeMark.pdf  Jay https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/blogs/the-scoop/ala-responds-to-montana-state-library-commissions-withdrawal-of-membership/  https://dailymontanan.com/2023/06/22/library-commissioners-concerned-about-national-associations-new-marxist-lesbian-president/ https://jacobin.com/2023/07/american-library-association-emily-drabinski-montana-state-library-right-wing-homophobia-anticommunism  Media mentioned

I'm Justin. I'm a scholarly communications librarian. My pronouns are he and they. I'm Sadie. I work IT at a public library. My pronouns are they then. And I'm Jay. I am a music librarian and my pronouns are he, him. We deserve an air horn. We're about to have a bad time. Yeah, shit's fuck time. We're doing a news round up. We're on a news round up. Let's fucking go. I realized one of the ones that I got for myself, I misunderstood the news story,

but I can still cover it. But this was done by Texas senators, not Texas legislature or Texas representatives to the U.S. Congress. The baseball player? Isn't the senator's baseball team? Sorry, I had a conversation with Audrey from RFTV the other day. And I was like, you could wear that one racist football mascot. And I was like, what's the one? The Braves?

It's like, no, you're not thinking of the Braves. It was like the redskins. No, no, that's not it. No, that's, that's not the mascot you're thinking of. Oh, it's the Indians. Oh, okay, okay. It's the Indians. They're the ones that have the chief Wahoo.

I was trying to figure out which team was Chief Wahoo. Jesus Christ. We were trying to figure out which the mascot. It literally was like a, it took a good like five minutes to get through and work it out. All right, so we're doing our continuing travel through all 50 states where shit's fucked up. So this week we have Kansas. We have Texas for different reasons because there was two Texas things, or at least they thought two Texas things, but whatever. And Montana.

So if you're keeping a map at home, let us know which state we haven't done yet. I think we still need to do New York. We need to do a lot of like New England, I think. and some of the smaller states. So we've got to get to the Dakota's in Nebraska. We've done any like Southwest. I can't remember if there's been any like Arizona or Utah. No, I can't remember either.

But anyway, we're starting off with Kansas. So we're, wait, Kansas is not Great Plains, is it? It is. Okay, yeah, we're getting close. Yeah, it's like the Midwest, Great Plains. Yeah. Yeah, I wasn't sure. So, Stady, take it away.

All right. Kansas, the town of, well, the city of St. Mary, Kansas is threatening to cancel the library's lease with the city, unless they pull all queer books from their collection. This is not the first time that the city commissioners have tried this bullshit. It's the second time. They tried it last year. And, of course, you know, the library, which has been using this building for a very long time, goes, wait a second, there's this new clause where you're trying. trying to control our collection. And they go, oh, yeah, we just want you to pull all of those before we'll renew this lease, right?

And the ACLU and most of the community showed up to be like, hey, maybe you shouldn't do that. And so they passed the lease last year. But now they're threatening to do the same exact thing again. The specific building is the main branch of a county system. So the city can't touch their funding at all. So this is the next tactic is actually physically undermining the buildings, which is, you, you know, one of the pitfalls of not actually outright owning your library buildings. So if you work for any sort of county or wide library system,

it's good to know which buildings you actually physically own and which ones you're leasing, renting some sort of agreement is basically unenforceable, right? Because it's a county system. So they probably trade lots of library books between the multiple libraries of the system. So what? They just have to somehow guarantee that no LGBTQ book is, going to land at that particular library on a hold or anything. So basically it's a bunch of bullshit.

One thing I was wondering about, though, is if this city has a contract with the library system for service, because I don't know how common that is. I know it's common where I am, where if you have an incorporated city and your county system, you actually have to sign a contract saying that you will provide service to the citizens, to the residents of that city. here it has caused there to be these weird little pockets amongst our county that don't have library service just because they won't contract with the county system. So I'm wondering if they have that sort of contract because they've got to have something in place

beyond just the building for the actual service. I'm just wondering like how that would play into this. Would like the city be violating that contract? I don't know. So that's something to think about that I didn't dive into. But basically commissioners insist that the parents are upset and the library director says we have gotten absolutely no complaints about this. If people are having complaints, have them come in and actually fucking talk to the library, which, you know, is just another manifestation of this whole people who don't use the library want to also control what's inside the library thing. But the thing that really got me about this article was how fucking bat shit crazy the religion of this town is.

So it's, hold on, let me find it, it's the... I think this religion is mentioned literally in the book, What's the Matter with Kansas? Yeah, it is the Society of St. Pius X, aka the Fundy LDS of the Catholic Church. They split off because the Catholic Church was being too liberal with shit and wanted to stick to traditional Catholic values. I don't know, I'm sure that there's more into that than it is, because it's been a couple century since they split. So I'm not that much of a religious person. But I started reading about this town because St. Mary's is one of the like hubs of this religion. Like people move across country to come live in St. Mary's because they're part of the society of Pious X and wants to like

live where their religion is. And this is basically the whole city is like 4,000. Well, there's at least 4,000 people who attend mass at the Pious Church in this city. So it's a big collection of their, a big part of their population, right? So I started digging into this, looking at this church, because there's always some shit. They were investigated by the Kansas Bureau of Investigations, along with a couple other Catholic congregations for child sexual abuse, just a couple of years ago, right? No arrests were actually made from the investigation, but that's because the statute of limitations had expired on pretty much all of the people that they got coming forward. So, you know, Catholic, that whole Catholic thing is not just the official Catholic church,

it's other Catholic churches, you know, tales of priests taking advantage of, you know, confessionary booths to get young people to just basically describe the sexual abuse that had happened to them for their shits and giggles was just one of the accounts that I read. So which just puts a nice little paw over this whole, like, we're not going to renew your lease unless you take out all of the queer books because like y'all covered up child sexual abuse for years and years in your church and

somehow we're supposed to trust your judgment on like what it's a good book or not i so yeah that was my fun little deep dive also they the catholic high school refused to pull out of a basketball game like because there was a woman referee and they didn't want their precious little teenage boys who play basketball being told what to do by a woman referee. So a woman. A woman. So yeah, if you want to you want to read some religious tea, the Society of St. Pius X, interesting one. But one of the things that the, one of the commissioner says is they want the library to reflect the community's values. And I don't think there's possibly any way you could organize that this community is not probably

very conservative seeing as they're like a major hub for this very conservative But and one of the commissioners, the first time around they tried to deny this lease saying that they weren't being like politically fair because they had a couple of books by Hillary Clinton and no books by Trump, which like to me doesn't sound like a collection selecting issue. It sounds like the people who use the library in this area and don't want to read anything by fucking Trump, right? Because I could tell you that like people process just if enough people ask it, it gets put in the collection at least for a little bit. of time, right? So to me, it sounds like these books are probably getting used to these queer books that they want to get rid of. The cert stacks probably back this up. This is speculation, of course. So there are clearly people in their community who want to read about this, whether or not it's something that aligns with their values, right? And I've been thinking a lot

about how, like, religions, like no group is a monolith, even including religions. Like, there are weird liberal Mormons, like, that I know personally. So, like, all kinds of weird shit can happen even inside, like, a very conservative religion, right? So, and there will always be people exiting these really bizarre controlling religions who probably, at least at some point, read about some of the stuff that it is so heavily against, right? Like, as a gateway, like, as a, oh, maybe this religion isn't actually like as great as they seem if they want to, you know, get rid of all of these queer books. So like it's just, again, it's just another one of those censorship stories that boils down to. They want control over their values of a

community. They don't actually want to reflect what the community wants or is or needs because otherwise they would be actually asking the library for like, you know, some of the stats of the books that circulate. They don't actually care. So every time I hear this, well, you know, a library needs to reflect its community's values, especially when it comes in line with like diversity and inclusion statements. Even when it's an obviously conservative community, like there are still going to be people who need these materials who might be part of that conservative community. So it just feels like one of those almost dog whistles that happens a lot, you know, where they say one thing and it could mean something very legitimate. in one context and in this context is just we want to further control our congregation and communities values and what they read. So yeah, that's the bullshit that's happening in Kansas.

It'll be interesting to see if anything comes out of this because the lease doesn't actually have to get renewed until December. And the ACLU basically said, if you try this shit, we will be suing the shit out of you. Strongly worded letter to follow, basically, when they threatened to not renew the lease on this library again. So yeah, library facility and building issues coupled with conservative population, coupled with, you know, child sexual abuse scandals. It has it all in a bad way. Yeah, like I regret not taking the library buildings course at U of I when I was there because I had the fortune of being at the library school program that has that class, right? And I didn't take it because I'm an idiot. Because like, well, I'm not going into public.

libraries. I'm not going to be making any of those decisions. It doesn't matter. Like, the facilities that you are in, like, it's important to learn about, like, your facilities, right? It's important to know what decisions go into those. It's, like, important to know, like, how you're staying in that building. It's important to know these things, no matter, like, where you are in the pecking order, right, because of shit like this. Yeah, well, and also, and just in terms of labor, if you want to improve your workspace, you know, for ergonomic reasons or your area. conditioning is broken or it's a historic building. There are so many just on the ground flavor reasons to know who is in charge here you're building and who is supposed to be maintaining

it. Yeah, I was interested in how the relationship between the public library and the city works because it's not part of the city structure. So I guess appropriations go directly to the library basically so the city can't touch it. I wonder if the building is owned by the city. And so they're the landlord and they're like, we're not renewing your lease. I think that's the, yeah, that's I think that was why the author didn't mention it. But again, yeah, it's, a lot of these things are frustrating because it's hard to, like, jump into all the details. Yeah, I just had the thought about the contract for service earlier today.

So I didn't get to, like, actually dig and see if that exists. But I'd be interested in seeing how that works out or what the story is there, I guess. All right. So that was Kansas. On to Texas I get more ass than a toilet seat That's an introduction I don't have a Texas drop

So that one works Yeah available for kissing practice On a portable Nintendo Portable Nintendo He sounds just like Kermit the Frog He does It's so good And he's wearing like the most ridiculous outfit

In this I love how that menswear guy On Twitter is always just like Dunking on his suits, him like trying to be cool and have cool fashion. And this guy's like, no. Guys braver than the troops. All right.

So Texas has a new law, lots of new laws. This is primarily authored by a guy named Patterson. So Texas Republican, Texas state representative, Jared Patterson. And it's aim as simple, get sexually explicit content out of schools. So book vendors selling. to Texas public schools from national sellers to local bookstores must now rate all the books they sell based on sexual content according to new legislation, which signed the law June 12th. So I've been hearing a little bit about this law. I wanted to dig into a little more.

They have until January 1st, 2024, to comply with the law. Otherwise, they barred from selling to Texas public schools. So this includes like local bookstores that have deals with the local school system. It's called the Reader Act Restricting Explicit and Adult Designated Educational Resources. And the psycho that authored it, Patterson said, well, you know, it's the

vendor's job to rate the books appropriately. We're not going to like create a separate institution that's going to rate these books. And here's the two ratings. Sexually explicit or sexually relevant. So those are the two, those are your two

sex ratings. It's the two, two genders. Bro, they're calling your sexually irrelevant over on book rating Twitter. Is this a foot? Is this thirst trap sexually explicit or sexually relevant? I tried to do it a sneak thirst trap of like my thighs today

and you cowards would like in the follow up joke tweet. You got to like the thigh tweet before you follow up on the joke tweet. Oh, I didn't see the thigh tweet. I was, I'll like it right now. Well, you're not on Twitter. No, well, I blue sky. Right. I was like, wait a minute. I skied it.

You skied it? I skied it. I skied it my thighs. It's a good place for it. You see the most amazing pictures. Gonna like my homies, their straps. Yeah. Law defines sexually explicit books is those containing sexual content that is patently offensive. Explain in state law is anything that affronts current community standards of decency.

That's not clear at all. And that's sexually explicit. Sexually relevant, books depict sexual conduct, but not necessarily in a way that is patently offensive. But students will still need a parent's written consent to check one out. So every vendor in the fucking universe from like Goby to I guess the school systems mostly go through either like Fallet or Barnes & Noble have a school system ordering in place so they don't use GoPie. but also Amazon publishers, wholesalers, independent bookstores. So there's a wholesaler named Khan, C-O-N-N, classroom library company, who's a wholesaler. He wrote a letter saying he recommended a one rating entity to prevent conflicting ratings

because that could happen and take liability offender's shoulders. And the guy's like, no, the market will do this. He says capitalism is the path forward here. Capitalism is the path forward for this government law that I, put into place remark it. And financially vendors have an incentive to figure this out. And then the article goes on to say like, now they don't. So I remember, I think this was in Texas, that some places have like stopped ordering just until they get further guidance from the state about this act. It's really just thrown K-12 into chaos. They interview a book shop in Houston that gets about 25% of business

from local schools. It's unclear in the law where the book's containing innuendo or suggest dialogue might fall under sexually relevant, in which case even a high schooler would need a parent's written permission to check them out. Nor is it clear whether a book contested by a parent for an inaccurate rating, because of course that could also happen, will be removed from school libraries while the Texas Education Agency reviews its contents. So anyway, it goes back to the government agency anyway for arbitration. So you could just tie this up constantly by, like, challenging the ratings of all these books.

Any book that gets through, you could just challenge the rating. So it doesn't say like, I'm sure it doesn't say how many times it can be challenged or whatever. The law, this is the really weird part. The law applies retroactively the books sold to schools in the past, meaning that vendors must issue recalls for sexual explicit books still in circulation. But booksellers often lack knowledge of what books are still in circulation because, duh, and what customers use their books for, a vendor doesn't know whether a customer buys a book for themselves or if they're an educator for their classroom libraries.

Yeah, this is like a, hopefully this is. will just get struck down or something by a court because it's just so ridiculously hard to enforce. But to be continued. So that's the first story I've got. The next one I thought was the Texas legislature, but actually it's Texas representatives are putting this into the federal appropriations bill in the House. So it's still in the appropriations bill. They haven't gone to reconciliation yet.

So this language isn't in the Senate bill. There's explicit language saying that the. Office of Science and Technologies policy memorandum to make taxpayer-funded research immediately available to the public, implement, administer, apply, enforce, or carry out the OSTP memos guidance, which removes the 12-month waiting period to access research papers. So the White House put out this thing. The White House put out this memo and like Skalkham people have been talking about it for, I don't know, about half a year now. And what it does, says that if you are getting any kind of federal money or grant, you have to be able to put it into a repository immediately.

So it just has to be available immediately. So it could go in one way of meaning that grant funds are just going to have to be used to pay open access fees. Or the federal government might start building repositories where the zero embargo stuff can go. similar to like PubMed Central. Right. So I'm making more PubMed. But the reason I thought it was a Texas story is because it was a Texas representative who put this in the appropriations bill. I don't know why they're against it except the Biden's doing it.

Well, why would they want to have things freely accessible to people? Yeah. I mean, literally the argument is tailored to Republic. The taxpayer argument for open access is literally tailored to Republicans, which is one of its weaknesses. And clearly, like, it doesn't work. So, like, we should get. rid of the taxpayer argument for open access. The taxpayers are paying for it, therefore it should be open access. It's like, well, it hasn't convinced anybody, especially the people who are supposed to convince.

So they just don't give a shit. I feel like it also came up during the Trump presidency. I don't remember if it was blocked or if it was just in a weaker state during his presidency. But this stuff has been in the works through both administrations. So I think someone's just doing it as a fuck you to Biden, which, you know, whatever. So yeah, maybe I won't have to worry about the implementation of this memo at all. Maybe it'll just go away. I doubt it, though. I think the Senate will probably overrule it on certain things when it gets to reconciliation. I think the appropriations bill also defunds all work study, all federal work study, and the House bill.

So, like, that's probably not going to go through. Yeah, it's just psychoship. But that was my segment. Smoke, smoke, smoke, meat. Damn, son, where'd you find this? Smoke, smoke, smoke we did. Smoh, we did every day. Smoh, smoh, smoh, sma, sma, sma, sma, sma, sma.

That wasn't even, like, halfway through the drop. Water break. Using that as a, yeah, drink break. We were all just, like, drinking. Sipping. Take a fucking sit, babes. I guess it's my turn now to talk about, about Emily. Hi, Emily, if you're listening, we hope you're doing okay.

So there's some bullshit happening in a Montana, and also now in, like, Texas and in in other places, but the precipitous of the Idaho. Yeah, which is where she's from. Yeah. Which is, yeah, sad. So as listeners may remember last year, we had president of ALA, Emily Dramitsky on when she was still in the act of running and hadn't yet been elected. And we talked about her and about unions and labor organizing, and it was great.

Go Emily. Yay. And when she got elected, she tweeted this banger tweet. I just cannot believe that a Marxist lesbian who believes that collective power is possible to build and can be wielded for a better world is a president-elect of the American Library Association. And my mom is so proud. Great. Love it. You're such a day, Justin.

But no, we love to see it, right? And, like, this was cool. Like, she has a point. Like, she's never been quiet about what her politics are or that she's, like, a huge dyke. Like, she rules. and like she gets taught in library schools. Like she's great. And so it is cool that like she got elected with this.

And Chud's right wing assholes found this tweet, which is now deleted, but they found it. And the Montana State Library Commission, not the Montana Library Association, important distinction here because there was a lot of misinformation going on when this started. So the Montana State Library Commissioners put up to a vote, and I believe that vote and discussion has now happened for the Montana State Library to stop being members of the American Library Association. Right. So, like, as everyone is well aware, you as a library as an institution can pay dues to ALA as an institution instead of as like an individual member. and you get cool support and funding and stuff that way. Like it is a way to help connect your staff and stuff to professional development resources, like all kinds of things.

It is like a good thing usually like to do if that makes sense for your library, especially if you are, I don't know, the state library of your fucking state, right? And so they were concerned about a Marxist lesbian being the head of the American Library Association. And we're like, we should, we should leave. And so they were going to like put up to a vote. and like invited people like for discussion and stuff. And naturally the Montana Library Association responded to this like before the actual vote and

discussion took place. And the thing that I dislike about how this has been written about is in a lot of the responses to what the Montana State Library Commissioners did has not defended Emily or been proactively supportive about her and her politics and who she is at all, it's just been like jerking off about the ALA. It's like, but ALA is good actually and it's good to be a member of the ALA. And like rightfully pointing out like how genuinely good and helpful and crucial it is for the library to like be connected to these resources. But it kind of just like puts under the rug the whole fact that what they're mad about is that a lesbian,

socialist is the head is, you know, is the president of the organization, right? That's what they're mad about. But no, we don't talk about that. We just have to be like, oh, but LA is good, actually. And so, like, I found these responses really frustrating and weak, trying to, like, seed ground and take the argument seriously. It's like, no, she is a Marxist and she is a lesbian. And those are both cool and great things to be. There have been other tweets that I've seen from White, right wing chuds saying that like because of this like the aLA is like indoctrinating library schools because the a la of course is the accrediting body of library school program so if a marxist lesbian is the head of it then all of the library schools are going to be

indoctrinated with marxist lesbianism we can't have that because groomers and Marxism two words that we know what exactly what they mean right I like their theory of how this happened, which is like in 2016, activists infiltrated the ALA. And it's like we all saw, we've all seen that kiss a, was it, kiss homosexual.

Yes, bitch. Yeah. Kiss a homosexual. And we saw that. The SRT roundt roundt tape. I saw it. Yeah, the social responsibilities roundtable task force on gay liberation, which was the very first queer professional organization in the United States in the 60s. Thank you very

much. We've been doing this since the 60s, bitch. We love them, folks, don't we? We've been here. Yeah, no. We love to give me a great big wet kiss. And there was Barbara Giddings, right? We love her.

No, like, before Stonewall, there was like really sweet labor organizing, overlapping with, like, queer shit. Like, I don't know. I also love the point that I believe the Jacobin article makes that, like, diversity statements have been in ALA since, like, 2012 or something. I don't know. But like, yeah, so that's what I have found really frustrating. And like, the state librarian of Montana, who can go choke, was like, oh, well, you know, like, she, like, raised concerns. Like, but, like, being a part of ALA is important and it supports the staff, but it was still, we're very raised concerns. And I was like, you fucking traitor.

Like, you know, fuck you. You don't care about your staff. You don't care about any of these people. You just, like, it's just like, it's so frustrating. I feel like I'm seeding ground, us even getting mad and talking about it, of taking these arguments seriously, but it's like, we have to, but we can't be, like, defensive and chicken shit about it, right? Yes, Sadie. I was just going to say, like, I remember a couple of years ago, there was a whole holobleau and Calispell, which is, like, I think maybe the capital, no, not the

capital, but one of the bigger cities in Montana, where they, basically, their conservative board kicked out the director of the Calisbelle Library and wanted to hire somebody who wasn't an accredited librarian. She was in library school, but they wanted to hire her as their executive director. And I remember the state library of Montana at that point being like, yeah, no, if you hire her and keep her in this position, we'll have to pull funding because it's in like Montana state law that directors of library systems in Montana need to be like accredited. libraries librarians right which you know is an a la decided thing so i'm just wondering if this is the same state librarian or if the one who previously was like yeah no this this isn't going to fly is uh has

now backtracked or got voted out or what so i'm kind of curious about the internal politics of montana on this one yeah yeah and like so tuesday is when the hearing happened apparently and voted five to one to withdraw for the motion to withdraw after an hour of public comments that were overwhelmingly hostile to ALA. So say what you will about Jacobin, I found this little section of reporting exceedingly CUNTY in the best way possible. I mean this as a compliment, right? Cunty affectionate.

Yeah, Cunty affectionate. Commissioner Tom Burnett, Burnett, whatever, kicked off the farce by declaring that quote, our oath of office and resulting duty to the Constitution forbids association with an organization led by a Marxist. Of course, as Burnett made clear, by reading out the oath soon after, and as a public commenter later pointed out, neither the oath nor the U.S. Constitution contains any mention of Marxism whatsoever. Not surprising, given that the document was first written and ratified roughly 30 years before Karl Marx was an infant child. That is so cap jack.

That is indeed so cap jack. And then the Jacobin article, and I want to do a quick side tangent that the ad that is happening right now on this Jacobin article is called sex in the GDR to communists have better sex. The answer to that is yes. Next question. So the Jacobin article then goes on to basically say that like McCarthyism to electric boogaloo. is happening in the United States in 2023 that is like how this article opens. And they focus a lot about the like Marxist Red Scare, you know, whatever stuff. But then they rightly point out that like much of the objection to the Montana State Library's membership in the ALA seemed less focus on the

quote, Marxist part of Drabinski's tweet than the quote, lesbian part. So like this is not about Marxism. This is about the fact that Emily is a lesbian and is outspoken about that. And they're using the Marxism as a way to like double whammy it because maybe they're still a little bit afraid of outright just attacking a lesbian person, but that's acceptable. Now, if she, if she were trans, then of course it would be on the table, right? But we're still just having to couch it maybe a little, but not by much. So like, this is just homophobic groomer hysteria to quote the Jacobin article again. And which again, they are correct. That is McCarthyism. McCarthyism wasn't just about communism.

It was also about ratting out all the queers from education and government. You know, all the nice young men who were very well groomed and died single in their 30s. They were confirmed bachelors, you know, those. Yeah, so that is that is McCarthyism. Like, because all the communists are faggots. Like, that's, they're the same thing, people. Like, that's the thing. Like, these two things are interconnected, right?

Homosexuality and queerness have always been antithetical. to capitalism. Like, same-sex desires and homosexuality and stuff have been part of colonialism and its wider project, but also, like, queerness and the homosexual, like, as an identity was also held up as, like, antithetical to being a productive worker in, like, the formation of homosexuality as an identity. So, like, these two things have always been linked, like, being a class traitor and being queer, right?

Like, you can't really separate those two, especially now in our culture war. Like, they're the same thing. always have been in this country. That's why all of the like rich gays, gays and the politics and everything, like, you're not up against the wall yet, but you will be, you know? So I don't know.

I just, I found it just so frustrating that this was the only article that, like, I read for this and really that I've seen talked about, that talked about Emily as a Marxist and as a lesbian and defending her, I get that, not just defending her, but saying that that's a good thing to be a Marxist and a lesbian, right? and not just talk about how good the ALA is. No, it's good that Emily is these things.

Emily, if you're listening, it is cool and good that you are a Marxist and a lesbian and you should be. And we are lucky to have someone who is Marxist and a lesbian as president of the ALA, especially right now. Right. More presidents of ALA should be Marxists and lesbians, which, again, as the Jacobin article rightly points out, like, this whole concern about like the diversity and whatnot. like, this is still a largely like liberal institution and panic we're having anyway, but still, the point stands, you know, it's good that we have someone like that, at least, in this position who is advocating for workers' rights and for like the, you know, the continuing, like, existence of our planet and sustainability, right? It is good that we have someone like that in this position,

even as kind of a ceremonial figurehead. May it kick off a long, long tenure of Marxist lesbians as the president of ALA, right? Right. Like, I know so many Marxist lesbians. Like, we can get like a who are also librarians. Like, seriously, we just like need to like get like a queue formed. Like Marxist lesbians, sound off. We need you as the next presidents at ALA.

You're the only ones we can trust. Like to charge reblock to cast. We just need to set up like a Samany Hall style. election system where it's just all controlled by the same like Marxist lesbians. And it's like, did you vote? Yeah, well, go vote again. I just turn into that like Billy Eichner, let's go lesbians. Like, yeah. The amount of times that that is said in my household, when my household does not actually contain any lesbians is kind of hilarious. Sometimes you just like, a lesbian possesses your body no matter what you are. And that is a beautiful moment in one's life.

you know sometimes it's just your soul needs to express but it expresses. I need to turn that to a drop. Let's go, lesbians, let's go! What? Let's go, lesbians, let's go. Let's go, lesbians. So yeah, that's basically what's going on in Montana and other states are now following suit, which fucking sucks.

So if your state is one of these states following suit, or you know what, even before one of your states is a state that follows suit, express your support for Emily. Like, there's like a little petition we're going to link to that's going around, which I still think kind of pussyfoot's around Marxism, but whatever. Yeah. In spirit, it's fine. I signed it.

But also, like, talk to your state library commission, like, of your state library or even of your library. Any library you're a part of or, like, you have any voice in that is a member of ALA or anything, like, express your support for Emily. And the fact that she is a Marxist and a lesbian and it is great and good for her to be president of this organization and that she's, She's not like fucking grooming children and or anything. Like you don't even have to bring that up. Like that's a stupid fucking argument. Like we shouldn't be seating that kind of ground to these assholes. I'm so fucking mad.

I'm gaining in the mic probably because I'm screaming now. I'm used. I'm not used to this mic yet. I can't just like be a loud cackling witch anymore. You know? I mean, I, it's not going to stop me.

But anyway. No, it's just, I don't remember who it was. They talk about this on Trash Future. But whenever you get asked like a dumb question like that. Just be like, that's a stupid question. Don't ask me that. So if someone brings up the groomer shit to you, just like, it's a stupid question. Don't ask me that. Yeah. Next question. Emily is great. Yeah, it's like if

you're in library school, if you're a library school student or work at a library school and like, if she's on the curriculum, support the fact that she is on the curriculum. Ask your cataloging teacher to assign querying the catalog if it's not already on your syllabus, right? No, shit like that. Actually, the Idaho Freedom Caucus, their press release, calling on the Idaho commission for libraries to end its membership, which I saw later in the thread that, like, they're not even members. I wouldn't be surprised if they just, you know, but they talk about queer theory to guide the way books are cataloged in libraries. Her expertise in queer theory aligns with the Marxist subjective, the Marxist, like the one, the one Marxist. It's apostrophe, it's possessive apostrophe, as seeking to undermine the West by eradicating the traditional family, natural,

relationships, distinctions between sexes, and the orderly structures that accompany them. Actually, yeah, that is what queer theory does. It's based. Good. It's queering things. That's what we're even for. Yep. Thank you.

Nailed it. Because those things are not natural or normal, and they break down under scrutiny. It isn't that scary. That's why you have to do that with cataloging. Exactly. Yeah, you can't start trying to catalog something, and you go, oh, this doesn't work. But anyway, some chuds are also a. saying Texas librarians in higher ed are signing the petition. So they are, and this is a very

funny tweet, which is Texas librarians must go to an ALA accredited school, which is why they have been radicalized into thinking children should have access to pornographic materials. Texas needs to cut ties to. It's like, but the libraries would still require you to have a library school degree. Yeah, that part's not going away. That was kind of what is my next thought, is like, how much steam can they keep up on this? Because like, well, the goal is to not have any librarians. Yeah. I figured though, though it would take a long time to really dislodge like ALA accreditation and stuff from like libraries as an ecosystem, especially because like half the country wouldn't do it. So eventually like a lot of these, I feel like Montana and other places are just going to rejoin eventually because they're like, oh yeah,

there were reasons we were, we were members. Like it's a good way to get membership for your employees so they don't have to pay the individual membership fees. So it's like a as a benefit. Yeah. So if you're a Montana librarian, I'm sure you're already probably, hopefully already screaming up a storm at your higher ups about keeping the ALA membership, but especially now. Yeah. So we will put the petition for you to sign, but if you are worried about these cheds harassing you, you can always use a pseudonym. You can always use initials. You don't have to use your place of work. They'll put your name on there if you just put your name or if you just put like a first name and the last initial they'll put your name on there so they'll put whatever you want on there so as long as you

sign it like you know but they the uh the because i think i found the original piece by this lady valerie munoz and they said that the the people who signed it were texas a and m and u t at austin and i was like what am i and i realized i didn't put my job uh my place of employment in there and so i guess they just did control F or Texas and then just saw the people like three people who did put their place of employment. I'm like, wow. Can't even get a conservative to fucking yell at me down here. Get yelled at by Tucker Carlson and then we can talk bitch.

I know. I know. No, this is these are like some low level chuds. They're not even paying like the $8 for. For verification. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to sit on that high fucking horse till I die. You know, what was it?

Gender jihadists or something. No, I'm thinking of something on, I think it was blue sky that was like, what's something wild that's happened to you that nobody would believe. And Brie retweeted it just with, I told Conan O'Brien and I forget who else about the history of Larry King about the history of porn. And also I got yelled at by Chuck Carlson. Like, so like, yeah. Yeah, pretty good. Don't let it buy. My father is very proud of me.

Yeah, the Idaho copycat. I'm trying to get like everything up that was up to the minute. And then the Texas thing. Yeah, I think that covers everything up to the minute on the Montana thing. Yeah, of the Montana thing, at least. I thought I saw some other bullshit happening on Twitter today. But I think it was just that the other states were joining in maybe. I don't know.

Shit's fuck. Yeah. We'll throw it in the news in the upcoming episodes as we keep updated. Emily is great. Being a Marxist is great. Being a lesbian is great.