librarypunk - 127 - Book Bans at FVRL and Gary Wilson

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

We’re talking with Quill and RiotDad about the community side of the response to the Fort Vancouver Regional Library and local school board issues surrounding transmisia, book bans in school and public libraries, and how to push back. Salary petition, board email/phone, and template email are in the notes. Email [e-mail] (Template email below) Trustees phone contact: 360-906-5011 Attend meetings through FVRL website fvrl.org/board/trustees  Sign petition for FVRL staff salaries: https://www.change.org/p/it-s-time-fvrlibraries-pay-your-staff-a-living-wage?original_footer_petition_id=34850778&algorithm=promoted&grid_position=5&pt=AVBldGl0aW9uABhQQQIAAAAAZbwMe%2FqWz6hhNDJhOWQwNw%3D%3D  Readings https://www.columbian.com/news/2022/dec/06/opposition-to-drag-queen-story-hours-roils-fvrlibraries/  FVRL Board Meeting 2/20/2024 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_r6NqOlEi0  FVRL employees testimony https://keepthelibrarysafeforchildren.com/author/keepthelibrary/ Librarian Calls Police On Mom (Olga Hodges)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqqg-TBqPw0 2023 voters pamphlet (page 50)   Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/zzEpV9QEAG    Email template for FVRL Board of Trustees Dear Board of Trustees, I am writing to express my ongoing support for the Fort Vancouver Regional Library (FVRL) and its commitment to inclusivity for queer and trans community members. Members of the community have inspired me by attending Board meetings to counter misinformation regarding the Drag Queen Story Hour and other LGBTQ+ materials. I applaud their dedication and now wish to add my voice in their support. Also, during a recent meeting, dedicated FVRL employees and WPEA union members shared their struggles with low wages and an unsustainable workload due to high staff turnover. Starting salaries at minimum wage and capped wages force many to live in poverty. Employees are burdened with performing duties outside their job descriptions simply to keep branches functioning. I stand with these employees and the WPEA. I urge the Board to take immediate action to: Address the wage disparity by offering fair compensation commensurate with the cost of living. Invest in staff retention by providing competitive wages and benefits. Maintain the dedicated workforce required to keep libraries as vital community hubs. Furthermore, I encourage the Board to: Uphold the freedom of information by ensuring diverse materials representing all communities are readily available. Counter misinformation by providing accurate resources about LGBTQ+ topics and inclusivity efforts. Prioritize both the well-being of its staff and the needs of all members of the community.  Thank you for your time and consideration. Sincerely, [Your Name/Group Name]

Justin, I'm Skalkan Library. My pronouns are he and they. I'm Sadie. I work IT at a public library and my pronouns are they them. I'm Jay. I'm a music library director and my pronouns are he whom. And we have guests. Would you like to introduce yourselves? Hi, my name's Quill. I use they them pronouns. I am a former library worker and current construction worker. Hey, I am Riot Dad. My pronouns are they them and I am your favorite Pacific Northwest everyday anti-fascist punk rock dad. Welcome. I've been a out they-themed. Everyone's a they-themb except me in this episode. Give it a few years, right? Give it a few years. Oh, I already went that direction once. No, there have been pronoun changes throughout the course of the show of the past like three years. Yeah. Fantastic. We love to see people playing with gender. We sure do. Yeah, exactly. That's the whole point. I mean, I feel like, if you don't, like, throw in, like, some other pronouns once in a while, what are you doing? Well, how do you keep the right on the end of their seat, you know, if you can't throw on?

an extra pronoun every once in a while, right? Yeah, exactly. Like, I don't have blue hair or you got to do something. Yeah, I was just about to make that joke. You got to have blue hair and then have pronouns. No, there's definitely, I definitely know someone who I think almost certainly uses it pronouns because they like saying my pronouns are she it. Nice.

Nice. That's almost, I'm almost certain that's why it happened. But, you know, far be it from me. Look, I may or may not have added an extra middle name when I legally change my names to give myself the initials QED. Hey, I like it. It's pretty good. That's so much better than mine. I saw an opportunity and I took it.

Yeah, you took it. All right. So, no segment today because we have guests. We've been talking with Wright Dad back and forth about issues in, you know, libraries. I mean, this show used to be fun, you know. We used to get to talk about bullshit. We get to talk about like queering the catalog. We got to talk about, you know, all the fun stuff of just being a weird leftist in libraries.

And then everyone started paying attention to us. And now there's this transmisic and homophobic and lavender panic and also satanic panic because let's be real. This is where this is all coming from. And so, you know, we're all here to talk about, you know, just what's going on with communities, responses to these kinds of things, especially if, you know, you are a library worker or have been a library worker. But particularly from this angle today, I think we're going to talk about, like, community resistance. Is that correct? Yeah, I think so. I think that's where resistance starts, right? It has to start within our communities. It has to start small time. It has to

start local. And I think that that's what we're attempting to do. I think Quill is much more eloquent at it than we are, but we all have roles to play diversity of tactics and such. You definitely take a, you definitely take a harder approach than I do, and I appreciate that we come at the same problem from different angles, as it were, and it's nice to see you doing what necessarily I feel like I cannot, given my ambiguous situation. That's coalition building. Yeah, and I appreciate you, you know, being able to say the things that I want to say without gratuitous use of the word thought. So it goes over a little bit better sometimes when you do it. Hey, you haven't been kicked out of a board meeting yet. I do get warned now when I

step up there to give public comment. It is, hey, this is your only warning this time again. We stop addressing people in the audience. We stop using profanity. You can't even say like, chat, back me up on this. Like nothing like that? No, you are, during public comments, you are addressing the board and only the board allegedly. The board. board as chat. Yeah. I had a thought, but you know what? I realized probably a bad tactic to mention.

Move on. Move right along. It's always redacted. The solution's always redacted. No, it's him doing a sound drop and then I go, Justin. No, no, no, not even. So to give everyone a background, who are you? What have you been doing?

And what's going on with the Fort Vancouver Regional library and the local school board. So just give us a background. Okay. So back in 2019, the Fort Vancouver Regional Library District decided that they wanted to expand the diversity of their program offerings. And as their first foray, they chose to offer a total of three drag queen story hours to the community. These were widely advertised as dry queen story hours. They were held outside of the normal rotation of story time. It was very much a special event. And after the first dry queen story hour,

a certain vocal segment of the community showed up to express their displeasure to the board of trustees. And they have been expressing their displeasure nonstop, like clockwork at every board meeting since then for the past 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24. We will be coming up.

I can't be right. I think five. I think we're coming up on like five years of showing up religiously, organized, mom, dad, people know children, ironically enough to come and talk about children and the library. So for going on five years now, continuing to show up, continuing to try to reaffirm that it has no place in our library, except for now they've moved on from an event that is no longer being ousted to banning book and attacking queer literature to attacking queer YA literature to attacking anything that falls outside, you know, their pragmatic belief. That's longer than I've been in any job. It's dedication, right?

But that's the problem with these folks is they are dedicated. They have a mission and they work together to advertise. Vote no-one school levies, right? Your money is just going to go to clear up our kids and, you know, to teach them liberal ideology. I was going to say good, but not the liberal ideology part. Right, heard. Yeah, yeah, like we would settle for that either. But, yeah, so, and that's the problem is they're organized and they're well-funded.

And now they're getting to become elected members of the library board of directors with old colleges and with Gary Wilson, the gentleman that leads all of this stuff, just elected to the Evergreen School Board District. And actually, they just cut 124 jobs, $18.7 million in funding gone away. And 22 of those positions were, surprised, surprise, teacher librarians. There is irony in somebody that consistently pushes to vote no-one school levies is saying that there's not enough money in our school. There is irony there.

I went through some, both Gary Wilson and Olga Hodges. whose names are now burned into my memory because whenever we get into these kinds of like local fascists, I tend to start doing deep dives. Go listen to our episode on Moms for Liberty, Moms for Libraries, and check out my band Twitter account where I posted everyone's home address. Babe. I just wanted that Twitter account gone. Let's start with, how did you get involved with supporting the FBRL and the library? And the school board, I guess, because they're kind of entwined, right? We can't really disentangle them. Correct. As long as Gary Wilson and his crowd have been at the library board meetings, I have been at the library board meetings. At the time, I was an employee of Fort Vancouver Regional Library District. I was a public service assistant, the frontline staff. And originally I started going to board meetings to see what they were saying about our current union contract negotiations. But then when 20 to 30 people show up to a board meeting and they're all wearing the same teal shirt and then they're

they all start spouting the same homophobic, transphobic comments, it makes you sit up and notice. And starting in July of 2019, I started standing up and saying, I am a gender queer community member and I am here in support of Dry Queen Story Hour. They've been there, and I've said this publicly, I will keep coming as long as they keep coming, though I will admit a certain amount of Stockholm syndrome because it is interesting seeing how. how a library district is run. And we have had a lot of turnover in our board trustees, which is a source of concern and saying how they respond differently to the same old comments. And to their credit, the board had tried shifting public comments to the end of the meeting to see if this deters anybody. It didn't really. They have tried very briefly banning speaking of on drag queen's story hour, however, that got rapidly undone. And they have said,

We hear you, but the comments just keep on coming. And so I keep on coming. I like to say that this is my one political spoon, and this is where I choose to spend it. And I show up to the board meeting like clockwork, even after leaving the library district for a living wage job in the construction trades and shifting out of the library's area of service. Sure.

When they say we hear you, are they talking to the people complaining about the Drakween Story Hour? or are they talking to you or are they talking out of both sides of the mouth? I'm sure they would love to say that we are speaking neutrally to all parties on this topic that we hear you, we see you, we understand you. I will say for the moment, the library district still has an equity equity policy. For the moment, there is still one LGBTQ plus program offered every month. It's an adult's only discussion group called Rainbow Reads, but that's it. That is the sum total of LGBTQ plus programming for the library

district, which covers three counties. Yeah, it's fairly conservative for sure. When I hear, I hear you, I certainly don't feel like they're acknowledging our all-inclusive queer community. I mean, like international women, you know, we didn't have one trans woman representing. And I think that that speaks volumes. I think that if you hear us and you see us and for five years going on now, people have been coming here, trying to talk about inclusivity, then something like that. Just minimal is that, right? Putting an author out on display for 30 days should have been manageable. Although I got to say, not many, how many libraries did represent trans women during that month? So maybe that just kind of speaks to where we are. Awesome.

Amazing. See, that's beautiful. Via Wendy Carlos, baby. Because I work at a music library. So Wendy Carlos CD. Nice. Nice. My, my, my, my sister. She's a librarian and trans, and she called me up, and we were kind of discussing that. To be fair, it was all my students who did that display. I didn't have to say in it. That's awesome. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. I love it. I don't remember how I got involved. I think some comrade who I do mutual aid with might have let it slip that a bunch of facts have been showing up to some library meetings. And I know that Will and I really connected after a local brewery was having an all-ages drag show on a Sunday and the macehold pulled up in a suburban the weekend before

and took a baseball bat to the storefront and smashed out every single window there. And at that point, I remember, I remember talking to the community and like just asking like, fuck what are we going to do about this. And I didn't get any response. So we just took it upon ourselves to reach out to compulse and organized. And we held a fairly decent size counter protest, you know, liberals, mom, dads, dads, out there. We were community members, leftist, community support, community defense, medic. I mean, we threw it all out. We were ready to show up and, you know, stand up to a bunch of proud boys. And luckily, the show went on. It was beautiful. It was awesome. Maybe three people showed up, but they got promptly walked off site that had a problem. And then that's really when, when Quilla and I started working together and when I started showing up, you know, very regularly to these meetings. I'm like, Quill, I got a lot of spoons, a lot of spoons for Deep Hooker. So, We're involved in a couple of different things. So there is a connection between the lack of pay for people who are doing what is called paraprofessional work. I hate that word.

The library, they make you the most important thing about a library. You can tell anyone who's worth their salt in the library from the dean or the director down to anyone else is the hardest thing about a library is keeping the doors open. And that's it. It's keeping the doors open. That's so much work. Someone has to show up on time. Someone's got to unlock it. Someone's got to be there to answer questions.

All that work is usually done by so-called paraprofessionals. So there's a connection between the devaluing of paraprofessionals and the devaluing of, you know, people choosing to represent their community through books that they believe will be relevant to people who you might not know are your neighbors yet. Queer books, especially. You know, people don't know queer people simply because they choose not to look for them or when they find them choose to ignore them. I find it very hard to avoid queer people because I feel like I don't know anyone who isn't at this point in my life. It's very confusing how you miss out on all this. So I don't know why I went on a little rant there. You're all on the same page.

Let's talk about Gary Wilson since he seems to be a focal point for some of this. He showed up in 2019, I believe, going against the library levy. Classic, classic move of, you know, my tax dollars go to this. So I get to say, I get to speak for everybody. He's obsessed with drag queens. I went to his website. He's very, like, I mean, I love a good drag queen, but I don't think about drag queens that often, quite honestly. They're cool.

But he's really got like a thing where he thinks about them every single day and likes to write really huge font blog posts about them. So, which is great for accessibility. You know what? Hands, you know what? Good for him. Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah. So tell me about Gary Wilson and how he gets involved. Gary is the ringleader. He has spearheaded the anti-dry queen's story our protests. He is very distinct with his mustache and his fedora and his teal shirt at every library morning meaning, I will say. He has really pulled back in terms of his involvement and the topics of his comments ever since he got elected to the Evergreen School Board. I wonder if the two are concerned, or excuse me, I wonder if the two could possibly be connected now that he is a publicly elected official who can be held to account for his words and his actions.

But at a previous board meeting, he stood up and said, I was given this mission by God to defend. The children, and I will not stop until he feels the children are adequately, adequately defended, which in his worldview means no dry queen's story hour, no queer representation. This is inherently damaging for children to learn or know about. One, listeners didn't see the face journey I went on when you described his attire. Two, at like a like city or county like function, you shouldn't be able to like not to get all like separation between church and state, but like you literally shouldn't probably be allowed to like bring up like religious objectives in those kinds of meetings.

You know, that didn't stop him and it certainly didn't stop Olga Hodges. Yeah, it wouldn't, but you know, in theory, if we're going to have these bullshit laws, you know. Also, take your head off. You're inside. Yeah, that's like, that's like their whole thing though. Like, all of them get up there and that's what they do. You know, they're going to pray for us. They, you know, love us as people. but hate the sin, et cetera. And it's painful, right? Like, please tell me you, you have a copy of drag queen's story our bingo that you can just hold up and show our fine comrades here.

Like, please tell me you have one of those. Will has made this amazing game from Drag Queen's Store Hour bingo, right? And for years, like, the center space was just fucking just a guy, Billson. You know, he's going to be there. You know, he's going to be a dick. It's just your automatic freebie. Just check that shit right off. But it just got like some of the best up.

Like, what is that? That's not how gender worked. That's not how transition work, you know, and debunked study from 20 years ago. Right. Because their arguments so rarely change and to help myself deal with the utterly soul-destroying work of going to these board meetings and listening to this month after month after month, I made myself a little bingo card. Because they're saying the same, they're trotting out the same tired arguments. I will say their goalposts have shifted over the years. Initially, they were pushing for background.

checks for all performers, for all volunteers, that could possibly have contact with children. And when the district said, you know what, that is a great idea. We have implemented this. Suddenly, the rhetoric changed to, well, you know, background checks don't actually catch any actual predators. So, and they've also shifted away from the more outrageous, political, religious, morally based arguments to, well, I just don't think this is appropriate. And we don't want to ban the books, we just want to take all the books and put them in a special spot where children cannot easily access them. But we don't want to take books off the shelves, therefore we're not banning books, despite the fact that I've gotten up there and quoted the ALA Code of Ethics and said,

spoiler alert, you're asking to effectively ban books. I mean, there's absolutely nothing in a library that says, you know, a student, like a child can't check out any book that's in a library. Like, sure, libraries sometimes will, you know, book mobiles will have like, you know, color-toated little shelves. This is for students. We're not going to check. This is for children. We're not going to check out something to adult to you that's for the adults, which I disagree with. But you know what?

People make their decisions about this, whatever. But if it's in the building and you can reach it, you can check it out. I mean, that's simply just how a library works. Right. And I have a set format for my board comment. I always introduce myself. He's my pronouns. here is a gender queer member of the community. I always end my board comments saying

drag queen story hours are appropriate. If a parent does not think it is appropriate for their child to see or hear a drag queen, they do not have to come to these programs. In that same vein, it is a parent or guardian's responsibility to monitor, if they're so concerned, it is, it is on the parent to monitor what their child is reading. And they can choose to do that however they wish. But you should not be able to come in and say, because this offends my beliefs, absolutely nobody should be able to access this information or this material. Although I do want to push back just slightly. When you're in a library as a child and there's no adult who is there standing over the child's shoulder, that child has full autonomy to read, look at, check out whatever they want because the library and library workers have absolutely no reason to stop that, right? 100%. And it's, it's admit, and it is definitely not the library's responsibility to act in local parentis. Yeah. I feel like a lot of the more liberal kind of anti-book ban people who are cool. They're doing the work. They're out there every day. They're doing stuff that's important. And when we've talked about like book banning and stuff, you know, the ideology of liberalism is pretty useful in this context of, hey, look, you can't dictate what people read and do. And that's, you know, that's, you.

It was something I struggled with for a while in terms of like, this is a really useful aspect of liberalism, but I have so many critiques of it. It's like season two library punk. But there's been a little bit too much of the parents decide aspects. So I do want to make sure no one comes away from this episode thinking like that's an effective strategy to always push it off on the parents because it hasn't been an effective strategy. Oh, and there have been board members who say, well, there's just too much. can't possibly stop at all. I can't possibly look at everything my child is reading. The library staff need to step in and help. My parents never looked at anything that I read growing up, and I'm better for it. The moment a child can walk around, there's a certain amount of control

you lose over them. Like, that's just humanity. Well, I was actually, I was just having this discussion with a couple of people that I work with because I was in an intellectual freedom training, and one of them was a long time. Youth Services librarian who straight up said, like, a lot of parents don't want to acknowledge the fact that their child most of the time will self-select for what they're ready for. Yes, literally. They'll pick up a book and go, ooh, I don't want to read that and put it right back down again if they're not ready to deal with the topics for it. I was a prude as a child. Right. And a lot of children are. And like I've like had this discussion elsewhere too where it's like a lot of the times like she's. said that children are usually either bored or embarrassed if it's a topic they're not ready for or

they don't want to engage with yet. So like when you think about it through that lens, it's very obvious that these people aren't actually concerned for their children suddenly accessing something that, you know, whatever. They're concerned with their control over their child. And that is once again, not the library's responsibility and be an abusive tactic, right? Like as somebody who had an abusive parent, it's like, That's exactly what it's about. It's not actually about the education of the child or anything like that. It's about whether or not they can control their own children and through that lens, therefore control everybody else's children, too. Yeah, I feel me and Sadie are nodding in solidarity of religious upbringing. So sometimes we'll be a little harsh, but I think you earned it. Yeah, I'm with you. The Patriot, to use that word of our family was a Southern fundamentalist Baptist minister. So growing up. I'm so sorry.

Growing up, you know, honestly, growing up as a queer kid, it was tough, but I can only imagine the hell it was for my sister, you know, knowing that the people that were supposed to protect and nurture and love us had nothing but disdain for us, you know. And so, yeah, so seeing these fuckers and seeing them, you know, quote the Bible and seeing them push for, you know, our book, you know, full of rape and incest and, you know, not, Noah being sodomized by his own. on. It's totally cool for anybody to pick up and read, you know, but God forbid somebody picks up, you know, genderqueer, you know, and then just all hell is going to break loose. So, and I think that, that, that's their big push right now is that, that particular title. But unfortunately, I mean, we're seeing it, we're seeing it across the country. You know, it's not, it's just not our town. It's not our city. It's everywhere. Yeah. And I think that, like, Quill, like, especially, like, the way that you're coming at it, I think that that those tactics are viable and,

a lot of ways and a lot of places. So it's not necessarily, I'm not trying to say it's a bad thing that this is how you end or this is how you bring it up every time because that sort of, it's the starting point, right? To get people to start thinking beyond like that sort of sphere. So it's like, it's a really good starting place. And unfortunately, these people aren't even there yet. If that makes sense. Oh, yeah. A hundred percent. And I'm not there thinking I'm magically going to change anybody's mind if they happen to be wearing a teal shirt. I am just there to stand up and say, I am a member of this community and I would like to be reflected in the programming and books on offer. Just to push back so that it is not just the bigots in the room. Because for the

majority of the five years, it was me by myself and a whole crowd of people in Teal. Right, because right-wing assholes are the only people that usually go to board meetings. Right. And people who agree with the library or they think the library is doing a great job, they don't necessarily, it's much harder to get people to speak up positively because they're like, yeah, of course they're doing a good job. Why would I need to say anything? Versus people who are deeply unhappy are much more readily willing to express that unhappiness, be it at board meetings, be it in Yelp reviews, be it on Facebook in any other number of formats. People love people love people like it's like, even though like we tend to, we tend towards anarchism on this podcast, get involved in your

local fucking politics if it's your school board and your library board because our voices need to be there. That's a that is a valid tactic to take. Otherwise, it's just going to be crypto, like, crypto-fascists. And we don't want that. Hard, yeah. I think, I think a lot of it, too, is people don't fucking know, you know, people don't know, you know, even people that would be in support of, you know, a drag queen story hour or, you know, more clear child-friendly, you know, programming. They don't know what's going on. You know, they show up, they check out their book, you know, and they go off, they do their thing. They show up.

They have their, you know, liberal meeting in a room, play a board game, whatever, you know, and they go back. They don't know what's going on at these things. So that's really been, you know, Kluena's big push right now. And we have another comrade who compiled a lot of this data for us, but for reasons, you know, is not doing the thing. And it's just been getting people to know. And I'd say, like, over the last several months, I mean, we're outnumbering these folks. There are times where, you know, they don't even have the opportunity to sign up and speak. And, you know, allegedly, some people might be following these motherfuckers to their cars.

And, you know, I'm trying to convince them it's maybe not a safe place for them to come at night alone in the dark, fountain for shit, you know, to certain people. So, you know, I think the more we get it out there and the more bodies we get to show up, the more people we get to show up, you know, the more likely we are to put them off, right? Yeah. Yeah. Are we going to change anything drastically? Of course not. The system's designed to work exactly the way it's working, you know?

But we can certainly try to make marginalized people and our comrades feel safer and feel seen and heard and feel protected. And like, Quill, it's so important that like you mentioned when you speak up that like you're not just a member of the community. It's not just that you used to work in the library, but that you were genderqueer because that is the like, that's the book, right? That's got everyone up in a fucking tis. or at least it was for a bit, I think it still is, but like, the fact that you are saying that you are this and you are a part of the community. And it's not just these outside books that are trying to indoctrinate your children. No, there are people in your community right now in this room, who are this? Right. And that's, I think, like, important to bring, I mean, even if you weren't, like, it's still important to have those books. But sometimes, you know, they need, they need their hands held a little bit. And even, though it shouldn't have to fucking matter that you are also genderqueer. You shouldn't have to be, you know. Plot, twist, gender queer is probably the name of Gary Wilson's childhood fled. Yeah. And I mean, with my activism, I always made it clear. I was speaking as a private individual. I never at any point claimed to be speaking for the library district for a stretch of time there. I was taking four hours of vacation every third Monday of the month to make sure that they couldn't come and attack the district by saying, well, look at what your employee is doing. Yeah. I did still have one very angry lady at a board meeting because my photo got used as part of a board.

ranch report. And she's like, are you a library employee? And it's like, I'm a substitute. And, oh, she was, she was completely livid that I had the audacity to be speaking on, on a topic as a private citizen. Yeah, because you can't be two things at once. No, of course not. So we were talking about Gary Wilson. So, oh, right. We talked about, like, cutting teacher librarians. I remember from the biography, the candidate's speech that he was focusing on, I'm not going to a single teacher, I'm only going to cut admin. What happened with that? Were librarians, were librarian teachers considered admin? No. So I think it's just another one of those like, this is what I'm going to do when I get there. And now that I'm here, surprised fuckers,

here's our real agenda. I will say the super took a pay cut, right? We got a $20,000 pay cut, right? I believe. Yeah. Yes, it was because I took note. But I think, I think more than anything, it was just one of those, you know, I'm not going to do this. I'm going to, you know, keep teachers, because this whole thing is about kids, right? I mean, like, this is the far-right thing now. It's all about children, right, where they have them, whether they don't have them. And why would you, you know, take educational resources away from a child, right? Because that's damaging, that's harming. Why would you increase class sizes with a childish student to teach a ratio, right? Because then that's taking away opportunities from children. But that's exactly what they did, because it's not about

children and it's not about, you know, saving money. This is about restricting access to information. This is about restricting access to identity. And this is about, you know, attack on the queer community. And based on Gary Wilson's history and the things that he says and the things that we've seen him say in person, there's no arguing that. There's no arguing that at all. You can't, you can't constantly push voting no on levies to save your tax dollars and then cut funding and eliminate 124 positions. and say that, you know, we're doing this because our children deserve a better education. You mentioned earlier funding for people like Gary Wilson. Do you have any, like, information about the funding sources, like how people like Wilson are funded or anything like that?

Well, you know, so we've got, I'm sure everybody's familiar with the Patriots United, like, little party, right? This little political party that's coming up, Patriots United. They hold their meetings in churches. They hold their potluck in churches. They have political speakers come to these churches, all of which might completely like going against the church's tax exempt state, right? So this is how they get their money. They hold little meetings. They hold fundraisers.

They bring people like Ben Carson in to speak for, you know, most recently was the women's 360. It's a clinic we have. A women's 360 clinic is a women's health clinic where if you're pregnant, you're looking for an abortion, you go and they shame you. into making life-altering decisions so that you don't perish and they're hereafter for eternity, right? So they bring these people in, they host galaes, they host dinners, they do them constantly. Their telegram and signal chats are not super keen on Opsc. So we follow them, we know, we know where they're at, we know what they're doing. But this is how we feel that they're getting their money, right?

This is how we feel that they're paying for all of these vote, no-one levy signs. And I'll be honest, there was one that just kept. falling down every single day down the road from where, you know, we stay. And I mean, 24 to 48 hours, there was a brand hill and put back up. And I went on for the better part of like six weeks. So they've got the money somewhere. But, but we think that it's through Patriots United. Patriot United works extremely close with Mom's Liberty. When they have events, three percenters and local proud boys are there providing community defense, right? They're providing security. They don't hire security firms. They just have a bunch of three-pers and a bunch

crowd voice standing outside. So that's where the money comes from. It comes from, you know, these far right fuckers and, you know, whatever it is that they do. And that's where they donate their extra time and that's where they donate their extra money. Right. No, it's good to know because, like, there's, there's links in the chain. Like, there's weaknesses. There's things people need to know about. Right. That's why I asked. At, and these events, especially at churches, can be like, disrupted super easily. Everybody's got a water meter box out front. It did one quarter turn to the left. you know, that they,

these things can be done super easily. It's just, it's just always funny to bring up, you know, that, oh my God, okay, totally going off.

Phil, you at the, the one up in Ridgefield, where that fucker that's always sitting outside of Joe Kent's table, trying to get Joe Kent elected. We're sitting there,

and the board was like, hey, we got to take a quick break. We'll be right back, you know, and they get up and they step out of the room. So I get up, because I'm going to go outside and smoke and stretch and see if I can't bully some facts.

And I walk by, and this fucker there in a heel shirt is sitting on his phone watching like a clip of this person, this woman dancing topless. Were you there? And I was just like, you motherfucker, you piece of shit, hypocrite motherfucker talking about indecency. You can't even get to a fucking library board meeting without staring at a set of fucking titty. Are you absolutely, like it was gnarly. I'm going to be a titty Stalinist and say no tities. It got so loud. It was just insane. And that's where we are with these people, right? It's not about decency. It's about

control, right? It's about... No, it's ever been about decency. It's about eliminating percent of the population, you know, like, I don't know, like, I love looking at nudity, but I can make it an hour. I can specifically go to a board meeting without staring at it on my phone. They haven't been back. That person has not been back to the meetings, but... But it's also like an important. point that you bring up that it's not about decency. It's about control and it's about population because like, and this is something we talked about with after Emily Knox is that like, like library book bans and censorship. It's not about like, oh, kids, it's inappropriate for kids to see drag queens. It's about thinking that reading something will like fundamentally change how

a person thinks in a way that you don't like. So it's about like shaping the story. It's the citizenship to fit into a white crystal fascist way. It's literally what this is all about. It literally is population control. Like, it's not about decency. It's not about, oh, let parents do their own things in their own homes. It's literally about like, no, we can't let people read things that are going to make them faggots because then they will be fagots and we don't like that. And I'm like, sorry, it's going to happen anyway. But, like, it's about population control. It is about, like, white nationalism. It is about white supremacy. Yeah, 100%.

Sure. Quill, you were going to say something? Oh, no. The only thought in my head was it's a thing for folks where they're like, no, the minds of children are impressionable little lumps of clay and whatever gets stuck in there is going to irreparably change the child. So obviously you- I watched Rocky Hor in fifth grade and I'm fine.

Right. So obviously you can't let them see the bad. things or they are irrevocably damaged. It's purity culture. Well, I love that. I love the irony that like, you know, oh, we can't expose children to this because it may change them. But then you've got all these fucking nimbies on Facebook who like five years ago were

kind of like halfway decent fucking people, you know, and now they're all like you and on just absolute fucking radical patriots and shit. It's never lost on me. The adults we need to worry about. No, it's true. It's true. It's true. It's all these people over fucking 40. Like, don't turn, don't turn 40.

Yeah. This is what I'm always saying. Just take you up high to Shen in five years. If you go to Gary Wilson's Ballotpedia, he has endorsements from various groups, right? Clark County, Washington Republican Party, Clark County Republican Women, Family Policy Institute of Washington, Slavic Vote. Now, I want to talk about Slavic vote because I went to their YouTube page. And Slavic Vote is a bunch of crazy fascists who are doing some insane shit to become like, like... Paramilitary?

Are you aware of Slavic vote? So, they actually, I know how if you know about this or not, but they usually train, like, like, Fort Vancouver Lake, or Vancouver Lake. Like, they're out there, like, training. They're out there, like, doing, like, rolling exercises. They're out there doing drills. They've got local law enforcement fucking out there working with these motherfuckers. Like, yeah, they also like to show up. Like, it's like this junior fascist ROTC.

And I will say that with the rise of like the Rose City Nationalist Group and, you know, the, what is the Portland Active Club, Active Club Portland. Like we're seeing like these fuckers pop up everywhere, everywhere. Like their flyers are starting to pop up. If you didn't understand my laughing, You haven't seen the videos of these motherfuckers who all look like they're in like the zone of, what is it? The zone of, Jay, what is it? Zone of interest.

Yeah, they all look like they got zone of interest haircuts. I just make Justin watch good movies. That's my job. Yeah, there are a bunch of bug-eyed people with bad haircuts, and they usually interview in like Ukrainian or whatever. But the head Gary Wilson on, and I really thought for sure, Olga Hodges must have had some connection. like some connection, but I couldn't find it. I looked and I looked and I looked and I was doing my Pepe Sylvia board because I did this for moms for liberty.

I found everyone's like fucking home address and everything. But unfortunately, Olga Hodges is using a fake name or some bullshit. But anyway, I couldn't find anything about her. But this might be our tie-in to Olga Hodges, who I am certain is a member of some kind of fucked up group because there's no way that there's no connection between these people and Slavic vote or some other fascist community. It has to be there. I just can't find it.

You can note. Olga is very proud of her story as a Ukrainian religious refugee. Oh, boy. Tell us more. I mean, Olga was elected to the board after she publicly filmed library staff in an attempt to shame the library staff because she found books with objectionary. content. Now, in manga, I will say the specific volumes and series, I can't remember the name of she found on the shelf, had gone, had done a rating shift and it had shifted to a mature rating.

So in that instance, the library, she put in a collection review request after berating the public, the staff at the public library. The collection review board looked at the material and they said, you know what, this is shelved in the wrong space. And that entire series as a whole was moved from the teen section to the adult section. And that is how they chose to handle that particular instance of community member objection. However, Olga then got put on the board. And she's spoken about how she's here as a mom and she's here as a community member. And she's here as someone who's active in her community and her community includes her church.

And it is Eastern Orthodox, I believe. And she decided to, the board can make board comments at the end of every board meeting. In one board meeting, she decided to end her public board comment as an official board member of Fort Vancouver Regional Libraries with the comment Christ Conquers. And at the next board meeting, when people got up and said, this is inappropriate for you to say, as a board member, you can believe whatever you want to believe. but when you were sitting as a board member, this isn't appropriate for you to say, well, her feelings were very hurt.

My initials are JC and my birthday is Eastern Orthodox Christmas, and I tell her she's wrong. She's also a homeschooler, which I believe is relevant to the whole discussion. She does choose to school her children at home because that is the decision she has made as a parent. She does not want her children engaging with the public school system for whatever, for whatever reason. Oh, it's not whatever reason.

It's, she doesn't want them around Bipak people. She doesn't want them around queer people. She doesn't want them around, you know, God forbid, they teach them critical race theory to the seven-year-olds because, you know, that's a reality, right? Just get some Kimberly Crenshaw up in there. Every fucking day. Yeah. So, no, we, you know, we, we know why. And we see it, we see it all over the place, right?

A lot of these people, a lot of these, you know, Patriots United, they homeschool, most of them do. And it's for the same reason, right? They want to teach their children the things that they believe and that, you know, they are righteous and they are divine and they are right. And everybody else is against them and we'll shun them because of that. And that becomes a whole other discussion, right? It's like, how do you interact with people like that? Do you reaffirm what their parents are telling them, you know, or do you take the time and the energy and the empathy to try to work with them and let them know that there's a better life out there than the one that they're subjected to?

I am so tempted to buy a fucking website and just put, we need like templates and for like policies that libraries can use to help like say like you can't film in the library or like this is what a collection development policy looks. like or a whatever that doesn't like allow this kind of bullshit to happen or that like you know severely discourages these people to do anything sorry most library districts have their collection development policies posted on their websites yep whether or not people read them is another matter and i think at least for public libraries filming can be a can be a tricky thing because it is we're open to the public and that comes with challenges is. Limited public forum.

Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. Yeah, no, I couldn't think of the right words. So I think as long as someone comes in and they're not being disruptive or obviously following a specific person or a specific staff member, there's not a whole lot staff can do. Yeah, and that's what I've seen. That's the approach that pretty much every public library I've worked for has had. It's a legal thing. It's not necessarily a policy thing.

But what I wanted to ask is if at these board. board meetings you've ever seen anybody from the community who is also religious, stand up and be like, I'm here because these people are wrong. Or I'm like, I'm Christian or I'm religious and I want my children to have the ability to read these books if they want. Like, have you, have you seen any sort of pushback that's on that same level? We occasionally get a community member who does come up and say something to that effect. In the initial backlash to drag queen story hour, the library did host a community panel. And you can find this on the library website. I can send you the link because the video recording is still posted. And they had faith leaders. They had psychologists. They had

welfare workers get up and speak to the importance of acceptance and diversity. And you can't see it on the video, but whenever someone said something that the anti-dry queen story crowd disagreed with, they had paper signs and they held it up and it just said like, no or wrong. And so that argument, they just say, well, that's not how you read the Bible. Obviously, you're reading the Bible wrong. We are fortunate enough to do a lot of work with Clark County Pride, which kind of encompasses like Vancouver and, you know, the, the suburbs and the rural areas. And there are a couple ministers. And these women show up at pride events. They show up at any sort of nonprofit event, right? And they have this tent. And they're there solely to apologize to the community for the way the

churches treat them and just offer hugs if anybody wants them. Like, that's what they do. Like, their tent is like literally says, we are so sorry for how the church is. treated you and they are those there to apologize. We did this super dope party. It was called a big gay wedding. There is a nasty church in Vancouver, Washington, the Shire Foundation Baptist. They made national news. They're part of the gnarly, like, fundamentalist Baptist movement. They've got churches in Spokane. They've got churches down in Uless, Texas. After the pulse shooting, you may remember a certain preacher going on and being like, good, glad it happened. They should do more of it at Darren Thompson of Shire Foundation Baptist Church. So they held this four-day

fucking like King Jane like mega retreat at their church. And on the fourth day, we decided wouldn't it be great if we grabbed a bunch of queer people and we got them legally married in the eyes of the state by drag queens in front of their fucking church and just do a big ass party? And that's what we did, right? And we had religious members of the community who have showed up to these events to the library board meetings show up and like just hug people all day long and tell them that, you know, nothing wrong with them. There's no such thing is this is being sin. This is love.

Love is perfect. Love conquers all, yada, yada. So yeah, we've been fortunate enough to find some really good people. But as Quill said, you can't argue with this cognitive dissonance, right? Like, you can't speak logic to these people. You certainly can't use, you know, their faith against them, right? Because then we just don't know what that means. Like only they really understand, right?

How can people support you? What can they do directly? what's the outcome you want of this this podcast like there's lots of people who care so what can they do all right so we can go to board vancouver regional library we can go to their website they have the ability for you to join virtually and call in right make statement fill up fill up statements right let's not let's not give fascists any room to speak right none of this like it's their first amendment right and bullshit right disruption is community defense disrupting fascist events and fascist organizing is community defense. So we can go to the Fort Vancouver Regional Library's website. We can sign up for these board of directors meetings. If you're in town, if you're local, come join us, come hang out, right? We'd love it. We'd love it. There's an open position for the board. I tried to get on it. But they said no, which is odd. I didn't even get to go through the application process. Like, hey, go ahead.

Even if you can't make it to the board meetings, you can always email comments and questions to trustees at FVRL.org T-U I can't spell T-R-U-S-T-E-E-S at F-V-R-L-L-R-L and they don't talk about

the emailed comments but they swear that they read every comment that they receive so that's one that's another way for folks to get involved you can visit Gary Wilson's website and just D-D-O-S-A-S shit out of it right? There's so many

things that we can do to help disrupt these fuckers. We, we can, we can show up to Evergreen school board meetings, right? They're doing the same thing. They're trying to do the same thing in Evergreen that they're, they're doing in the center school district, which is also in Clark County. And not to get off on a tangent, but they made it policy to where if a child approaches anyone in the school, teacher, or faculty, and it's just like, hey, I'm not really comfortable with, you know, these pronouns. These are my pronouns. It is now mandatory that that teacher contacts the child's parents because nothing says safety like a parent who you won't share your pronouns with. So we've been spending a lot of time up there working on that. So that's the center school district. We can we can always use more

bodies up there because these kids need our support. These young people, these young adults need our support. The other day for Trans-Day Visibility, somebody went around town and hung up like 150 beautiful sign painted trans flagged pride colors, but the words love stenciled on them. We can do something like that. We just need people to get up, get out, and start taking action. And it's any way that you see fit. Great. Well, right, Dad? Thanks so much for coming on. Thank you so much for hosting us. Thank you. Thank you. We love the show. Catching up on two years is been a lot of like, should I go inside or should I sit in my car and ride the last 20 minutes out? So, like, thank you for what y'all do. are amazing people. And thank you for giving us a platform. We appreciate it. Absolutely. Anytime. Good night.