trump Killing Our Libraries, Our Museums, Our Knowledge

This is not an April Fools. trump's fascist regime is doing everything they can to shut down our nation's libraries and museums (via Andrew Limbong at NPR):

The Institute of Museum and Library Services has placed its entire staff on administrative leave.

The IMLS is a relatively small federal agency, with around 70 employees, that awards grant funding to museums and libraries across the United States.

This month, President Trump named Keith E. Sonderling — the deputy secretary of labor — the new acting director of IMLS. This followed Trump's previous executive order shrinking seven federal agencies, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

According to a statement from AFGE Local 3403, which represents IMLS workers, the agency's staff was notified by email about being placed on paid administrative leave for up to 90 days, after a "brief meeting between DOGE staff and IMLS leadership." Employees had to turn in government property, and email accounts were disabled.

How, you might ask, does something at the federal level affect public libraries that are funded at the city/county/state levels?

The IMLS is an independent federal agency that provides grants to libraries and museums across the country. According to the American Library Association, the IMLS provides "the majority of federal library funds." The IMLS says it awarded $266 million in grants and research funding to cultural institutions last year. This money goes to help staff, fund maintenance and create new programs. In comparison, the projected 2025 budget for the National Endowment for the Arts was $210 million.

For instance, in 2023 the IMLS funded projects such as a workforce training program, including internships, at the Museum of Discovery and Science in Florida, a pilot program in Iowa to help library staff address patrons' psychological needs and basic library functions (books, computers, internet) for various Native American tribes. You can find programs that the IMLS has funded to libraries and museums in your state through its dashboard.

That amount of $266 million is a blip in the overall federal budget. It's not wasteful or distracting from other funding needs, and yet these bastards went for that - along with all the other millions in social aid that were going to our communities - because it offends them.

Think of all those field trips you did in science or history classes back in elementary, middle, and/or high school. Think of all those writing assignments that required you to research the public library for topics on countries, or science projects for the school fairs. All gone, or about to go away, because billionaires dare not let public services go to the actual public.

While most of us are paying taxes at the state and county levels to pay for public services like libraries and museums, it's often not enough - especially in Republican-controlled states that try to keep their tax rates on property or income as low as possible to appease the Club For Greed types - to cover large-scale services for summer reading programs in low-income counties or to maintain local museums that promote ecology, history, or other sciences.

Cutting back on IMLS funding - shutting it all down like this - is going to force states and counties to either increase their own tax rates - which some of them can't do without overcoming local partisan anger - or cut services which is the path of least resistance for most local governments.

We are getting punished by ignorant, angry partisan leadership that wants the majority of us in poorer counties and states to sink deeper into ignorance and anger of our own.

Goddamn trump. Goddamn the greedheads like Elon Musk and the anti-government assholes who've been railing against our nation's long-standing efforts to provide public services to our communities.

As a librarian, this hurts me not just in the pocketbook - I dread how this is going to gut some of our state funding that supplements our county money - but in my soul. Providing library services - reading, literacy, entertainment, computer tutorials and one-on-one help - defines who I am as a person in my town, in my county, in my world.

And it's only going to get worse from here.

What the hell, America. For the LOVE OF GOD and for the LOVE OF YOUR COMMUNITIES and your families, defend your local libraries! Defend your right to read, to learn, to enlighten yourselves!

Defend Your Libraries in 2022

Well, this is unsettling (Via Nikoel Hytrek at the Iowa Starting Line).

The effort to ban books has expanded beyond the classroom now to public libraries, with a new GOP-backed bill adding librarians to their target for prosecution and civil fines of those they believe give access to materials that are “obscene or harmful to minors.”

A collection of 14 Iowa Republican representatives introduced a bill Tuesday that makes it illegal for a person affiliated with a public school or public library to knowingly spread “material the person knows or reasonably should know, is obscene or harmful to minors.” Colleges and universities are exempted.

The penalty would be an aggravated misdemeanor, upgraded to a class D felony if the person was previously guilty of this.

Aggravated misdemeanors can be punishable by up to two years in jail and a fine between $625 and $6,250. Class D felonies are punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine between $750 and $7,500.

In short, Iowa Republicans want to turn librarianship into a criminal profession. Putting us up there with robbers, drug dealers, and people who talk at the theater.

You want to know how this game will get played if Iowa makes this a law?

Say a mature-looking young adult comes in, claiming they're a college student, asking for a book on sexual identity from the 306 Dewey Decimal (DDC) shelves. As a librarian, I would direct them to the shelf area, show them the titles we've got there. And then WHAMMO the "college student" turns out to be a 17-year-old high schooler on "dual enrollment" with the local community college and they call in the cops to arrest you for "knowingly spreading obscene material" to a minor.

You think that if this law passes, the courts will only rely on the fines to punish librarians, I mean who wants to send a sad little librarian to jail over an obscene book? Thing is you WILL get judges who will punish sad little librarians "to send a message," because those judges may agree with the Far Right religious conservatives who want to ban "obscene" books from the face of the Earth. Even then, those fines aren't cheap: A full-time librarian usually makes between $35,000 to $45,000 a year. Even a $625 fine is cutting into rent or mortgage, not to mention the costs of fighting these charges in court. Want to take care of $1000 fines every month? There goes most of a monthly paycheck for librarians. This would bankrupt most of us.

Oho, you say. If this law passes, perhaps it would be safer to pull all the obscene books off the shelves, right?

You want to know what these Far Right religious extremists think is obscene? Anything about gay and lesbian and trans culture, even when those books aren't graphic in detail. Young Adult books about sexual identity that don't even get as far as kissing scenes will still get targeted.

Anything about sexuality in general, even straight-up medical textbooks detailing human anatomy, and sociology/psychology textbooks. Because even those research-type books will offend those wingnuts.

Anything about "Critical Race Theory" because God forbid we upset Far Right people who believe that pointing out systemic racism is obscene to them.

Anything artistic from the Fine Arts (700s DDC) shelf range that just happens to show human nudity (Note: Most public libraries already self-sensor themselves from anything sexually graphic. But the religious nuts will go after anything that even hints at sexuality).

And it won't be the cheap and tawdry books these wingnuts will go after. Prize-winning authors like Toni Morrison and Ernest Hemingway - about a hundred writers and about a thousand literary works that make up a public library's core collection - will get labeled "obscene" and make it impossible for us to keep our doors open to everybody else who wants to use the library for their reading (and entertainment) needs.

And this is just the books: Many libraries have DVD movies available - yes, not everybody's gone to streaming yet - and half of those movies will be "obscene" in the wingnuts' eyes.

A good library - school, public, college - is one with a broad range of books from fiction to nonfiction, able to provide research and literary information to the communities we serve. This means we have to cover - even with a handful of titles - a lot of topics and reading interests for a diverse population, some of whom DO WANT to read books that others might find grotesque.

Again, most libraries DO evaluate and self-censor when necessary: For example, most libraries will not stock The Illustrated Joy of Sex because we know community standards won't abide it (Also, it will disappear off the shelf). We also won't stock The Turner Diaries, not only because it's openly racist and Anti-Semitic but it also contains bomb-making instructions violating laws banning such information (also also, that book is poorly plotted with one-dimensional characters, bland sex, and suffers many grammatic errors).

But what this Iowa law will do is make librarians vulnerable to ANY accusation about ANY other book that most would find benign but what the extremists will view as dangerous. Librarians could weed out every "offensive" book we could think of, and the wingnuts will STILL find something on the shelf to offend them and punish us.

And this just won't stop in Iowa. If this law passes, and it survives every court challenge - even the Supreme Court where a 6-3 conservative lineup could well side with the religious extremists - every other Republican-controlled state is going to pass their own version. Half the nation could well see our public libraries shut down due to the threat of prison and bankruptcy facing their staffers.

And who would win then? Without public libraries, children and adult literacy withers. Public access to computers goes away, hurting poor people searching online for jobs or families trying to file for food stamps. No more children's programs. No more community centers.

Libraries matter to people. Libraries define a city, support their counties. We're a public service that people enjoy having, because they often get good results from what we help them with. You can hear people whine about the post office or waiting forever at the DMV, but you don't see those kind of complaints about libraries.

Except from the ones who hate libraries for doing the one thing the religious extremists despise. We give our communities the diversity of experience that shames those who would rather keep us ignorant, uninformed, and fearful.

Well, to hell with those haters.    

You're gonna have to pry my library catalog from my cold dead hands, you bloody wingnuts.

Now is the time for all honest Americans who want to keep copies of Harry Potter stories and books on Tarot and Wicca to join your library's Friends group. Now is the time to defend your library and your community!

To The Shelves! To the Shelves! Defend the books!