\n<\/p>\n
To protect libraries, we need to fight defunding as hard as we fight book bans.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The war on libraries is being fought on two fronts. On the first, we have extremists<\/a> calling on librarians to repent for the sin of building collections and offering programming related to LGBTQ+ experiences. Proud Boys show up armed<\/a> to protest Drag Queen Story Hours. The cops are called<\/a> to investigate allegedly \u201cobscene\u201d materials on the shelves during Pride month.<\/p>\n The second front, perhaps less spectacular but no less damaging, is the ongoing war against public education that has put libraries in the crosshairs. The fight for public institutions must address both points of attack and requires a political analysis and project that moves beyond the issue of book banning.<\/p>\n Just as they did in the 1990s<\/a>, conservative activists are pairing their ostensible \u201cculture war\u201d with a concerted policy focus on privatizing public sector goods. In Utah, right-wing parent groups followed the contemporary game plan, pushing librarians<\/a> to remove books from shelves, claiming that content acknowledging the existence of queer life was prima facie obscene.<\/p>\n Last January, the state passed HB 374 banning \u201csensitive materials\u201d from public schools. A month later, the legislature debated HB 331, which would have transferred $36 million from per-pupil spending to a Hope Scholarship Fund that could be used to pay for private and religious school tuition and expenses related to homeschooling. (That bill ultimately failed, with some legislatures arguing there are already multiple ways that the state funds private and parochial education.) When I talked with school librarians in the state about what they were facing, they were very clear on this point: Book banning goes hand in hand with the voucher movement.<\/p>\n A similar story is unfolding in South Carolina. Much of the media coverage has focused on the conflict at the Travelers Rest branch of the Greenville County Library System, where Allen Hill, the head of the library board, has been clear that LGBTQ+ materials should not be highlighted<\/a> or even included in collections. On a visit to the library during Banned Books Week, a library staffer told me Hill had picked up the bookmarks that staff had made to promote the event and threw them in the garbage can. Public librarians have been forced to organize against a state legislative proposal banning \u201csexual materials<\/a>\u201d from children\u2019s sections. The Palmetto Promise Institute (PPI), a right-wing think tank, calls this a \u201cclash of worldviews\u201d between organizations like the National Education Association and accrediting agencies and the individual families who want to protect their children from \u201cpornographic\u201d materials (always a category that only the right is qualified to define).<\/p>\n