In Lafayette, Louisiana, the library board has been “stacked” with political appointees by the Parish Council and this has resulted in a highly politicized board with an extremist political agenda to defund the library and ban books.
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The Parish Council must appoint library board members who will not politicize the library, its contents, or its staff. Please send an email to today to end the politicization of the library board.
We are asking for library board members who want to increase access to library resources for the communities they serve. Trustees should help fund libraries, engage the public, and improve access, not cut existing services and ban books
Book Banning
The Board has attempted to support the banning of books based on their own political beliefs and has even gone so far as creating secret committee to ban books behind closed doors.
When the book review process did not ban books that the board politically disagreed with, library board president Robert Judge proposed taking away all library representatives from the review process, leaving it entirely up to the board to decide whether to ban the book. After some discussion, the board voted to have the subcommittee made up of one librarian and two board members.
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This effectively means the board has elected themselves the arbiters of what kind of literature should be allowed to be accessed by the public. The librarians, who are experts on this subject, will always be outnumbered on these decisions.
One resident said she “trusts doctors to treat her medical condition, not the hospital’s board members. Librarians are experts who have studied library science and have years of experience, while board members admitted they hadn’t read one of the books they were asked to ban.”
Any act to ban books or videos some people find offensive, including the recent vote to stack the reconsideration board with political appointees, is tantamount to censorship.
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Free Speech
The far right agenda of the board was on display when Lafayette Parish Sheriff’s deputies were directed to arrest Matthew Humphrey at a four-hour meeting of the Library Board of Control. Humphrey’s arrest came more than two hours into the meeting when he interrupted a small town conservative blogger (who doesn't live in Lafayette) who stood to speak about "The V-Word" by Amber J. Keyser. Which is one of the books he sought to remove from the library’s collection over sexual content in order to drum up content for his website.
Politicizing Library Programs
Teresa Elberson, a long-time employee of the Lafayette Parish library and current system director, stepped down from her post suddenly on Friday, January 29th. Members of the board believed that speakers she’d lined up to discuss a history of voting rights with her community were too “far left” and did not represent the community at large. The library applied for a grant through the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. The $2700 was rejected by the board because the discussion of voting rights would not be balanced. The board further made clear their disappointment in Elberson for not inviting two speakers of “opposing perspectives” to balance the discussion. But what is the other side to Voting Rights? Who did they think should come speak against voting rights?
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