Hello everyone. This is Diane Rasmussen Makati with UK column. I'm delighted to be joined today by Dan Kleiman of Safe Libraries. He is based in New Jersey and the United States, and in my opinion, he's been doing some wonderful work over the last several years trying to make sure that things are safe in libraries for our children over in America.
And I hope today that he can give us some inspiration to do some similar work that needs to be done just as much over here in the UK as it needs to be done still in America. So, Dan, again, thank you. Welcome to UK column. I'd like to just hand it over to you a little bit to maybe introduce yourself and give our viewers a little bit of introduction to what you've been doing over the past several years to try to keep children safe.
I'm Dan Kleiman. I'm and I run Safe Libraries and I, I also happen to run World Library Association, which is new and growing, and I've been doing this for about 25 years. It started when my kid went to kindergarten and began to read a book that was completely inappropriate and brought it to the principal. The principal said it's twice as bad as what you said, and I'm removing it from the library. And that began my journey as to what's going on in schools with
books and children. And it just kept going downhill from there. The things that I have learned over the course of these decades, frankly, have come to basically maybe ahead right now because I'm actually being sued at the moment by a librarian for the statements that I make in which I basically respond or report on what the librarians are saying. And I pointed out to the public. And that's not favored right now.
So who am I right now? I'm the, I'm not liked by a lot of librarians in in the United States, but only those that are part of the problem that we have with giving inappropriate material to children. Other than that, I'm just a dad like everybody else. I do this in my spare time like probably everybody else does who does my kind of thing.
And you know, we're up against an organization that's well funded, has offices, has a donations in the millions of dollars in which they specifically say they're going to help librarians, soup parents. Well, now I'm on the receiving end of that and that's who I am. I'm just dead like everybody else. I've just been at it for 25 years. That's really amazing. I mean, that's a long time to be working on A cause and and we just see it unfortunately
getting worse. It seems to me that the pressure from these these groups that you're talking about and these types of librarians has become more and more over time. And I have to say myself, I've been a qualified librarian since 2001, and having worked as a practicing librarian for several years and then a professor teaching future librarians.
As someone who never worked directly in children's libraries, I've always worked in university libraries and never had a really desire to work with children's materials or children. Nothing against children, it was just that always my dream was to work in universities and work with all of the knowledge and the information available in university setting. This has all.
Yeah, this has all come to a big surprise to me in the past few years as I've started to look into it and, and as as a result of me discovering what was going on, I've been cancelled from the profession myself. And as someone who loved my profession and still does, it's been very painful for me to have these people kind of pushed out, pushed myself out because I'm here saying, I don't think that this is this is the right thing to do necessarily and that it should be left up to the
parents. So I think it just shows us how how pressure filled these groups can be. There aren't very many full professors of librarianship in the world. And I'm one of them. And I'm losing my career in that as we speak. So I'm sort of reshaping myself as in a different direction with UK column in other ways, in other ways like that. And it But I think, you know, you've done some research as well into what's funding the organizations.
And I think our viewers in particular would be interested to hear what you have learned about how the American Library Association has funded, what's actually going behind, what's driving the agenda financially. Can you talk about that a little bit? Believe it or not, I'm not an expert on that, but the I think the majority of their money, well a lot of their money comes from membership dues, although the membership numbers have been shrinking.
They've even just acknowledged that in a recent message, I forget where I saw that, where they're talking about other library associations making a dent. Maybe they're referring to World Library Association, but I think the Do's is a large portion. But they also get lots of big donations from the Ford Foundation, from the Open Society, from George Soros, $1 million came in from Jay-Z and $1 million from Robert Kraft who owns the Patriots.
And the Ala dedicated that money specifically to suing parents. And so they're also a a tax free organization. So they're getting lots of benefits just by being tax free. Yeah, I'm not an expert on where they get their funding. I'm I'm, I'm more focused on what they're doing to communities and especially children and even librarians,
frankly. But but that's that's where it comes from lots of donations that they use as they choose, so to speak, and they choose to do it to well, what what happened to you? You got like pushed out of the out of your professional organization. Syllabi believe that's kind of what they that's what they do. This is a standard practice over here. This is why a lot of people who are in favor of these kinds of policies that harm children are outspoken.
But the other ones who are not in favor, and there are plenty, they noted, kind of keep silent. And what's interesting to me as well is the hypocrisy of it all. I, I don't know so much about this part of it going on, what's going on in America right now. But I know for example, in Scotland where I am the all of these things are in the books. I do want to get into a little bit about some of the books. I've covered it some on the news, but I want to hear from you because I know you know
quite a bit about that. Unfortunately for you, but for example, there's been pressure over here from librarians and booksellers in Scotland to not provide gender critical books in the adult sections, which is where, you know, in my opinion, if you're over 18, you can read anything that you want. And if you want to read people against the trans, the transgender kind of agenda and those things, you should have the right to do that. But they're saying, well, that's
offensive to the trans people. And so we can't have gender critical books, as we call them in the adult sections of the bookstores and the libraries in Scotland. But we can put anything that we think we want to put in front of children and hypocrisy and all of it just is incredible to me.
If we're really about fighting censorship, then we should allow people who have The Who are of age to decide what they want to read to do it. And, and I, I really don't, it's hard to not get past the idea of this sexualization of children and, and, and grooming that you talked about. It's hard to really start to see it as anything else. It is hypocritical, but it's not like a hypocrisy thing.
It's more like they have an intentional, they're making a potential, I'm sorry, an effort to politically change things because they believe that librarianship is not neutral and they're there to promote their view of the world, which is not really the view of the world. It's just their view of the world. And how they do it is with these kinds of books and the balance of books in, in school libraries or bookstores, as you mentioned, and, and things like that.
That's what's going on here. It's a, it's a ideological war that's been going on for a long time and lots of institutions, not just the, you know, the libraries associations. Yeah, I've had conversations about this with Brian Garish, who's one of the, he's the founder of UK column and he's on the news with me on Mondays and he's been seeing my reports on libraries. And as Brian has said, libraries are central to knowledge, right, to information, to learning
about the world. And so it's to him, it seems like a logical place where they would start to attack and would have really strong attacks and go in through the librarians and through the organizations. Because capturing the libraries means that you've captured the knowledge. And if, and if you don't want the world to have the, you know, the right knowledge, whether it's age appropriate or anything else, then you, you know, you've kind of got society right there
by attacking the libraries. And I, I think that's why they're starting there. That's exactly right. That's why, for example, you might have a community, let's say they're mostly people who don't want to harm children, but there are always going to be a few who do. And those people somehow coincidentally get on the library boards or the school boards.
That's that's why you have a, a mostly fine community, but the people that want to push the inappropriate stuff on kids, they somehow find themselves on the boards. That's why the principal thing that people need to do to reverse this trend is to get on the boards and and keep those other kind of people out by taking your own body running for election or getting selected or whatever it is and getting
yourself a seat on a board. That is the number one way to make change going on. Once you get the board and you're in control, so to speak, then you can remove the policies that are harmful to the children. Just because our British audience might not be familiar with how our our systems work in America, can you maybe explain a little bit about the sort of the city councils and the library
boards and how well that works? Yes, libraries in the United States have been around for a long time, something to do with some kind of a war that England and America used to have. But so some of those libraries are are are built like differently than most libraries. Most libraries are now kind of instruments of law. They were created by a law somehow, usually for the use and benefit of the public, not just for anything goes, but that's what it is.
And the laws usually set up a means of taking care of the library like trustees, boards of trustees. And so under the law, those trustees may be selected or they may be elected, depending on how the law is set up. So some boards are selected and some are elected. And then the boards kind of have defined duties within the law of what they are supposed to do in order to take care of the
library. That has caused a lot of problems because sometimes the library directors who are hired by the boards feel that they control the libraries. And don't worry, board, we'll take care of it and we'll do whatever we think is appropriate. And whatever we think is appropriate is often not appropriate. And the board has just given up its rights to somebody who's just taken over, so to speak.
So boards need to, when they become board members, look at the law, find out what powers they have under their existing laws and apply them and make sure somebody isn't taking them away from them. So that's how you get on boards here in the United States, either by selection or election, under some kind of a statute or law generally.
And so once you get onto the boards, I, I've read some of this in, well, Amanda Jones is very hard to follow, very hard to read book, not because it was at a high level of, of, of intellect, but because it was just hard to follow and hard to read. She mentioned some things about the boards and that's what she has said was the, when she made her her big proclamation about censorship in at her local Public Library board. And then that's when she said it all started with Michael Lunsford.
So if you went to a board meeting and you spoke out against these, these kinds of things, I, I've seen some videos of someone both in the US and in Canada that has a similar system and it's, it seems like they can get quite intense in terms of people arguing on either side. Have you ever seen those, those kinds of, I know you've been to some of these meetings. If you can maybe explain some of that, because I don't think politics are quite as outwardly obvious in British politics.
People aren't quite the same over here, but it seems like some of them can get quite heated in some of the discussions. I've seen some of these videos of people actually reading out the text of some of these books and showing the pictures and they get shut down. It's it's incredible. Have you had any of those kinds of experiences? I've had numerous those kinds of experiences and part of and, and I'll tell you about some of them in a moment, but I just want to tell you how it happens.
It happens because the American Library Association essentially works with multiple other organizations and with their own people to get out a lot of people to show up at these meetings to crown out the local crowd, essentially. I was involved in one in Glen Ridge, NJ, for example, where there were hundreds of people out there all supporting keeping some kind of an inappropriate book in the library. It was a Public Library. They can have whatever books
they want. A school library is kind of different. But anyway, there were so many people there with signs and, and, and people cheering and people wearing the same shirts. And then people when they would line up, they would say get in line. So we get the first tickets so that we can speak first. And, and they wanted to make sure that they crowded out everybody. That's what they do.
I met somebody. And then they have people show up. The librarians get people to show up, like the mother of George M Johnson, who wrote This Boy Ain't Blue or wherever that book is. I was the one who saw the mother at the at this Park Ridge, NJ library and recognized who she was, had a delightful conversation with her because she's adorable. And then as soon as that happened, the media realized who it was and began taking photographs of her.
The media was probably called out by the American Library Association too. She gets to speak for three minutes, even though everybody got everybody else got to speak for two minutes. And this is the kind of mass gang up that happens because the American Library Association has been creating local organizations, has been a funding and helping and and building up local organizations, hundreds of them throughout the United States to then pressure
and bully boards. And in fact, in that particular case, there was so much bullying going on that the people who were in favor of the action they wanted on the books were too intimidated to even show up at the meeting. I was the only person who spoke up in favor of those people, not necessarily in favor of their point, but just the in favor of them having the right to have a point.
And for my speaking up at that meeting, the New Jersey ACLU decided to say how awful it was that somebody spoke up. And the other side right, They're all for free speech, but when you use free speech, suddenly they don't want to hear it and they crowd you out. This is what these meetings are like. Some of them can get very violent. Some people can be removed from rooms by police and things like that.
I was with John, John Amanchakwu from I think it's I know God dot US and he goes around the country here in the in the United States to various school boards to read these books to them. And sometimes he gets escorted out. I was there at one of those meetings. I, I filmed the whole thing, frankly. And they just don't want to hear anything that that goes against what the majority of people are.
And that majority is created by the American Library Association. The locals aren't activated to get in to get this active. No, it's just the American Library Association. They get out their ACAACLU people, they're PEN America people, they're National Coalition, they get censorship people. It goes on and on and on. And suddenly you're a school board that gets inundated with hundreds of people for a meeting. And sometimes things that you say in these meetings will get you sued.
Parents in Roxbury, New Jersey, for example, were sued by the school librarian because they said these books were inappropriate and shouldn't be in the library. And somehow they use that as the excuse to sue the parents because the American Library Association funds these lawsuits. So on the QT quietly. And so even if you do show up and speak out, you could be sued. Oh, look at that. I was just sued a few days ago for speaking up at board meetings. What do you know?
This is how they operate here in the United States. It can be wild. That's incredible. We, we don't have those kinds of things over here in, in the UK. So I, I tried to tell people over here, you know, American meetings are, are quite different and it's the same with the campaign. I know I was sharing a lot of clips with people just selection that just happened of, you know, the Trump rallies and the Kamala rallies and and we just nothing
like that happens over here. But it's it's quite entertaining to to people that I've shared it with them trying to imagine what it's like to be at some of these things. It's just, it's just so incredibly different. But I mean, at least I would say that you have an advantage over there because you do have people that are speaking out. You have Moms for Liberty, you have all of these groups that
are trying to do something. And I think that's a cultural difference over here, which is people are less likely to want to speak out. And it's it's not anything negative. It's just a difference in how people do things over here. But I think we need more of it because we're getting in some of these these same books, we're having the same situations, but if we don't have anyone speaking up, then it's just going to continue to get worse.
So I'm hoping you can give some people some inspiration through through this discussion. You have to speak out and there has to be enough of you to make a difference, right? Right now, people in England, I can't believe you could say something online and then you can go to jail for more time than somebody who raped some kids. That's England is crazy right now. So I don't know what to say about that. I'm not an expert on England, but it looks like you're having
a lot of troubles over there. But I think if enough parents say something and come out, they can't possibly jail all of you. So, so you need to come out, you need to make Moms for Liberty types of groups, get people, you know, organized. So this is what the librarians do. They, they're now into community organizing in the United States. Right in, well, I won't get into that right now, but you need to
get organized too. Essentially make groups like Moms for Liberty. Who knows, maybe call them Moms for Liberty and and start getting into these school boards or whatever you call them over there and make some changes. Yeah, we have a few, a few people doing things.
We have our viewers will be familiar with the chemistry wood in Wales, for example, who's been calling out things, not just library books, but just, you know, that we have these things over here called basically relationship, sexual education, health curriculum. They're slightly different
throughout the UK, but. We have things like, we've seen examples through Kim Isherwood and Wales, for example, that they have exercises where they're teaching teachers to use play dough to mold genitals together. And that's supposed to be a classroom activity just so you like. These are things that are absolutely ridiculously disgusting in my opinion. And, and children have absolutely no, no, no reason to do this. But these are the kinds of
things that are happening. But it takes people like him around the country, I think, for more of us to get organized. And that's what I'm trying to help advocate for. And remember when you're getting organized, who, who's the person you're protecting here? You're protecting children. They have nobody else to protect them. It's just you. And you have these groups that are trying to indoctrinate them. So it's not like somebody else can take care of himself. You don't have to get involved.
It's children. There's nobody else who can take care of them. You need to get involved. You need to do it for the children. That's why you do it. That's why I do it. That's why everybody does it. And we keep it. We keep at it and we keep doing it with a smile because we're doing the right thing and we're going to eventually get our way and stop these children from being indoctrinated. Somebody's got to stand up there and do it, and you're doing it
for kids. Just keep that in mind and you'll keep doing it. But that's what I try to keep in mind. I, I guess if we could get into some examples of some of the books that are in your mind. I've done some of this myself on some of my previous UK column reports, which I will link to in the final description, I think for our interview when it goes out. But what are some examples that just come to your mind that maybe you've, you've spoken out about?
Because I know you share a lot on your on your Twitter X account. There's a book called This book is Gay. No, no, no, let's talk about it. Let's talk about well, there is a book called This book is gay, but I want to talk about let's talk about it. This book is pervasively vulgar and educationally unsuitable. 2 words I use because they come from the United States Supreme Court case in 1982 called Board of Education versus PICO, whatever. They're educationally unsuitable
and pervasively vulgar. Now, in New Jersey, there's also an obscenity law for children under 18, and these books violate that obscenity law. And the obscenity law would basically make a crime out of what everything that school librarians are doing and put them in jail, which I think is a great idea if they're breaking the obscenity law.
In fact, it is so well known that it breaks the obscenity law that the American Library Association is trying to get legislation passed all throughout the United States and in New Jersey, which specifically adds an exemption or librarians against the obscenity law so that they can continue to teach them anything they want and violate the obscenity. So what am I talking about
violates the obscenity. This book, for example, you know, I'm thinking to myself, how do I say this without being cut off by the sensors or whatever, but there is material in there that is absolutely so inappropriate for children. It may be fine for adults who are really into this kind of stuff that whatever, but but children, it's really
inappropriate. For example, how to use objects with regard to your behind, shall we say, and, and how to make sure that you don't get harmed by them and how to make sure you clean them and how to make sure you have fun with them and what to do with them. I mean, it goes into such great detail. It's, it's unbelievable. It's just inappropriate for a school book, which is the issue basically, right? In a Public Library, that's anything goes almost. But in a school library, that is
inappropriate. And the school board approved it because the American Library Association got hundreds of people to come out. And not only that, the American Library Association was so proud of its effort in that particular community that it's. It's multiple presidents talk all the time about how community organizing really works to sway the thoughts of the local community boards and things like
that. Yeah. They use it as an example of how to better indoctrinate and sexualized children is essentially what they're doing. So that is I think that answers your question. Yeah, I, I know you can't get into a lot of detail because I've had similar, similar concerns when I've tried to cover it on new segments of how much can I show? But I think, you know, it is important to, to get people to
see these things. And there's been a couple of suggestions that well, Michael Longsford gave me that is it the book looks website, some other websites where you can actually look up these books and see exactly what's in them. And the the thing for me that's interesting is as an educator, when I see that it says, well, this is age appropriate. It might be age appropriate in terms of the level of the language or maybe it's a picture book, but the content is not age
appropriate at all whatsoever. So it really bothers me when they say, well, this is for three to six year olds, but actually when you look at what they're doing, they're starting to explain, you know, pride parades and these kinds of things that they really don't need to know about when they're that age in. Addition when when the librarians talk about age appropriate, what they don't tell you is that the American Library Association works for
decades to ensure that any information parents can get about the age appropriateness of books is removed. The American Library Association, for example, censored its own website once it realized that it was giving out ratings to Common Sense Media, which was providing a rating from 1:00 to 5:00 on the explicitness of books.
So the Ala had censored from their own website and sent out a message that library schools must remove common sense media links and a state library associations must remove common
sense Media links. So they're not only using a weird definition of of age appropriate, but they're actively ensuring that organizations like booklooks.org, which provide information to parents about the sexual explicit nature or the inappropriateness of these materials are actually kept out of libraries, out of everywhere.
It it's almost like diabolical almost to think that not, you know, not only do parents have enough time making up a decision about something, but there's a library association that's going out of its way to remove materials and information that the parents could use to make up their own mind for their own children. That's the real problem here is these people are pushing their way into communities nationwide. It's just their view and it's harming people.
So what do you think is at the heart of why they're doing this? There is an article written by a professor at the University of Houston called Rita Koganson which goes into details as to why the Ala is doing this. And they, the Ala is doing it to take away rights from parents in order to better indoctrinate children for political reasons related to the 60s movement. I know that sounds crazy. That is what's in the article that did you know that I make available to people.
I'm not an expert on, you know, the 60s movement, shall we say. But that is an article that I have read which goes into detail about how this stuff did start about 60 years ago within the American Library Association. This is why we're here today. You and I are talking now because this, this inappropriate stuff is sweeping the United States. So then it sweeps other countries because we have
somehow big influence. Our wonderful library associations, which are harming children, have somehow swept into other countries. That's why we're here. This is why they're doing it. It's for political gain, just like lots of other organizations have been taken over for political gain. The Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts. Maybe they're the Girl Guides in England, churches. Lots of things have been taken over by this kind of ideology. Well, now it's. It's in libraries now and and
it's targeted at our children. So, Speaking of political gain, what can you tell us about Emily Drabinsky? Emily Drabinsky is the current immediate past president of the American Library Association. Last year, when she became Two years ago, when she became the president-elect, she tweeted out how happy she was that a Marxist lesbian, her words, not mine.
A Marxist lesbian became the president of the American Library Association. And something like, imagine the power that we can wield to make things better or something like that. Solidarity.
I love you, mom. She's eventually removed that tweet and sort of said, I'm sorry I ever tweeted it because it brought too much attention to what we're actually doing in the American Library Association. Emily Drabinsky has gone on to attend attend a socialism conference in in in Chicago where she met with socialists and communists and said we need your help in turning libraries into sites for socialism
training. This is the head of the American Library Association going to a socialism conference saying to actual hundreds of actual socialists, we need your help. Fortunately, we, you know, how do I make these statements? I got to tell you, I make all these statements because this stuff is recorded and reported. In this case, this was recorded and reported by Doctor Karlan Borisenko. So you can go to my website or her website. Add here Emily Drabinsky saying this to all these people.
It's quite remarkable. That's the problem at the American Library Association. The next library president elected happens to be Marxist. The president-elect right now happens to be Marxist and non binary. So kids are in for a real treat soon. And the next set of people who are being elected, they're, they're considering for the next election, they are openly out and Marxist as well too. So this is what's happening in the American Library Association.
And they're bragging about it. And then when they get caught at it, they say, oh, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. It's a little bit too late at that point. That's the the problem because yeah, conferences are recorded. That's just a common thing. Everyone does it now. So whatever you say at a conference, it's it's out there and it's probably everywhere on YouTube for everyone to find.
I'm gonna give you a tip. I'm gonna here's a tip for everybody out there in England and everywhere else listening to this on how to how to find out information about what these librarians are and what's they're doing. What are they doing? I'm, I do this, A lot of other people don't, but I do it. And therefore I find stuff which becomes newsworthy. So I'm going to tell you what my secret is. The secret is just what you just
said. They record things, go to the library conferences online, look them up, listen to the speeches, and after a while you'll get used to what's going on and maybe you're going to actually hear something that is truly unbelievable. Then you report it.
That's what I've done. For example, I've heard the the director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom and the Freedom to Read Foundation at the American Library Association, training librarians, that before stuff becomes legislation, we need to have sustained messaging, like lying about the materials that the kids are reading. And we need to take away the idea that these are, and then she says inappropriate for minors and corrects herself sexually inappropriate for minors.
And we need to reframe it as diversity and inclusion. This is the training that I found on a YouTube video by just looking at all their stuff at all. You guys can do this too. And that thing that I found and published became the subject of a U.S. Senate review on banned books in the United States. There's no such thing since 1963. And and it became the subject. And Senator Mike Lee talked
about that. He played that video that I just told you and he said, look, they just said the quieter part, the quiet part out loud. They are grooming students and they know it and they're sexualizing them. So frankly, when I say they're grooming and basically using what a senator said during a hearing on a banned books hearing, that's that's what they're doing. So I'm not making it up again, I'm just following what the our elected leaders are saying about this.
But the point of this is you can go into where your library associations are having their conferences and you can look at them. Nobody else does, just librarians. And you can look at them and they say things that are damning in those in those tapes, and then you can find your own stuff and make your own way in, in exposing what's going on in your own areas. Yeah, I, I do that now as well, which is interesting.
I feel like I'm spying on my own profession when I see these things that they're, they're coming out with. And you know, just, I, I know that obviously you're focusing on the safety of children. But one of the things that I see as watching what the universities are doing, which is all of this changing language decolonization, which is really
destruction. If you listen to James Lindsay's work at New Discourses, that they're changing what things are called in library catalogs at the university level so that ultimately nobody will be able to find anything, right? But my favorite example that I use is from a university here, and it's in England, the University of Manchester. And they talked about in a webinar how they were decolonizing their catalogue and their collection.
One of the things that they did, for example, was change the word costume to traditional dress because costume is now an offensive word. And so it's fine to give sexual materials to children, but it's not fine to use the word costume because the word costume is offensive. I. Don't know what to say, It's
hysterical. I know that's all you can do is laugh at it sometimes because it does actually get this ridiculous when you start to see what what is going on and what is considered to be a problem of what is no longer considered to be a problem. It's it's yeah, it's very strange. But that is a very key point for people to see what's going on out there is to see what you know, if you have state library associations as well are have also the annual conferences. I, I lived in Texas for a long
time. That's where I did my education and I worked as a librarian in Texas. And that's the second largest library association just after Ala. So they have quite a bit of coverage of what they're doing in Texas. At the same time, that's a question I have for you personally. The World Library Association lists itself as being based in Texas, but you're in New Jersey. So I'm wondering what what connection you have to Texas just to someone who lived in the Dallas area for a very long
time. Texas Library Association is the largest library association in the United States. As you mentioned, State Library association. I reported something about them that was so unbelievable by listening to recordings and, and I'm I'm getting to your point in
a moment. I reported that because I just said you got to listen to tapes, that they're training the librarians how to keep the parents and legislators from knowing what's in the books by intentionally using their private devices and private Wi-fi's and private e-mail addresses in order to talk about school business. But do in a way that the public can never get under open public records acts or open government laws.
So I was shocked by this, to have somebody just say it out in the open, but they're talking to themselves. You see, I just happened to look at it too. And so I reported on it and they made a big story and so big that the Texas Library Association itself protected its Twitter account. It was Twitter at that time. It protected its account for I think like 3 weeks or something like that. And then I guess after they cleaned it up, came back online again and they blocked me.
So now I said, look, I'm a disclosing this inappropriate. I'm sorry. I'm disclosing the stuff that they know they're doing to basically harm children. That's why they're having this conference.
It's coming from the head of the Texas Library Association, who's also a member of executive member on the Freedom to Read Foundation. And, and, and they're blocking me and they're exposing me. Oh yes, I also exposed that they had a drag queen for their keynote speaker, a keynote speaker at a library conference that had just come back from COVID. I think the keynote speaker was a drag queen. It's like, look at this.
And so they blocked me. I decided at that point I was going to base my library association in Texas because it's the biggest library, state library association. They're doing terrible things to children.
And it's going to be based in Texas because I want to be there when the time comes to finally, after years of growth as a new organization, to finally, you know, make sure that people are now actually supporting local control, local standards and local law instead of law standards and control that comes from Chicago, IL. But, and it's the World Library Association, right? Just so our viewers can look it up. What?
worldlibraryassociation.org. Yeah, you, you should, you have to realize, why are we doing this? Why is mom's celebrity out there doing this? Why am I? There's Monster America, There's mass resistance. There's no left turn in education. There's International Women's Foundation or something. Why are we all doing this? Because, because the American Library Association has been pushing this inappropriate stuff on kids.
If they weren't doing this, if they weren't sneaking things behind parents backs, if they weren't taking away the rights for parents to see what's explicit, we would not be here. We would not be having this conversation. There wouldn't be a problem. They've brought this on themselves. We're here because they're doing these inappropriate things. Then, by the way, they call us extremists, right? That's how it works.
They push this inappropriate stuff on kids for 60 years by design, and then when parents finally catch on and fight back, the parents are the extremists. I'm a member of a group here in Scotland where I published my book review of Amanda's book called the Scottish Union for Education. And that our, our bases are sort of, our tagline is education,
not indoctrination. So we're trying to inform parents because the, this, the governments here are all sort of in lockstep with providing this out there. And I think Scotland is is probably even worse than England and Wales and Northern Ireland at this point.
And one of the things that I was cancelled for out of Scillop was because I posted an article a few months on the Scottish Union for Education about these issues and of an anonymous complaint was raised against me. And I was asked to come in for a formal disciplinary hearing through Scillop. And I said I'm not paying you guys my money to be disciplined. So that was, you know, part of how I got pushed out of the
organization. But Scottish Union for Education, although we're trying to do similar things and get this stuff out of the schools in Scotland, we're being called far right, alt right extremists, all of these things that you've said. And yeah, we get, we get the same treatment from certain groups and people. So completely understand where you're coming from there.
We get called white supremacists, Chris don't fascist, all because we don't want kids to have in school a book about tushy toys and shall we say. Can we say that? So I just want, I just got my book review up here and I, I will probably link to this again in our because I'll write a short article to go along with our discussion. And it's, it's interesting because I, it's reminded me of some of the things that I put in this review that come directly from Amanda's book that she has
said, and I quoted these. So this is not defamation because these are Amanda's words. That doesn't mean I am ashamed to be white or that I have white guilt. That's the first thing the Whitey Nick Whites like to say when the term white privilege is brought up. So I read that to a Scottish person and they said, well, that's offensive to me because I'm Scottish. And that's how is that not
offensive to a Scottish person? Have you ever just wanted to punch someone in the face with all your might? Maybe someone has said something awful to you and the thought crossed your mind that a good ass whipping would wipe the smirk off the face and teach them a lesson? I don't advocate violence, but I have thought about how good it would feel to knee my haters in the groin.
How is that not hateful? Nobody was asking to interview her haters, as she called them, except wackadoo alt right bloggers and in reference to Moms for Liberty, she wrote. Groups like Moms for Liberty are popping up like zits all over the country and provided names for the group such as Planned Karen Hood Mini Van Taliban, Assholes with Casseroles and Cue Imams. So she can say those things but you can't say anything about her? What? What's your response to that?
You know, I thought you were initially asking me the question and I was about to say I would never hit anybody. You do this through the political process, right? And then I realized you were reading from her that we're just two different people. I mean, we're not really two different people. Those, the people who are like her, have been infected by the mind virus. As we say, that's how this happens.
That's why people, you know, our that's why there's division in the country intentionally set up between people with the mind virus in order to get them to fight with each other. And she's, she's infected by it and she's basically saying it right there. Actually, I've exposed a lot about her by once again, just listening to the broadcasts that are that are published by her and she said she wanted to detail. I have to, you know, maybe I won't refer to anything I discovered.
I'll just talk about New New Louisiana, who reported on her and New New Louisiana headed by Michael Lunsford reported that she said that, you know, she knows these works are inappropriate for children and that the parents and the school administration doesn't want these parents to get these inappropriate works. But she's going to give them to she's going to give them to the children anyway just by calling
them something different. If you know my if you know what I mean, if you read between the lines, these are things that she said. So that's what I think about her. She's she's making these statements that are obviously in improvement. I mean, who would ever hit anybody like that?
That wasn't my first thought. And meantime, the reason why she's making them is because according to New Louisiana, she's planning to push inappropriate material on children without the parents or their or the legislators knowing what's going on. This is a big problem. It's in a lot of live school librarians. These are all these people are all heroes to each other. They back each other up. They high 5 each other.
They especially love what's going on now that she has sued me. I mean, they really love it. So that's what I think about about that situation. And we have to remember, ladies and gentlemen, that these schools are public schools. They're not Chicago, IL, American Library Association schools. We have to control what's in the public. And if these people are working overtime to ensure the public isn't finding out what's going on, then we need to find out.
Well, that's what I've been doing for 25 years. I told you my secret just by listening to their broadcasts and then reporting them. And somebody has to do something. And it looks like it's, you know, with lots of these groups popping up, it looks like something's going to be happening. So I'm I'm happy. Looks like from the the School Library Journal article that you sent me reporting that this has happened to you, that they're you. You can almost feel the bias in the article, right?
Like look please, it's you. Didn't even call me. You know, as as someone who works in independent media, the point is you're supposed to just report what you see and but the bias is just is just so clear. They reprinted everything that she said, like half the about 1/4 of the article is is what they what she said. Nothing from me, no interview from me, and they came out so quickly.
Look how fast between the time that thing happened and the time the article appears in School Library Journal. I'm going to tell you there's an organization in Ala called Unite Against Book Bands. The Ala created it a few years back after parents were successfully getting gender queer removed from schools because it was educationally unsuitable and pervasively vulgar. And they created it to create the false lie that Pico doesn't apply to school books, so you can't.
And that rather that nothing can be removed under the Pico case because every book has to do with an idea and and books can't be removed for the ideas they contain. So part of that Unite against book bans includes many organizations, including School Library Journal and they all working together as a giant group to to push this material.
Even her book, the idea came to her like in a day when somebody came up to her who's a part of the Unite against book bands, Bloomsbury's publishers and said, Hey, you know, we want you to think about writing a book. OK, I did so outcomes this book really quickly. The average writer would would have like a hard time getting into into bookstores and things like that. This person was just pushed right along because of this giant industry.
And that includes, for example, the School Library Journal that puts out an article that's completely biased, like you said, and you like you saw. This is what's going on. It's a giant pile up amongst all these organizations against parents and people who oppose inappropriate material in schools. People who oppose age inappropriate material are the problem to the librarians. And you know, it, it really it, it bothers me just as a librarian, and I still think of myself as a librarian.
And regardless of what's happened to me, I always will. But it's it, it, it bothers me that this is what's the exemplar of our profession, right? So if this woman is the one who's got these OM school Librarian of the year, I've got a book, I've got a book tour. And then you read the content where she says things like haters gonna hate. And it just, you know, we're supposed to be educated people
as librarians, right? You're supposed to have a master's degree, to be, according to the American Library Association, a master's degree, a set of qualifications, experience, and and to have a book that goes out like this that's meant for the public. Is this is this really what we want us people to know about our profession, which has always been known as, oh, those are the brainy book people that, you know, sit behind their books all day.
So that's one thing. And now we've got haters going to hate. They hate me, those outright conspiracy theorists. It's just, it's just not a good look for the profession at all. And I would we already have an image problem anyway. But I, I really hate it that this is something that has come out to say, Oh, here's a leading librarian, school librarian of the year has written this wonderful book. And it just sounds like to me a
teenage girl texting her friend. When you say she's the school librarian of the year, how did that happen? Well, I know how it happened. It happened because you can self nominate yourself. And she self nominated herself for three years until she was finally selected. Gee, she awarded herself a gift. A school library of the year essentially is what happened. That's how that happened.
And then you mentioned the MLIS degrees, the masters of, you know, whatever, and those degrees now which are approved or accredited by the American Library Association, the American Library Association has required those degrees to teach diversity, equity and inclusion in every single class taken in library school. Not just a single class, not just how to deal with the people in the library. Every class has diversity, equity and inclusion in it now.
So when you have an MLIS degree, you sort of have a degree that specializes in Emily Drubinsky's favorite topic. Difference from when I did my degree back in 2001 and I left America in, I guess I moved to Scotland in 2015 and I taught in library programs before then. It was even back then. It was not a requirement, wasn't even something we talked about. So it's amazing how much things have changed in 10 years.
The more that these librarians get away with this stuff, the more that they see that they can and the more that they do. So what do you think about the Michael Lunsford case? Because, you know, I read about it in Amanda's book. I've read about it, but I know that you and Michael and I've interviewed Michael as well. Just wondering your perspective on what he went through and do you have any updates as well?
Because I know he was waiting for word from the Supreme Court, I believe, about if they were going to hear it. He's still waiting. I'll tell you what I think about that Michael Lunsberg case. Along comes an anonymous donation. I think it was the first one to the GoFundMe for Amanda and it was $11,000.
Somebody gave an $11,000 anonymous whatever for Amanda to sue parents, which is what the American Library Association trained people to do. And it just so we're clear when I say AALA trained people to do this, I want to let you all know that this was discovered in a Freedom of Information Act request where notes from that librarians took at a training given by the American Library Association included that parents that librarians should sue parents for defamation
because it will waste their time and run them up to a $500,000 in money and costs and basically put them out of the game, which is basically what they're trying to do to me right now. So the Ala trains people to do this. Now, it happened to Michael Lunsford in New Louisiana, and suddenly there's an $11,000 donation. That's just the first one that appears there. And I can tell you that I have been sued for defamation before
by a, by a librarian. And the request was that I would delete my article on the homophobia within the American Library Association, which I refused to do. The case went away. They lost. There was no defamation. And they're now suing in New Jersey against the parent in a case that I am involved. I'm, I'm not named party, but I'm in the case they're they sued Michael Lunsford, they're suing me. They're going to lose. They have so far.
They've lost everywhere. And they're going to keep losing because there's no there there. They're just doing this because the American Library Association is urging people to do that. And then when they do, it kind of like harms them to a certain extent. One person who sued and ended up losing her job and is now working in a nature reserve somewhere or something like that, I can't remember this exact details. It like ruins their lives.
If you librarians, if you follow the American Library Association advice to sue parents up for defamation, you're going down a long road that is going to not be fruitful. So that's what I you asked me what I thought about this. That's what's going on. Michael Lundsberg has won four cases out of four so far, and it's now in the Supreme Court. So that that's where we are with this. This is what we're dealing with, a giant organization that gets
lots of funding. In fact, that brings up another thing. One of the things that I would like to do at World Library Association as we eventually grow is to provide funding for parents who are sued or who want to sue because there is no equivalent. It is just unfair that a giant organization with huge funders can can load money on people to cause them to sue, and there's nothing equivalent on the other side.
There's nothing. I want to get people on the World Library Association to somehow be able to identify the parents being sued and then to provide them with legal and financial support needed to stop this actions by the American Library Association to continue to promote their ideology across America and the world thereby. That's a really good point. I I didn't think about that and it's really sad that parents would even have to think about soothing just to protect their
own children. It's just absolutely ridiculous. You just reminded me of a quote from page one of Amanda's book, which just relates to what you just said. And this is what she said when she first got this e-mail after her board meeting where she made her speech. And she said, I've been spending a large portion of the previous weeks pondering why random strangers go online to put down, troll, threaten and defame people who they've never met.
Do they wake up and think to themselves, I wonder who I can ruin today to make myself feel better, to fill the hole in my life? I believe that anyone who does this kind of thing suffers from some type of trauma or that something elemental is missing from their lives. That's. What I mean by the mind virus, they're not even aware of reality. They're not aware of what's happening to the children if
they're not aware of what. What parents are thinking about, they're not aware of the other librarians who are too scared to speak up to Save the Children that they're trying to help because they don't believe in it. They only think about themselves. And I guess that's maybe part of this mind virus, as you call it. Yeah. I'm just wondering if you have any other final things that you would like to say.
I hope I can interview you again as we get maybe on the other side of of what you're now just been what you're going through with the the defamation. But is there is there anything else that you want to share now? And I'm specifically really anything you want to say, but I'm really interested in any final tips that you can give to parents or anyone who wants to try to go out there and fight for the safety of our children. I'm most interested in providing final tips for the safety of
children. That's the goal of all this stuff and that is you need to get involved. You need to learn what's what's going on. You need to look at what they're saying and see how it applies in your situation and see if it's harming your community and your children. You need to get together in groups and try to do something to stop it from happening. These are actually your schools and your children and your governments. It's suspect to me.
I think it would be especially worse in England or other countries, not the United States, because the United States has this giant Ala. Well, it's only 48,000 members. It's shrinking. The Ala has has this big organization that it kind of leads all the other world
organizations. So it's even worse, I would imagine in England where you're not only following the law, the dictations of your or the dictat of your local library associations, but you're also following the one from America in Chicago, IL. I mean, just that would really annoy me. People need to just become aware of that and and remember that you control your libraries, not some organizations that want to make sure that your children have inappropriate material as you go through this.
Another tip would be that you were going to be accused of all sorts of things. You're going to be homophobic, you're going to be anti black, you're going to be just a piles and piles of names. None of this are none of this is true. The issue here is age appropriateness. Keep your focus on that.
Another thing to consider is when you're doing your research and you're finding out things that are unsavory and you want to talk about it, be aware that libraries and librarians will, and library associations will look at what you've done and then delete it if they can. So make yourself screen copies. Make yourself a copy on archive.org. Make yourself a copy on archive dot pH OK, two different ones
and and get prepared. Get your ducks in a row, so to speak, before you say something about it. Because many times, for example, when I pointed out that the American Library Association sample policy for libraries across the United States included that librarians should ignore child pornography, the American Library Association deleted that page and put up an old version that didn't have that and then said I was lying, but too bad, I already had it on archive.org. And there it was.
So that's, that's the kind of games that they play and do. So get your ducks in a row. Back it up. Everything you do, get together with other parents. Don't be intimidated by these people. That's what they do. We're all new to this. And then we go up against an organization that's been working together behind the scenes for decades and we get whacked out fast. So you got to not be intimidated by that and keep pushing ahead and do the right thing.
Ultimately, it's the children you're protecting here. You want them to have age appropriate information. Simple as that. Thank you so much. I think that's a great place to end. Thank you again, Dan for your your time today and I hope to keep in touch with you as this progresses and and no doubt we'll speak again. So thank you very much again. Anytime. Nice to speak with you. Thank you.