There is an update to this story; scroll to the bottom of the article.
A recent article tracing the Biden administration’s efforts to keep objectionable and often pornographic books in K-12 libraries included the activities of the American Library Association (ALA) in suppressing actor Kirk Cameron’s nationwide event “See You At The Library.”
The ALA has doubled down a bit in the last week. Its Office of Intellectual Freedom - the same office that tried to suppress Cameron’s book event - recently tweeted about “attacks” on libraries in Wyoming with the quote, "There is nothing in the library that can be classified as pornography, in any way shape or form."
If you missed that recent article, it delved into President Biden’s orders issued during Pride month on combating “book bans,” and included what was actually a challenged book list compiled by the ALA. Long and short, each and every book on the list has sexually graphic and/or explicit content, and many of them contain images of sex acts. These books cannot be shown on broadcast TV or in print media as they run afoul of decency laws, yet they are allowed in K-12 libraries.
As a result of the censorship attempts by officials within the ALA, Congress got involved. Since ALA receives tax dollars, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and a few of his colleagues have demanded the Institute of Museum and Library Services conduct an investigation.
That is where we left off and today pick up with the ALA’s new president, Emily Drabinski, who was elected this past spring and who reacted to her election with a tweet about being a “Marxist lesbian.”
Since that tweet, Elon Musk has renamed Twitter as “X” and Drabinski’s X account has since begun “auto-deleting” tweets like the one above.
She may have deleted the tweet, but she’s not backtracking on her beliefs:
And though it has attracted backlash, Drabinski said she’s not going to hide her political opinions.
“I was excited to highlight and celebrate two aspects of my identity that are really important to me, and are often under a lot of scrutiny,” Drabinksi said in her first interview since taking office last month.
She said she wanted to show a sense of pride to peers who share those identities with her, some of who voted for her because of it, she said. “I didn’t anticipate these kinds of targeted attacks being used as a bludgeon against library workers across the country. I really think that is regrettable, and I wish that wasn’t happening right now.” - NBC News, Aug. 7, 2023
According to the “Queer” media outlet “Them,” Drabinski won’t be “walking back her “Marxist lesbian” self-descriptor.”
Drabinski has long pushed for LGBTQ+ and racial justice in her library work, writing in a July column for the ALA’s official magazine that librarians must seek out “good trouble, the kind of trouble that matters” — evoking civil rights pioneer John Lewis. She helped lead a successful faculty strike at Long Island University in 2016 as a union secretary after the board of directors staged a week-long lockout over contract negotiations. - Them via Yahoo, Aug.9, 2023
“Good trouble,” according to an interview Drabinski gave in 2019, is labor unions and collective organizing.
On the “Srsly Wrong” podcast, Drabinksi was asked about what she would do if elected president of the ALA, and her comments throughout centered on her "vision of collective organizing."
During the interview, she talked about "using the pot of money" given to her in her position as ALA president to train people to "organize." She said she got most of her training through "Labor Notes" which she describes as a Democratic project that's super-cool."
Labor Notes is a decades-old organization dedicated to unions, worker’s rights, and labor group protesting - as well as “troublemaking” per the Labor Notes website:
“We can bring the troublemaking to you! Labor Notes works with local unions and community groups to organize Troublemakers Schools, bringing labor activists in your city or region together for a day of workshops on grassroots unionism and skills that officers and rank and filers need.”
"I'd love to give them some cash to come and run their "troublemaker schools for library workers who want to take back power for themselves and their colleagues in their workplace,” Drabinksi told the podcast’s host.
She later went on to say she'd get "$75,000" and do some "labor training" and "organizing training."
During the interview, Drabinksi also makes mention of the "weaponization of the protection of children" as it relates to "book banning." In that arena, Drabinski unsurprisingly looks at teacher unions as allies “in the fight.”
Drabinski’s view on the library system as a “socialist good” is also laid out in a presentation she gave in 2021 called “Teaching the Radical Catalog.”
She states in her opening remarks that she had served as a 'Critical Pedagogy librarian." She goes on to talk about "sex" and how one of her first jobs was at Sarah Lawrence University where "absolutely everybody there was queer."
"Gender and sexual identity constituted the terrain of play," Drabinksi said, going to say 1993 was the year she came out as a lesbian when she "fell desperately in love" with a"forbidden person" at a "smoky party" in college.
In her presentation, Drabinkski talks about how she taught students to navigate the library subsection "HQ," which consists of sexual behavior topics including homosexuality, transvestitism, bestiality, prostitution, masochism, sadism, and more.
"These are not systems I can burn down or throw out," Drabinksi said about helping students navigate the subject heading classifications that she finds "offensive and exclusionary," as well as "heteronormative and racist."
Drabinksi says in the video she is one of the "radical cataloguers" who try to reform that classification system.
"For me, this is the task of the critical information literacy instructor," said Drabinksi. "I want to teach you both how this system is reflective of power and here are the tools you need in order to get what you need from the system. And hopefully, over the course of that instruction session, I can show you some points for potential resistance."
The next slides she uses address that resistance "in practice."
Here’s the full video of the presentation:
More To The Story
So what is the ALA, how old is it, where does its money come from?
Per the ALA "Fact" sheet the organization is “the voice of America's libraries,” and is the “oldest, largest and most influential library association in the world.” The ALA boasts more than 58,000 members (primarily librarians) but also “trustees, publishers, and other library supporters.”
The headquarters for the ALA is in Chicago, Illinois, but it also has a “legislative office and Office for Information Technology Policy in Washington, D.C.”
The association, which has a staff of around 300 people, is led by an executive director and is governed by a 183-member council, an executive board composed of elected officers and eight council members.
The ALA is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and its tax ID is 36-2166947 for those who wish to look them up.
Looking just at the ALA’s revenues - it is a financial juggernaut.
IRS filings show the ALA has consistently brought in between $47 and $54 million each year going back to 2011.
The ALA's most recent operating revenue total was $45,696,502. Included in that figure were $2,261,111 in "grants and awards" as well as $4,213,035 in federal CARES Act funds. Additionally, there was $5,289,551 in "contributions" and $7,124,903 of that was membership dues.
Among its revenue sources, the organization receives millions from the federal government, including $200 million from the Biden Administration's American Rescue Plan.
According to its most recent audit documentation, as of 2022, the ALA was sitting on $23,056,988 in "total current assets." Including property and long-term investments, that number jumps to "$92,728,225."
In that same documentation, salaries and wages came in at $15,993,569. The wages are not itemized, but in 2021, at least ten employees were making six figures with its Executive Director Tracie Hall making the most at $222,990. The gross receipts reported for 2021 were $ 56,538,605.
The organization charges various Library membership dues on a sliding scale of "very small" at $175, up to "very large" at $2,000. The website doesn't denote whether those amounts are an annual or a monthly fee.
Personal memberships appear to be annual and have various types that range from $41 to $155, while Corporate memberships span $500 to $2,000.
As far as the direction of the ALA, the four strategic directions put forth at the 2018 meeting were “Advocacy, Information Policy, Professional & Leadership Development,” and the increasingly controversial practice of "Equity, Diversity & Inclusion."
Another fun fact and North Carolina tie-in - despite being a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the ALA has engaged in what could be seen as political activism.
In 2016 the organization's top leaders sent a letter to then-Gov. Pat McCrory to “urge” repeal House Bill 2, dubbed by media and Democrats as "the bathroom bill."
The letter was penned by then-ALA President Sari Feldman, Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) President Andrew Medlar and ALA Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table (GLBTRT) Chair Peter Coyl.
“We are writing to you today to urge repeal of the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act (HB2), which prohibits local governments from protecting the civil liberties of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (GLBTQ) constituents,” the opening paragraph of the letter states. “This legislation is a plain statement of the State of North Carolina’s willingness to permit intolerance and discrimination against GLBTQ citizens.”
The letter goes on to threaten “economic investment” in North Carolina and says, “House Bill 2 contradicts the fundamental values of the American Library Association (ALA) and undermines civil rights and the fundamental principles upon which libraries are founded. Because libraries are a microcosm of the larger society, they play an important and unique role in the communities that they serve and must seek to provide an inclusive environment where all are treated with respect and dignity.”
The full letter can be accessed here.
As of the publication of this article, the North Carolina Library Association appears to still affiliate with the ALA.
Update:
An organization named the “American Accountability Foundation” has produced a video compilation and a 21-page report on Drabinksi’s public remarks, many of which are contained in my substack article.
The American Accountability Foundation also produced a 24-page report on the ALA’s promotion of cultural Marxism.
Related reading:
ChatGPT helps Iowa school district sift through books to weed out sexually explicit content - FOX News