P flag friends please take your seats the program will begin shortly one on the left is great for 50 years P flag has been leading with love what started as a letter to the editor from one mother of a gay son led to a march with parent and child
Side by side they brought together a meeting of parents and families with their lesbian gay bisexual transgender and queer loved ones and that meeting birthed a global movement of millions working to create a caring just and affirming world for lgbtq plus people and those who love them when AIDS
Ravaged a generation p flag families appealed to elected officials to feel their heartache and loss before there were gsas in schools a p flag family fought for and won Title 9 protections for lgbtq plus students when it was still the gay rights movement P flag included transgender and bisexual people
In our mission and when the governor of Texas threaten parents of transgender children P flag brought that Governor to court for 50 years P flag has connected lgbtq plus people with Community parents and families with support and allies with education and resources to advocate for justice and Equity love is at the
Center of every everything we do let’s ensure that every lgbtq plus person is safe celebrated Empower for the next 50 years and Beyond visit p flag.org 50 years to learn more please welcome Brian Bond CEO of P flag National and Dr Jill Biden first lady of the United [Applause] States [Applause] W good afternoon everyone and welcome to learning with love the 20123 P flag National Convention my name is Brian Bond my pronouncer human and his and I’m the Chief Executive Officer of P flag [Applause] National I’m so glad to be here in Washington and so grateful for you all
Being here with us especially as we close out P flag 50 th anniversary year as you know we are living extremely challenging times right now here at home and around the world but I see moments every day of selflessness and bravery and all along the way I get to
Meet incredible people including all of you in this room and a very special guest today [Applause] in my humble opinion President Biden has been a true champion and Ally to LGB the lgbtq plus Community not just in words but in actions the Biden Harris Administration has done so much for this
Community from day one that ethos has permeated every department and agency of the federal government and I am grateful for the president’s leadership there is one person in particular who as her team knows holds a special place in my heart since my time in the Obama Biden
Administration she is a military mom a grandmother a best-selling author and a community college educ educator I had the pleasure of first meeting and working around her when she served as the second lady of the United States it was then that I had the opportunity to see firsthand her warmth her caring and
Her kindness Dr Biden is one of I’m gonna cry sorry sorry it’s a very PE [Applause] flish Dr Biden is one of the most authentic individuals you will ever meet whether it’s a state dinner or a picnic whether with friends or heads of state she is genuine and a true Ally to our
Community please join me in welcoming the first lady of the United States Dr J thank you thank you very much thank you please thank you gosh he he’s gonna have me crying now so thank you Brian honestly for that beautiful introduction and I’m so grateful for his friendship and he’s
Right it has been for many many years and several years ago when you know when he was looking for his next step he had every opportunity as at his fingertips but you know he chose to make a difference by Leading P flag because he realized that you know there’s no
Other no more fundamental fight than the fight to be our authentic selves and love who we love and Brian Somewhere Out There is a boy growing up in a small room rural town in Missouri he’s gay and because of your work he’s able to find the love and
Support he needs and become anything he wants to [Applause] be and maybe he too will go on to improve the lives of so many more and to the hundred of P flag members with us today thank you for being a part of this powerful Community thank you for leading With
Love sometimes it’s the smallest decisions that change the course of history the decision to dump tea on the off the side of ships in the Boston Harbor the decision to refuse to sit in the back of the bus yes the decision to say enough is enough
After repeated raids at a New York City gay [Applause] bar in 1972 Jean Manford decided to write a letter to the editor the week before her 21-year-old son Morty had been beaten anti-gay bias in a New York City while other people just stood by and watched Jean as most people would be was
Scared and heartbroken and livid I am proud of my son Morty Manford she wrote in those eight words Jean came out to the world and gave other parents the space to do the same it was a courageous love you know it was a love letter from a mom who just wanted her
Son to be safe and to enjoy the same rights and respect as any other human being two months later Jean would walk alongside Morty in New York City’s famous Christopher Street Liberation day March holding a sign urging parents to unite in support of their gay Sons and daughters small decisions simple acts of
Protest that launched a movement but to Jean this wasn’t revolutionary loving your child unconditionally wanting them to be safe wanting them to find love wanting to live in a world where they can be anything they want to be and that they can have the opportunity that their
Peers have to the world in the 1970s this was Radical yet the overwhelming outpouring of support following Jean’s small acts of activism led her to start hosting meetings to connect with other parents and families and friends and the rest is your history p flag is living proof that a
Small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world and look at that small group [Applause] Now you provide a safe haven a home for so many children who are struggling against the world that is rarely compassionate and too often violent and unkind P flag creates a space for parents families and friends to become loving allies at its core P flag is about family and family is
Love I am here today to applaud your 50 years of service and advocacy [Applause] and I want to ask you to keep going continue to summon Jean’s courage because the world needs these small acts of love now more than ever for the transperson who feels seen when we use
The right pronouns for the gay or lesbian teen kicked out of his or her home who is searching for refuge for the bisexual student who wants to see herself reflected in the book she can borrow from her school library in America my friends we do not ban [Applause] books
Remember what jean showed us that change starts with one small step that worldwide movements can begin with the smallest of actions continue bringing that courage back to the communities once this weekend is over and know that my husband President Biden is a partner in your work
He is doing everything in his power to protect lgbtq kids and support families he’s working to combat the dangerous cruel practice of conversion Therapy his administration launched a crisis hotline for young people he’s committing more resources to address youth homelessness and just a few months ago we hosted and maybe some of you were there the largest pride month celebration ever held at the White [Applause] House from today’s perspective it’s easy
To forget what a revolutionary concept it was was that parents families and friends would organize in support of their lesbian and gay children but you were the first you made the movement you changed our culture along with the course of history and you’ve grown into the largest organization in the world
Dedicated to supporting educating and advocating for lgbtq individuals and their loved [Applause] ones you are fighting unjust state laws and local school district policies that censor history you are bringing cases to courts on behalf of families across this country you give hope to Advocates everywhere those who feel like their one
Voice is not enough your example shows them that real change comes from real people with a simple Act of protest with a match that lights a fire and inspires a movement thank you for making lasting change for leading with love I’m honored to Mark 50 years with all of you and I’m
So grateful that future generations of children will have you in the corner for the next 50 thank you love you God bless you thank [Applause] [Applause] You [Applause] Woo [Applause] w W think figure how my binder works yay how was that we want Dr Biden back we let her thank you Dr Biden um okay it’s really hard to follow that I see a lot of bathroom breaks happening as I start uh I’ve been CEO of P flag National for
Almost five years now and I have to say it has been the honor of my life I want to give a big quick thanks and thank you to the P flag national board of directors if they could stand if able please do so as well as our volunteer regional
Directors Council again if you could stand if able to do [Applause] so thank you for all of your hard work that you do in support of P flag’s mission and vision I’m grateful and humbled to work with each and every one of you every day thank you so much and
Susan thank you for your leadership as chair of our board I want to thank all of the P flag chapter leaders that are here and chapter and National members for everything you do every single day to help create a caring just and affirming world for lgbtq plus people and those
Who love them that is the work of P flag and we are absolutely doing this work together this has been a year of Celebration 50 years years of purpose action and service yet with so much going on around us it’s sometimes hard to celebrate but that meeting in a basement
Of a Methodist Church 50 years ago has led us to this moment I know I’m stating the obvious but we are under siege the world seems on fire and we are being tested but that being said I know that every one of us we are resilient and always always leading with
Love and I need to make this abundantly clear people should not mistake P flag love as a sign of weakness [Applause] no P flag love is a courageous love it moves us to action and drives us to persist even when the path before us is difficult our work is critical your
Voices matter many of you brought your voices to Capitol Hill yesterday to make a difference with your legislators and whether you were greeted with warmth or challenged with questions or anything in between never doubt that they will continue to think about you and your story long after you’ve left their office
Legislatively this has been one of the worst years on record so bad in fact that as most of you know P flag for the first time in our 50-year history is now serving as a plaintiff in four different lawsuits across the country Texas Missouri and we announced on
Coming out day last week North Carolina to fight back against band on medically necessary health care for Trans kids socially this has been one of the worst years on record with anti-Semitism xenophobia racism and anti-lgbtq plus rhetoric On The Rise leading to so much real world harm and
Violence our families are being targeted lgbtq plus people our beloved family members neighbors and friends are being targeted by an organized and well-funded effort to share misinformation and purposeful disinformation and it’s harmful to the people we love we’re seeing continuing efforts to force teachers to out their students
They are trying to censor us erase us and prohibit our access to public facilities and these things are happening everywhere not just a red State thing or a blue State thing this is an America thing I do see a glimmer of hope however about a year ago I was in Mississippi
For p flag Jackson for a pride event to show support to a community in a state that denies our very existence what I saw there was a fenced in area with security with with weapons heckers outside but we had a strong and Vibrant Community there that said it would not be
Erased I’m so proud of that P flag chapter and our community doing what you all do every single day in support of our mission through all this this I have seen P flaggers lead and fight back with passion and sometimes at very real personal risks I have sat in multiple
Courtrooms over the past year in Texas in Missour listening to parents speak out on behalf of their kids to try to stop bad laws from going into effect I have watched parents take the stand and swear to tell the truth and that truth is that they have just one job
One job to keep their lgbtq plus Kids Safe I have seen our members parents grandparents teachers and Librarians and allies and lgbtq plus people speaking out at contentious school board and Library board meetings to prevent books and inclusive curriculum from being removed from shelves and classrooms this work is important and we
Have no choice but to double down and move forward because after all we have just one job just one to keep our community and lgbtq plus Kids Safe we’re doubling down and expanding our staff to meet this demand and P flag chapters the chap P flag chapter network has grown
Exponentially with 36 new chapters just in the last year alone [Applause] mostly mostly in communities where P flag may very well be the only source of support and Community affirmation P flag chapters in places like Enid Oklahoma south Pines and Apex North Carolina sadelia Missouri Hendersonville Tennessee Gainesville Georgia Clinton
And stormlake Iowa MOS Texas Anderson South Carolina Lander Wyoming and Safety Harbor Florida how appropriate Safety Harbor [Applause] we need safe harbors right now and as P flaggers you are building those welcoming and inclusive spaces in your own communities that is what P flag is all
About that is why 50 years later we were still here last week I was in Missour sorry ah uh my home state Martin with P flag Cape Gerardo in southeast at the in the Southeast M Missouri State University homecoming parade not a pride parade mind you the State University’s homecoming parade in
One of the most conservative parts of the state it was a remarkable experience in the delegation P flag delegation just qu team maybe 15 16 years old and they were twirling a pride flag and there with them was their P flag dad marching right beside them carrying the P flag
Banner I saw such pride and tenacity in this kid I saw hope now to be honest I was canly a little bit worried every time I’d hear a noise you know but then I’d see this Dad and this kid they were just out there they were present you could see on some
Of the young moms faces as we go by in the crowd now they might not have known what P flag is but they for sure saw our flags and they might not have a queer kid but they just didn’t want to see any kids hurt and so they clapped and they
Don’t want to see any kid picked on and there were Tailgators college kids paternities and sororities and when we went through Fraternity Row again the applauses and I think it says something if we can take politics out of it and keep things on a human level people don’t want to see kids
Heard and picked on this is why your stories and your voices matter because those stories can reach those moms and dads these students in fraternities and sororities and Tailgators in Missouri and Mississippi a person to person conversation or interaction one at a time we can create lasting change I truly believe
That our founder Jee Manford did that Adele star our first national president did that you all embody their legacies to make this a more Equitable inclusive and affirming world please keep doing what you’re doing please know you have the Gratitude of many and from the bottom of my heart
Thank you for all you [Applause] do oh I’m not done this might be where you want to sneak out sorry just good now we’ve got I do have a few more things to go through uh and we’ve got a great program for you so please stay where you are now
Before we dive into the first PL today I have some awards to give out first up our first P flag National chapter award as I shared earlier this year for the first time P flag is a plaintiff in a law in some lawsuits suing states to protect trans kids two of those lawsuits
Are in Texas yes P flag versus Abbot might be my three favorite [Applause] words we brought that case to protect loving parents from being investigated for child abuse and we’re also suing to stop sb14 which prevents trans kids and their families from accessing medically necessary care our chapters in Texas have been
Doing incredible work in the face of fear and harm they have been supporting families and expanding their membership by the droves in fact since that lawsuit started we have more than doubled our membership in the state of Texas this is because of the protection that P flag provides and the support and
Work done by all of our local chapters one of those chapters P flag Georgetown from our southern region is people like George from our southern region in a time of tension and fear with many families fleeing the state a small group of passionate folks in Georgetown chose to start a new P flag
Chapter as an opportunity to provide support and visibility where little to none existed previously their activities have been diverse and robust from establish a monthly support group meeting at their local library to welcoming guest speakers on legislative advocacy the chapter introduced a second monthly support group meeting specifically for families with trans
Kids due to the climate they can’t advertise these meetings but word of mouth has spread quickly the chapter also holds lgbtq plus book club meetings at local book at a local bookstore so for establishing themselves as a new chapter to provide much-needed visibility and support I’m proud to
Present this chapter award to P flag [Applause] Georgetown [Applause] [Applause] thank you so we’re from Texas y’all and you know we’re in the belly of the Beast and you’ve heard today just what we’re facing families who were fighting for their kids to get their medical care
I listen to moms who were in tears because they’re 16-year-old kid has just found out that they can’t stay on the hormones they’ve been taking for a couple of years we’re fighting against being investigated we have friends that have left the state because they are afraid that they are
Going to be investigated and called child abusers we have stood together at the state capital and heard our children called the spawn of Satan this is what it’s like in Texas but we have hope because the people of Texas are actually very welcoming and what we found with
Starting our new P flag chapter is that folks are responding beautifully we have a booth at the local farmers market once a month and we watch folks walk past us and then do a double take and they come back and they say wow in Georgetown yeah in Georgetown so we’ve got this wonderful
Community that is actually very welcoming but the politicians don’t know that yet so we’re showing them and P flag has allowed that to happen has had our back each step of the way and we are able to make a difference and we’re able to make a difference because we have the
Support of everybody in this room and for that those of us who would who are in Texas who are struggling every day are grateful from the bottom of our hearts thank you so [Applause] much [Applause] our second and final award for the day is a service award as many of you know
Jee Marie Netta spent s 17 years at P flag National and recently made a decision to move on a new opportunity during her time at P flag National the work she did through the many programs she created and worked on straight for equality P flag Academy online and
Something to talk about live touched so many people and changed so many lives I’m proud to present this P flag national service award to G Marie nada [Applause] [Applause] I didn’t write a speech after all the speeches I Brian just said I have to give a speech um the first time I saw P flag I was uh 17 years old and I was living in Beaver in Oregon and um I saw P flag in the pr
Parate and I said to my friend could you imagine if my parents did that um eventually my parents did do that so um p flag has changed my life in ways that I can’t even imagine I never thought there would be a way that I
Could do the things that I loved and be part of what I think is probably one of the most important organizations in civil rights history and to know that I just got to be a little tiny part of it um and to get to meet so many of you and
To have so many of you make me who I am today I will never ever forget um I have to tell you in my new role I’m I love love what I do um but the thing that always makes me very happy is when people introduce me when I
Get introduced for something um they say she spent 17 years at P flag and before I even say a word people start applauding and that makes me very proud um I will always be P flag proud um this will always be my family um and I I hope
That we will see each other a whole lot more thank you [Applause] thank you g Marie one of the programs that g Marie was heavily involved with is our Read With Love program our response to the onslaught of book bands and bands on accurate inclusive curricula in the
Classroom that we are seeing in every state across the country this orchestrated attempt to prevent people of all ages from accessing inclusive books and content censoring not just stories but the identities of people of color and lgbtq plus people is well funded and not new it is deeply rooted
In racism anti-Semitism xenophobia and an anti-lgbtq plus sentiment and action and P flaggers have been fighting on the front lines fighting this every step of the way this is critical conversation to have this is why I’m happy to introduce our moderator for our plenary Let Freedom re he’s an award-winning
Journalist host of veli and chief correspondent for MSNBC and weekly economics contributor to nprs here and now he has reported extensively from Ukraine and across Central and Eastern Europe during the Russian invasion as well as covered Co coid 19 pandemic and the killing of George
Floyd here at home he is known for his immersive on the ground reporting host vel’s band Book Club on MSNBC and veli band Book Club podcast please join me in welcoming to the stage Ali [Applause] veli [Applause] thank you uh thank you for the uh warm welcome uh this is not a circumstance
Where I should be getting the Applause it’s you uh who are doing the hard work I only do what I’m supposed to do as a journalist I bear witness to it and I hold power to account for doing it so thank you uh for all you do thanks to P
Flag for all it is doing uh and and when I say it it’s an organization but but it’s a it’s an organization of people around this country who have been doing remarkable things Brian thank you for your uh warm words of introduction and welcome to uh Let Freedom read I am so
Deeply honored to be to be invited here but uh I’m very lucky to be here um been my last couple weeks in Israel on the Gaza border and I wasn’t sure uh I was going to make it uh it’s a weird world when discussing book bands is your uh
Amuse Bush between the things that you that you do but it’s a it’s a key part of my work it became a key part of my work almost two years ago and my team started this sort of Fringe idea called the veli band Book Club largely because
You know as a as a TV host you have such pressure to book guests that this became the easiest thing in the world right every week somebody would ban another author and like hey you want to come on TV and they’re like yeah sure um so it
Became a sort of an easy to book segment M and we we soon realize though after you do four uh segments on ban books you’ve exhausted all the reasons why people ban books um and and it’s for all of history right there’s nothing new in the way this goes and so what this
Evolved into was a real celebration of books and authors and people and ideas it was not it wasn’t about why’ your book get banned because that takes 30 seconds and and and we can have that conversation and we all know the reasons for it but then we started realizing
What people miss when they don’t read these books and all over the country you see bookstores that have band Book sections and uh you know every author that comes on their Book Sales go up so it’s a great little middle finger um but there’s a real reason for this
And that is so that we can provide an honest and inclusive education for the Next Generation especially of lgbtq plus Youth and youth of color diverse books allow young people people the access to the information they need to learn about themselves and the world around them and
Boy do we need that right now we need that so badly so our signal than you our our uh our slogan is reading as resistance we the Silver Lining to this is the resistance that it has brought about in a in a world in which you feel
Disempowered and you’re not sure how you deal with the craziness in the world around you we actually have ways to deal with this we know it gets people out there the simplest thing you do is you can read the book you can make sure your library has the book you can make sure
That you purchase that book if you want to or purchase it for someone else or you can get involved with your your parents Association or the local library or you can go to your Schoolboard meetings or you can go to your City Council meetings you can make sure you
Vote you can make sure you’re registered to vote there’s so much we can do we don’t have to be victims of this so our panelist today and I want to get right to it are leaders in the concept of resistance against book bands as authors as organizers and as Librarians they
Work to bring about bring diverse books onto our bookshelves they are experts on individual local and systemic ways that we can fight those n uh Nationwide book bands and I want to introduce them to you right now what a remarkable August panel we’ve got starting with Emily
Drabinsky and I’ll ask Emily to come forward Emily drabinsky is an associate professor at the Queens College of graduate scho Graduate School of Library information science uh studies in uh Queens New York I got that entirely wrong but um close enough close enough she’s a librarian extraordinaire
She’s the C current president of the American Library Association that has been at this game for a very long [Applause] time she edits the book series gender and sexuality and information studies and organized a biannual colloquium series that expanded research in the area she was the 2020 recipient of the
Association of college and research libraries award for career achievement awards from its women and gender studies section in recognition of uh of this work Arvin ahadi is the author of Dawn and across Arvin you can come up uh to the stage uh girl gone viral and how it
All blew up he graduated from Columbia University worked in the tech industry prior to becoming a full-time writer when he is not reading or writing books he can found be found watching late night talk show interviews and editing Wikipedia Pages he lives in Los Angeles uh I want to welcome Julie wack
Julie come on up Julie is the head of organizing for red wine and [Applause] blue apparently you’ve heard of it a community of over 500,000 Suburban women who use digital media and friendto friend or organizing to fight disinformation and to win campaigns she’s a former prosecutor who specialized in domestic violence and
Abuse cases she practiced as an assistant City attorney for the city of Columbus Ohio where she handled both state and federal litigation the folks from Ohio over there um after the 2016 election she jumped into local organizing in blue trending conservative suburbs uh in a blue her blue trending
Conservative suburb to help start several women-led Grassroots organizations and a political action committee that led her to her current position with red wine and blue she resides north of Cincinnati she’s the mom of three I am really thrilled to talk to you all let’s get right to [Applause]
It friends thank you uh for for being here and we we’ve had a good amount of time to get to know one another um and it’s so interesting that you can look at this book Banning thing and think this is a a really dark time in our history
But in truth this has been around for all of history since the first word was printed um and you really do look at it as an opportunity you you you sort of think that there’s there’s hope in all of this because it has activated people and frankly it’s getting more people to
Read books and it’s getting them to learn things about other people people who aren’t even activists necessarily they’re just like hey why’d you ban that book let me read it 100% so okay I was getting my microphone com back me um yeah 100% so I know what’s happening is
That you know there are these people out there trying to be divisive trying to scare people it’s a political agenda right they are trying to push a political agenda through our schools using our children and the thing that I’ve been seeing that does give me hope
Is that there’s a backlash to it um people when they learn about it they don’t like it um and if you look at the statistics we are the majority like there’s a very loud but vocal minority out there that is doing this and when people in our community hear about book
Banning hear about attacks on LBGTQ students in their schools they do not like it but what we need to do is we need to make sure we are using our voices and sharing these stories um because you know people are busy and they run around doing their daily lives
Things and they’re not paying attention to all of that but you got can you all can make a difference by using your voices by standing up by bringing people to your school boards to share stories and that will change communities Arvin one of the things that most interesting
In our book club when we read these books is we are literally talking to people whose lives lived experiences so different from ours sometimes that we wouldn’t seek those books out necessarily and now there are people who make their entire reading decisions on what got ban or what’s on my band book
Club which is achieving this interesting thing where I may not have been seeking out a book on your life experience and now I’m gonna read it because somebody didn’t want me to tell me about that as a as a writer well as a writer it’s it’s still you know it’s having your book
Band is not a badge of honor and yet it’s no coincidence that almost all the books on these lists are books about people’s gender identities or sexualities or race ethnicity background they’re about authentic experiences we write these books and these books are getting published because they mean
Something to us as authors and we know they would have meant something to us as kids looking for books that reflect us they’re getting published now because the culture has changed publishing is an industry and at the end of the day readers have demanded those books and Publishing is finally responding to them
But because those books are now out there and because like Generation Z especially is seen as the authenticity generation a nobs generation I think a lot of Gatekeepers and people in this country I do believe a minority but a very loud minority feels threatened by this threatened by this authenticity
This openness the spreading of this authenticity and openness and how they believe it might change their kids in some kind of a dangerous way that they want these Books banned you look at a lot of these lists of book bands just yesterday I was looking at one cleanup
Alabama.com books a lot of the reasons which already just the fact that that’s categorizing these books as dirty 101 books listed there a lot of them were the reason listed was alternate sexualities or alternate sexual identities so it’s it’s a fear of other ideas and other people which is just
That’s terrifying to me that we are now afraid of opening our kids up to other ideas and other people and so I think it does embolden other authors like myself and readers to speak out on it but it’s also tiring it’s not what you were looking for it’s not why you you’re
Looking for yeah it is tiring and and uh and I guess that’s part of why the the flip side of this is the the people who read the books and read the language and ask about the vehicles that you used why you chose that and Emily that brings me
To you in that every book that’s banned wasn’t some work of Revolution it was somebody just writing their words or their truth or somebody writing a story about who they are yeah and you know I think for those of us in the lgbtq plus Community we read to come to understand
Ourselves right like how many of you read a book and were like I look just like the character in dyes to watch out for I guess that had guess I must be right so we come we come to our identities through Reading and through language and
That’s um what what I think is part of what they’re trying to crush yeah I’m totally GNA get a shirt that says dkes to watch out for look at the puzzling reaction on people’s faces as I walk by um let’s talk about libraries and Librarians um I have never prior to the
Last year and a half known anything about Librarians other than the fact that they get Awards and everybody likes them and they’re they’re fantastic I I don’t know that they were they chose to get enlisted in some kind of a battle but they’re on the front lines of this
Thing absolutely I just flew in this morning from Florida where I was attending our associ American Association of school librarians conference uh and the library workers in Florida who have as their whole job right to find a book and put it in the hands of a kid to read it like that’s
What we do we connect people to stories that’s what we got in the line of work to do every single one of those people is working under extraordinarily challenging circumstances having to think about whether they are compliant with the law when they want to give a
Book to a kid it’s just it’s absurd right because if I said to you what we do for a living is put a book in the hands of a child you can’t be against it there’s no way to be opposed to it right and so it was
Incredibly moving to be there and to see the school librarians of Florida they all got up on the stage on mass for a photo op and it was like see people who’d been through a kind of War and who are continuing to be in a kind of war
And really inspirational and moving to see how much we’re committed to that work and you know in many ways it is nice to I’ve spent my entire career with people telling me libraries were over the Internet we don’t need libraries at all and so in this moment to to see so
Many people learning about what we do and the incredible power that we that we have to connect people to the stories that make them who they are that’s the one bright spot for me in this and I just want to every thread of this conversation is worth pulling on uh some
More so it’s going to feel a little disjointed but I just want to know so much more about everything you’re doing Julie one of the things you said that was really interesting is that when people find out what’s going on they don’t like it now you could append
Anything to that sentence in fact we’ve seen it with abortion across the country where there are people who they’re not it’s not about what what they think about abortion it’s the are you about to take a right away from me there’s there’s this sense amongst people that
If you let this go it’s a slippery slope they will PE the state will start making the decisions that you should be making for yourself and we have certainly seen that example in book Bannings in Reproductive Rights in a lot of other places and there’s some fear that that
Goes further if we don’t step in and say stop 100% and all of those issues it is so important that everybody is standing up and using their voices um we just did an event it was a great event in um Pittsburgh with pen at peny spice I
Think there’s probably a lot of peny spice fans out here and it was amazing and we had a a table of band books out in front of the store and people were coming into shop of course and running into our band books and there were so
Many people who came up and had no idea that books were being banned in schools near them this is Pennsylvania you guys there’s a lot of big book Banning going on in Pennsylvania so the fact that all these people coming into the store had no idea but they were shocked and then
They were ready to go read more and learn more and I I think you’re 100% right Ally no matter what the issue is people do not like the idea of government taking away their rights they do not like being told what to do for their children not being able to make
Decisions for their children um and so it’s really important at this time we keep we see a lot of these parents rights um Talk going on and that’s not what it is um we it’s a weird talking point right because it sounds like a good bumper sticker right but what
You’re doing is parents are giving the state the right to make decisions about what they and their family consume exactly and so right now we’re running a campaign called freedom to parent because we’re pushing back on that narrative we want to change that framing we want the freedom to parent our
Children without being told by the state or a small minority of people what we can and cannot do so this is interesting um excellent work Emily not all books are for everybody and one of the great uh roles that Librarians play if you’re a concerned
Parent uh is to say hey my kid likes this or really reacted well to that book you know you you can you can curate that you Librarians as curators as opposed to people who know how to read those crazy numbers and figure out what what shelf
The book is on well we do know how to do that you yeah and that’s very important able to find a book but that’s not what this this talk is right and and so let’s talk about that part of it that every author I talk to where I I read some
Comment that some book Banner put out about this is inappropriate for my four-year-old child and the book you know the author will say I didn’t write it for a four-year-old child it wouldn’t make sense but for instance to arvin’s point there are books about experiences particularly as it relates to sexuality
That occur younger than some parents would like that to be true and there are some readers who say I didn’t know people wrote about that I didn’t know that happened to someone else I didn’t know someone else went through that experience so tell me about the curation
Role as a librarian where how do you manage that how do you manage the I know what’s not appropriate for you and I know what you might need to read so Librarians are professionals right we have master’s degrees and just like you wouldn’t Plum your own house or or cut
Your own hair or maybe you did during the pandemic but we do that again you wouldn’t build a library collection for the public without having some expertise in that so we all have master’s degrees you know it’s because if I was building a library just as myself it would have
No sci-fi in it I don’t like sci-fi right but we don’t do that we like Librarians are very committed to building collections that have something in it for everyone in your community and I think part of what happens is people imagine that they know their Community
Because I know me and my set of friends and you do but there’s all kinds of people in your community that you don’t know uh and Librarians it’s our job to get to know our community whether it’s the uh kids in our schools and the curriculum that we’re teaching to in an
Academic Library I’m thinking about the curriculum and in a public library I’m thinking about everybody in the community that changes all the time and making sure that I have something in the collection for everyone we use professional review tools we read book reviews you’ve probably seen our youth
Media awards that come out every year we are experts in sort of thinking about books and thinking about collections that we build for everybody not just for the individual reader not just for me that’s a good way of thinking about it I I appreciate that Arvin one of the
Things that I I often say is that a book is banned either because of the words the person writing it or the ideas therein and it might be all three and in some cases it is all three but in some cases it’s not like some of these silly
Book bands in York Pennsylvania were just off of a sort of a list to say hey why don’t you broaden what you read and they said oh well let’s ban everything on that list um talk to me as a writer because what I enjoy in my book club is
That I’m actually talking to writers about the story The Language the use of individual words and sentences that’s some of the beauty of this whole thing there are people getting exposed to discussions about books they weren’t going to read and getting immersed in them and whatever agenda someone was
Worrying about is falling into the background they’re just loving the book totally for See For Better or Worse I think writers are people who are obsessed with depth and with Contex and it can be frustrating as a writer sometimes to have to consider every interaction from seven different angles
And possibilities being like I could have said that or that but the way that benefits I think books about touchy subjects is that they go deep they give you so much context about an identity a grapple a struggle things like that the problem with these book bands is that so
Often the people the few people that are bringing them to the attention of school boards and local governments are cherry pick specific lines out of books that have so much more context to them and I think as a parent you should be more concerned with you know maybe the way that your
Kids are surfing the internet and looking at so many things tweets articles Instagram stories without context in just a second versus actually sitting down to read a book typically 40 50 60 plus thousand words which are so deep and so thoughtful and so it’s really unfair and I think it’s a form of
Propaganda for these book banners to be taking and cherry-picking specific lines without giving the full context and that I think is sort of what’s lacking from the conversation because these are novels these are books um they just have so much more than the specific lines
That are being pulled out and they do so much more for the readers um in terms of you know like was saying what they’re looking for and needing I just want to go further with that cont text because in Florida for instance Romeo and Juliet
Now in many places is limited in the way it can be taught it can only be taught certain things because it’s like how do you how do you read Romeo and Juliet without knowing the context right the whole thing is context no author says well yeah if you took that one sentence
It might seem like a weird book but it wasn’t I didn’t write a sentence yeah and that’s I mean that’s that’s sort of the society that we’re living in today right that everything is kind of in hypers speed and people are even more maybe enamored by a quick pull
Quote or Cherry Picked line um I think the society that we’re also living in today is part of what’s affecting these book bands where the numbers are in favor of authenticity and kids you know people are more accepting of other identities people are coming into their identities better and I think there’s
This quick knee-jerk P fear from parents that you know if that a book is going to turn their kids gay for example and let me be the first person to tell you or not the first person to tell you a book will not turn your kid
Get um but you know it might help them figure out an identity or a thought or a feeling that was already there or contextualize it or make them feel less Alone um but because the numbers and the culture is moving in the direction that
It is and I think a lot of some parents maybe feel helpless about that or afraid of that book bands are just an easy it’s an easy thing to come at Julie let’s talk about winds on the ground what kind of things have you done that that look
Like success okay well there’s a woman who now works for us met her at a convention in Virginia a couple months ago her school library there was some um members of the community coming in trying to remove books and get the library defunded um basically they were
You know just didn’t like the anything that was literature for the LBGTQ plus community so they were pushing back on that she heard about it again someone told her about it she heard she started to organize and I love the picture at the end they got their Board of
Supervisors to reverse um fully fund the library they got the books in the library there’s this great picture and the people who were pushing the book bands are in the front of the picture kind of looking down and then there’s this group of like 50 people in the back
With colors on all going like this in the meeting so um you know that’s why I’m saying it’s like you need to talk to the people I mean you guys have your community here you guys are organized but there was a broader Community you need to be talking to all
Parents you need to be showing up at your school boards cu if you show up and you use your voice and you talk you know the odds are in your favor that you are going to win on this and if you don’t you just keep fighting and you change
The school board okay literally as you say if you stand up that little dog just stood up literally who’ been sleeping maybe I’m a little too loud sorry about that no no dogs in the fight um uh Emily let’s talk about that because I think a lot of people who
Appreciate or grow up loving their Library have no idea what the library needs or can use or what Librarians need or can use because it’s not a system where we give things to our library um so what what does support look like what does saving your library look like I’m
So glad you asked that question because I have 800 ideas for you the first thing I would say is that any everybody can do something right and and you you all know this in the room but I talked to a lot of people who are
Like well what can we do and which is why it’s so great to be here with you Julie because there’s so many things you can do do the first thing I would say is make sure you have a library card right if you don’t have a library
Card go get one if you have a library card find a friend bring them to the library get them a library card okay uh because we need to use our public institutions right that’s we use them or lose them and so I think that’s really crucial and then ask your librarian what
You can do to support them most libraries have a friends group where you can join we need people who care about libraries and who love libraries to be part of the governing bodies of their libraries so if you have capacity to run for the library board that’s amazing
Make sure you know in the Ala this is like all we do all day right I didn’t think when I ran for president that what I would be doing is talking about the importance of books right and like having access to books but in the context where in the
First nine months of this year we saw more than 600 attempts to censor Library materials addressing 1,915 books a 20% increase in book bands over the same period last year shifting from the school library to the public library uh last year there was just uh mostly part
Of the school library picture but now it’s split half and half between school and public so where they were coming for school libraries they’re coming for public libraries now and so going to your Public Library being a part of it uh and make sure that we we are running
A campaign ourselves called unite against book bands if you go to unitebook bands.org and sign up that is what the tool we are using to mobilize people on the ground when we hear of particular ular and like parts of the country that are needing help most recently a school district in Carol
County uh Maryland we were able to use our uh campaign platform to get people organized and mobilized around that so I encourage you if you haven’t already to go to unitebook bands.org and join our campaign can I say something about Library boards when just said about Library
Boards maybe think about this you guys I don’t know if you understand this well you probably do I know you all do your you’re dialed into politics but elections are coming up pretty soon and there’s a lot of Library boards that are on the ballot and people do not pay
Attention to those kind of they don’t make it down a list but it’s really important so you need to look to make sure who is your library board up for election and maybe uh maybe the mayor in your town actually controls the library board like figure out who actually
Controls those and then make sure you’re you’re telling everybody because you tell a couple of friends these local elections can be won by couple of votes sometimes so you can actually make a huge difference so just something to pay attention to um yeah not kidding about
That because in the case of uh lower down positions on a on a ballot uh any funding by some group somebody gives you a$ thousand dollar that means you’ve got signs which means when somebody walks into that that voting booth and they’ve seen your name that’s who gets the
Election it it is the sort of the smallest thing you can do but it can have outsized impact yes in case you all have never heard of the term relational organizing it’s it’s basically friend-to-friend organizing and it just means you talk to your people so before
November 7th uh you need to be everybody in your phone in your state in your city needs to be hearing from you about who they should be voting for who are the you know who are the good candidates um like Alli said these local elections a lot of
People don’t know who these candidates are and maybe they know the name because their kid played sports with this parent but they have no idea this parent is you know pretty extreme in their views they just know their name from something so it’s really important to inform your
Friends Arvin one of the things that’s interesting is that going back to the Reproductive Rights stuff it didn’t matter what state and what their politics were every time there was a ballot question about restricting Reproductive Rights It Was Defeated or whatever the side that wanted to restrict uh Reproductive Rights was
Defeated because it got Beyond being partisan now look obviously there’s a partisan aspect to what’s going on but really as a writer your view is I assume that no this should not be about political parties everybody should be against book Banning yeah I mean writers I think one thing writers and young
People people today have in common is that we’re both idealists I think something that we talk about all the time as writers creative artists is keeping that kid inside of you alive um and so that’s I I think it’s the same thing where if you bring the idea of
Book band to the attention of teenagers especially today they’re appalled that it’s happening I mean that’s why so many children’s book authors I know are now becoming political becoming involved um there are even organizations of klet authors you know you made the point of of small amounts of money making a
Big difference at a state and local level klet authors now involved in that fight because we see that too and we know that the kids that we are writing for um who we care about care about what’s going on in this country and that’s an easy way to make an impact um
And so on the book band front it’s the exact same thing um where if you bring the attention to them they know that one of the greatest things about growing up in this country is the freedom to read what you want be who you are it’s it’s
That freedom and it’s like Dr Biden said we don’t ban books in America it’s as simple as that right and so the kids are on our side I think readers are on our side most Americans are on our side if they know about what’s going on the
Problem is that a lot of it is happening behind closed doors or just you know in a hush hush sort of sense yeah well that’s why you gota you got to get inside those closed doors yeah um Emily uh the first book it’s not the first book I featured because the writer of
The Bible is not with us but um the the Tindle Bible in English was was uh sort of offended everyone’s sensibilities because it caused people who read English to be able to read the Bible on their own and skip the clergy um but generally when we think about ban
Books in history we think about big things like that pieces of literature and one of the neat things in the last two years is the number of things the number of books I’ve focused on that are kid lit what we used to call chick lit uh graphic novels uh things that you
Can’t imagine why they’d be B banned but but that we are exposing ourselves because some dumb County somewhere put it on a a list and now I get to discuss this interesting book that you weren’t actually going to read in the first place and now you’re going to now you’re
Going to get involved in it because someone brought it to your attention I think the upside of this book Banning is my my to to read list has become it’s five times as long as it ever was right I mean I think about how for how many years there weren’t any lgbtq plus
Stories at all right there are many ways to ban a book and so we finally come to the point in our history where we have access to those stories like I came out in 1994 I didn’t know a single trans person in my life and I had met one lesbian who
Worked at the antique store up on Fairview Avenue in boy Idaho like that’s it and I have a 15 to sounds like a madeup story but yeah I gu it’s completely true and my 15-year-old had trans kids in his second grade classroom right and so the openness to story and
The openness to ways of being and the profusion of ways to like flourish as ourselves it’s like unlike anything I could have imagined growing up and so I think like I try to hang on to that that we’re seeing this this crisis right now this attack because of the amount of
Progress we’ve made so Arin made a similar point I mean do you think net net we’re we’re doing better we’re getting better more people thinking right it’s hard like just you know Senate Bill 150 just passed in Kentucky and it changes the way that you can teach about gender and sexuality in
Schools and for librarians having to deal with that they’ve already seen hundreds of books being removed from the shelves of school libraries in Kentucky and so that’s not better right like that’s not a better situation right so I guess I would say like even though it is
Growing our reading lists it’s making it harder and harder for people on the ground to get books in the hands of kids who need them because I think about social media media 2 here where it’s because when I was a kid the way that I discovered books was the Newberry list
And whatever books were featured in my school library today kids have social media and so maybe a book is getting banned or lots of books that speak to you’re getting banned you learn about it on social media but I’m still thinking about those kids who maybe even their access to social media is
Limited so they still just have the Newberry list and the books being featured of their Library so yes maybe you and I are discovering books we might not have discovered from the band books list or maybe some social media Savvy teenagers are finding those books but I
Still feel for those kids who the library is their main point of access and it’s about more than books so the Human Rights Campaign they put out a study recently 60% of trans and gender variant kids report feeling unsafe at school 90% report feeling safe in their
School library so it’s not just the books it’s the space and the that we make for our most vulnerable [Applause] students Julie uh we we we’ve all we’ve started to enumerate ways and in which people can get involved and change things tell me a little bit more about what that
Looks like to you do you hear from people who say I want to to to become a little bit of an activist this might be the uh the entry point tell me how this works yeah we consider ourselves we call ourselves the um non-threatening onramp
To politics so you know I see yeah I see parents who maybe have a who’s come out as gay or lesbian or trans and they’re seeing policies at their school that they do not like so they’re trying to figure out how they can be activated they don’t like the book bands going on
In their Community um and so they’re looking for ways to get involved and so you just there are resources out there red one and blue has a ton of resources and trainings on how to do that you just start with finding your people in your community who feel like you who do not
Like inform them they do not like these book bands and then you you know get them together you have meetings you start showing up at your school board you start making sure people are speaking you make sure that people on social media are sharing about these again informing your community a lot of
People in your community do not know this is happening so it is just about getting yourself organized and you do not have to be a political operative or experience to do this it is more authentic when you are sharing your real life experiences um just showing up as
Yourself and the power of bringing your community together like I said Virginia saved a whole library that probably would have been defunded if nobody had stuffed up so you have the power to make these changes you just got to find your people and and start showing up and
Start speaking out Emily what do you what do you make of you know we have my band book list is fairly well curated and there’s all these band Book shelves at bookstores but all books are not not all that interesting and and there’s there’s there’s a lot of stuff out there
That that you you have you defend because you’re defending a principle not every book yeah absolutely we’re defending a principle that we all have the right to the sovereignty of our own minds and it’s about you the consumer the reader not not necessarily the and for librarians like we want something for
Everybody like I don’t know why anyone reads Dune too long too boring movies bad but I’m you will defend its right to be on your book absolutely every time every time because we want every everybody to come into the library how far does that go when it’s when there’s
Hate in books how far does it go when there’s hate in books like How how far how far are you comfortable defending a book being on a shelf in a library so what I love about working in a library is that there’s nothing abstract about it it’s extremely material so if you ask
Me that question like up here right you know I don’t know but if I ask you about a book if I give you this book you’ll you’ll know how to answer it well I’ll know how to answer it in relation to the community for whom I’m building the
Collection like we do all of our work relationally and wi conversation with the community and we have you know the books that we select are books for the people who live where we are and what’s interesting too about the sort of band books mishas if you will is that uh we
Are used to people having questions about the books we have in our collections that’s a very common thing that happens in libraries we want people to have an interest in their public institutions and to demand more of them frankly uh and so we have processes that
Are in place in every library to so if you have a problem with a book we review it there’s a whole process a challenge policy so most always has been that’s important this is standard practice in any library and so what’s different now is that where you know you might have an
Authentic you might say this this this book has hateful language in it and I don’t know if it should be in the school and we would have a conversation about that with the community what we’re seeing now is books that are challenged a hundred at a time by people who
Haven’t read them by people who and you’re getting form letters and yeah and it’s just you know it’s not about like it’s clearly not an authentic interest in building a collection with something for everyone that sometimes we do choose a book and decide it’s not in the right
Place and we move it or we decide we don’t want it in the collection that’s normal standard Library practice and has been for the 147 years that the American Library Association has been doing its work so this is very interesting Arvin because there are books you know we
Always solicit from our viewers their view on it and people will say with regard to Huck Finn or uh To Kill a Mocking Bird or even some of Tony Morrison stuff that the the matter inside and the language used is the kind of thing that some people will find
Offensive and that’s everybody’s right to find something offensive and we have good discussions with people some in some of those cases the authors are not available but we have experts who come and discuss it and say yes but to your point it’s the context in which the book
Is set the time in which it was written all of which is relevant to the critical mind the time in which it’s read too so my absolute favorite book in the world is The Catcher in the Ry and I read it in high school and it spoke to me and
Having I reread it every year or two wow and my views on this book always change because now I find Holden you know a little bit grading has a couple of offensive views here and there and yet it’s that voice and sort of like yearning to discover his you know
Yearning for adventure and the truth and some kind of something about him that clinks to me but I think because I read it every couple of years I recontextualize the book The Language the interactions all that but that’s sort of the beauty of a book is that it also changes with you and
With the times um and you can have that conversation I mean that’s the beauty of English teachers and reading books growing up in a classroom setting is you have those conversations you have them respectfully you have them in the context of what’s going on in the world
And how the culture has changed since that moment that that book was written in this case the book that was written in the early 50s um and so yeah you know I context is critical context is critical context is what books are all about about um not every book by a gay
Author is going to be the same not every book by a black author latinx author whoever is going to be the same because they are written in the specific context of that book’s universe and that author’s experiences um and that’s why I think we need to keep letting kids read widely
Widely widely um because it gives them that context it gives them empathy it gives them critical thinking skills to think with Nuance Nuance is the whole name of the gameing books Julie some people have framed this discussion uh as some kind of an urban liberal Elite versus Real Americans or
You know things like that who are the people you talk to and how do they see it um well I work in the suburbs so it’s definitely not you know the big cities um and what we know is that this is happening in a lot of areas that we are
Doing work in because these areas are diversifying they are becoming a little bit more Progressive and that is a political threat so what you see is like I said this is very much a very coordinated um you know well-funded effort uh to cause chaos in our schools because they want to defund public
Education and kids are basically become political ponds in you know in this agenda and so by sewing distrust because come on we love our Public Schools okay most people across the country love their Public Schools so if you want to defund a beloved institution then you need to
Build some distrust you need to suddenly have teachers and Librarians be the enemy like that’s just unbelievable but you have to build you know you have to do it that way and so I think that’s why you see a lot of these things happening in communities that are a little bit
More um turning from red to purple or purple to Blue it’s it’s very much a political tactic that is driving all of this Emily do you think people sort of get the degree to which this is a funded organized effort because a lot of these challenges that you talk about look like
They just come from concerned parents oh I don’t know if it looks like that to the Librarians receiving this chall uh but to the public out there that you’d like to help to have rally around you do you think everybody’s clear on this I don’t know if everyone’s
Clear on that as a journal think your analysis is spot on that it is about sewing distrust in public institutions I completely agree with you and I think that for most people the LI library is a trusted institution the librarian is a trusted figure and it’s A Hard Sell
Right because you brought your kids there and you’ve got 50 picture books and you would never have been able to afford 50 picture books so it’s like impossible so I think when they when people hear that this is happening in their communities they’re baffled because it doesn’t doesn’t make any
Sense but do do they know how well funded is I think that’s a kind of harder story to tell which is why we talk a lot at ala about the numbers of challenges like when you say this is like a hundred books and you and it’s the same hundred books from library to
Library to library City to City to City so there’s a um I’m from Idaho so I pay attention to are there any idahoans here okay I pay a lot of attention to Idaho so I’ll call them and tell them they got to be here next year um but Kimber
Glidden was the library director in boundary County Idaho and she received a challenge on 400 individual titles in her Library wow how many of those 400 books do you think she had in her Library collection zero exactly right zero of those titles so you know those are the
Kinds of stories that I think make it very very clear right and of course this is not a good faith effort it’s not a good faith effort at all yeah that’s wild H that’s stumped me I forgot my next question that was like cuz I thought you
Were making up a county again let me but let me tell you what happened to Kimber she and her staff were followed by armed extremists they they occupied the board meetings it was completely unsafe wow at one point they couldn’t get insurance on the building right extremely painful she no
Longer works at the library I just listened to her on a podcast this week her new job is working in an emergency room and she said that that was a lot less stressful than the library w wow yeah so you go from and I I mean
This with the deepest of respect for ala what was to most people a benign Organization for a long time meaning it existed but it wasn’t we didn’t know people didn’t know the mechanics of how it fit into their lives right you should have it’s a great I a lesson we have
Learned but but we but we didn’t and and and now you are literally in the middle of it all the time are you and the organization built for that and how do you do it to avoid you okay I can see the look on your face
That’s all the answer I needed are we built for that we are built for that like I said 147 years old we’ve been fighting for the right to read the whole time the whole time yeah all right you’re you’re in the fight I gotta say
Something I have so part of my job is to do Outreach and talk to people in the front lines I’ve talked to lots of teachers I’ve talked to lots of librarians you guys Librarians need to have like superhero capes they are bad asses they are like they are standing up
For like you know some of that horrible stuff but I mean they are standing up for kids they are standing up for families and you know I don’t maybe you’re trained for it that’s great I mean but I don’t think that was probably in the job
Description not at all but you know what was in the job description was like cultivating community and making sure that like we solve problems yeah right yeah like I among all of my accolades I’m what I’m really best at is fixing the stapler when it’s when it’s jammed
Right and this is like because like you have to figure out how to solve that problem if you’re going to work in a library so we’re very good at solving problems do we wish that this was not happening absolutely but we all do right that’s something we all share Arvin um
What does this portend for the you made an interesting point that social media and acceptance and young people have probably push this thing because they because they want more information they’re craving it they’re they’re it’s available to them what happens next do you think that that because that demand is not going to
Go away despite people Banning books about uh gay penguins and Oklahoma or something like it’s not it’s not actually going to change anything do you think that the demand just continues to solve this problem and I mean I think on the author and writer side it just means
That we are we are closer with our readers we’re listening to them we’re interacting with them more both at festivals and school visits but also online on Tik Tok on uh on Instagram um because they I think they’re also puzzled and frankly angered when they do
Learn about these book bands um but to know that the authors of the books that they want to read that they want access to are also on side means a lot to them and for us to know that they care too about their access means a lot to us and
Emboldens us to keep writing these books and pouring our identities and the real identities that we see in the world in these books so I mean at the most basic level all we can do is continue writing these books um and allow just enough of this information and what’s going on in
The world in to get online be involved but not let it kind of become the whole thing not let it stop us from producing and and I don’t I’ve not met a lot of authors I mean clearly authors have become activists in this thing but most authors want to write their books yeah
And they want people to read their books they’re not they’re not they’re not it’s like Librarians they weren’t looking for this extra side fight yeah but I think I think children’s book authors I’m a young adult author I think we we do see ourselves as involved in this fight um
Just because our audience it’s it’s it’s different you know our books are meant to be read by young people and old people l but young people are such idealists and I I think we just feel we we feel like we owe them the acknowledgement of what’s going on maybe
Speaking out on it or doing something about it instead of just writing the books writing the books is our job that’s what we love to do that’s what we came to this job for but there’s something about writing for young people where you just can’t stand by and watch
Them having these like empathy delivery devices that they love get Stripped Away have access to those things lied by the way I knew that there were some rough understanding that someone was going to give me time cues here but these lights are impossible I can’t see
Any of you um so I’m good to go for another couple hours unless somebody anybody has any directions for me stand near that dog um five minutes I’m paying a lot of attention to the dog okay there we go oh there we go I see
Thank you um all right Emily I do want to ask you because we’ve we sort of touched on this a couple times about who’s affected by this Arvin made a really good point that there I’m not affected by a book band generally speaking because I get the books from
The Publishers and then nobody comes right to me um but but who is actually affected by this and I ask I mean this in two ways one is what does the actual removal of access to a book mean for somebody who otherwise wouldn’t be buying that book or reading it and what
Does it mean to a a family or a kid who goes to a library seeking information about books that that a librarian may now not be able to offer them yeah I mean it it like the people who come to the library looking for anything when they can’t find it it
Is crushing to that person but I think it also rips a whole lot of the community and we’re seeing that with the fights around the library the way that it’s sort of ripping communities apart like I um I get a lot of like online hate because I’m a librarian right now
Which is absurd but it’s reality for me but in a lot of communities the librarian is getting attacked by people that they grew up with that they go to church with they’re they that was their teacher their kid is in that school classroom and so it really is ripping
Apart communities they’re using this sort of book band as a way to sort of be really destructive around that but I think you know most of us can’t afford to just buy every book that we want and the library is the space where you can go and find those books it’s like built
For the public and it’s built for the public public good and it’s you know that is what we do as as libraries and so I think it it it sort of the impact it has on communities is I think we talk about it less um but the individual
Reader of course we can’t know what we don’t know right it’s a negative like I had it’s AER right that’s the issue I didn’t have a bunch of books about being queer in my library because they didn’t really exist in published form so the danger is that a whole bunch of kids
Today may not have access to those books even though they exist and I yeah and I wish that I had known who I was a little earlier I wish I’d had a sense of a world outside of myself that included me and so to have that removed from
People’s access I mean I know what that was like I don’t want that for the people growing up today it makes for a much smoother transition into adulthood yeah it’s yeah you are who you are and you’ll become the adult that you’re meant to become eventually anyway it’s just a
Matter of why are we trying to cut these kids off during those pivotal childhood years where they’re exploring they’re looking outward they’re looking inward they’re learning about themselves um why are we trying to limit their access to things that they can use to learn about themselves so it just it’s it’s sad it
Makes it harder yeah I can uh sit and talk to you guys literally for a few hours but having mentioned that thing about timing I then got the timing queue so I I do have to uh I have to wrap this up but I don’t want to I’m so deeply
Grateful to you all uh for a a fight I don’t know that you were all looking for but you’re in uh and we’re all in and uh thank you for the ideas you’ve given us and the Insight you’ve given us um thank you to all of you for the you know
You’re all in it you’re all in it we’re all in this way and I I I leave thinking that ultimately wisdom will prevail and and and it’ll be okay but it’s not going to be okay until we’re finished fighting for so as as I like to say reading is resistance thank you thank
[Applause] you
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