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Thursday, April 13th, 2023

ACLU calls Missouri Republicans move to defund libraries ‘abhorrent’

Author:     Mark Maxwell
Source:     KSDK (Missouri)
Publication Date:     April 12, 2023 | 7:04 PM CDT
Link: ACLU calls Missouri Republicans move to defund libraries ‘abhorrent’
Stephan:  

Missouri is now in the news for its blatantly racist Republican-controlled state legislature. I see this legislature as representative of the Republican Party nationally at state level scale. The Republican legislators threw out the two young Black men only to have them reappointed by the communities that had elected them in the first place. But that is just a piece of what the Republican legislators are up to.  A handful of Republican voters complained about books in the public libraries that offended them, and the response of the Republicans was to cut all funding for the state's public libraries as described in this report. And this is going on in Red states all over the country. In Florida, a Republican voter objected to a book about Anne Frank and it was removed. Do you remember how important your local public library was to you when you were young? I certainly do. 

Missouri library

ST. LOUIS — Despite a multi-billion-dollar surplus in the budget, Missouri House Republicans recently passed a plan to defund local libraries in an apparent act of spite against librarians who spoke out against censorship. 

The Missouri Association of School Librarians and the Missouri Library Association, together with the ACLU, sued to block a recent state law that threatens to jail librarians if kids find “explicit sexual material” on their shelves.

When Missouri passed a new law last year outlawing “explicit sexual material” in school libraries, books like ‘Batman: White Knight’ were removed from school library shelves in Rockwood, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ was removed in Webster Groves, ‘The Walking Dead’ in Lindbergh, and in Kirkwood, the graphic novel depiction of George Orwell’s ‘1984.’

Rep. Cody Smith (R-Carthage), the top budget negotiator for House Republicans, reportedly said libraries shouldn’t be able to use tax dollars to sue and oppose censorship. However, libraries and their lawyers at the ACLU said they weren’t using public funds for this legal battle.

Free speech and human rights groups described the proposed budget cuts as vengeful political payback against libraries that […]

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1 Comment

  1. Rev. Dean on Thursday, April 13, 2023 at 12:15 pm

    Libraries are a necessary component of the educational system.