I posted this at my other blog - the professional librarianship / amateur writing one - but it's also a political call to action so:
Well, this is unsettling (Via Nikoel Hytrek at the Iowa Starting Line):
The effort to ban books has expanded beyond the classroom now to public libraries, with a new GOP-backed bill adding librarians to their target for prosecution and civil fines of those they believe give access to materials that are “obscene or harmful to minors.”
A collection of 14 Iowa Republican representatives introduced a bill Tuesday that makes it illegal for a person affiliated with a public school or public library to knowingly spread “material the person knows or reasonably should know, is obscene or harmful to minors.” Colleges and universities are exempted.
The penalty would be an aggravated misdemeanor, upgraded to a class D felony if the person was previously guilty of this.
Aggravated misdemeanors can be punishable by up to two years in jail and a fine between $625 and $6,250. Class D felonies are punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine between $750 and $7,500.
In short, Iowa Republicans want to turn librarianship into a criminal profession. Putting us up there with robbers, drug dealers, and people who talk at the theater...
Goddamn wingnuts. They know it's not enough to ban books at the school libraries. They're going after the public libraries as well.
Unable to ban books due to First Amendment restrictions, these Republican bastards are going to do the next-best thing: Make it impossible for public librarians to do their jobs lest they fear getting fined and jailed.
You want to know how this game will get played if Iowa makes this a law?
Say a mature-looking young adult comes in, claiming they're a college student, asking for a book on sexual identity from the 306 Dewey Decimal (DDC) shelves. As a librarian, I would direct them to the shelf area, show them the titles we've got there. And then WHAMMO the "college student" turns out to be a 17-year-old high schooler on "dual enrollment" with the local community college and they call in the cops to arrest you for "knowingly spreading obscene material" to a minor.
You think that if this law passes, the courts will only rely on the fines to punish librarians, I mean who wants to send a sad little librarian to jail over an obscene book? Thing is you WILL get judges who will punish sad little librarians "to send a message," because those judges may agree with the Far Right religious conservatives who want to ban "obscene" books from the face of the Earth. Even then, those fines aren't cheap: A full-time librarian usually makes between $35,000 to $45,000 a year. Even a $625 fine is cutting into rent or mortgage, not to mention the costs of fighting these charges in court. Want to take care of $1000 fines every month? There goes most of a monthly paycheck for librarians. This would bankrupt most of us...
I'd really like it if you went to that blog and read the rest of my rant. Suffice to say, I am calling on every honest American to stand with your public library. Join your Friends of the Library group. Tell the religious wingnuts they will not take away your right to access a great public service.
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| You are going to pry my library catalog from my cold dead hands, Republican wingnuts. |
This is where the Far Right war against libraries is taking us, America. Fight back.
1 comment:
Typical modern Republican tactics: make it too damn expensive for the working folks to access their civil rights, or too financially dangerous for them to want to try.
Don't fuck with librarians. They will shush you all of the way to the curb.
Also, they were all you had when you wanted to know something before there was an internet.
Speaking of which, do these book banning bastards not understand that almost every kid around is carrying the internet around in their pockets? And that the stuff they want to ban is available there, along with actually harmful material such as right wing propaganda?
-Doug in Sugar Pine
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