When the War on Woke Destroys Libraries, It Destroys People Too

Just seeing this now on social media, and as a librarian I AM LIVID AS HELL (via Steven Walker with the Sarasota Herald-Tribune): 

Hundreds of New College of Florida library books, including many on LGBTQ+ topics and religious studies, are headed to a landfill.

A dumpster in the parking lot of Jane Bancroft Cook Library on the campus of New College overflowed with books and collections from the now-defunct Gender and Diversity Center on Tuesday afternoon. Video captured in the afternoon showed a vehicle driving away with the books before students were notified. In the past, students were given an opportunity to purchase books that were leaving the college's library collection.

Some discarded books included "Nine and Counting: The Women of the Senate", "The War of the Worlds" and "When I Knew" — which is a collection of stories from LGBTQ+ people recounting when they knew they were gay.

New College spokesperson Nathan March acknowledged the Herald-Tribune's request for comment but had not provided the college's response as of 2 p.m...

Fuck Governor DeSantis. Fuck Chris Rufo. Damn their anti-Woke, racist sexist asses.

This may not be literal book-burning but it's as damn close as the Far Right wingnuts will get.

I guarantee you there's no practical reason they're clearing these books. It's not for shelf space, or for updating to current understanding. These bastards are dumping these books out of spite, out of their sadistic need to make intellectuals and researchers and readers suffer. They intentionally purged a Gender and Diversity Center, for God's sake.

This isn't about faith either. These bastards are purging books about religions that only they disagree with, in violation of the First Amendment and the Constitutional right that no religious test should ever be applied to anything.

Any other rational actor at the academic level would have made good-faith efforts to see books that are weeded from a collection have a chance of going to another college that may need those titles for research purposes. Do you realize how many rare or hard-to-find titles survive at universities exactly because of their research value? If New College had a rare book that DeSantis and Rufo just tossed into the dumpster, they have knowingly denied current and future generations of researchers any opportunity to learn from that book.

SONS OF BITCHES.

For the LOVE OF FREEDOM, and AN HONEST GOD that does NOT ban thought or the SIMPLE RIGHT TO EXIST that every gay and lesbian and trans person has as human beings, and OUR SOULS. Florida, Please. Please please PLEASE STOP VOTING REPUBLICAN. Stop giving these haters and anti-intellectual dickweeds any power over all of us.

SAVE THE BOOKS. SAVE OURSELVES.