A Conversation with Rep. Jamie Gragg

 

 

Rep. Jamie Gragg

Right To Win Ozarks spoke last Friday with Missouri State Rep. Jamie Gragg (R) 140th District about a recent meeting he had with Secretary of State John R. Ashcroft.

How did the meeting go with Mr. Ashcroft?

Rep. Gragg: The meeting went fantastic. We were able to sit down with him and a few of his staff, including the state librarian, and shared with him a couple of the ideas I’m shooting for this next legislative session, bill wise. He was very excited about both of them. Of course his office can only go so far because it’s not their wheelhouse, it’s not what they do, and due to different office limitations they can only do so many things as well. But there were some good suggestions, good brainstorming ideas from all that were there. Rep. [Brad] Hudson was there as well.

What idea stands out to you about the meeting—what suggestions?

Rep. Gragg: Not to let too many details out that are still being hammered, [but] a paradigm shift of how things will be done, is kind of what we are looking at because right now the thought process—when you say ‘book rating system’--I know every library across the state and probably across the country is thinking, 'We don’t have the staff to do that. We have to create this whole monster for the thousands and thousand of books we’ve got. Who has the time, effort and energy to do that?' And I get that. I get that.

To me, anything worth doing...is worth doing right...that’s my mindset, but I also understand if you’re not quite on board and you’re given a herculean task you kind of shut down. And so I’m sure that’s kind of where they’re at, as well. [So] paradigm shifting it so that it becomes a standard from outside organizations instead of internal...because right now if you get a book from let’s say Random House it has been written as a children’s book--here’s the topic--and Random House will give it to the organizations that make the determination of where it’s listed and shelved at. Well we’re gonna go to these organizations now instead, so that it is more of a standard instead of something the individual libraries have to do.

Now is that like the ALA or the MLA that you are talking about?

Rep. Gragg: Oh no no no, that’s a four letter word. No we’re talking, uh, there are separate organizations out
there that assist libraries when it comes to layouts...

Cataloging you mean?

Rep. Gragg: Cataloging, yes, thank you, that is the word that was trying to come into my mouth but I couldn’t
spit it out.

There is a whole lot of ways of cataloging books they’ve largely, they’re starting to,
abandon the Dewey Decimal System...

Rep. Gragg: Yes. This would be kind of sliding into that middle ground, so it’s after the publication but before it hits the library...every library uses some sort of cataloging system whether it’s this, that or the
other--ABC cataloging or XYZ cataloging system--so we’re going to see if we can slide into that
level. It will become more of a standard in the industry instead of saying ‘Libraries you messed up
this is what you gotta do now and we’re going to legislate it that way’.

So this is just my question about it because I’ve been doing a little dive into it, that...
every librarian can do it differently and it’s the wild west when it comes to cataloging and
classifying books. And some will use the Dewey Decimal System in the adult section, and
they won’t use it in the children’s section, and there’s a whole huge amount of woke
Marxist ways of classifying and cataloging books so yeah, I mean its really..that’s a
little..umm...

Rep. Gragg: And you do find that more with your smaller libraries, unfortunately because you do have, you’ve still got volunteers in a lot of the smaller libraries. You’re gonna have one volunteer that she just loves the children’s section, that is her baby and we don’t mess with it because if we do that it messes with her system, or his, I don’t want to go in the wrong direction here. That is that individual section there and we’re gonna do it the way we’re gonna do it. And you see that. Your bigger library systems they tend to universalize their whole building because that way when children get older they’re not having to learn a whole new system to go the toddler section, to the children section, to the young adult section, and on and on.

Did anybody bring up the ALA or the kind of connections that are going on with the MLA?

Rep. Gragg: I did because after we’d had our brainstorming session, and we discussed various things that we can do—you know I like to have all the eggs laid out on the table and talk about all of them and all angles they can come from—so I said, “Okay guys, now we’ve discussed some tactics of what we’re gonna do, now let’s talk about the push back, the ALA. And they all stopped me right there and giggled. ‘We don’t care about them.’ So, the state librarian [Robin Westphal] gave me a little bit of hope. She said, “I think you’d be surprised how few libraries in the State of Missouri are actually ALA members. There’s not as many as you think.”

Now I don’t know what ‘Not as many as you think’ is to her. Is that 50%, is that 20%, 100%? I don’t know what that means. She definitely is one that understands the issues that are going on right now, and she’s on board with us. She thinks that there is definitely a problem. So it was very encouraging. And she has worked in libraries of all sizes. From the small two-librarian systems to the St. Louis library systems, so she has been involved in the whole gambit in the state. She knows the issues, she knows it’s a problem and she agrees with us that it needs to be fixed, and taken care of.

From her words to my ears was the ALA is not as strong in Missouri as the ALA has made it out to be. Now the MLA, we didn’t breach that one. But we will be learning about how maybe they are in the state and really kind of what it will take to put them in a pen if we need to.

Yeah, it’s kind of more of a reform type thing...Did you feel like Sec. Ashcroft had a good knowledge of the situation?

Rep. Gragg: More so than I’d even hoped. I was able to bring book binders with me, put together by Mary Hernandez de Carl here in Nixa, and she’s been wonderful about doing that. And I brought three extras with me, that she put together, and I put them on the table, and Jay was like, ‘Oh I know what’s in here. I’ve gotten the texts. I do not need to…’ And you could tell he was, it disgusted him enough what he has seen already. He says, ‘Please don’t ask me to open this up because I know what’s in here.’

And one of his other staff members opens it up and of course opened up probably to one of the worst pages and quickly slams it shut. And he’s an adult individual who probably would not be embarrassed by much, but the fact that what he opened it up to was enough. It was instantaneously bad. So they know what’s out there, they know what it looks like…Again, they knew more than I thought they would.

Let me change tack a little bit. Do you have any suggestions on what citizens can do right now to try and get this fixed? How we can assist our elected officials?

Rep. Gragg: You know, first and foremost letting voices be heard. What does that look like? I am a firm believer in you get more bees with honey than you do with vinegar. So when you’re voice is being heard, it doesn’t mean arguments, it doesn’t mean, you know, doing things to turn people the other direction. It means rationally saying these are my children, or these are my grandchildren. We are in charge of what goes into their brains. We should be the ones to make the decision, not somebody telling us what we have to put in their brains.

If I go to the library, the library should be built around the desires and the culture that the library exists in...not the East and the West coasts saying, ‘Hey Midwest, this is what you guys should be doing’. It should match your community, and the people that live here should be voicing their opinion to say, ‘This library has pushed us out. Instead of meeting the community needs and wants you’ve run us out and now you’ve got a niche that is taking the library and you’re meeting their needs.' 

The marketing in the library has gone bye-bye. It no longer exists. They’re not marketing to the community. They’ve pigeon-holed themselves to what they think we should have. Let their voices be heard. That’s the ultimate one right there.

What would you say to people who are afraid to engage because of push back from the left? For instance, the U Turn in Education group down here that’s been very loud, and they’ve even berated Commissioners Morris [and Jackson]…? And some of the local parents have been doxxed and so how do we overcome that…?

Rep. Gragg: First and foremost know that they don’t play by rational tactics. They don’t. It’s terroristic contact is what they do. And I’ve been a victim of that as well to some extent. I will say that some people, their gift is not to engage. And that’s fine. Their gift may be behind the scenes. Their gift may be planning and organizing an event or something like that. So don’t think just because you are with the [grassroots group] or the parents group that wants to make their library better. [It] doesn’t mean that you have to engage. So don’t think they have to by any means. Stand firm. Sometimes a quiet stance speaks louder than the words.

I’ll throw this out, I will give a church analogy. Some people are not meant to teach Sunday School. They’re not meant to organize fellowship suppers. Their gift is to pray. Their gift is to be the support that way. So everyone has a gift, everyone has a spot.

Do you have anything that you’d like to share, [any] particular point that you’d like to make?

Rep. Gragg: You know, just know that this has a very positive effect and by what I’ve seen happening right now, we’re turning this ship in the right direction. You can’t turn a big ship on a dime, by any means. It does take time, but we have positive direction going on right now.

Growing up, and this is a little back story here. One of my favorite Sunday School teachers was a lady named Louella Long. She worked at the library and she was one of those ladies who had her section and it grew to where she was a full librarian. This is not the same library that Louella Long used to be in charge of. And this is the same building, right down here by the park.

What we have done is we have taken that thought process of ‘These are the professionals, these are the folks taking care of our libraries, they’re doing a great job’, and we’ve become hands off. If there’s one thing that Covid did, it made parents see and pay attention to what their kids bring home now. I think that’s where this stems from, and I think it’s time that parents have their eyes opened. We took our eyes off the library for so long and trusted the professionals for too long. And now we see the damage done. We should never let our guard down. We should always have checks and balances in place, and this fight that’s happening right now, we’re taking it back, and we’re going to hopefully make sure that’s there’s constantly going to be checks and balances in place, and we’ll have a better library for it.

When did you become aware of this issue? A lot of politicians are not wanting to engage with it, but you’ve engaged...

Rep. Gragg: I’ll admit I was just as guilty as the average citizen around here. My kids are grown up and so the library is not as much as an everyday part of my life as much as it was when my kids were in the house. My youngest is 22 now. So, but I have grandchildren coming up...but when I was approached by this and I saw some of the books, gosh, it was before I was even in office. I’d say probably the middle of last year, so about a year ago, and I was shown some of the things that are in there. And I was like, “No, that can’t be real, that can’t be right. No, no no. And then I found it was true and it was right, and it really disturbed me, so…”

And so me and Mary Hernandez de Carl have actually been talking since before I took office in January, and we tried to get some stuff going last year, but it was really, we were on the wrong side of the Eight Ball, to get something for last legislative session in place, so it’s taken us time. Unfortunately, the library books are still in there. But we’re definitely gonna have it in for this year. So we’re working on [it] with that meeting with Jay Ashcroft and so forth.

And so, you said there’s three separate bills that are going be introduced in the new session?

Rep. Gragg: Well, there’s two for sure. I would like to formulate a third when it comes to organizations like the ALA and the MLA, but I think one of the bills...is going to be the rating system that we’ve discussed. The other one is our library boards by and large across the state are hand-picked from within. This is a tax-funded system here, where the people on the board spend tax dollars, so there is no taxation with representation. That goes against our model, our setup. If we have people spending tax dollars then the people who are putting the money into that tax base should have representation on how it is spent.

So, one of my bills will be that library boards have to be an elected board, much like your school boards. That way we, you, everybody else, your neighbors, your family that live here in Christian County have a say-so on who’s spending the money that they are paying into to fund our libraries. And that local elected board will make those decisions that we’ve elected them to do, and hopefully that will follow through with...outside organizations like the ALA and MLA who we are giving money to. We have more accountability because we’re electing people to make those important decisions for us.

Thank you so much for taking time with us this afternoon. We really appreciate it.

Rep. Gragg: Not a problem at all. I appreciate the time to sit down and take a breath, first and foremost, and to answer any questions people have. If I’m not sharing with you guys what’s going on and not hearing from you guys what’s going on, then I’m doing it wrong.

(Rep. Gragg's Committee Assignments include Children and Families, Elementary and Secondary Education, Healthcare Reform, and the Subcommittee on Appropriations--Education. He can reached at  (573) 751-2565 and jamieray.gragg@house.mo.gov.)

Contributors: Deborah Spindle, Gretchen Garrity