The Library's Little Tyrannies

 

Library Executive Director Renee Brumett

 

By Gretchen Garrity

At the February 27, 2024 Christian County Library Board of Trustees meeting, citizens were once again faced with a board president who appears to be setting up a narrative regarding public comments.

Quick Background

Since December 2022, the library board has been taken to task by citizens who have requested that books with inappropriate material be relocated out of the children’s section of the library. This material runs the gamut from early sexualization of children, indoctrination of children into Marxist agendas through Social Emotional Learning, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and Critical Race Theory, and LGBTQ themes and gender ideology. These are the same issues that parents of public school children are facing in their school libraries and curricula.

The library board and staff have resisted these requests. Following the far left agenda of the American Library Association (ALA) and its member chapter the Missouri Library Association (MLA), the local library has been nearly unresponsive to the requests of taxpayers.

Citizens are not giving up, and the library board is met every month with citizens asking for recourse to protect children. It is now March 2024. Two new trustees have been appointed and a third one will be appointed in the coming months.

It is understandable that the board majority and staff are weary of the citizens’ requests, when it is obvious they have no intention of protecting children, but rather continue to provide unsuitable materials to any child that happens upon them in the children’s section. It is no longer a matter of unintentional exposure. These materials are being provided in a purposeful manner to children under the guise of “Freedom to Read".

Suppressing Free Speech at the Library

At last Tuesday's meeting, Board President Allyson Tuckness not only reiterated the standard rules that suppress free speech and communication between citizens and the board, but she added another new rule. Watch (prompted to the 42:45 minute mark):

So let’s get a list going:

1. Comments limited to 10 speakers, with three minutes each (meetings typically end right at the one-hour mark, unless the board’s business goes longer, as happened at the February meeting)
2. Will not respond to public comments at the time they are made (has anyone ever had a response afterward?)
3. The board may ask clarifying questions, comment or take action at their discretion (but citizens cannot ask clarifying questions or comment on board comments)
   
4. Questions for staff about library operations should be made during normal business hours (why is this a problem? Isn't the board involved in library operations?)
   
5. If a patron needs to step outside for whatever reason, they are asked not to go beyond the foyer outside for “safety reasons” (a narrative being pushed)
   

Building the Bad Citizen Narrative

For several months now, the library has contracted to have a police officer on duty during the board meetings. Ostensibly this is because of “heightened emotions,” a term that Tuckness uses often when she speaks about citizen comments.

At the latest meeting she mentioned a speaker at the December meeting, a young man who spoke vehemently and passionately about being introduced to porn at a young age, and its deleterious effects upon him. He begged the board to remove such books from the children’s section of the library.

Oddly, at another meeting a month or so previously, a man in the audience had become angry at the exposure of some of the materials a citizen had shared. The man slapped the materials out of a woman’s hand and threw them at another citizen. He was escorted from the meeting room.

But it is the young Christian man who Tuckness mentions in the video above —with the 'heightened emotions'. This is the narrative of the Bad Citizen, the Bad Christian that has been formed and is being pushed to the public and perhaps other actors.

The board president asks citizens to respect the board. “We will not tolerate raising of voices or yelling at us, at other audience members, or Renee [the executive director]. I will give everyone a chance, will ask them to calm down, will not take away their time, but if it happens a second time you may be cut off.” Then she says, “Try to control emotions and respect us the same way that we would respect you.”

Is it the emotions that bother some of the board members and staff, or is it the truth being expressed in those emotions?

What does the Supreme Court of the United States say about free speech? From Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1 (1949):

“Accordingly, a function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for acceptance of an idea. That is why freedom of speech, though not absolute, Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, supra, pp. 315 U. S. 571-572, is nevertheless protected against censorship or punishment, unless shown likely to produce a clear and present danger of a serious substantive evil that rises far above public inconvenience, annoyance, or unrest.”

Board President Tuckness does not respect the citizens who speak. She asserts she has the right to determine the tone and volume of another citizen’s speech. Just as the socialist/progressives seek to defame those who oppose their agenda, so Tuckness is framing Christians as overly emotional, while ignoring the actual physical accosting of others on the part of a citizen opposed to relocating objectionable materials away from children.

And worst of all, Tuckness refuses to address the urgent issue of children being exposed to sexually explicit and pervasively vulgar books, even early indoctrination into alternative sexualities--there are actually board books for toddlers pushing gender ideology in the children's section of the library.

If she can't take the heat, President Tuckness should resign. The people will continue to speak.

For more on the Christian County Library see David Rice's Substack: Frenemies of the Library, Show Me the Money, Library Usage Still Lagging, Voting for Libraries? Titus Must Wade Through Jeff City Swamp, and Library Lovers Lock Horns.