If you want to get a parent or grandparent or taxpayer up to speed about the issues with the Christian County Library, this interview by David Rice is the perfect vehicle.
Not only does it give a short history of how Christian County citizen Mary Hernandez de Carl became involved in the movement to bring sanity to the children and teen sections of the library, but how the battle is going. Many very important points are shared.
Our publicly-appointed officials at the library continue to dig in and provide inappropriate materials to children. The staff seem to be creatures of the American Library Association and its chapter the Missouri Library Association. There is a lot of money and power behind the agenda to demoralize our children and destabilize our culture.
One person stood up.
Again, the Christian County Library Board of Trustees meets tonight at the Nixa branch at 6 p.m. Also, the Facebook group mentioned at the end, Pray for Christian County, can be found HERE. Also, We the People of Christian County was instrumental in giving a citizen's a voice in the effort to clean up the library.
David Rice writes about the Christian County Library's penchant for spending our tax dollars. This time with MOBIUS, a consortium of libraries (mostly academic) that charges for sharing books and resources. I wrote about it here.
But Rice has information from the executive director of MOBIUS, Donna Bacon. From his article:
"When I was emailing Donna Bacon, she mentioned that the future goals for MOBIUS include bringing Missouri Evergreen libraries into MOBIUS--increasing the costs to the taxpayer duplicating services we dont really need for Missouri Public Libraries."
The tendency to centralize everything under one system is neither good for individual libraries or for the taxpayer. Rice shares the numbers.
Incidentally, the CCL board of trustees meeting is tonight at the Nixa branch, at 6 p.m. If you would like to speak, you need to get there early and fill out a comment form. Agenda HERE.
If you don't keep up with your public officials, they tend to spend all kinds of your money. As Rice states, the library is ramping up to ask for yet more money to do renovations.
"Any employee who holds a voting interest in the Board or governing body of any other organization, association, non-for-profit, union, corporation, or government entity that conducts any business, financial or otherwise, with Christian County Library (including Recognized Library Support Organizations such as the Christian County Library Foundation and Friends of the Christian County Library) must disclose that relationship to their Supervisor and shall be disqualified from voting on or participating in any decision making, contract negotiation, or purchasing for or on behalf of Christian County Library related to that organization or entity. "
In a striking coincidence, a citizen, Aileena Keen, stood up to speak during the public comment portion of the meeting. In it, she exposes a possible conflict of interest on the part of the library's executive director, Renee Brumett, who is a current board member of MOBIUS, a library consortium that provides access to digital library materials, inter-library loans, and other resources. Watch the short video:
From Keen's question, it appears few, if any, members of the board were aware that Brumett is a member of the board of directors of MOBIUS. Library
consortiums engage in resource sharing, thereby giving local library
members a wider degree of access to materials like books and digital
resources. Why would this be a conflict of interest? See the above library policy. MOBIUS is a library consortium of mainly academic libraries that the Missouri State Library is associated with.
Currently, only four Missouri public libraries, including the Christian County Library, are members of MOBIUS. The other libraries are St. Charles City-County Library, St. Louis County Library, and the Springfield-Green County Library. Additionally, Robin Westphal, the State Librarian, is an ex officio board member of MOBIUS.
The question has to be asked, "Does the Christian County Library's membership in MOBIUS, versus Evergreen, have anything to do with Brumett's board membership?" It may not, but the library board should have had knowledge of any potential conflicts.
Additionally, the Christian County Library received a grant from MOBIUS for $1,159.00 to send a staff member to the American Library Association's YALSA Symposium in 2023.
Looking deeper into MOBIUS, other connections surface, such as with Overdrive. What is Overdrive? You can read about Overdrive HERE in a previous article. From that article, "As
a company OverDrive is typically Woke,
aligned with the ALA, and
prominently promotes social justice issues on its blog and for book
recommendations. The ALA’s “Right to Read” statement is
promoted here
and here;
while Social Emotional
Learning is promoted here."
Overdrive originated the Libby App which public libraries and their patrons can download to access digital materials. You can also read about it at the link, and not only can it be expensive for public libraries, but Libby allows children access to thousands of inappropriate digital materials and books.
If a parent desires only age-appropriate materials for their children on Libby, there is the eReading Room which curates materials designed for children and teens. However, it is not the parent who is able to make the final determination, but something Overdrive and libraries developed. Their understanding of age-appropriate may not be what parents feel is right for their child.
The connections with MOBIUS--including the ALA, the MLA (as an Institutional Member) and Overdrive--all point to the continued association with organizations that have progressive socialist agendas separate from our local community. Local control is not just for government schools. It's also for taxpayer-funded public libraries.
Why would our public library hold membership in a consortium of academic libraries and not one geared to public libraries? What are the respective costs associated with membership, as opposed to membership in Evergreen? When did our library join MOBIUS? What are the advantages, if any?
Taxpayers--citizens of Christian County--are unknowingly funding the American Library Association's advocacy for overthrowing our nation. Our local library, the Christian County Library, has sent Executive Director Renee Brumett, to an Ohio ALA conference this week that...well, let them speak for themselves.
"So the "Big Ideas" for public librarians to learn on the public's dime
are anticapitalism, with a side helping of racism and hate. This is
what librarians are learning as Big Ideas to kick off their day at an
ALA conference with an inspiring speaker sure to challenge their minds
and spark their creativity. Then they come back to the local
communities and implement the anticapitalism and racism and hate they
just learned. All taxpayer funded. All of it. Memberships,
conferences, travel, meals, incidentals, all of it."
Now do you see why citizens have been petitioning the CCL for over a year to no avail? When your librarians and a majority of board members are activists, courtesy of the Marxist ALA, you will get nowhere with an appeal to decency, child protection, and community values.
When the library budgets $30,000 for staff and board travel, not to mention thousands for "training" and whatever else they have stuffed into the budget under innocuous sounding categories, it's time for a review.
And it is long past time for the CCL to sever any and all ties with the American Library Association and its chapter member, The Missouri Library Association. There are alternatives to the Marxist ALA such as Kleinman's WLA.
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:
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)
Will not respond to
public comments at the time they are made (has anyone ever had a
response afterward?)
The board may ask
clarifying questions, comment or take action at their discretion (but citizens cannot ask clarifying questions or comment on board comments)
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?)
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?
“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.
This is a must-read article by David Rice. It details how the Friends of the Library in Christian County support the status quo, i.e., letting sexually explicit and pervasively vulgar books be accessible to children. The Marxist, godless and technocratic agenda of indoctrinating children and minors into gender ideology is at a peak right now.
The physical and emotional toll this ideology is taking upon our children will echo down the years as an era of insanity. No individual of good will can remain neutral.
Rice exposes how the Friends of the Library take books the community has donated, resells them, and then uses that money to support the status quo. The FOL president even has the audacity (perhaps ignorance) to write in opposition to HB2498, which provides for the election rather than appointment of library boards:
"This bill will also give the now-elected Board of Trustees the power to
approve or reject all library employees, programs, activities, and
volunteers."
He is advocating that un-elected employees, and not elected officials, be in charge of the library.
The Christian County Commission will be meeting on Feb. 14, at 10:30 a.m. On the agenda is discussion regarding the selection process for trustees of the library board. Apparently the process from last year needs to be reaffirmed. Please support the commission with your attendance.
The method to their madness is similar to organizations like the Missouri School Boards Association (MSBA), in which their advocacy positions are often antithetical to freedom, parental rights, etc.
Rice says, "Missouri Librarians descended on Jefferson City on Tuesday, Feb. 6th,
24, to have morning Unity meetings and then go lobby (harass) public
officials. Their purpose is laid bare in their agendas and their
priorities.
They were against Free Speech, the 2nd Amendment,
Protecting Children, lowering taxes, changing their Fiscal Year and
elections, and Limiting their Power. The one bill they supported would
make it illegal for libraries to remove books from their collection. As I
point out below, they don’t even expect this bill to pass."
Read the whole thing. Rice includes a list of bills currently in the legislature that citizens will want to read. Keep in mind that the MLA is a chapter of the American Library Association (ALA)...that hard Left organization that is beginning a slow retreat from its Marxist President Emily Drabinski.
Citizen participation is vital. The next Christian County Library Board of Trustee meeting is scheduled for February 27.
At their weekly meeting on Feb. 6, 2024, the Christian County Commissioners reaffirmed the process used last year to vet and appoint Christian County Library Board of Trustees positions.
There are approximately nine local county boards that are comprised of volunteers who serve the public in various ways, including on the library board. These are unpaid positions. Most of them are self-perpetuating in the sense that when a board position comes open each organization selects and vets their candidate and refers them to the county commission for appointment.
However, because the county library has been embroiled in controversy for more than a year, the county commissioners took charge of the process and eventually appointed two new board members in 2023.
(You may have to go to Youtube to view the video)
Citizens began petitioning the library board in December 2022 to restrict age-inappropriate, pornographic, and pervasively vulgar materials in the children and teen sections of the library.
So far, the library staff and board have resisted almost all efforts to have books moved out of the reach of minors. Monthly board of trustee meetings have seen increasing numbers of citizens commenting upon the issue and requesting relief.
Now that another appointed position is coming open (Clever area) in June, the library staff and other activists are most likely concerned that a new appointee would constitute a majority on the board and be able to make substantial changes to the library's collection policies.
The library's executive director, Renee Brumett, requested to delay the meeting to discuss the appointment process due to the MLA's Library Advocacy Day occurring on the same date. According to Presiding Commissioner Lynn Morris, the delay request came in late Sunday or early Monday before Tuesday morning's meeting.
The Commission, after discussion, decided to go forward. A motion was put forth from Eastern Commissioner Bradley Jackson, and seconded by Presiding Commissioner Lynn to continue the appointment process in perpetuity until such time as another motion was made to change the process. It passed, with Western Commissioner Hosea Bilyeu voting no.
The commissioners heard from citizens who were not happy with the process or the fact that the commissioners voted to continue the procedure from last year without the library staff being present. For the record, there are sixty employees in the Christian County Library system. Surely, not all of them were at the Library Advocacy Day or at work.
Let's be clear, the dissent is coming from people who want to continue with the library as it has been and continues to be--a place where children are being exposed to age-inappropriate books of a sexual nature, as well as indoctrination in Marxist ideology through DEI and CT.
They know that when the commissioners appoint another trustee, that the board may decide to make changes.
Listen to Rep. Tony Lovasco describe his bill (HB2498) to make library board of trustees an elected position, and not an appointed position (prompted to the 20:00 minute mark). Our county commissioners have done a great job of vetting the trustees in 2023, but allowing citizens to vote for who ultimately governs our local library is a good thing.
Although the discussion about the library bill is only two minutes long, Rep. Lovasco makes some great points. Tomorrow is Library Advocacy Day in Jefferson City, in which librarians and trustees will be visiting with legislators. Say a little prayer for the representatives as they discuss HB2498 (bill text here). :-)
Incidentally, tomorrow morning's Christian County Commission meeting (9 a.m. at the courthouse in Ozark) will include discussion of the West County Township Position for the library trustees.
"One should not be illegal, while the other is legal. We are
facing a distinction between virtual and real child porn without a
difference for the end consumer and the children being abused. And for
the men and women who fall into a child porn fetish, they don’t avoid
using real children because the images they find are “virtual” or
“drawn.” When children are the target of abuse, whether the image is
virtual or real, then why are Supreme Court Justices, Politicians, and pagan parents arguing for the inclusion of child porn in schools and libraries? What is their goal?"
That there has been more than a year of citizens petitioning the Christian County Library to remove access to sexually explicit and age inappropriate materials with NO RESPONSE from the publicly-appointed board of trustees, is problematic to say the least.
It looks like the executive director and other activists within the library system are running the show. If the board of trustees does not respond to the public, then it must be inferred they do not represent the taxpayers.
David Rice is back with the second of five articles, "Why is Child Porn Legal?" dealing with the subject of child porn and how porn has found its way into our schools and libraries. Rice details a recent visit he had with the Christian County Library's Executive Director:
"I recently met with the Executive Director at the Library near my home. I
told her the material was illegal. She told me it was legal, and her
smug look of satisfaction let me know I was uninformed. That is why I
started this series. I dug into the law and discovered she was right. It
is legal."
Part two dissects the legalities behind what has happened. Another must read.
One so wants to recoil from this stuff and not think on it. But in all honesty, porn has affected, on one level or another, almost everyone in modern society. Christians must be willing to take up the cross and fight. Porn, and in particular child porn, is a scourge that grows ever larger.
Our betters (those with most of the money, education, and influence) have long since abandoned their moral position and are not to be followed or trusted. This includes elected officials who pay lip service to protecting children but in reality do little or nothing.
From Rice's article:
"Overall, the Miller decision is just bad
law. One of the justices, William J. Brenner, Jr., was eager to remove
as many obscenity laws as he could. We can all give him thanks for his
service to this nation. I need a sarcasm font. We were given a law which
created a market for obscene materials across the nation. Its claim to
return the issues to the states is a valueless claim. We are one bad
petition initiative to change the Missouri Constitution to enshrine the
right to porn in our libraries and our schools. This is what happens
when you side with a Free Love worldview."
Our local culture has become so degraded that our Christian County Library is on par with public libraries in St. Louis and Kansas City for the amount of smut pushing the early sexualization and indoctrination of our children.
But there is hope. The monthly library board of trustee meetings have become a sort of revival of Christian sentiment. Pastors are getting involved, though sadly they are few and far between. Victims of the "pornification of our culture" speak about its trauma, and how to be saved and healed.
The "educated" voices that speak in favor of allowing minors access to smut are slowly being overcome by common sense and sanity. But the Enemy of common sense and sanity will not give up easily.
The next meeting of the Christian County Library is scheduled for Tuesday, January 23 at 6 p.m. Check the link to confirm the location as the meeting draws closer.
In the meantime, keep up with David Rice's series. Don't turn away. Local action has national impact.
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