According to Jody
Pena, the meeting is to “stimulate a grassroots effort of citizens
and parents to become aware of actions by the Ozark
School District, and how citizens can make a positive change.”
The two-pronged
meeting will be on Thursday, August 17 from 5:30 to 7 p.m.,
and on Saturday, August 19, from 9:30 to 11 a.m. Both meetings
will be at the Ozark Public Library, 1005 N. 4th Ave., and the same
information will be shared.
Christian County Library, Ozark branch
According to one member, the
informational meeting is designed to make parents aware that the
governing system in place in the Ozark School District is such that
parents have little say and no power to effect positive change.
According to their
homepage, OSST :
“We cherish a strong bond with school board members, school
administrators, teachers, parents, taxpayers, and all patrons of the
school district who share this belief. We stand ready to support any
and all who understand that the purpose of education is to develop
graduates who can think critically and enter the world ready, able,
and willing to explore new solutions to both arising and age-old
issues.
To that end,
communities everywhere elect representatives from the district to
govern the local public education structure. The word govern is not
used lightly here. The school board is the government of the school.
The board does not answer to educators or administrators; it answers
only to you. Nor does it answer to the Missouri School Board
Association or the Missouri Education Roundtable; it answers only to
you. Outside a very few State laws that must be adhered to with
respect to reporting, it does not even answer to DESE; it answers
only to you. You elect this board, you monitor this board, and you
demand that this board answer to you. OSST exists to support a board
that supports the elective, representative, democratic form of
governance and to bring a board that strays from those principles
back to that form of governance.”
A
reflection of the high turn-over of personnel, the current interim
superintendent, Dr.
Lori Wilson, also
serves as the Chief
Financial Officer, School Treasurer and School Board Treasurer.
OSST plans to inform
parents of some of the current issues with the school district, and
expects to come up with a way forward to improving the situation for
students, staff, and taxpayers. One member said, “The public needs
to be informed of what happens behind their back.”
A flyer will be
forthcoming with more information in the next week.
“…the school board meeting turned into an utter disaster. The
meeting was cut short after sixty-two speakers, two men were arrested,
and the national and local media were running with the “insurrectionist
right-wing parents” narrative. I thought it was very possible that our
young movement had just screwed up big-time.”
It turns out that Prior’s parents movement, “Fight for Schools,”
was about to go national. From a local fight to protect school children
from dangerous ideologies like Critical Race Theory (CRT), and
transgender school policies, Prior’s group was able to turn the tables
on an unresponsive school board and gain victory.
“Parents of the World, Unite!” is not only an entertaining
story of how parents came together at a particular place and time to
battle corruption in their schools, it is also a step-by-step primer on
how to replicate victory in your community.
While Prior’s story is primarily about the school board, his
strategies and tactics can be used in other public institutions that
ultimately answer to citizen taxpayers.
THE RULES
The introduction includes twelve rules that, if implemented, will
help citizens successfully battle corruption in their own communities.
Prior writes, “What follows are twelve essential and
battle-tested strategies for fighting back against your school’s
implementation of critical race theory, radical gender ideology, and the
political agenda du jour that the Educational Industrial Complex is
putting into school with your tax dollars paying the bills.”
Further, he says, “Remember that in the beginning, the task can
be daunting. No one likes talking to strangers or drawing attention to
themselves, especially if that attention is going to put you in the line
of fire. But if you find a good group of people, put your heads
together, and keep your eyes on the prize, there’s very little you won’t
be able to accomplish.”
The book’s twelve chapters detail and explain the winning strategy.
Rule 1: Every Neighborhood Is a Battlefield.
Rule 2: Activate, Investigate, Communicate.
Rule 3: Always flip the Script.
Rule 4: Identify the “Bad Guys” and Take It to ‘Em.
Rule 5: Turn Your Fight into Must-See TV.
Rule 6: Do Not Get Stuck in the Mud.
Rule 7: When They Mobilize, Go Guerrilla.
Rule 8: Do Not Stop at the Wall.
Rule 9: You’ve Gotta Believe.
Rule 10: Don’t Let ‘Em Off the Ropes.
Rule 11: Don’t Be Overly Reliant on Past Success.
Rule 12: Play the Endgame.
Each chapter begins with a Key Lesson, and then goes
on to describe what each Rule looks like in action. Prior explains the
difference between goals, tactics, and strategies, and shows parents how
to turn on a dime and change tactics as events demand.
There’s information on how to motivate and activate citizens, how his
group raised funds and organized, and how to utilize the unique skills
that each person can bring to the battle.
Along the way, Fight for Schools gained new voices, new
strategies, and new battles. As the school board began to fight back,
Prior explains how the group learned to zigzag around their tactics. He
writes:
“After the June 22 meeting, the school board put in place new
rules out of “fear for their safety.” Those rules included only letting
10 people into the building at a time, with only the speaker being
allowed in the boardroom for public comment…Therefore, we decided to
convene about 40 parents to record our own public comment system…We
would then live stream it during the meeting itself as a way to show the
school board that for every plan they had, we had one as well.”
With humor and good will even toward the “Bad Guys,” Prior shares the
high and low points of the battle against corruption in the Loudoun
County, Virginia schools. There was plenty of push back in the form of
cancel culture and character assassination in the local and national
press, but the parents kept moving forward and never gave up.
“Parents of the World, Unite!” also shares some helpful
resources along the way. A Must Read if you are about to engage in the
battle to save our public institutions and keep children safe from
radical leftist agendas.
"The transgender movement is inherently political." -- Christopher F. Rufo
Below is a 12-minute documentary By Christopher F. Rufo that details the Marxist and transhumanist agenda behind gender ideology.
The books below, all in our Christian County Library system, promote gender ideology to children as young as 2.9 years up to 8 years of age. The links take you to where they are located in our library system. These books are by no means the only ones in the Christian County Library. To neo-Marxists, childhood innocence is a patriarchal social construct, something to be exposed and destroyed.
Description: "Just before his fifth birthday, Penelope lets his mother know he is a
boy and, with her support and his ninja powers, faces the rest of his
family and his classmates. Drawn from the author's memoir, The bold
world."
Description: "A picture book that introduces the concept of gender identity to the
youngest reader from writer Theresa Thorn and illustrator Noah Grigni.
Some people are boys. Some people are girls. Some people are both,
neither, or somewhere in between. This sweet, straightforward
exploration of gender identity will give children a fuller understanding
of themselves and others..."
Description: "Susan loves her baby sister, Jackie, but as Jackie grows older and
behaves more and more like a boy Susan must adjust to having a brother,
Jack, instead."
Description: "Three-year-old Casey wants what his older sister, Jessie, has--a
shimmery skirt, glittery painted nails, and a sparkly bracelet--but
Jessie does not approve. After two boys tease Casey about his
appearance, Jessie evolves to a place of acceptance and celebration of
her gender-creative younger brother."
"The field of librarianship is not what it used to be. A librarian has
typically been known as kind, helpful, and not at all controversial, but
the culture of the field has changed. Instead, your typical librarian
today may be an individual with brightly colored hair, pronouns on his
or her name tag, and a repertoire of “inclusive” books to put on display
or suggest for your kids. She may resemble an activist more so than an
actual librarian. It is also likely your librarian has a degree in
Library Science from an ALA-accredited program which makes him or her a
“certified” librarian in your state. This is a requirement for the
majority of librarian jobs in the country, and it is the primary reason
that you may see inappropriate and agenda-driven material in your local
library, even if you thought it could never happen there."
And as an added bonus, read this article from Montana:
"The Montana State Library Commission will consider withdrawing from the
American Library Association later this summer after a state
commissioner raised concerns — splashed in right-wing media outlets —
the president-elect is a “self-proclaimed Marxist.”
Citizen participation was vital. From the article:
"As demonstrated by nearly an hour of public comment
before Tuesday’s vote, the Montana State Library’s separation from the
ALA is the latest development in a broader debate about the nature of
books available in public schools and libraries. Several prominent
members of the self-styled parental rights movement
spoke in favor of the withdrawal, including Bozeman parent Cheryl
Tusken and Moms for Liberty Montana chapter treasurer Jessie Browning.
Both testified regularly during the 2023 Montana Legislature in support
of proposals such as House Bill 234, the state’s so-called obscenity bill."
While these particular books are not overtly sexualized, they do set
up—as normal—the idea that a boy can be a girl, that a loving
parent or grandparent would encourage gender fluidity, or that a
family can be comprised of two moms, etc. The indoctrination starts
early. And when a child reaches age 10 or 12, there is a plethora of
other, more explicitly sexual books written just for them. By the
time a child reaches the teen years, they have been “positively”
exposed
to significant amounts of sexualization
that would have been unheard of in previous generations.
Why are such books being heavily marketed to very young children?
Back in the 1970s, radical activists and librarians began the process
of deconstructing how books are cataloged. The goal was to move the
classification of homosexual-themed books out of the traditional
subject headings and into an ever-growing variety of classifications.
Later, the library activists branched out to Queer
Theory as it pertains to the normalization and dissemination of any kind of
sexuality. The targeting of children at ever younger ages is also a
feature of cultural Marxism, a move to sexualize children in an
effort to destabilize families and society.
Pronoun buttons in the teen section at Sparta
In a scholastic paper titled, “Queering the Catalog,”
incoming American
Library Association President, Emily Drabinski, writes,
“Works about religion in the Dewey Decimal System are
overwhelmingly Christian (Berman [1971] 1993. 70); works about
heterosexuality are barely named as such in LCSH*
[Link added] (Christensen 2008, 233-34). As a result of
these failures, biased ideological stories continue to be “told”
by the organizational systems. As users interact with these
structures to browse and retrieve materials, they inevitably learn
negative stereotypes about race, gender, class, and other social
identities...Similarly, they “learn” that heterosexuality in
normative, that gay and lesbian sexuality is the only sexual identity
to be examined, and that queer sexuality is inherently deviant.”
Just scratching the surface, what extremist activists have been busy
doing is to make classifying books about sexuality, particularly any
sexuality that is not heterosexual, so fluid that these books
can be organized under just about any classification and placed on
just about any shelf in the library. This, of course, has been going
on with school textbooks for some time, with subversive ideologies
being embedded within the curriculum and basically unavoidable.
For a primer on why schools, libraries, and mass media are
sexualizing children, watch James Lindsay. In just over an hour, he
details the Marxist Queer Theory underpinnings of overturning the
existing order of society through corrupting the innocence of
children.
This destablization is purposeful and militant and ongoing, whether
the Christian County library staff and board of trustees are fully aware or not. If
they are not already aware, they should be made aware.
There are many obscene and sexually inappropriate children's books at the Christian County Library and branches. Go to the online catalog to search for them. You can do searches for LGBT, or Transgender, or Queer, or for books that promote Critical Race Theory or DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion). If you have the title or author of a particular book you can also search that way.
While the Nixa School Board in Christian County has been working to abide
by state laws that prohibit giving minors access to obscene and
pornographic materials, public libraries are
resisting any such mechanism.
(From the Missouri Public Library Standards handbook)
The ALA's code of ethics says in part, "We
uphold the principles of intellectual freedom and resist all efforts
to censor library resources."
This
is part of the ALA Code of Ethics that the Missouri Public Library Standards handbook lists as an Entry Level
Requirement for public libraries. The ALA, which receives about $230
million of taxpayer funding, has been subverting state and local
libraries for decades. And unfortunately for many county libraries in
Missouri, the state has allowed politically far left organizations like
the ALA to dictate policy. Another requirement from the Missouri handbook is the mandate to "cooperate with other libraries (public, school, academic, special) to offer information, services, and programs for library users, such as interlibrary loan, reciprocal borrowing, and consortium access to collections."
"We support the Library Bill of Rights and the Freedom to Read Statement in providing free and open access to our materials for all age groups. Children are not restricted to particular areas of the Library. Our staff does not monitor the materials that children choose. The responsibility for the reading or viewing choices of children rests entirely with parents or legal guardians."
In
other words, the library gives minors, some of whom are without a
parent, free rein in the library, all the while placing sexually
explicit books throughout the children and teen sections. Children
are free to browse and read whatever they come across, without
checking out any materials at all.
Parents have trusted the library to be a safe space for their
children for generations, one of the few public spots where a child
could be safe in both mind and body while a parent ran to
the store or browsed the adult section. However, in spite of laws to
the contrary, public libraries, including the Christian County
Library, are providing obscene materials to children, indeed seeding
them throughout the children and teen sections.
Missouri has passed SB 775, which prohibits schools from "providing explicit sexual material to a student if such person is
affiliated with a public or private elementary or secondary school in an
official capacity and, knowing of its content and character, such
person provides, assigns, supplies, distributes, loans, or coerces
acceptance of or the approval of the providing of explicit sexual
material to a student or possesses with the purpose of providing,
assigning, supplying, distributing, loaning, or coercing acceptance of
or the approval of the providing of explicit sexual material to a
student."
Violating SB 775 is a Class A misdemeanor that could result in a year in jail and a $2,000 fine.
THE MILLER TEST
According to the U.S. Supreme Court, in what has
been termed the Miller Test, obscene material can be categorized in
this way:
(1) whether the average person applying contemporary community
standards would find the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the
prurient interest;
(2) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently
offensive way, sexual conduct specifically
defined by the
applicable state law; and
(3) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary,
artistic, political or scientific value.
The books that were
restricted or removed from the Nixa public schools, in compliance
with state law, are currently available to children in our public
library branches. Included:
Blankets, by Craig
Thompson (a graphic novel) is in the Clever branch.
Unpregnant,
by Jeni Hendricks is located in the Ozark branch
TheHandmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood; Illustrator Renee Nault
(graphic novel version) is in the Ozark branch.
Lucky
by Alice Sebold has been located to the Adult Section in Ozark.
Minors have full access to the Adult sections of the library, which
allows children to browse and select all kinds of materials that are
dangerous to the minds of vulnerable youth.
Here is Nixa School Board member Bridget Bidinger, giving the truth behind the memoir Lucky, a book that even the publisher pulled from publication:
That the county library is mandated to partner with local schools is more than problematic. Public
libraries have become change agents, militantly pushing sexually
explicit books on children. Whether they are aware or not, library
staff are contributing to a political agenda that has nothing to do
with providing a quality reading experience for children; instead,
the library promotes smut and LGBTQ propaganda, among other ideologies not in keeping
with community standards.
It makes no sense for obscene and pornographic books to be unavailable to minors at school, but easily accessible at the library.
Echo Alexander of Highlandville was appointed to replace Treasurer Paula Bishop for the
South County area, while attorney Diana P. Brazeale of Ozark has been
appointed in place of current President Matthew Suarez for the Ozark area.
Echo Alexander
The Commission took a more direct role over the appointment process after the library's executive director and board of trustees had experienced months of contention with local citizens regarding the placement of sexually explicit books in the children's section of the library.
Many county boards are self-perpetuating in that they find and present board members to the county commission for appointment or reappointment. Such appointments are routinely approved by the commission, however, in the case of the library board of trustees, the commission decided to take a more active role in vetting candidates.
Matthew Suarez
Ultimately, the commission received 24 applications for the two appointments. After narrowing down the field to a handful of candidates, the commissioners interviewed them individually, asking the same questions and using a point system to determine who would be appointed.
The appointments were announced and voted on at the July 3, 2023 Christian County Commission meeting.
Paula Bishop
The library board of trustees is an unpaid position. The next position to be up for appointment or reappointment will be in 2024 for the West County area that includes Clever. Board of Trustee Stephanie Sekscinski (Member-at-Large) is the current appointee.
Many taxpayers believe their local library, funded mainly by local dollars, is under local direction. It makes sense to believe that, since library staff and governing boards are usually local citizens.
But right under our noses libraries are being colonized by ideologies
and agendas that are foreign to the local community. Policies are being
put in place that have more to do with the political goals of leftist
organizations than our Republic.
In fact, local libraries have become community change agents, pushing such things as Critical Race Theory (CRT) , Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and the LGBTQ+
agenda. Specifically, sexually explicit books are being actively
displayed and pushed on children in thousands of libraries across the
nation.
Depending on the size of the local library or library association, the cost to join the ALA
can be anywhere from $175 for a very small library to $2,000 for a very
large library. In Christian County, the cost would reflect a medium
library of $500. For Greene County the cost would be $1,300 for a larger
population. As can be seen from the link there are numerous divisions
and round tables that can be joined for a fee, and then there are individual memberships for librarians and library staff.
Assuming these fees are paid out of the local library’s budget,
taxpayers are footing the bill to have their own communities
indoctrinated. Additionally, the ALA has a legion of organizations
either spun off or closely associated, that promote any number of
extreme left agendas. One such organization is a group named EveryLibrary, a 501(c)4 that was founded by John Chrastka, who previously worked for the ALA.
According to Dan Kleinman of Safe Libraries, who has written about EveryLibrary previously, “It
has a history of deceptive training. It guided librarians how to
silence parents who complain about p*rn in the library… Librarians were
trained to use a ‘very common political ploy.’ Another technique is
‘never mention or directly oppose or attack the person making the
original claim. Simply bury their claim in great stories that tell a
counter account of their experience.’ We will see below that’s exactly
what they do when they attack Moms For Liberty without naming it. ‘The
last technique you can use is to simply ignore them.’”
EveryLibrary’s founder, Chrastka, has written a pair of books that
teach librarians how to gain funding during political campaigns.
According to the introductory description of Before the Ballot,
“Let’s be blunt: library
funding is political. And the struggle to secure funding is ongoing;
the work that librarians need to do to influence local politics doesn’t
just pop up in the few months before Election Day. It should span the
years before or between elections. [Bolding added] The authors’
previous book ‘Winning Elections and Influencing Politicians for
Library Funding’ targeted library ballot committees and advocacy
organizations. But their new book speaks directly to librarians, library
staff, and boards. It is designed to help library leaders understand
and navigate the political nature of their work in the years leading up
to a ballot measure or political initiative. Sharing the tools and
tactics developed by their organization EveryLibrary, the nation’s first
and only Political Action Committee for Libraries…”
Why have libraries–historically understood as apolitical and
dedicated to promoting reading in their communities–become political?
Short answer: The American Library Association.
THE TENTACLES OF THE ALA
For most of its history, the ALA has had a decided leftward slant.
But in recent years, and especially with the election of an openly
Marxist president, Emily Drabinski, the ALA has militantly advocated for
the LGBTQ+ agenda, CRT, and other hard left positions. Through policies
not having the force of law like the “Right to Read” and the “Library Bill of Rights” the ALA is pushing a radical agenda that is having real impact on local communities.
Through advocacy and a quiet colonization of library staff and
boards, local libraries are carrying out a political transformation of
communities on behalf of the ALA. It has come to the point that, in
defiance of state laws, libraries are promoting open access to obscene, sexually explicit and even pornographic materials to children.
James Lindsay, of New Discourses,
has been at the forefront of identifying and opposing the colonization
of our public institutions by Marxists like Emily Drabinski. Below is an
excellent introduction to the Marxist roots of DEI:
She speaks about using her socialist vision to expand out from the local library to the community:
“I’ve been thinking more and more about the public library as,
every square inch that is the public library isn’t a store or a private
equity office building, so if we expand the public library in terms of
both space and the networks that it can take up in a social space, the
more we have for the public. If we think of the public library as the
public square, we want more of that. If we fully fund and expand the
libraries we would reclaim more of the city for the public.
So, can I do that as President of the ALA? Obviously not, all of
these struggles and fights are local, but helping people access the
language of a socialist vision of what the city could be and the role of
the library I think is something I could do.”
SEEING THE CONNECTIONS
Once the connection is made between increasing library funding via
political campaigns to implementing the socialist vision that the new
president of the ALA is envisioning, it is clear that public libraries
have become a focus of infiltration for Socialism/Communism/Marxism.
Later in the interview Drabinski says about campaigning, “I think
the socialist project, along with a range of other movements against
white supremacy, patriarchy, and others, has played a role in the fact
that we can now talk openly about the abolition of the carceral state.
The public conversation about defunding the police, and thinking about
different ways of organizing our relations to one another. To me, that’s
something that’s only possible through deep organizing and is the ethic
that we brought to the campaign.”
And this:
“I tweeted that I was a “Marxist lesbian” when I won, and I
absolutely am a Marxist, and absolutely am a lesbian, but I got a ton of
blowback, which is not great, but I don’t know. We have to be brave, we
have to be willing to fight, and the right has no compunction about
being completely out there with their totally hardcore racist ideals,
and their white replacement theory bullshit. We have to be as brave as
they are and as public as they are, I think…”
SEXUALIZING CHILDREN IS A FEATURE, NOT A BUG
It is this political perspective that has overtaken many public
libraries in the United States. A strategy of Socialist goals is the
demoralization of a community, including advocating the early
sexualization of children, the de-funding of police, the dividing into
opposing groups of local populations, and other strategies that will be
addressed later.
In short, citizens are paying for the destruction of their
communities and the sexualization of children through taxpayer-funded
local libraries.
The ALA also provides a deep well of resources, training, consulting, and legal aid to assist librarians and boards. There are extensive ALA resources provided to libraries to keep sexually explicit books in the children’s sections.
“The real question is do you trust librarians to decide what your
family is allowed to read. Librarians have a “Library Bill of Rights”
that contains the Marxist idea that all ages can access all materials.
That’s why they allow kids to read pervasively vulgar materials. So kids
would get anything at all from a librarian, and indeed that’s what we
are seeing again and again in the news. That “Bill of Rights” sham is in
almost every library. That’s the every library in EveryLibrary. To them
EveryLibrary means every library will allow kids access to
inappropriate material because some Marxists added the word “age” to the
“Library Bill of Rights” over fifty years ago, no one’s yet realized,
and we’re going to damn well keep ramming it down people’s throats,
especially the easy targets: school kids away from their parents. So
actually yes, parents ultimately decide what goes on in schools and
libraries—that’s why they elect board members to carry out their wishes,
not the wishes of some Marxists from Chicago, IL, called American
Library Association.”
ACTION ITEM:
Contact your local library and request via the Sunshine law whether your library is a member of the ALA (sample request here). Read here about a Wyoming community that voted to have their library sever ties with the ALA. It can be done!
