The Librarians (2025) Movie Script
1
This programme contains
very strong language
I never imagined what's happening
right now could ever happen.
It didn't dawn on us that
we would come under attack.
Do you like people?
Have you a real love
of books and learning?
You may well consider
the vocation of a librarian.
We just...
..never imagined
we would be in the forefront.
We're not supposed to
necessarily be seen and felt.
We're stewards of the space,
stewards of the resources.
We're the stewards for the people.
Now I think we've moved
into the vanguard.
We have to be out in front
telling the story.
It's about us.
Texas Republicans are launching
an investigation
into what types of books
school districts have,
specifically ones that pertain
to race and sexuality.
In a letter to
the Texas Education Agency,
lawmakers pointed to Texas districts
that recently removed books
from classrooms
after parent complaints.
Republican State Representative
Matt Krause of Fort Worth
sent this list of 850 books
to a number of public school
districts.
There is no information on
who helped Representative Krause
compile the list.
We were right there in
the crosshairs of this rising call,
so we felt like everything
that we did was being watched.
It's not just 850 books
which we've all fixated on.
He says and "any other books".
I'm just immediately angry
because it's so obvious
that he is targeting LGBTQ titles
and authors of colour,
and books about race,
and books about sex education.
He is asking districts to
remove these and any other books
that might embarrass
or shame someone...
..due to sex or race.
What struck me was, one,
there was a list of 850 books.
He wanted to know
if school districts had them,
how much money
had been spent on them.
REPORTER: The list includes titles
like a book on the history
of the KKK, and another about
desegregation in schools.
There are also books
about gender identity,
the LGBTQ+ community
and the history of Roe v Wade.
I didn't even think,
you know, most school districts
would entertain this.
I remember looking at it,
thinking...
..they're singling us out again.
A couple of days later,
our governor doubled down
and sent a letter to the Texas
Association of School Boards
asking them to do something about
"pornography" in our libraries.
I'm calling for
the immediate removal
of this very graphic,
pornographic material
from our libraries and our schools,
and want to establish standards
so that parents have the assurance
that their children
will not be exposed to it.
I remember seeing
Governor Abbott's letter
and my district
was mentioned specifically.
That was the first moment that
I realised school librarians
could be criminalised
for selecting books
and making them available
on the shelf.
All books, Ulysses.
I wonder what they say in all
those books. Are they saying...
Politicians are playing
a very dangerous game
when they try to make
school libraries
battlegrounds
for their political war,
because the only people that
that is going to hurt are our kids.
This space, these resources,
that are supposed to be
this magical entry point to...
..the world, to stories, to ideas.
There it is.
See it?
Something they're seeing in there.
What is it, Lionel?
There's an A.
Yep, that's an A right there.
I sure would like to know what
they're saying in there, though.
Every letter is different from...
Well, ladies and gentlemen, here
we are at Granbury High School.
You know, it's always exciting,
the first day of school.
kids are dressed up,
parents are excited,
especially new moms and dads
taking that walk for the first time
with those five-year-olds into
kindergarten. It's a great feeling.
And when they come to me, I...
I need to have a conversation
with you.
We were called into a meeting
and told
anything that is sexually explicit
that could meet the penal code,
you are responsible for
in your library.
And I pepped up, I said,
"Just the Krause list?",
and got the evil eye.
We spent the rest of the afternoon
in that meeting going through our
catalogues and trying to figure out
what we have and what we don't have.
I was sitting in the library
reading, and these men
came in with this big cart,
and they went up to librarians
and they started saying,
"Where are the books?
"We need to get these things
out of here."
We were just told,
"Get rid of them. Get rid of them.
"Deal with it. Get rid of them."
Getting them off the shelves,
putting them on carts,
putting them wherever,
going through books
and just chucking them.
They had no room downtown.
The offices were full of books.
The high school was full of books.
When you have to go through
10,000 books,
what are you going to do?
To me, as a librarian,
that was trauma.
I went to the campus of a librarian
I particularly feared for
and she took me into a closet.
Was very careful to let me know,
"What I'm about to show you
"is behind three locks,
so I feel like it's safe."
The librarian unlocks each of those
and we get to the cabinets
and open the cabinets.
It's shelves and shelves of books.
Harmless books.
I just started putting them
on the carts and I said, "No."
Every book that was on that shelf
felt like a student
that we were saying, "We've got
to put you behind three locks.
"We've got to hide you
back here in the dark."
Now we'll come to order.
Mr Reed Harris, you wrote a book,
and at the time you wrote this book,
did you feel that marriage
should be cast out
of our civilisation as antiquated
and stupid religious phenomena?
You put an implication on it and
you feature this particular point
out of the book, which of course
is quite out of context,
does not give a proper impression
of the book as a whole.
The American public doesn't get an
honest impression of even that book.
Well, then, let's continue
to read your own writing.
If we would go back in history
to McCarthyism,
it felt like that happened to them,
it wouldn't happen to us,
it wouldn't happen now.
Our hearts swell with pride...
..because those who went
before you worked...
..to give to us today
standing here...
..this pride.
Don't join the book burners.
Don't think you're going
to conceal faults
by concealing evidence
that they ever existed.
Don't be afraid to go in your
library and read every book.
We do have a code of ethics...
..around intellectual freedom...
..around privacy,
around representation
and access to information
and a diversity of perspectives
and issues.
Those are all part of our code.
I couldn't remove a book
because it has ideas we don't like.
Can't we look at this from
a practical point of view?
Take my word for it,
it's not unreasonable
to ask you to take out
just this one book.
If you can control the library,
you can control the community
because if you can control
the flow of information,
if you can control the ideas, you've
got it. You've got everything.
Of course you're coming after
school librarians first.
Of course you are.
That was my office.
Erm, where is it?
These are two books that
I was asked to be removed
and I would not remove them.
Now, they asked us to put
these behind the counter
so that they weren't available
unless you knew they were here.
Now they've separated all of
the pluses from the regular books.
The LGBTQ books.
They were all integrated before,
but now they have separated them.
But also, we went out of our way
to get Christian books
just for this group,
when they started making problems,
so we got two series down here
just so that their children,
who were more Christian-based,
could have their books, too.
I have to show you
our children's library.
You know,
that's where our porn lives!
SHE LAUGHS
A Day In The Life Of Marlon Bundo.
Have you seen that one?
It's a story about a bunny rabbit.
He meets another male bunny.
So, the bunnies end up
getting married.
They don't know that's here.
Because they're just
looking on their list.
So, yes, there are books here
that they may not like,
but they're here.
This is the actual rules
of the Llano County Library.
"In no case should any book
be excluded
"because of race or nationality,
"or the political
or religious views of the writer."
I followed these rules
and I got fired for it.
That's me
when I was in the US Army.
When we take our oath to protect
the country, it doesn't stop there.
You protect the Constitution
of the United States
from attacks,
both external and internal.
Did you know this book existed?
Everybody's afraid to say what
these people are acting like,
but if you read history,
you know what they are acting like.
It says, "No to decadence
and moral corruption,
"yes to decency and morality
and family and state.
"You do well to commit to the flames
the evil spirit of the past.
"This is a strong, great
and symbolic deed."
A lot of the books that he burned
were not just the Jewish authors,
they were the LGBTQ+.
They were those authors
that they burned.
Start throwing it in there!
Start throwing it in there!
Start throwing it in there!
Start throwing it in there!
Burn it! Burn it! Burn it!
HORN BLARES
Hallelujah! Woo!
ALL: I pledge allegiance to thee,
Texas,
one state under God,
one and indivisible.
I do want to clarify a couple of
points on behalf of the district.
As you know,
Texas education is the
responsibility of the state,
which essentially makes
Governor Abbott our CEO.
I want to start this out simple.
The job of the Superintendent
and the school board
is to not only protect
the students in this district,
but to make them feel like they
have a place in this community.
But I've got to tell you,
from what I've seen so far,
you are failing at your job.
DOORBELL
Hiya, guys. Come on in.
We've all read Fahrenheit
our freshman year,
and we talk about the scariness
of book banning.
Literally on the windows
of our library,
our library has a big windowed wall,
there are freshman students'
drawings about Fahrenheit 451.
Look, these are all novels...
..all about people
that never existed.
The people that read them, it makes
them unhappy with their own lives,
makes them want to live in other
ways that can never really be.
So we must burn the books, Montag.
All the books.
And seeing that and knowing what
is going on within that library,
it feels like...
It's blatant that
there's a facade here.
We have books in the library
that are pretty heavy
and have sexual assault,
like A Clockwork Orange, even,
and that wasn't pulled, so...
Had I not picked this book up,
I don't think I would
be sitting here now.
If it's a cis, straight, white male
or female, well, it's no issue,
but as soon as you've got any
kind of diversity, red flag.
A gay person, a brown person,
cut it out.
LAUGHTER
Yeah.
An analysis of the 850-book list
form the following likely reasons
for inclusion.
60% because of LGBTQ+.
8% because of race and racism.
13% because of sexual education -
something that is not taught
in all Texas schools.
Stop the censorship in our district.
Wake up to the reality
that we are all different
and we should all embrace each
other with love, not blatant hate.
I'm simply going to say that
no government, and public school
is an extension of government,
has ever banned books
and banned information
from its public,
and been remembered in history
as the good guys.
Let's not misrepresent things.
We're not taking Shakespeare
or Hemingway off the shelves,
and we're not going and grabbing
every socially, culturally
or religiously diverse book
and pulling them. That's absurd.
And the people that are
saying that are gaslighters,
and it's designed
to incite division.
Can you help me?
I might need somebody else to
help me. I need to pass these out.
Maybe somebody else to help Karen.
You can give them to the board.
Definitely she needs help.
I've brought you some excerpts
of books.
I pray you really are able
to stop this kind of content
from going in this school.
These people put sexually explicit
content into your libraries.
Get ready for truth and transparency
from an ocean of liberal tears.
Let's talk about
Superintendent Dr Jeremy Glenn
and the smut and porn
in the library books.
And it's not just his position. It's
the position of the school board,
it's the position
of this community at large.
Bottom line, this is about
removing pornographic,
sexually explicit and vulgar
materials from school libraries.
I want you to know this.
Tonight I'm going to go home
and I'm going to get a great
night's sleep because, unlike you,
I've actually read
what's in those books,
and I'm proud that they've been
removed from our shelves
and we've made the right decision
for kids.
APPLAUSE
I taught for about five years.
I've taught in
a private school setting,
and I've taught sixth grade
social studies,
I've taught third grade
general education,
so all the core classes.
My concern was that
there might have been stuff
that they just didn't
know was there,
that they just weren't aware,
because they didn't know...
They didn't know where to look.
And, at first, I didn't know
where to look.
I had gone to a Moms for Liberty
event
where we had a preview
to a documentary.
You are teaching children
adult-child sex,
you're teaching transgender issues,
and children are mouldable
and influenced by that.
In my humble opinion, it will be
worse before it gets better.
My kids go to the schools here,
my family's kids go
to the schools here,
my friends' kids go
to the schools here.
It was disheartening to think
that was actually happening
in my hometown.
We first really encountered the
Moms for Liberty organisations
during Covid, as they really
pushed to open schools
and unmask children,
and that's when we started to hear
about their parental rights.
Some of us moms out here
have really struggled...
Have children that have really
struggled with wearing a mask.
Then, when that crisis was over,
they turned to the books.
The things that Moms for Liberty
is fighting against
is pornography in school,
teaching young children
scientific ideologies that have...
Non-scientific ideologies.
And it just spread.
We could almost see a preview
of what was to come
and this playbook emerged.
We were afraid.
We were told not to tweet,
we were told not to
put things on Facebook.
They came after me
and they came after our library,
they came after our library board.
We were called evil specialist
instead of media specialist.
I know they're going to fire me,
I know they're making a case
to fire me, I know it's coming,
but I'm not going to shut up.
I'm just not going to do it.
You continue to speak out,
you will be on the chopping block,
you will lose your job.
"We have guns. When can we start
killing liberals?"
When could they start hunting us.
Hold the line against
the LGBT mafia
and their damn paedo fans!
We had to bring in law enforcement
to meetings.
This white truck pulled up
behind us
and the guy rolled down his window
and he yelled at me,
he said, "We're coming
after you next."
We're going to keep coming so hard,
the only thing these woke-tards
have got to figure out is whether
it's on their face, back, butt or
thighs.
Woo!
A Florida school district
has pulled 176 books
from its libraries to comply with
the new state education reform law
championed by Governor Ron DeSantis.
We are going to make sure that
parents have a seat at the table
and that we protect...
erm, protect their rights.
Under Florida's HB 1467 Law,
school books have to be free
of pornography
or certain race-based teachings.
Violating parts of the law
could lead teachers
to be charged with a felony.
Librarians are pulling books without
anyone challenging them.
The teachers in Manatee County
were told, "By Friday at 3pm,
"you will either cover with paper,
"turn them to the walls,
or take your books home."
They thought they were erring
on the side of caution.
But the kids were
so upset, they actually
texted their parents and said,
"Everyone's crying,
"everyone's upset. We need our
books. We want our books."
They wrote emails to the principal,
saying,
"Please, don't take away our books."
Part of what I see as my calling
is taking care of children.
Elizabeth Ann Seton was the
patron saint of teachers.
I do not believe
that Scripture is there
for us to use as a weapon,
or to make our political points.
Please do some research
as to our founding fathers.
Their biggest fear was
that we'd become a theocracy.
They did not want
to be governed by a king,
and they did not want
to be governed by a god.
They wanted freedom.
Librarians have heard from hundreds
of kids
that books have saved their lives.
That's why, to me, I see this as
the civil rights fight of our time.
And they're not banning
just any books.
They're banning the best books.
We reject woke ideology.
CHEERING
We fight the woke
in the legislature.
We fight the woke in the schools.
We fight the woke
in the corporations.
We will never,
ever surrender to the woke mob.
Florida is where woke goes to die.
CHEERING
We've got, down here,
The Librarian Of Auschwitz
some people are challenging.
Or Flamer,
which is actually a really good one.
And, of course, Handmaid's Tale.
I had been at the school
for nine years.
It had been a dream job for
the first seven of those nine years.
The governor says this
is child pornography.
In June, one of the Moms For Liberty
in our area had posted a video about
the second book in the A
Court Of Thorns and Roses series,
and she tagged all of the schools
that had the book in their library.
So then the district decided to just
quietly pull the books
from the shelves and delete them.
And I happened to notice a few
days later, when I went up to work.
I was very concerned that this
was kind of getting out of hand.
So I went to the
school board meeting.
Hi. Good evening.
My name is Julie Miller,
my address is on file,
and I am a high school librarian.
I know, we're kind of seen
as the bad guy.
Um, so I just wanted to give you
guys just a moment of
hearing straight from one of us who
are boots-on-the-ground to let you
know, like, a little bit about us.
I am a Baptist minister's wife,
and daughter of a minister, as well.
It was at that same meeting
where Bruce Friedman showed up.
ARCHIVE: This year, at least
102 books have been banned
in Clay County, Florida.
They were removed
from school libraries,
thanks in large part to this single
conservative activist.
I represent
No Left Turn in Education,
that's the Florida chapter.
I also run the New York chapter.
Also a member of Moms For Liberty.
I spent, like, 45 minutes
after that meeting talking to him,
and it was a, you know, pleasant...
..weird, but pleasant conversation.
Um, and the next thing I know
is Bruce essentially said
in an article,
"I'm going to clean up the libraries
in Clay County.
"Anyone who gets in my way,
"I'm going to run over them
like a dead body."
And it was just like, "First of all,
who runs over a dead body?
"Like, what does that even mean?"
But very, like, triggering language.
And then he started
writing my name on challenge forms.
"Talk to Julie Miller.
"Julie Miller has this one.
Surprise, surprise.
"Disgusting."
It was like, "What is going on?!"
MUSICIANS PLAY UPBEAT MUSIC
Julie was very helpful
in research of
the books that have been banned,
the books that have been removed.
Get ready Get ready
For the miracle...
To attempt to take black history
and take a lot of our stories away
from children
is one of the most evil things
I think a person can do.
ARCHIVE: When it comes to the number
of banned books
at schools, Florida leads the
nation, and Clay County
is number one in the state.
Clay County is one of the last
"good ol' boy" frontiers
in North Florida.
If you ride through Clay County,
most of the streets are named
after slave owners.
And so that symbolism
and that ideology,
it gives them opportunity
to be deep-seated
in government positions,
superintendents, school boards,
city managers, all of that.
These are some of the books
Stamped.
Anybody ever seen the movie,
Color Purple? Yes.
And, of course, 1619 Project.
Do you care whether books
that are written by
African-Americans, or books like...?
This book was banned!
As a kid, like, going to a
predominantly white school,
I was always questioning,
questioning who I was,
like, hair, skin colour.
I feel like this,
New Kid, Hair Love,
I feel like
that would have made me feel
a little bit more comfortable
in my own skin.
What's dangerous
with this book banning
is it's being led by people
who say they love God.
And I call for the fire of God,
and the glory of God,
and the fear of the Lord to fall on
Clay County, Florida,
in the name of Jesus.
SCATTERED APPLAUSE
Next, we have Jeffrey Dove.
I do not wish the fire of God
to fall on you all.
That's not the God I serve.
I'm a lot of things.
I'm a pastor. I'm a father.
And most of all,
I'm a strong black man.
But when you start talking about
removing African-American authors
and African-American history,
I got a problem with that,
because right now,
we are an embarrassment...
..in the state of Florida.
We got the list of, "These books
are to be removed immediately,
"so says the Oversight Committee."
I wrote an email back
and just asked, like,
"Could you please provide us with
the reason
"why each of these books
is being removed?"
Some months have went by.
I asked someone about Julie
and how she was doing.
That one thing that I dreaded
the most, had happened.
I lost my job.
I was removed from my library
for asking questions.
They're going to say it's because I
was refusing to follow directives.
That's not the case at all.
It's really just
because I kept pushing back.
I sat there for three hours.
I wasn't giving up,
I wasn't budging.
I don't care how long it was.
They were going to hear me that day.
All right, so before, actually,
we move into school board member
comments, I did have a question from
the audience. Um, it's from...
Yeah, the reason I came back,
because I saw
one of you all's media specialist
in Clay County was removed.
It's wrong.
Don't do...
Don't do people like that
when they have a different view.
It's not fair.
If anybody has to be responsible for
this cabal who are leading
the United States in books
that are not on the shelf,
it's y'all.
Shame on you.
Shame, shame, shame on you.
Moms For liberty are
making a lot of ground.
Very smart young ladies.
I call it wicked genius.
It's a genius
that pertains to oppressing people.
It was like snuffing out a candle.
It just happened so, like, quietly,
and... it's like, "You're dismissed."
And it's all politically motivated,
right?
But I met the young man outside,
and I said,
"How you doing, brother?"
He says, "I hate librarians."
This can't be America.
No, this can't be America.
It feels like I'm living
in a dystopian novel right now.
Like, if you would have
asked me ten years ago
if I was going to have,
like, security concerns
at a librarian conference,
I'd have been like,
"You're nuts!"
This is the highest
number of attempted book bans
since we began compiling these lists
20 years ago.
And I hate that censorship
affects our professional lives,
but it is a reality.
Sometimes librarians are relocated
to other buildings or grade levels,
and sometimes librarians
are outright fired
for defending intellectual freedom.
And then there are the cases
where librarians feel
for their physical safety
and for those of their families.
One librarian had her tyres slashed
during a library board meeting.
We understand what's
going on right now
on a very real and personal level
for some of us.
Um, but I know that, as librarians,
we continue to remember
and focus on our professionalism
and the work that we do.
We want to make sure
that we are reinforcing to you
that even in the darkest
of days, this is still what we do.
We want to talk about a book-banning
controversy under way
in Island Trees, New York.
ARCHIVE: For six years, The Naked
Ape, Slaughterhouse-Five,
and seven other books, labelled by
the school board as anti-American
or obscene, have been banned from
Island Trees library shelves.
Steven Pico, you were one of the
students to bring action,
were you not? We filed suit because
we believe that every American,
regardless of age,
has the right to be exposed to
a diversity of viewpoints
and gain a number
of perspectives on life.
The Supreme Court
today sharply curbed
the authority of local school boards
to ban books from school libraries.
For laypeople,
this is the Roe v Wade of libraries.
When the cross lists came back,
when Granbury boxed up
hundreds of books,
they were infringing on
what Pico established.
A book cannot be removed
because of a disagreement with
the ideas that are in the book.
We're highly trained in the
selection of
age-appropriate material.
Most of us have
library and information science
master's degrees.
We learned legal precedent.
We take courses on it.
The thing that truly concerns us is
when an individual,
whether it be a parent
or a non-parent,
or a single group within
the society,
tries to determine what is correct
for not only that child,
but other children, as well.
That is what we fight.
When I was growing up,
we had one road here,
and if you were black,
you lived on that one road.
In our parish, we have the highest
concentration of, like, KKK,
Aryan Nation,
those type of groups.
I'm not going to say my parents
are white Christian nationalists,
but when I started being targeted,
they didn't speak to me
for a week.
It's, uh... kind of a mess in here.
There we go. Turned it.
All right.
For 40 years,
I've been wanting to build a cannon.
See, it rolls real easy.
It's called a
Confederate mountain rifle.
It's an exact replica of what
you would have seen
back to the Civil War.
You know, I've done a lot
of family history and research.
My ancestors listed slaves
as property,
and I'm not proud of that.
It's uncomfortable.
But I think sometimes we have
to be uncomfortable
and face that fact.
Why would you want
to embarrass white kids, or...?
It's like she said,
that's the past,
and we can't change that.
What you don't want to do
is teach your kids
to hate their country.
Because then, when they grow up,
we won't have a country.
I love my country,
but I think we have to acknowledge
that we're not perfect.
Don't teach only
the bad, the bad, the bad,
the bad, the bad, the bad.
ARCHIVE: While the rest of us were
in lockdown,
Live Oak Middle School librarian
Amanda Jones
and her students
were travelling the world.
I decided if they couldn't go out
in the world,
I was going to bring the world
to them.
She was awarded the 2021 National
School Librarian of the Year.
And I hope to use it
as a platform to advocate
for school libraries across
the country.
"Here is Amanda Jones at the
Livingston Parish Library Board
"meeting on Tuesday, July 19th.
"Why is she fighting
so hard to keep sexually erotic
"and pornographic material
in the kids' section?"
The reason why I got targeted
and attacked is
because I spoke at our public
library board meeting, as a parent.
"If a middle school teacher
is promoting pornography
"and erotic content to kids,
"I don't care
what kind of pedigree she has."
And I've never promoted pornography
and erotica to children.
Our local representative came
for a photo op
when I got National School Librarian
of the Year.
She was there for that photo op.
Two years later,
she's perpetuating lies about me.
Jones was the subject
of harsh memes,
comments and threats.
Police couldn't determine
who was threatening her.
I have made it very well known
that I travel with a weapon,
multiple weapons,
and we got security
all around our home.
I have escape routes wherever I go,
in my head, and I...
I get my groceries delivered.
I don't go in public
in my community.
Because the things they say online
are so horrible,
um, you know,
that I should be killed, and I'm...
I shouldn't be alive.
And that's sad.
This is just my life now.
I don't think any of us imagined
when we started out
that one day our lives
might be at risk.
I reached out to a lawyer.
Just got some background information
about our county DA.
And who in Texas would want to be
the first district attorney to try
to prosecute a school librarian?
That was an existential moment
for me.
Imagining my face
on the "wanted" poster,
and my friends being taken away
in handcuffs.
You are obsolete,
Mr Wordsworth. A lie!
No man is obsolete.
You're a librarian,
Mr Wordsworth!
I'm a human being! I exist!
And if I speak one thought aloud,
that thought lives, even after
I'm shovelled into my grave!
You waste our time, Mr Wordsworth,
and you're not worth the waste.
How do you find,
ladies and gentlemen?
Obsolete. Obsolete.
Obsolete. Obsolete.
I concur.
When I was first attacked,
back in 2021,
a student, who was
not a library regular previously,
started showing up in the first
couple of weeks of September,
every day, during lunchtime,
and would just roam the stacks.
And I'd go out and I'd say,
"Can I help you find anything?"
And he would say, "No,"
and I would leave it at that.
I don't want to, you know,
nag a kid.
After two weeks of this, every day,
I see the kid emerge from
the stacks holding
Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison.
I read the book, myself, and loved
it.
And I was kind of dumbfounded
because it was
not a wildly popular book.
It wasn't on many people's radar.
And of all the 20,000 books
in the library,
he emerges with that one?
I said, "How'd you learn about it?"
And he said, "My parents sent me...
"My parents told me about it
"and said I should look
for it in the library."
24 hours later...
..that student's mother
was standing in front of
the Board of Education...
Martha Hickson, our school
librarian, remarked to my son
as he was checking out the books,
quote, "I love that book."
..and calling me a pornographer,
paedophile, and groomer of children.
This amounts to an effort
to groom our kids,
to make them more willing
to participate
in the heinous acts described
in these books.
It grooms them to accept the
inappropriate advances of an adult.
My principal was in that room.
The assistant superintendent was
in that room.
But they sat there in silence.
And here's the pain...
really painful part.
They have maintained that silence
for three years.
Being a librarian,
I started researching.
I was watching Texas and Florida,
both very carefully.
I felt like that's sort of
the petri dish
of what could be coming up here.
This started in Llano, Texas.
About a week later,
a woman in Virginia saw
the Llano challenge
and picked up some of that language.
Both of these books
include paedophilia.
CROSSTALK
This... Do not interrupt my time!
And then, about two weeks later,
the same claim showed up
at our board meeting,
and that suggested to me
something was afoot.
And I said,
"I don't think this is organic.
"I don't think this is spontaneous.
"This is organised."
DRUMMING, CHATTER, WHISTLING
ARCHIVE: Moms For Liberty are having
their town hall here tonight
on the Upper East Side.
Welcome, New York.
We are thrilled to be here.
Thank you so much
for joining us tonight.
CHEERING, APPLAUSE
It seems like there's a lot
of misconceptions out there about
who we are and what we do.
We were founded in 2021
by Tiffany Justice and I.
We're both former
school board members.
What is Moms For Liberty? The New
Yorker calls them
"the right-wing mothers fuelling the
school board wars."
No-one's going to fight
for any issue like a parent.
We're not in it for the money.
There's no glory.
We love our children,
and we're willing to do anything
to protect their future.
What money?!
LAUGHTER
Now, they'll tell you that their
funding for these
national conferences comes from
selling their $15 T-shirts.
You don't get Ron DeSantis to
show up at your conference,
Donald Trump to show up
at your conference,
just from selling T-shirts.
But this grassroots group
is registered as a 501(c).
They are not required
to disclose their donors.
But we do know that their PAC
received a $50,000 donation
this year from Julie Fancelli,
the largest single donor to the
January 6th Stop the Steal rally
that led to the
Capitol insurrection.
We asked Moms For Liberty
who else is among their donors,
and they did not respond
with any specific names.
What ideology are the children
being indoctrinated into?
I think parents fears' are realised.
They're looking at these books
where sexual discussions
are happening with their children
at younger and younger ages.
And Tango Makes Three
has been challenged
in at least 32 states.
It's about two male penguins
who care
for an abandoned baby penguin.
The book has been labelled a tool
for so-called grooming.
Maurice Sendak's
In the Night Kitchen.
They drew pants.
You're getting to the point
of talking about
a period is sexually explicit.
Under the new law, Lord Of The Rings
is considered to be inappropriate.
There are some Facebook moms' group
that said
that pandas symbolised something...
The graphic novel of
The Diary Of Anne Frank.
Yep,
there's your nudity, right there.
And Maus,
which has to do with mouse nudity
in a concentration camp.
When they go after the books,
what they're really going
after is those kids
that come into my library
for a safe space,
and I cannot abide that.
Part of the ethics of our
profession,
to support the First Amendment,
and to fight censorship.
That's what I've been trained to do.
The North Hunterdon-Voorhees
Regional High School District
Board of Education meeting on
Tuesday, January 30th is
now called to order.
If I were a younger person,
I may have left by now.
But I believe firmly
in what's right,
and then I also believe firmly
in my students.
If I were to say to the Board,
or someone at school,
"You are a vile and disgusting
C-word
"and a danger to young people",
I could and should be escorted out
of this building by the police.
This is the exact language
that has been sent
to our school librarian by a group
led by the spouse of someone on
the board.
If you want to get rid of
and censor books,
you are no different
than fascist, for every
fascist movement began
the same exact way.
If you're here to ban books with
gay characters,
you might as well be here to start
the Fourth Reich.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Board, do you want him out for
cursing? Yes! Yeah! Yeah!
You guys cursed
at my fucking children
at your fucking book
banning meeting. You guys cursed...
Out! Out! Out!
Thank you, Board!
The book itself,
Queerfully And Wonderfully Made...
..that's going against
the scripture.
It's, "Fearfully
and wonderfully made",
and that's what we are.
I can go through the whole chapter
of that, of the Bible.
This book is considered nonfiction,
and it is including Christianity.
The Bible doesn't support this,
so that already debunks
the nonfiction status of this book.
So we're talking
about pornography here.
I was born and raised in Holden.
I am also
transfeminine,
and I am a queer person.
I don't think y'all understand
what it's like to grow up in
an environment like this,
where even your family members
are constantly telling you
that you're going to burn in hell.
Books like this say,
"Hey, you are loved.
"There is a community
that will be there for you."
Sorry, my anxiety is running very
high because I can tell
that y'all very
much misunderstand us.
This is much... This require...
STUTTERING
Thank you.
Hello. My name is Amanda Jones.
The great thing about books is
that we all have different ways
that we interpret them.
I read this book
and I interpret it
as meaning a push for love
and acceptance.
It was written by pastors
and mental health professionals
for Christians.
This book is not in
the children's picture book section.
It is in the teen nonfiction section
where it belongs,
because it was written for teens.
Monitor your own children.
Don't let your children read it
if you don't want to.
No-one's forcing you
to check it out.
LGBTQ youth who report having
at least one accepting adult
are 40% less likely to
attempt suicide.
Some kids don't have those adults
in their life.
I have lost over 12 students
who were ostracised
because they were
made to feel less than
in this parish.
And I feel it right now,
even though I'm not from
that community,
from the hate that's coming
from some people in this room.
It would be easy to move this book
and placate a few people
for the sake of bypassing drama.
It would be easy.
But sometimes doing what's easy
is not what's right.
SMATTERING OF APPLAUSE
The board would like to
protect children
from inappropriate material
and would prefer to remove
the challenged materials while
the library processes its request.
I'll be damned
if we're going to lose another kid
because of something our community
has done to make them feel less.
I've had former students reach out
to me that have told me books
have saved them.
And then there's the kids that grew
up and killed themselves
because they were ostracised
in our community for who they are.
And if I was silent,
my silence would be my compliance.
And I am not going to be complicit
in the death of children,
or even the...
The hurtful feelings, or...
I'm not going to participate in that
any more.
Because even though I didn't
actively participate in it before,
I was silent and I saw stuff.
But I'm not going to do
that any more.
I'm going to speak out about it,
so...
This is my strong-willed child
and I thought,
"Mm-mm, she's not going to lay
down and take this."
Our district was doing an
OK job before this.
Was it perfect? No. They were doing
a pretty darn good job.
And they were watching out
for our kids,
and they were trying to keep their
own personal politics out
of the decision-making.
But that's not
what we're doing any more.
Now it's all the culture
wars of America
are just right smack dab right here
in the middle of my kids'
school district.
After more than a year
of controversy,
Keller ISD voted to ban books
about gender identity.
CHILDREN CHANT: I pledge allegiance
to thee, Texas.
One state under God...
Hi. I'm Laney.
I'm a mum of four kids
in Keller ISD.
As soon as our new Patriot Mobile
school board was elected,
your top priority was to disregard
all the parent district
and community input.
Since then, you've created
a hateful, contradictory,
nonsensical, and unconstitutional
book-banning rubric.
You are also passing
a policy tonight
that gives you the power to hire
and fire every employee
in the district,
all the way down to
the cafeteria workers.
You don't trust your admin.
You don't trust your principals.
You don't trust your teachers.
You don't trust the parents.
You're coming for teachers
and librarians.
You've made it clear,
and they know it.
We have a movement within America
that has decided
that school boards are now
where they want to push
their agenda.
Patriot Mobile, they aren't
just a wireless provider,
they are a political movement.
Up to 5% of every Patriot Mobile
phone bill goes directly
to supporting Patriot Mobile's
political action committee.
We need to put our money behind
companies that share our values.
I'm looking at Glenn over here from
Patriot Mobile.
We know that Patriot Mobile,
they admitted to coming into our
communities
and interviewing people and finding
who they thought would
best represent their interests,
and that's who they backed
with the hundreds of thousands of
dollars.
It wasn't until we started getting
these mailers
that we realised what was happening.
We're talking probably seven, eight,
nine, ten flyers
these people are getting,
covered with images of crying
children
and saying they've been exposed
to porn in school,
and your kid is being made
to feel guilty for being white.
All of these things
that are just simply untrue.
Then we started sharing them online,
and we found out
the school
districts neighbouring ours had
the exact same flyers paid
for by the exact same PAC,
but just with the pictures of
the candidates in ours swapped
with theirs.
And we were like, "Oh, my goodness,
this is a large-scale,
"coordinated effort
"to take over school boards across
the state of Texas."
One of the keys is these school
boards, right? The school boards
are the key that picks the lock.
This was their blueprint,
and they succeeded.
They backed 11 candidates
in North Texas.
All 11 candidates won.
And now they hold a majority,
and the president, vice-president
and secretary on
all four school boards
that they decided to fund.
And they're going to continue
to spread it.
We're focused on school boards here
for now,
but our goal is to spread this
as large as we can to other states
and other communities
that are, quite frankly, wanting
what we're doing here
in their communities.
They had that school board meeting
completely packed with people.
I'm sure. And... I'm sure.
..somebody told me this morning
to go
online and look
at the Republican Club.
They had some meeting, I guess,
last week and it was all about
book banning.
And they had speakers come in,
so they got them all riled
up and gave them
all their talking points so that
they could all come to this meeting
and completely drown
anybody else's voices out.
That's what they did.
That's what they do.
Well, you know,
a lot of these people actually
make threats,
you know, about having a gun and
yada, yada, yada.
Mm-hm.
They drive around
in trucks with...
..you know... Confederate flags.
Yeah, Confederate flags
and those secret organisations,
they're not secret... Oath Keepers,
Three Percenters...
Yeah, Three Percenters...
Yeah, you see that all the time.
..the skulls.
It's just like, just so ate
up with hate
and there's not enough
voices countering it.
..Of The United States and of this
state.
IN UNISON: Of the United States
and of this state.
So help me God. So help me God.
Congratulations. Thank you.
APPLAUSE
I ran on this platform.
The porn and the grooming
and paedophiles in schools.
I felt like it was there.
People just didn't know
or they didn't know where to look,
and I was going to find it,
dagnabbit!
So that's what I did, you know,
that's why I ran.
And so I did the research.
I was expecting to find something
that would relate to
what they were saying.
But nothing even came close.
I mean, it just...
It didn't even come close.
It just became very apparent
that what they were
trying to tell parents
and what was actually happening
in our schools,
were two completely
different things.
This was just complete
sexualisation of the kids.
And it's not stopping,
it's not going backwards,
it's moving forward.
It's moving full steam ahead.
Our mission on The Blue Shark Show
was to bring transparency
to our local government.
It pains me to say that GISD,
through the inaction
of the Board of Trustees
and the upper-level administrators,
are grooming your children.
The "aha" moment for me
was a conversation I had with
one of my former co-hosts.
I felt we need
to let our community know
that it's not in the schools,
and he told me to stop talking
to my fellow trustees.
Just completely cut
off communication.
Granbury races for the trustees,
we've got three positions
that are up.
If you want
more-morally-sound schools
that don't have satanic cartoon porn
and jihadi sympathiser material on
the library,
this is a no-brainer.
They wanted to flip the board.
They wanted to flip
the Commissioners Court.
They want to flip the city council.
Every level of government here
locally to get their candidates in.
When you're trying to get people
in every level of government,
something else is going on behind
the scenes.
I refused to do their bidding
and I said, "No, I'm not doing that.
That's not right."
Now I'm enemy number one with them.
Surprise, surprise.
Courtney Gore, who's been an entire
and complete
and total disappointment.
Yes, I would say disappointment
is a big word.
And I go back to that culture of,
do you want to do the right
thing and not be liked by everybody?
I guess Courtney's woke.
She woke. Courtney's woke?
I guess she's woke now,
is what they're saying.
Courtney? Yes.
You can't say there's not porn
in schools, cos there is.
I knew I was going to get backlash,
but I never thought it was going
to rise to the level that it did.
There was a June meeting
where a gentleman -
it was actually his grandfather -
came with a firearm.
Yeah, I've got something for you,
too.
You just wait.
I don't play by the rules any more.
I haven't played by the rules
since Vietnam.
And I'm not going to start now.
We have profile sheets
of Courtney Gore, which...
She's not here.
Profile sheets. We know what you do,
we know where you live.
MURMURING
WOMAN: It's threatening. And wrong.
One of my younger brothers
came over here
and actually slept on
our front porch that night,
just to make sure we were safe.
I feel like by talking, that is
the only way I'm going to be able
to protect myself.
Like, I have to be vocal.
And if I'm not,
that's when they get the power.
Last day in Granbury.
We're very excited to be leaving.
This is a place Mindy and I both
grew up in...
..came back to raise our kids in.
I ran the Baseball and Softball
Association,
I served on the school board.
And this place changed.
People more willing
to impose their religion on others,
discriminate against others.
We've been fighting for years.
The book ban is the latest piece.
I have a proven conservative record,
always considered one of
the top conservatives in the House.
Before the Krause List,
there had been
zero parent requests to review
books, not even one.
So why are we doing this?
My Texas House rep, while
I was serving on the school board,
the first time he got elected,
we met with him as a school board
and said,
"Here's the things we care about
"in public education
and we'd love your support."
He told us, "Yes, yes, absolutely."
And when it came time to vote,
he voted exactly the opposite.
I couldn't understand why.
You told us you were
going to support our schools,
and then you voted against
them every time,
and, honestly, started
to bad-mouth our schools.
And that's truly
what made me start digging
into money.
60%, 70% of his money was coming
from one source,
which was a billionaire out in
Cisco, Texas.
I did the thing
that people do, right?
When you discover something
is you put it on Facebook
or you put it on Twitter
and you talk about it.
Our schools are not to be used
for personal political agendas,
and our children are here
for education,
not religious indoctrination.
Go tell your pastor.
Our schools are not your church.
Thank you.
I'm good at spreadsheets,
so I built pie charts and...
Yeah, I built a site to make it go.
We have Chris Tackett, who is
a former trustee of this school
board.
Pie chart guy for the Texas...
Right, he does pie charts...
..for all the state reps.
Right, for all the conservatives
to show where all the dark money
goes.
It was kind of an eyeopener
for me to realise
that there was this bigger agenda
behind everything.
Some of the people
that are pushing this agenda believe
it is their duty to take over
everywhere - government,
public, schools, media,
every aspect of our lives.
You're going to read about
certain verticals or structures
that the enemy is working on.
Satan wants to occupy the seat
of influence over the Supreme Court,
over the government,
over education with indoctrination.
We're the force that is hindering
the devil from doing
what he wants to do.
God takes what the devil meant to
harm us and he turns it into good.
He blesses us with it.
Every time we're attacked at
Patriot Mobile,
our sales just go through the roof.
We increase our sales.
And so what does increasing our
sales mean?
It means we can give more money back
to organisations
like Moms For Liberty.
This is a spiritual war,
not a political war.
APPLAUSE
Is the agenda to gain power and
money?
Or is it to make our country
a Christian theocracy?
Or are they one and the same?
Thank you for having me. All of you.
I moved to Granbury in 2020, and...
..I really hope it stands up to
the reputation it had when I came.
The word I have on my heart
is repentance.
Not all of us had a hand
in what's happened here,
but we are the ones
who are present to solve the issues.
The last book I read
was 600-plus pages
and it was a whipping,
for poor quality -
number one - but also sexual
content.
And I'm sorry to point fingers,
but we have librarians
who are misunderstanding
what is healthy and good
for children.
I think you ought to have people
of good moral standards,
people in the community
that maybe even are voted on,
pastors like Paul Duncan.
He would never steer you wrong,
and he would put you
in a safety zone with your books.
You don't have
to have these ultra-controversial
books in your library.
Hey, TikTok, I got a wild one for
you.
In 2018, I received this text from
my mom after coming out,
and was effectively cut off from my
family and eight younger siblings.
I came across this video
showing my mom speaking at
a school board meeting in Texas,
calling for the district to remove
books, repent,
and appoint a pastor to review
and approve educational material.
She even filed charges
against librarians in Granbury,
Texas.
Literally, you have thousands of
books.
So what harm is it to let go of
some of them?
And that's all I have to say.
Thank you, Miss Brown.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Your kids do not go to school here.
No, they don't.
You're on a political agenda,
everybody knows what you're doing.
You're trying to get school staff
arrested.
You've already tried it.
That's what you're doing.
And we know that's
what you're doing.
That's fine with me if you know it.
I'm not hiding anything.
I respect you...
You notice I haven't hid a thing.
I'm not hiding anything.
And I do have a problem with
sexually explicit books in the
library.
I'm sure you do.
And expose fraud. You're trying
to arrest librarians.
I have nothing to say to you.
You're trying to arrest librarians.
You're trying to arrest librarians.
I do not understand.
You're a fascist.
You're a fascist. Fascist?
Fascist. Fascist.
When I moved here to San Diego,
I got a bunch of prints.
My siblings from a few years back,
one of the last times I got
to see them, and my partner here.
His name is Andrew.
Growing up, none of my siblings -
there's nine of us total -
none of us have stepped foot
in a public school.
Every piece of printed material
that came into our home
was curated by my parents.
I'm starting...
..a little collection of, um, books.
It's off to a small start.
The book that started it all,
All Boys Aren't Blue.
Right off the bat,
this book is saying,
hey, there are some heavy topics,
like, be aware.
It all seems so much smaller
and, like, depressing.
I hope my siblings can
make it out unscathed,
and I'm worried that they're
growing up
in even more extreme circumstances.
And I'm, you know, I hope that
they're able to...
..find their own path as well.
What my parents - the people that my
parents learned from -
are doing is so harmful,
and they deserve to be put back
in their lane.
"Hello, everyone.
My name is Weston Brown.
"I was born and raised in Texas
and am grateful
"for the opportunity
to speak here tonight.
"A few months ago, I saw my mom,
Monica Brown,
"standing at this podium calling
for the removal of books
"and asking the school to follow
the guidance of religious..."
Weston Brown.
From a young age, I was
taught to give
a voice to people
who were disregarded,
elevate the marginalised
and love my neighbour.
Today, I strive to be the person I
needed when I was young.
Someone who would stand up,
speak out and protect the kid
that felt alone.
Growing up, we read the Bible cover
to cover
from the earliest age I can
remember.
We repetitively read
graphic depictions of sex,
violence, genocide,
sexual assault, and incest.
However, topics related to dating,
safe sex, drugs,
alcohol or sexual identity,
were deemed inappropriate
or too heavy to discuss.
I would have given anything to read
a book with a character
that felt the feelings I felt...
..asked the questions I couldn't
ask,
and learned the lessons
that I needed to learn.
It's been nearly five years
since I came out to my family.
I'm not allowed to join
in family celebrations or holidays,
or be a part of my eight younger
siblings' lives,
solely because I'm not straight.
I'm here today to implore you
to listen to librarians,
educators and students.
Not those speaking from a religious
perspective
or at the bidding of a political
group.
If you choose
to marginalise difference
and remove representation,
you will only cause harm.
History will remember your decisions
and demand accountability.
Show the world that Granbury will
not succumb to fear...
..but will shine brightly,
leading the way
for the next generation of Texans.
Thank you for listening.
APPLAUSE
Next up, we have Monica Brown.
Thank you. And I knew
that was coming, what came tonight.
It's no surprise. Not all true.
But it is true that we have said no
in our home for what we expect
in our family,
whether that matters to any of you
or not.
This is an example.
You know, in the scripture
it says Adam knew Eve.
That's not the same
as saying he stuck his dick
in her body.
That's what you've got in your mind,
right?
Listen, that's what you got in your
mind...
That's my mom, who birthed me,
who raised me and fed me
and took care of me.
Is it some sort of
religious psychosis?
Years of messaging
from extremist pastors
and political leaders?
Because when I look at my mom,
I see someone
who absolutely believes
what she's saying.
And I see someone who looks scared.
Thank you for coming.
Thank you so much.
OK.
Your mother has been involved in
this process.
What was it like to stand here
tonight, knowing she's here as well?
You know, I, in my mind, that
wasn't...
It's interesting, it wasn't
what was top of mind for me.
I don't have a message for my family
or for my mom
or my dad specifically.
I've brought and said everything
that I have to say to them
in many conversations,
many times over.
And so my perspective tonight isn't
to try to reach through
to my parents.
That's a conversation that - they
have the tools they need.
They know what they need
to do to build the bridge.
But my goal... Not my goal,
my plea is for librarians,
educators,
students, and the boards
to pay attention to what matters.
Monica, do you have any comments?
Mrs Monica Brown.
I think as librarians we recognise
that we're on a continuum.
But the swing between these
polarising views
are having catastrophic effects
on our social structures
and our communities.
We are on the precipice of
some very,
very bad things happening
in this country.
I just hope and pray
that people are waking up.
It's gone way beyond the Krause
List, honey.
Way beyond the Krause List.
We are going
to take back our schools.
This is what I will do to the
grooming books
when I become Secretary of State.
Being offended is the basis
for House Bill 666.
They feel that this legislation
could be used to threaten schools,
to remove books, or face arrest,
just because someone
does not like a book.
Is it so hurtful to maybe
nurture morality?
Is that so awful to do that?
I think that there's going to come
a time in some of these books
where it crosses a criminal line.
It's called contributing to
the delinquency of a minor.
I had been home for three days...
..and in that last day I had
people calling me left and right.
"Are you OK? What's going on?"
I was like, "What are you talking
about?"
A Hood County constable attempted
to bring felony charges
against three librarians
for providing students
with library books
the constable deemed obscene.
Now, I'm not one of those crazy,
overthrow-the-government anarchist
types.
But it is a legitimate
question to ask.
What do you do when your government
doesn't follow its own rules?
How does a sheriff arrest
someone for violating
your constitutional rights?
I had some complainants come
in on Friday
and talked about making a report,
um, about the books. OK.
Do you know if they use
student aids in the libraries? Yes.
I was told that my library aids
were going to be pulled
because for every piece
of pornography that was found
in the library,
I would be served with one felony
for every student.
Constable London, he was trying to
tell the librarians
that if minors
had actually put those books on
the shelves,
then it was then elevated to
a felony.
I'm doing a criminal investigation
into some of your staff.
Obviously, there's been an
allegation
of books that were in conflict
of the penal code, in the library.
Essentially, the librarians are my
suspects.
If they're the ones
that are choosing books
and putting them in there, you know,
they're the ones that
are carrying the criminal liability.
Constable London was able to get
the names of the minors
that checked out those books.
To me as a parent,
that is extremely concerning.
So then I got to tell those poor
kids that they were
not going to be allowed
to be library aids,
because people are afraid that
there's pornography in the library.
I'm definitely on that list.
I was in the library
literally every single day
of my senior year.
That is really, really scary. Um...
And that is information
that can be used in such a evil way.
If the student was underage,
was he going to go after the parents
for the kids
checking out pornography?
Was he going to go
after other students
who may have been 18 at the time?
As someone who's not had anything
to do with breaking the law
and that, I mean,
maybe a speeding ticket.
But who would have thought
child pornography?
I fear that we are at the point now
where...
..we're going to see teachers
in handcuffs.
There are forces
that want to manipulate
and to control the dissemination
of information.
Some of us feel that depth
of responsibility
to help our communities navigate.
That's why we're here.
Librarians are the firewall.
I happened to come
in contact last year
with our state senator,
Andrew Zwicker,
who, after hearing my story,
put forth the New Jersey Freedom to
Read Act.
I went down to Trenton to testify
in front of the Education Committee
in favour of the bill.
There is a proposed
committee substitute which
establishes requirements
for library material
in public school libraries.
And establishes protections
for school library staff members
and librarians.
Being, you know,
your vast experience over the years
in your role,
do you see a distinction
between book banning
and restricting access
to pornography for minors?
In my professional role, there is no
pornography for
minors in a school libraries.
So there is no need to restrict it.
But restrictions are, however,
a form of censorship.
Your personal opinion
about obscenity does not make it so.
Thank you for sharing.
I hold that a penis is inappropriate
for fifth grade, but thank you.
We can talk offline. Thank you.
Had I been permitted
to speak further,
I would have reminded her
that fifth graders HAVE penises.
NEWSREADER: A county in Central
Texas will consider shutting
down its entire public
library system
because a federal judge ordered it
to return banned books.
REPORTER: This dispute ultimately
led
to a special meeting in
Commissioners Court.
I am in favour of closing libraries
temporarily
until we find a solution to
the pornographic filth we do have.
How do we think it's OK
that the librarians
would actually facilitate that and
deal that like a drug dealer to our
kids?
And now they're becoming
porn dealers?
Is that what our librarians have to
become?
My name is Suzette Baker.
I'm the former head librarian
for Kingsland, Texas.
I'm also a military veteran.
The books that are
in the library are not pornographic.
None of them are.
I would like to know how The History
Of The KKK is pornographic.
How To Be An Antiracist.
How is that pornographic?
It's not.
This is about taking away rights.
Keep the libraries open.
Keep the information available to
all equally.
This is not a communist nation.
You do not get to pick our reading
material.
It is ours.
So with that, I'll take a motion.
I'll second.
The library will remain open.
We will try this in the courts,
not through social media
or through news media.
REPORTER: Libraries in Llano will
stay open after
a passion-filled afternoon.
SHE CHUCKLES
Thank you. That was embarrassing...
It's good to know we're not alone.
WOMAN SOBS
Hey, you! How are you? Good.
I'm proud of you.
I forgot my FReadom shirt at home.
Will you take a picture
of me beside it?
I do have a picture...
I couldn't be more delighted
to introduce Amanda Jones to you.
Author of That Librarian -
part memoir, part manifesto.
No-one should have
to endure everything
that Amanda has had to endure,
and I fear that other people
in this room may have
had similar experiences.
We are so grateful
for all you do on the front lines.
APPLAUSE
How can you stay?
Oh, stay in my town? Yeah.
Oh, it's my town.
They can all go to hell. Like...
LAUGHTER
You my hero, you know that, right?
Thank you.
You're absolutely my hero.
I don't know what's going
to happen next.
I cannot imagine us
being on a cliff.
That's just too much.
But I don't know, maybe we are
and we've gone over.
Our stories have power.
I can't stay anonymous,
I can't stay in the shadows any
more.
I can't let them keep my story
in the dark.
I won't be censored.
Just like we can't let them keep
censoring the stories in our books.
What I do know is that our story
is still being written.
But now it's everyone's story.
This programme contains
very strong language
I never imagined what's happening
right now could ever happen.
It didn't dawn on us that
we would come under attack.
Do you like people?
Have you a real love
of books and learning?
You may well consider
the vocation of a librarian.
We just...
..never imagined
we would be in the forefront.
We're not supposed to
necessarily be seen and felt.
We're stewards of the space,
stewards of the resources.
We're the stewards for the people.
Now I think we've moved
into the vanguard.
We have to be out in front
telling the story.
It's about us.
Texas Republicans are launching
an investigation
into what types of books
school districts have,
specifically ones that pertain
to race and sexuality.
In a letter to
the Texas Education Agency,
lawmakers pointed to Texas districts
that recently removed books
from classrooms
after parent complaints.
Republican State Representative
Matt Krause of Fort Worth
sent this list of 850 books
to a number of public school
districts.
There is no information on
who helped Representative Krause
compile the list.
We were right there in
the crosshairs of this rising call,
so we felt like everything
that we did was being watched.
It's not just 850 books
which we've all fixated on.
He says and "any other books".
I'm just immediately angry
because it's so obvious
that he is targeting LGBTQ titles
and authors of colour,
and books about race,
and books about sex education.
He is asking districts to
remove these and any other books
that might embarrass
or shame someone...
..due to sex or race.
What struck me was, one,
there was a list of 850 books.
He wanted to know
if school districts had them,
how much money
had been spent on them.
REPORTER: The list includes titles
like a book on the history
of the KKK, and another about
desegregation in schools.
There are also books
about gender identity,
the LGBTQ+ community
and the history of Roe v Wade.
I didn't even think,
you know, most school districts
would entertain this.
I remember looking at it,
thinking...
..they're singling us out again.
A couple of days later,
our governor doubled down
and sent a letter to the Texas
Association of School Boards
asking them to do something about
"pornography" in our libraries.
I'm calling for
the immediate removal
of this very graphic,
pornographic material
from our libraries and our schools,
and want to establish standards
so that parents have the assurance
that their children
will not be exposed to it.
I remember seeing
Governor Abbott's letter
and my district
was mentioned specifically.
That was the first moment that
I realised school librarians
could be criminalised
for selecting books
and making them available
on the shelf.
All books, Ulysses.
I wonder what they say in all
those books. Are they saying...
Politicians are playing
a very dangerous game
when they try to make
school libraries
battlegrounds
for their political war,
because the only people that
that is going to hurt are our kids.
This space, these resources,
that are supposed to be
this magical entry point to...
..the world, to stories, to ideas.
There it is.
See it?
Something they're seeing in there.
What is it, Lionel?
There's an A.
Yep, that's an A right there.
I sure would like to know what
they're saying in there, though.
Every letter is different from...
Well, ladies and gentlemen, here
we are at Granbury High School.
You know, it's always exciting,
the first day of school.
kids are dressed up,
parents are excited,
especially new moms and dads
taking that walk for the first time
with those five-year-olds into
kindergarten. It's a great feeling.
And when they come to me, I...
I need to have a conversation
with you.
We were called into a meeting
and told
anything that is sexually explicit
that could meet the penal code,
you are responsible for
in your library.
And I pepped up, I said,
"Just the Krause list?",
and got the evil eye.
We spent the rest of the afternoon
in that meeting going through our
catalogues and trying to figure out
what we have and what we don't have.
I was sitting in the library
reading, and these men
came in with this big cart,
and they went up to librarians
and they started saying,
"Where are the books?
"We need to get these things
out of here."
We were just told,
"Get rid of them. Get rid of them.
"Deal with it. Get rid of them."
Getting them off the shelves,
putting them on carts,
putting them wherever,
going through books
and just chucking them.
They had no room downtown.
The offices were full of books.
The high school was full of books.
When you have to go through
10,000 books,
what are you going to do?
To me, as a librarian,
that was trauma.
I went to the campus of a librarian
I particularly feared for
and she took me into a closet.
Was very careful to let me know,
"What I'm about to show you
"is behind three locks,
so I feel like it's safe."
The librarian unlocks each of those
and we get to the cabinets
and open the cabinets.
It's shelves and shelves of books.
Harmless books.
I just started putting them
on the carts and I said, "No."
Every book that was on that shelf
felt like a student
that we were saying, "We've got
to put you behind three locks.
"We've got to hide you
back here in the dark."
Now we'll come to order.
Mr Reed Harris, you wrote a book,
and at the time you wrote this book,
did you feel that marriage
should be cast out
of our civilisation as antiquated
and stupid religious phenomena?
You put an implication on it and
you feature this particular point
out of the book, which of course
is quite out of context,
does not give a proper impression
of the book as a whole.
The American public doesn't get an
honest impression of even that book.
Well, then, let's continue
to read your own writing.
If we would go back in history
to McCarthyism,
it felt like that happened to them,
it wouldn't happen to us,
it wouldn't happen now.
Our hearts swell with pride...
..because those who went
before you worked...
..to give to us today
standing here...
..this pride.
Don't join the book burners.
Don't think you're going
to conceal faults
by concealing evidence
that they ever existed.
Don't be afraid to go in your
library and read every book.
We do have a code of ethics...
..around intellectual freedom...
..around privacy,
around representation
and access to information
and a diversity of perspectives
and issues.
Those are all part of our code.
I couldn't remove a book
because it has ideas we don't like.
Can't we look at this from
a practical point of view?
Take my word for it,
it's not unreasonable
to ask you to take out
just this one book.
If you can control the library,
you can control the community
because if you can control
the flow of information,
if you can control the ideas, you've
got it. You've got everything.
Of course you're coming after
school librarians first.
Of course you are.
That was my office.
Erm, where is it?
These are two books that
I was asked to be removed
and I would not remove them.
Now, they asked us to put
these behind the counter
so that they weren't available
unless you knew they were here.
Now they've separated all of
the pluses from the regular books.
The LGBTQ books.
They were all integrated before,
but now they have separated them.
But also, we went out of our way
to get Christian books
just for this group,
when they started making problems,
so we got two series down here
just so that their children,
who were more Christian-based,
could have their books, too.
I have to show you
our children's library.
You know,
that's where our porn lives!
SHE LAUGHS
A Day In The Life Of Marlon Bundo.
Have you seen that one?
It's a story about a bunny rabbit.
He meets another male bunny.
So, the bunnies end up
getting married.
They don't know that's here.
Because they're just
looking on their list.
So, yes, there are books here
that they may not like,
but they're here.
This is the actual rules
of the Llano County Library.
"In no case should any book
be excluded
"because of race or nationality,
"or the political
or religious views of the writer."
I followed these rules
and I got fired for it.
That's me
when I was in the US Army.
When we take our oath to protect
the country, it doesn't stop there.
You protect the Constitution
of the United States
from attacks,
both external and internal.
Did you know this book existed?
Everybody's afraid to say what
these people are acting like,
but if you read history,
you know what they are acting like.
It says, "No to decadence
and moral corruption,
"yes to decency and morality
and family and state.
"You do well to commit to the flames
the evil spirit of the past.
"This is a strong, great
and symbolic deed."
A lot of the books that he burned
were not just the Jewish authors,
they were the LGBTQ+.
They were those authors
that they burned.
Start throwing it in there!
Start throwing it in there!
Start throwing it in there!
Start throwing it in there!
Burn it! Burn it! Burn it!
HORN BLARES
Hallelujah! Woo!
ALL: I pledge allegiance to thee,
Texas,
one state under God,
one and indivisible.
I do want to clarify a couple of
points on behalf of the district.
As you know,
Texas education is the
responsibility of the state,
which essentially makes
Governor Abbott our CEO.
I want to start this out simple.
The job of the Superintendent
and the school board
is to not only protect
the students in this district,
but to make them feel like they
have a place in this community.
But I've got to tell you,
from what I've seen so far,
you are failing at your job.
DOORBELL
Hiya, guys. Come on in.
We've all read Fahrenheit
our freshman year,
and we talk about the scariness
of book banning.
Literally on the windows
of our library,
our library has a big windowed wall,
there are freshman students'
drawings about Fahrenheit 451.
Look, these are all novels...
..all about people
that never existed.
The people that read them, it makes
them unhappy with their own lives,
makes them want to live in other
ways that can never really be.
So we must burn the books, Montag.
All the books.
And seeing that and knowing what
is going on within that library,
it feels like...
It's blatant that
there's a facade here.
We have books in the library
that are pretty heavy
and have sexual assault,
like A Clockwork Orange, even,
and that wasn't pulled, so...
Had I not picked this book up,
I don't think I would
be sitting here now.
If it's a cis, straight, white male
or female, well, it's no issue,
but as soon as you've got any
kind of diversity, red flag.
A gay person, a brown person,
cut it out.
LAUGHTER
Yeah.
An analysis of the 850-book list
form the following likely reasons
for inclusion.
60% because of LGBTQ+.
8% because of race and racism.
13% because of sexual education -
something that is not taught
in all Texas schools.
Stop the censorship in our district.
Wake up to the reality
that we are all different
and we should all embrace each
other with love, not blatant hate.
I'm simply going to say that
no government, and public school
is an extension of government,
has ever banned books
and banned information
from its public,
and been remembered in history
as the good guys.
Let's not misrepresent things.
We're not taking Shakespeare
or Hemingway off the shelves,
and we're not going and grabbing
every socially, culturally
or religiously diverse book
and pulling them. That's absurd.
And the people that are
saying that are gaslighters,
and it's designed
to incite division.
Can you help me?
I might need somebody else to
help me. I need to pass these out.
Maybe somebody else to help Karen.
You can give them to the board.
Definitely she needs help.
I've brought you some excerpts
of books.
I pray you really are able
to stop this kind of content
from going in this school.
These people put sexually explicit
content into your libraries.
Get ready for truth and transparency
from an ocean of liberal tears.
Let's talk about
Superintendent Dr Jeremy Glenn
and the smut and porn
in the library books.
And it's not just his position. It's
the position of the school board,
it's the position
of this community at large.
Bottom line, this is about
removing pornographic,
sexually explicit and vulgar
materials from school libraries.
I want you to know this.
Tonight I'm going to go home
and I'm going to get a great
night's sleep because, unlike you,
I've actually read
what's in those books,
and I'm proud that they've been
removed from our shelves
and we've made the right decision
for kids.
APPLAUSE
I taught for about five years.
I've taught in
a private school setting,
and I've taught sixth grade
social studies,
I've taught third grade
general education,
so all the core classes.
My concern was that
there might have been stuff
that they just didn't
know was there,
that they just weren't aware,
because they didn't know...
They didn't know where to look.
And, at first, I didn't know
where to look.
I had gone to a Moms for Liberty
event
where we had a preview
to a documentary.
You are teaching children
adult-child sex,
you're teaching transgender issues,
and children are mouldable
and influenced by that.
In my humble opinion, it will be
worse before it gets better.
My kids go to the schools here,
my family's kids go
to the schools here,
my friends' kids go
to the schools here.
It was disheartening to think
that was actually happening
in my hometown.
We first really encountered the
Moms for Liberty organisations
during Covid, as they really
pushed to open schools
and unmask children,
and that's when we started to hear
about their parental rights.
Some of us moms out here
have really struggled...
Have children that have really
struggled with wearing a mask.
Then, when that crisis was over,
they turned to the books.
The things that Moms for Liberty
is fighting against
is pornography in school,
teaching young children
scientific ideologies that have...
Non-scientific ideologies.
And it just spread.
We could almost see a preview
of what was to come
and this playbook emerged.
We were afraid.
We were told not to tweet,
we were told not to
put things on Facebook.
They came after me
and they came after our library,
they came after our library board.
We were called evil specialist
instead of media specialist.
I know they're going to fire me,
I know they're making a case
to fire me, I know it's coming,
but I'm not going to shut up.
I'm just not going to do it.
You continue to speak out,
you will be on the chopping block,
you will lose your job.
"We have guns. When can we start
killing liberals?"
When could they start hunting us.
Hold the line against
the LGBT mafia
and their damn paedo fans!
We had to bring in law enforcement
to meetings.
This white truck pulled up
behind us
and the guy rolled down his window
and he yelled at me,
he said, "We're coming
after you next."
We're going to keep coming so hard,
the only thing these woke-tards
have got to figure out is whether
it's on their face, back, butt or
thighs.
Woo!
A Florida school district
has pulled 176 books
from its libraries to comply with
the new state education reform law
championed by Governor Ron DeSantis.
We are going to make sure that
parents have a seat at the table
and that we protect...
erm, protect their rights.
Under Florida's HB 1467 Law,
school books have to be free
of pornography
or certain race-based teachings.
Violating parts of the law
could lead teachers
to be charged with a felony.
Librarians are pulling books without
anyone challenging them.
The teachers in Manatee County
were told, "By Friday at 3pm,
"you will either cover with paper,
"turn them to the walls,
or take your books home."
They thought they were erring
on the side of caution.
But the kids were
so upset, they actually
texted their parents and said,
"Everyone's crying,
"everyone's upset. We need our
books. We want our books."
They wrote emails to the principal,
saying,
"Please, don't take away our books."
Part of what I see as my calling
is taking care of children.
Elizabeth Ann Seton was the
patron saint of teachers.
I do not believe
that Scripture is there
for us to use as a weapon,
or to make our political points.
Please do some research
as to our founding fathers.
Their biggest fear was
that we'd become a theocracy.
They did not want
to be governed by a king,
and they did not want
to be governed by a god.
They wanted freedom.
Librarians have heard from hundreds
of kids
that books have saved their lives.
That's why, to me, I see this as
the civil rights fight of our time.
And they're not banning
just any books.
They're banning the best books.
We reject woke ideology.
CHEERING
We fight the woke
in the legislature.
We fight the woke in the schools.
We fight the woke
in the corporations.
We will never,
ever surrender to the woke mob.
Florida is where woke goes to die.
CHEERING
We've got, down here,
The Librarian Of Auschwitz
some people are challenging.
Or Flamer,
which is actually a really good one.
And, of course, Handmaid's Tale.
I had been at the school
for nine years.
It had been a dream job for
the first seven of those nine years.
The governor says this
is child pornography.
In June, one of the Moms For Liberty
in our area had posted a video about
the second book in the A
Court Of Thorns and Roses series,
and she tagged all of the schools
that had the book in their library.
So then the district decided to just
quietly pull the books
from the shelves and delete them.
And I happened to notice a few
days later, when I went up to work.
I was very concerned that this
was kind of getting out of hand.
So I went to the
school board meeting.
Hi. Good evening.
My name is Julie Miller,
my address is on file,
and I am a high school librarian.
I know, we're kind of seen
as the bad guy.
Um, so I just wanted to give you
guys just a moment of
hearing straight from one of us who
are boots-on-the-ground to let you
know, like, a little bit about us.
I am a Baptist minister's wife,
and daughter of a minister, as well.
It was at that same meeting
where Bruce Friedman showed up.
ARCHIVE: This year, at least
102 books have been banned
in Clay County, Florida.
They were removed
from school libraries,
thanks in large part to this single
conservative activist.
I represent
No Left Turn in Education,
that's the Florida chapter.
I also run the New York chapter.
Also a member of Moms For Liberty.
I spent, like, 45 minutes
after that meeting talking to him,
and it was a, you know, pleasant...
..weird, but pleasant conversation.
Um, and the next thing I know
is Bruce essentially said
in an article,
"I'm going to clean up the libraries
in Clay County.
"Anyone who gets in my way,
"I'm going to run over them
like a dead body."
And it was just like, "First of all,
who runs over a dead body?
"Like, what does that even mean?"
But very, like, triggering language.
And then he started
writing my name on challenge forms.
"Talk to Julie Miller.
"Julie Miller has this one.
Surprise, surprise.
"Disgusting."
It was like, "What is going on?!"
MUSICIANS PLAY UPBEAT MUSIC
Julie was very helpful
in research of
the books that have been banned,
the books that have been removed.
Get ready Get ready
For the miracle...
To attempt to take black history
and take a lot of our stories away
from children
is one of the most evil things
I think a person can do.
ARCHIVE: When it comes to the number
of banned books
at schools, Florida leads the
nation, and Clay County
is number one in the state.
Clay County is one of the last
"good ol' boy" frontiers
in North Florida.
If you ride through Clay County,
most of the streets are named
after slave owners.
And so that symbolism
and that ideology,
it gives them opportunity
to be deep-seated
in government positions,
superintendents, school boards,
city managers, all of that.
These are some of the books
Stamped.
Anybody ever seen the movie,
Color Purple? Yes.
And, of course, 1619 Project.
Do you care whether books
that are written by
African-Americans, or books like...?
This book was banned!
As a kid, like, going to a
predominantly white school,
I was always questioning,
questioning who I was,
like, hair, skin colour.
I feel like this,
New Kid, Hair Love,
I feel like
that would have made me feel
a little bit more comfortable
in my own skin.
What's dangerous
with this book banning
is it's being led by people
who say they love God.
And I call for the fire of God,
and the glory of God,
and the fear of the Lord to fall on
Clay County, Florida,
in the name of Jesus.
SCATTERED APPLAUSE
Next, we have Jeffrey Dove.
I do not wish the fire of God
to fall on you all.
That's not the God I serve.
I'm a lot of things.
I'm a pastor. I'm a father.
And most of all,
I'm a strong black man.
But when you start talking about
removing African-American authors
and African-American history,
I got a problem with that,
because right now,
we are an embarrassment...
..in the state of Florida.
We got the list of, "These books
are to be removed immediately,
"so says the Oversight Committee."
I wrote an email back
and just asked, like,
"Could you please provide us with
the reason
"why each of these books
is being removed?"
Some months have went by.
I asked someone about Julie
and how she was doing.
That one thing that I dreaded
the most, had happened.
I lost my job.
I was removed from my library
for asking questions.
They're going to say it's because I
was refusing to follow directives.
That's not the case at all.
It's really just
because I kept pushing back.
I sat there for three hours.
I wasn't giving up,
I wasn't budging.
I don't care how long it was.
They were going to hear me that day.
All right, so before, actually,
we move into school board member
comments, I did have a question from
the audience. Um, it's from...
Yeah, the reason I came back,
because I saw
one of you all's media specialist
in Clay County was removed.
It's wrong.
Don't do...
Don't do people like that
when they have a different view.
It's not fair.
If anybody has to be responsible for
this cabal who are leading
the United States in books
that are not on the shelf,
it's y'all.
Shame on you.
Shame, shame, shame on you.
Moms For liberty are
making a lot of ground.
Very smart young ladies.
I call it wicked genius.
It's a genius
that pertains to oppressing people.
It was like snuffing out a candle.
It just happened so, like, quietly,
and... it's like, "You're dismissed."
And it's all politically motivated,
right?
But I met the young man outside,
and I said,
"How you doing, brother?"
He says, "I hate librarians."
This can't be America.
No, this can't be America.
It feels like I'm living
in a dystopian novel right now.
Like, if you would have
asked me ten years ago
if I was going to have,
like, security concerns
at a librarian conference,
I'd have been like,
"You're nuts!"
This is the highest
number of attempted book bans
since we began compiling these lists
20 years ago.
And I hate that censorship
affects our professional lives,
but it is a reality.
Sometimes librarians are relocated
to other buildings or grade levels,
and sometimes librarians
are outright fired
for defending intellectual freedom.
And then there are the cases
where librarians feel
for their physical safety
and for those of their families.
One librarian had her tyres slashed
during a library board meeting.
We understand what's
going on right now
on a very real and personal level
for some of us.
Um, but I know that, as librarians,
we continue to remember
and focus on our professionalism
and the work that we do.
We want to make sure
that we are reinforcing to you
that even in the darkest
of days, this is still what we do.
We want to talk about a book-banning
controversy under way
in Island Trees, New York.
ARCHIVE: For six years, The Naked
Ape, Slaughterhouse-Five,
and seven other books, labelled by
the school board as anti-American
or obscene, have been banned from
Island Trees library shelves.
Steven Pico, you were one of the
students to bring action,
were you not? We filed suit because
we believe that every American,
regardless of age,
has the right to be exposed to
a diversity of viewpoints
and gain a number
of perspectives on life.
The Supreme Court
today sharply curbed
the authority of local school boards
to ban books from school libraries.
For laypeople,
this is the Roe v Wade of libraries.
When the cross lists came back,
when Granbury boxed up
hundreds of books,
they were infringing on
what Pico established.
A book cannot be removed
because of a disagreement with
the ideas that are in the book.
We're highly trained in the
selection of
age-appropriate material.
Most of us have
library and information science
master's degrees.
We learned legal precedent.
We take courses on it.
The thing that truly concerns us is
when an individual,
whether it be a parent
or a non-parent,
or a single group within
the society,
tries to determine what is correct
for not only that child,
but other children, as well.
That is what we fight.
When I was growing up,
we had one road here,
and if you were black,
you lived on that one road.
In our parish, we have the highest
concentration of, like, KKK,
Aryan Nation,
those type of groups.
I'm not going to say my parents
are white Christian nationalists,
but when I started being targeted,
they didn't speak to me
for a week.
It's, uh... kind of a mess in here.
There we go. Turned it.
All right.
For 40 years,
I've been wanting to build a cannon.
See, it rolls real easy.
It's called a
Confederate mountain rifle.
It's an exact replica of what
you would have seen
back to the Civil War.
You know, I've done a lot
of family history and research.
My ancestors listed slaves
as property,
and I'm not proud of that.
It's uncomfortable.
But I think sometimes we have
to be uncomfortable
and face that fact.
Why would you want
to embarrass white kids, or...?
It's like she said,
that's the past,
and we can't change that.
What you don't want to do
is teach your kids
to hate their country.
Because then, when they grow up,
we won't have a country.
I love my country,
but I think we have to acknowledge
that we're not perfect.
Don't teach only
the bad, the bad, the bad,
the bad, the bad, the bad.
ARCHIVE: While the rest of us were
in lockdown,
Live Oak Middle School librarian
Amanda Jones
and her students
were travelling the world.
I decided if they couldn't go out
in the world,
I was going to bring the world
to them.
She was awarded the 2021 National
School Librarian of the Year.
And I hope to use it
as a platform to advocate
for school libraries across
the country.
"Here is Amanda Jones at the
Livingston Parish Library Board
"meeting on Tuesday, July 19th.
"Why is she fighting
so hard to keep sexually erotic
"and pornographic material
in the kids' section?"
The reason why I got targeted
and attacked is
because I spoke at our public
library board meeting, as a parent.
"If a middle school teacher
is promoting pornography
"and erotic content to kids,
"I don't care
what kind of pedigree she has."
And I've never promoted pornography
and erotica to children.
Our local representative came
for a photo op
when I got National School Librarian
of the Year.
She was there for that photo op.
Two years later,
she's perpetuating lies about me.
Jones was the subject
of harsh memes,
comments and threats.
Police couldn't determine
who was threatening her.
I have made it very well known
that I travel with a weapon,
multiple weapons,
and we got security
all around our home.
I have escape routes wherever I go,
in my head, and I...
I get my groceries delivered.
I don't go in public
in my community.
Because the things they say online
are so horrible,
um, you know,
that I should be killed, and I'm...
I shouldn't be alive.
And that's sad.
This is just my life now.
I don't think any of us imagined
when we started out
that one day our lives
might be at risk.
I reached out to a lawyer.
Just got some background information
about our county DA.
And who in Texas would want to be
the first district attorney to try
to prosecute a school librarian?
That was an existential moment
for me.
Imagining my face
on the "wanted" poster,
and my friends being taken away
in handcuffs.
You are obsolete,
Mr Wordsworth. A lie!
No man is obsolete.
You're a librarian,
Mr Wordsworth!
I'm a human being! I exist!
And if I speak one thought aloud,
that thought lives, even after
I'm shovelled into my grave!
You waste our time, Mr Wordsworth,
and you're not worth the waste.
How do you find,
ladies and gentlemen?
Obsolete. Obsolete.
Obsolete. Obsolete.
I concur.
When I was first attacked,
back in 2021,
a student, who was
not a library regular previously,
started showing up in the first
couple of weeks of September,
every day, during lunchtime,
and would just roam the stacks.
And I'd go out and I'd say,
"Can I help you find anything?"
And he would say, "No,"
and I would leave it at that.
I don't want to, you know,
nag a kid.
After two weeks of this, every day,
I see the kid emerge from
the stacks holding
Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison.
I read the book, myself, and loved
it.
And I was kind of dumbfounded
because it was
not a wildly popular book.
It wasn't on many people's radar.
And of all the 20,000 books
in the library,
he emerges with that one?
I said, "How'd you learn about it?"
And he said, "My parents sent me...
"My parents told me about it
"and said I should look
for it in the library."
24 hours later...
..that student's mother
was standing in front of
the Board of Education...
Martha Hickson, our school
librarian, remarked to my son
as he was checking out the books,
quote, "I love that book."
..and calling me a pornographer,
paedophile, and groomer of children.
This amounts to an effort
to groom our kids,
to make them more willing
to participate
in the heinous acts described
in these books.
It grooms them to accept the
inappropriate advances of an adult.
My principal was in that room.
The assistant superintendent was
in that room.
But they sat there in silence.
And here's the pain...
really painful part.
They have maintained that silence
for three years.
Being a librarian,
I started researching.
I was watching Texas and Florida,
both very carefully.
I felt like that's sort of
the petri dish
of what could be coming up here.
This started in Llano, Texas.
About a week later,
a woman in Virginia saw
the Llano challenge
and picked up some of that language.
Both of these books
include paedophilia.
CROSSTALK
This... Do not interrupt my time!
And then, about two weeks later,
the same claim showed up
at our board meeting,
and that suggested to me
something was afoot.
And I said,
"I don't think this is organic.
"I don't think this is spontaneous.
"This is organised."
DRUMMING, CHATTER, WHISTLING
ARCHIVE: Moms For Liberty are having
their town hall here tonight
on the Upper East Side.
Welcome, New York.
We are thrilled to be here.
Thank you so much
for joining us tonight.
CHEERING, APPLAUSE
It seems like there's a lot
of misconceptions out there about
who we are and what we do.
We were founded in 2021
by Tiffany Justice and I.
We're both former
school board members.
What is Moms For Liberty? The New
Yorker calls them
"the right-wing mothers fuelling the
school board wars."
No-one's going to fight
for any issue like a parent.
We're not in it for the money.
There's no glory.
We love our children,
and we're willing to do anything
to protect their future.
What money?!
LAUGHTER
Now, they'll tell you that their
funding for these
national conferences comes from
selling their $15 T-shirts.
You don't get Ron DeSantis to
show up at your conference,
Donald Trump to show up
at your conference,
just from selling T-shirts.
But this grassroots group
is registered as a 501(c).
They are not required
to disclose their donors.
But we do know that their PAC
received a $50,000 donation
this year from Julie Fancelli,
the largest single donor to the
January 6th Stop the Steal rally
that led to the
Capitol insurrection.
We asked Moms For Liberty
who else is among their donors,
and they did not respond
with any specific names.
What ideology are the children
being indoctrinated into?
I think parents fears' are realised.
They're looking at these books
where sexual discussions
are happening with their children
at younger and younger ages.
And Tango Makes Three
has been challenged
in at least 32 states.
It's about two male penguins
who care
for an abandoned baby penguin.
The book has been labelled a tool
for so-called grooming.
Maurice Sendak's
In the Night Kitchen.
They drew pants.
You're getting to the point
of talking about
a period is sexually explicit.
Under the new law, Lord Of The Rings
is considered to be inappropriate.
There are some Facebook moms' group
that said
that pandas symbolised something...
The graphic novel of
The Diary Of Anne Frank.
Yep,
there's your nudity, right there.
And Maus,
which has to do with mouse nudity
in a concentration camp.
When they go after the books,
what they're really going
after is those kids
that come into my library
for a safe space,
and I cannot abide that.
Part of the ethics of our
profession,
to support the First Amendment,
and to fight censorship.
That's what I've been trained to do.
The North Hunterdon-Voorhees
Regional High School District
Board of Education meeting on
Tuesday, January 30th is
now called to order.
If I were a younger person,
I may have left by now.
But I believe firmly
in what's right,
and then I also believe firmly
in my students.
If I were to say to the Board,
or someone at school,
"You are a vile and disgusting
C-word
"and a danger to young people",
I could and should be escorted out
of this building by the police.
This is the exact language
that has been sent
to our school librarian by a group
led by the spouse of someone on
the board.
If you want to get rid of
and censor books,
you are no different
than fascist, for every
fascist movement began
the same exact way.
If you're here to ban books with
gay characters,
you might as well be here to start
the Fourth Reich.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Board, do you want him out for
cursing? Yes! Yeah! Yeah!
You guys cursed
at my fucking children
at your fucking book
banning meeting. You guys cursed...
Out! Out! Out!
Thank you, Board!
The book itself,
Queerfully And Wonderfully Made...
..that's going against
the scripture.
It's, "Fearfully
and wonderfully made",
and that's what we are.
I can go through the whole chapter
of that, of the Bible.
This book is considered nonfiction,
and it is including Christianity.
The Bible doesn't support this,
so that already debunks
the nonfiction status of this book.
So we're talking
about pornography here.
I was born and raised in Holden.
I am also
transfeminine,
and I am a queer person.
I don't think y'all understand
what it's like to grow up in
an environment like this,
where even your family members
are constantly telling you
that you're going to burn in hell.
Books like this say,
"Hey, you are loved.
"There is a community
that will be there for you."
Sorry, my anxiety is running very
high because I can tell
that y'all very
much misunderstand us.
This is much... This require...
STUTTERING
Thank you.
Hello. My name is Amanda Jones.
The great thing about books is
that we all have different ways
that we interpret them.
I read this book
and I interpret it
as meaning a push for love
and acceptance.
It was written by pastors
and mental health professionals
for Christians.
This book is not in
the children's picture book section.
It is in the teen nonfiction section
where it belongs,
because it was written for teens.
Monitor your own children.
Don't let your children read it
if you don't want to.
No-one's forcing you
to check it out.
LGBTQ youth who report having
at least one accepting adult
are 40% less likely to
attempt suicide.
Some kids don't have those adults
in their life.
I have lost over 12 students
who were ostracised
because they were
made to feel less than
in this parish.
And I feel it right now,
even though I'm not from
that community,
from the hate that's coming
from some people in this room.
It would be easy to move this book
and placate a few people
for the sake of bypassing drama.
It would be easy.
But sometimes doing what's easy
is not what's right.
SMATTERING OF APPLAUSE
The board would like to
protect children
from inappropriate material
and would prefer to remove
the challenged materials while
the library processes its request.
I'll be damned
if we're going to lose another kid
because of something our community
has done to make them feel less.
I've had former students reach out
to me that have told me books
have saved them.
And then there's the kids that grew
up and killed themselves
because they were ostracised
in our community for who they are.
And if I was silent,
my silence would be my compliance.
And I am not going to be complicit
in the death of children,
or even the...
The hurtful feelings, or...
I'm not going to participate in that
any more.
Because even though I didn't
actively participate in it before,
I was silent and I saw stuff.
But I'm not going to do
that any more.
I'm going to speak out about it,
so...
This is my strong-willed child
and I thought,
"Mm-mm, she's not going to lay
down and take this."
Our district was doing an
OK job before this.
Was it perfect? No. They were doing
a pretty darn good job.
And they were watching out
for our kids,
and they were trying to keep their
own personal politics out
of the decision-making.
But that's not
what we're doing any more.
Now it's all the culture
wars of America
are just right smack dab right here
in the middle of my kids'
school district.
After more than a year
of controversy,
Keller ISD voted to ban books
about gender identity.
CHILDREN CHANT: I pledge allegiance
to thee, Texas.
One state under God...
Hi. I'm Laney.
I'm a mum of four kids
in Keller ISD.
As soon as our new Patriot Mobile
school board was elected,
your top priority was to disregard
all the parent district
and community input.
Since then, you've created
a hateful, contradictory,
nonsensical, and unconstitutional
book-banning rubric.
You are also passing
a policy tonight
that gives you the power to hire
and fire every employee
in the district,
all the way down to
the cafeteria workers.
You don't trust your admin.
You don't trust your principals.
You don't trust your teachers.
You don't trust the parents.
You're coming for teachers
and librarians.
You've made it clear,
and they know it.
We have a movement within America
that has decided
that school boards are now
where they want to push
their agenda.
Patriot Mobile, they aren't
just a wireless provider,
they are a political movement.
Up to 5% of every Patriot Mobile
phone bill goes directly
to supporting Patriot Mobile's
political action committee.
We need to put our money behind
companies that share our values.
I'm looking at Glenn over here from
Patriot Mobile.
We know that Patriot Mobile,
they admitted to coming into our
communities
and interviewing people and finding
who they thought would
best represent their interests,
and that's who they backed
with the hundreds of thousands of
dollars.
It wasn't until we started getting
these mailers
that we realised what was happening.
We're talking probably seven, eight,
nine, ten flyers
these people are getting,
covered with images of crying
children
and saying they've been exposed
to porn in school,
and your kid is being made
to feel guilty for being white.
All of these things
that are just simply untrue.
Then we started sharing them online,
and we found out
the school
districts neighbouring ours had
the exact same flyers paid
for by the exact same PAC,
but just with the pictures of
the candidates in ours swapped
with theirs.
And we were like, "Oh, my goodness,
this is a large-scale,
"coordinated effort
"to take over school boards across
the state of Texas."
One of the keys is these school
boards, right? The school boards
are the key that picks the lock.
This was their blueprint,
and they succeeded.
They backed 11 candidates
in North Texas.
All 11 candidates won.
And now they hold a majority,
and the president, vice-president
and secretary on
all four school boards
that they decided to fund.
And they're going to continue
to spread it.
We're focused on school boards here
for now,
but our goal is to spread this
as large as we can to other states
and other communities
that are, quite frankly, wanting
what we're doing here
in their communities.
They had that school board meeting
completely packed with people.
I'm sure. And... I'm sure.
..somebody told me this morning
to go
online and look
at the Republican Club.
They had some meeting, I guess,
last week and it was all about
book banning.
And they had speakers come in,
so they got them all riled
up and gave them
all their talking points so that
they could all come to this meeting
and completely drown
anybody else's voices out.
That's what they did.
That's what they do.
Well, you know,
a lot of these people actually
make threats,
you know, about having a gun and
yada, yada, yada.
Mm-hm.
They drive around
in trucks with...
..you know... Confederate flags.
Yeah, Confederate flags
and those secret organisations,
they're not secret... Oath Keepers,
Three Percenters...
Yeah, Three Percenters...
Yeah, you see that all the time.
..the skulls.
It's just like, just so ate
up with hate
and there's not enough
voices countering it.
..Of The United States and of this
state.
IN UNISON: Of the United States
and of this state.
So help me God. So help me God.
Congratulations. Thank you.
APPLAUSE
I ran on this platform.
The porn and the grooming
and paedophiles in schools.
I felt like it was there.
People just didn't know
or they didn't know where to look,
and I was going to find it,
dagnabbit!
So that's what I did, you know,
that's why I ran.
And so I did the research.
I was expecting to find something
that would relate to
what they were saying.
But nothing even came close.
I mean, it just...
It didn't even come close.
It just became very apparent
that what they were
trying to tell parents
and what was actually happening
in our schools,
were two completely
different things.
This was just complete
sexualisation of the kids.
And it's not stopping,
it's not going backwards,
it's moving forward.
It's moving full steam ahead.
Our mission on The Blue Shark Show
was to bring transparency
to our local government.
It pains me to say that GISD,
through the inaction
of the Board of Trustees
and the upper-level administrators,
are grooming your children.
The "aha" moment for me
was a conversation I had with
one of my former co-hosts.
I felt we need
to let our community know
that it's not in the schools,
and he told me to stop talking
to my fellow trustees.
Just completely cut
off communication.
Granbury races for the trustees,
we've got three positions
that are up.
If you want
more-morally-sound schools
that don't have satanic cartoon porn
and jihadi sympathiser material on
the library,
this is a no-brainer.
They wanted to flip the board.
They wanted to flip
the Commissioners Court.
They want to flip the city council.
Every level of government here
locally to get their candidates in.
When you're trying to get people
in every level of government,
something else is going on behind
the scenes.
I refused to do their bidding
and I said, "No, I'm not doing that.
That's not right."
Now I'm enemy number one with them.
Surprise, surprise.
Courtney Gore, who's been an entire
and complete
and total disappointment.
Yes, I would say disappointment
is a big word.
And I go back to that culture of,
do you want to do the right
thing and not be liked by everybody?
I guess Courtney's woke.
She woke. Courtney's woke?
I guess she's woke now,
is what they're saying.
Courtney? Yes.
You can't say there's not porn
in schools, cos there is.
I knew I was going to get backlash,
but I never thought it was going
to rise to the level that it did.
There was a June meeting
where a gentleman -
it was actually his grandfather -
came with a firearm.
Yeah, I've got something for you,
too.
You just wait.
I don't play by the rules any more.
I haven't played by the rules
since Vietnam.
And I'm not going to start now.
We have profile sheets
of Courtney Gore, which...
She's not here.
Profile sheets. We know what you do,
we know where you live.
MURMURING
WOMAN: It's threatening. And wrong.
One of my younger brothers
came over here
and actually slept on
our front porch that night,
just to make sure we were safe.
I feel like by talking, that is
the only way I'm going to be able
to protect myself.
Like, I have to be vocal.
And if I'm not,
that's when they get the power.
Last day in Granbury.
We're very excited to be leaving.
This is a place Mindy and I both
grew up in...
..came back to raise our kids in.
I ran the Baseball and Softball
Association,
I served on the school board.
And this place changed.
People more willing
to impose their religion on others,
discriminate against others.
We've been fighting for years.
The book ban is the latest piece.
I have a proven conservative record,
always considered one of
the top conservatives in the House.
Before the Krause List,
there had been
zero parent requests to review
books, not even one.
So why are we doing this?
My Texas House rep, while
I was serving on the school board,
the first time he got elected,
we met with him as a school board
and said,
"Here's the things we care about
"in public education
and we'd love your support."
He told us, "Yes, yes, absolutely."
And when it came time to vote,
he voted exactly the opposite.
I couldn't understand why.
You told us you were
going to support our schools,
and then you voted against
them every time,
and, honestly, started
to bad-mouth our schools.
And that's truly
what made me start digging
into money.
60%, 70% of his money was coming
from one source,
which was a billionaire out in
Cisco, Texas.
I did the thing
that people do, right?
When you discover something
is you put it on Facebook
or you put it on Twitter
and you talk about it.
Our schools are not to be used
for personal political agendas,
and our children are here
for education,
not religious indoctrination.
Go tell your pastor.
Our schools are not your church.
Thank you.
I'm good at spreadsheets,
so I built pie charts and...
Yeah, I built a site to make it go.
We have Chris Tackett, who is
a former trustee of this school
board.
Pie chart guy for the Texas...
Right, he does pie charts...
..for all the state reps.
Right, for all the conservatives
to show where all the dark money
goes.
It was kind of an eyeopener
for me to realise
that there was this bigger agenda
behind everything.
Some of the people
that are pushing this agenda believe
it is their duty to take over
everywhere - government,
public, schools, media,
every aspect of our lives.
You're going to read about
certain verticals or structures
that the enemy is working on.
Satan wants to occupy the seat
of influence over the Supreme Court,
over the government,
over education with indoctrination.
We're the force that is hindering
the devil from doing
what he wants to do.
God takes what the devil meant to
harm us and he turns it into good.
He blesses us with it.
Every time we're attacked at
Patriot Mobile,
our sales just go through the roof.
We increase our sales.
And so what does increasing our
sales mean?
It means we can give more money back
to organisations
like Moms For Liberty.
This is a spiritual war,
not a political war.
APPLAUSE
Is the agenda to gain power and
money?
Or is it to make our country
a Christian theocracy?
Or are they one and the same?
Thank you for having me. All of you.
I moved to Granbury in 2020, and...
..I really hope it stands up to
the reputation it had when I came.
The word I have on my heart
is repentance.
Not all of us had a hand
in what's happened here,
but we are the ones
who are present to solve the issues.
The last book I read
was 600-plus pages
and it was a whipping,
for poor quality -
number one - but also sexual
content.
And I'm sorry to point fingers,
but we have librarians
who are misunderstanding
what is healthy and good
for children.
I think you ought to have people
of good moral standards,
people in the community
that maybe even are voted on,
pastors like Paul Duncan.
He would never steer you wrong,
and he would put you
in a safety zone with your books.
You don't have
to have these ultra-controversial
books in your library.
Hey, TikTok, I got a wild one for
you.
In 2018, I received this text from
my mom after coming out,
and was effectively cut off from my
family and eight younger siblings.
I came across this video
showing my mom speaking at
a school board meeting in Texas,
calling for the district to remove
books, repent,
and appoint a pastor to review
and approve educational material.
She even filed charges
against librarians in Granbury,
Texas.
Literally, you have thousands of
books.
So what harm is it to let go of
some of them?
And that's all I have to say.
Thank you, Miss Brown.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Your kids do not go to school here.
No, they don't.
You're on a political agenda,
everybody knows what you're doing.
You're trying to get school staff
arrested.
You've already tried it.
That's what you're doing.
And we know that's
what you're doing.
That's fine with me if you know it.
I'm not hiding anything.
I respect you...
You notice I haven't hid a thing.
I'm not hiding anything.
And I do have a problem with
sexually explicit books in the
library.
I'm sure you do.
And expose fraud. You're trying
to arrest librarians.
I have nothing to say to you.
You're trying to arrest librarians.
You're trying to arrest librarians.
I do not understand.
You're a fascist.
You're a fascist. Fascist?
Fascist. Fascist.
When I moved here to San Diego,
I got a bunch of prints.
My siblings from a few years back,
one of the last times I got
to see them, and my partner here.
His name is Andrew.
Growing up, none of my siblings -
there's nine of us total -
none of us have stepped foot
in a public school.
Every piece of printed material
that came into our home
was curated by my parents.
I'm starting...
..a little collection of, um, books.
It's off to a small start.
The book that started it all,
All Boys Aren't Blue.
Right off the bat,
this book is saying,
hey, there are some heavy topics,
like, be aware.
It all seems so much smaller
and, like, depressing.
I hope my siblings can
make it out unscathed,
and I'm worried that they're
growing up
in even more extreme circumstances.
And I'm, you know, I hope that
they're able to...
..find their own path as well.
What my parents - the people that my
parents learned from -
are doing is so harmful,
and they deserve to be put back
in their lane.
"Hello, everyone.
My name is Weston Brown.
"I was born and raised in Texas
and am grateful
"for the opportunity
to speak here tonight.
"A few months ago, I saw my mom,
Monica Brown,
"standing at this podium calling
for the removal of books
"and asking the school to follow
the guidance of religious..."
Weston Brown.
From a young age, I was
taught to give
a voice to people
who were disregarded,
elevate the marginalised
and love my neighbour.
Today, I strive to be the person I
needed when I was young.
Someone who would stand up,
speak out and protect the kid
that felt alone.
Growing up, we read the Bible cover
to cover
from the earliest age I can
remember.
We repetitively read
graphic depictions of sex,
violence, genocide,
sexual assault, and incest.
However, topics related to dating,
safe sex, drugs,
alcohol or sexual identity,
were deemed inappropriate
or too heavy to discuss.
I would have given anything to read
a book with a character
that felt the feelings I felt...
..asked the questions I couldn't
ask,
and learned the lessons
that I needed to learn.
It's been nearly five years
since I came out to my family.
I'm not allowed to join
in family celebrations or holidays,
or be a part of my eight younger
siblings' lives,
solely because I'm not straight.
I'm here today to implore you
to listen to librarians,
educators and students.
Not those speaking from a religious
perspective
or at the bidding of a political
group.
If you choose
to marginalise difference
and remove representation,
you will only cause harm.
History will remember your decisions
and demand accountability.
Show the world that Granbury will
not succumb to fear...
..but will shine brightly,
leading the way
for the next generation of Texans.
Thank you for listening.
APPLAUSE
Next up, we have Monica Brown.
Thank you. And I knew
that was coming, what came tonight.
It's no surprise. Not all true.
But it is true that we have said no
in our home for what we expect
in our family,
whether that matters to any of you
or not.
This is an example.
You know, in the scripture
it says Adam knew Eve.
That's not the same
as saying he stuck his dick
in her body.
That's what you've got in your mind,
right?
Listen, that's what you got in your
mind...
That's my mom, who birthed me,
who raised me and fed me
and took care of me.
Is it some sort of
religious psychosis?
Years of messaging
from extremist pastors
and political leaders?
Because when I look at my mom,
I see someone
who absolutely believes
what she's saying.
And I see someone who looks scared.
Thank you for coming.
Thank you so much.
OK.
Your mother has been involved in
this process.
What was it like to stand here
tonight, knowing she's here as well?
You know, I, in my mind, that
wasn't...
It's interesting, it wasn't
what was top of mind for me.
I don't have a message for my family
or for my mom
or my dad specifically.
I've brought and said everything
that I have to say to them
in many conversations,
many times over.
And so my perspective tonight isn't
to try to reach through
to my parents.
That's a conversation that - they
have the tools they need.
They know what they need
to do to build the bridge.
But my goal... Not my goal,
my plea is for librarians,
educators,
students, and the boards
to pay attention to what matters.
Monica, do you have any comments?
Mrs Monica Brown.
I think as librarians we recognise
that we're on a continuum.
But the swing between these
polarising views
are having catastrophic effects
on our social structures
and our communities.
We are on the precipice of
some very,
very bad things happening
in this country.
I just hope and pray
that people are waking up.
It's gone way beyond the Krause
List, honey.
Way beyond the Krause List.
We are going
to take back our schools.
This is what I will do to the
grooming books
when I become Secretary of State.
Being offended is the basis
for House Bill 666.
They feel that this legislation
could be used to threaten schools,
to remove books, or face arrest,
just because someone
does not like a book.
Is it so hurtful to maybe
nurture morality?
Is that so awful to do that?
I think that there's going to come
a time in some of these books
where it crosses a criminal line.
It's called contributing to
the delinquency of a minor.
I had been home for three days...
..and in that last day I had
people calling me left and right.
"Are you OK? What's going on?"
I was like, "What are you talking
about?"
A Hood County constable attempted
to bring felony charges
against three librarians
for providing students
with library books
the constable deemed obscene.
Now, I'm not one of those crazy,
overthrow-the-government anarchist
types.
But it is a legitimate
question to ask.
What do you do when your government
doesn't follow its own rules?
How does a sheriff arrest
someone for violating
your constitutional rights?
I had some complainants come
in on Friday
and talked about making a report,
um, about the books. OK.
Do you know if they use
student aids in the libraries? Yes.
I was told that my library aids
were going to be pulled
because for every piece
of pornography that was found
in the library,
I would be served with one felony
for every student.
Constable London, he was trying to
tell the librarians
that if minors
had actually put those books on
the shelves,
then it was then elevated to
a felony.
I'm doing a criminal investigation
into some of your staff.
Obviously, there's been an
allegation
of books that were in conflict
of the penal code, in the library.
Essentially, the librarians are my
suspects.
If they're the ones
that are choosing books
and putting them in there, you know,
they're the ones that
are carrying the criminal liability.
Constable London was able to get
the names of the minors
that checked out those books.
To me as a parent,
that is extremely concerning.
So then I got to tell those poor
kids that they were
not going to be allowed
to be library aids,
because people are afraid that
there's pornography in the library.
I'm definitely on that list.
I was in the library
literally every single day
of my senior year.
That is really, really scary. Um...
And that is information
that can be used in such a evil way.
If the student was underage,
was he going to go after the parents
for the kids
checking out pornography?
Was he going to go
after other students
who may have been 18 at the time?
As someone who's not had anything
to do with breaking the law
and that, I mean,
maybe a speeding ticket.
But who would have thought
child pornography?
I fear that we are at the point now
where...
..we're going to see teachers
in handcuffs.
There are forces
that want to manipulate
and to control the dissemination
of information.
Some of us feel that depth
of responsibility
to help our communities navigate.
That's why we're here.
Librarians are the firewall.
I happened to come
in contact last year
with our state senator,
Andrew Zwicker,
who, after hearing my story,
put forth the New Jersey Freedom to
Read Act.
I went down to Trenton to testify
in front of the Education Committee
in favour of the bill.
There is a proposed
committee substitute which
establishes requirements
for library material
in public school libraries.
And establishes protections
for school library staff members
and librarians.
Being, you know,
your vast experience over the years
in your role,
do you see a distinction
between book banning
and restricting access
to pornography for minors?
In my professional role, there is no
pornography for
minors in a school libraries.
So there is no need to restrict it.
But restrictions are, however,
a form of censorship.
Your personal opinion
about obscenity does not make it so.
Thank you for sharing.
I hold that a penis is inappropriate
for fifth grade, but thank you.
We can talk offline. Thank you.
Had I been permitted
to speak further,
I would have reminded her
that fifth graders HAVE penises.
NEWSREADER: A county in Central
Texas will consider shutting
down its entire public
library system
because a federal judge ordered it
to return banned books.
REPORTER: This dispute ultimately
led
to a special meeting in
Commissioners Court.
I am in favour of closing libraries
temporarily
until we find a solution to
the pornographic filth we do have.
How do we think it's OK
that the librarians
would actually facilitate that and
deal that like a drug dealer to our
kids?
And now they're becoming
porn dealers?
Is that what our librarians have to
become?
My name is Suzette Baker.
I'm the former head librarian
for Kingsland, Texas.
I'm also a military veteran.
The books that are
in the library are not pornographic.
None of them are.
I would like to know how The History
Of The KKK is pornographic.
How To Be An Antiracist.
How is that pornographic?
It's not.
This is about taking away rights.
Keep the libraries open.
Keep the information available to
all equally.
This is not a communist nation.
You do not get to pick our reading
material.
It is ours.
So with that, I'll take a motion.
I'll second.
The library will remain open.
We will try this in the courts,
not through social media
or through news media.
REPORTER: Libraries in Llano will
stay open after
a passion-filled afternoon.
SHE CHUCKLES
Thank you. That was embarrassing...
It's good to know we're not alone.
WOMAN SOBS
Hey, you! How are you? Good.
I'm proud of you.
I forgot my FReadom shirt at home.
Will you take a picture
of me beside it?
I do have a picture...
I couldn't be more delighted
to introduce Amanda Jones to you.
Author of That Librarian -
part memoir, part manifesto.
No-one should have
to endure everything
that Amanda has had to endure,
and I fear that other people
in this room may have
had similar experiences.
We are so grateful
for all you do on the front lines.
APPLAUSE
How can you stay?
Oh, stay in my town? Yeah.
Oh, it's my town.
They can all go to hell. Like...
LAUGHTER
You my hero, you know that, right?
Thank you.
You're absolutely my hero.
I don't know what's going
to happen next.
I cannot imagine us
being on a cliff.
That's just too much.
But I don't know, maybe we are
and we've gone over.
Our stories have power.
I can't stay anonymous,
I can't stay in the shadows any
more.
I can't let them keep my story
in the dark.
I won't be censored.
Just like we can't let them keep
censoring the stories in our books.
What I do know is that our story
is still being written.
But now it's everyone's story.