What is the American Library Association and where does it get its regulatory power to control local library boards? A follow-up question is why do local library boards so willingly submit to the ALA? The ALA is like a corporation or union that each library joins in membership. The local library models itself after the same structure but is smaller. If the association has an agenda, and an outside force attacks that agenda, then the association circles the wagons of local libraries to defend the whole. When most normal thinking Iowans think of their local library, they think of a quiet place where one can go to read a book, read the local newspaper or a place to research information. The original concept of the library was a repository to grow intellectually. It was a safe place where parents could release their children to explore the possibilities life had to offer and build dreams. Sadly, the original picture of a library in one’s mind may no longer be true. The modern library has surreptitiously evolved into a neo-Marxist enclave used to poison the minds of young children. The local library has lost its partisan mission due to the leadership of the corporate boss.
The ALA is a behemoth organization headquartered in Chicago and has a 183-member council with a staff of 300, it reports a national membership of 50,000. Of its eleven main office divisions, one such office is Public Policy & Advocacy that follows and monitors legislation, policy and regulations it deems important to its agenda. It has operatives at all levels of government lobbying for new laws or regulations and defends the association’s agenda if necessary. It is considered a non-profit organization that was formed 147 years ago on October 6, 1876. Fifty-seven independent library associations promoting libraries and librarianship in states, regions and territories of the United States are chapters. Twenty-eight independent national and international organizations having purposes similar to the ALA, are affiliates. The ALA sends official representatives to meet with more than seventy-five organizations sharing mutual interests with the association. It is difficult to pin down the actual dollar amount that sustains the ALA and where it goes. However, it has its hand in the 1.7 trillion Omnibus Appropriations bill passed by Congress in December 2023 as well as private philanthropic donors and stock investors. Not only is the ALA huge in membership, but it is also plush with cash with deep pockets.
The ALA has a life of its own that appears innocuous to the untrained eye, but underneath a veneer of worthy causes lurks a sinister agenda. Its current president, Emily Drabinski, who self-identifies as a Marxist lesbian, began her tenure in July 2023. In Drabinski’s opening statements at the Socialism 2023 conference held over Labor Day weekend in Chicago, she said, “I think your point [is] that public education needs to be a site of socialist organizing. I think libraries really do, too, and that happens. I haven’t seen that working in libraries, but I think there is a real opportunity here to both connect with what’s happening in public education, what’s happening in libraries, we need some help in libraries. We need to be on the agenda of socialist organizing.” The president clearly has an ideologically driven political agenda that is wrong for Iowa.
Our local library boards, if taking marching orders from the ALA president, are walking under a strong influence of neo-Marxist ideology. That should tell any sane free-thinking parent what influences their children are being exposed to. It explains the acceptance and approval of sexually graphic books containing pictures of sexual encounters and written descriptions of rape and incest made available to minor children. It explains drag queens circuiting through the local library system conducting Storytime with innocent children as the targeted audience. Children are being sexualized – but that is the plan – and as such, it is imperative that our legislature responds to the issue here. The only reason graphic sexual images are put in front of children is to rob them of their innocence and create a false identity of themselves.
Marxist ALA president Emily Drabinski, who further revealed her flawed political character in a since-deleted tweet, was the reason that the Montana State Library Commission voted to withdraw in July 2023 from the ALA citing the reason as “Our oath of office and resulting duty to the Constitution forbids association with an organization led by a Marxist.” It would be recommended that Iowa also take proactive measures to terminate membership from this intellectually dangerous influence as well. If we are concerned with child education, then it is imperative to stop libraries in Iowa from being used as ALA bases of operation to propagate Marxist ideology to undermine parental concerns. No child, no matter what they believe their sexual orientation might be, needs to have access to the graphically explicit illustrations the ALA deems educational. The approved material by neo-Marxist president Emily Drabinski is tantamount to emotional child abuse by pornography. And the words she approves in children’s books is nothing more than Chicago street slang that avoids anatomically correct language. ALA operatives hold many library board seats to maintain the assault on Iowa families and children.
The ALA alleges book bans are on the rise and has become the red herring defense to cover the clandestine agenda of this regimented organization. Their website advertises to “raise your voice against book bans: Join the campaign to raise your voice for the right to read books.”
Because parents do not want their children exposed to the agenda of sexualization and protected from graphic sexually explicit books at the library, book bans and censorship become the battle cry of the ALA. I am a writer. I have the 1st Amendment right to write and publish my views and sentiments. However, I do not have the right to force reading my writings or to be heard. No one is required by law to place my books in every library under a mandatory reading rule. Local library boards are in place not only for oversight of fiscal operations, but also to approve what kinds of material is being placed on the shelves. The library board acting as a filter, can, and does, have the power and right to deny certain reading material being made available to children. That form of regulation is not book banning, nor is it violating the first amendment rights of authors. The boards play a pivotal role in protecting children from material that is harmful to their young eyes and minds. So, why is it so important that library boards follow ALA recommendations? The graphic books approved by the ALA can be obtained in an adult book store.
Despite how innocent appearing the ALA presents itself, its agenda is nefarious and evil. This is the proverbial wolf hidden in sheep’s clothing. If we’re going to protect innocent children, then we must call the ALA what it is. We can’t judge a book by its cover, but this is one book that must be opened to scrutiny. When people like Marxist president Emily Drabinski displays her skewed philosophy as her main qualifier to hold office, then we have a problem. The pool of staff is an additional problem if that is who nominated her from among them. While the ALA externally appears to have only literary interests, internally the organization has a lengthy history of promoting lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, and queer rights and causes. Why do local library administrators resist keeping pervasively explicit material out of the reach of minor children?
The ALA sports 9 divisions, 11 offices and 19 Round Tables of specific interests. It is remarkable that Karl Marx was an avid book reader who shared the last 8 years of his natural life with the first 8 years of an early day ALA. There is no direct connection between Marx and the ALA except a shared German philosophy. ALA president Drabinski shares the same philosophy of how the world works and raising children. This is evident in their organizational divisions, offices and Round Tables. There is great admiration for German philosophers Kant, Nietzsche and Hegel with every effort to discredit the Bible and relegate Jesus Christ as nothing more than a mythical figure that had no historical relevance. With the ALA and staff growing from this contaminated petri dish, we have to ask Christian parents who desire their children to maintain a biblical worldview if it would be counterintuitive to expose them to an atheist organization? The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.
Marxism tends to create classes, cause divisions, and pit against one another the Haves and Have-nots – not to mention divides parents and children by creating rights to be educated by something a majority of parents disapprove of. It’s a philosophy that grows covetousness through class envy and warfare. The underlying current of Marxism cleverly embedded in the ALA tends to secretly oppose biblical teaching and values, even though this will be denied. The neo-Marxist mind is of a superior educated ruling class over the destitute uneducated peasants. The state has all the rights and power according to Marxist belief. Who are parents to tell librarians what a child should read and learn? Parents’ are just the babysitter, but the state is the custodian that determines the educational needs of a child while working parents are used to achieve the goals of the state. Freedom of will is foreign to the controlling class that places the struggle and tribute upon the shoulders of the working class. The burden for families and children becomes so overwhelming that parents seek the government for morehelp. A mistake! Herein we see the Hegelian theory of thesis-synthesis-antithesis; create a problem, wait for the public outcry, provide a state solution which is Marxism reaching the desired objective by exerting a little social pressure to manipulate a calculated course of action for a specific outcome. Not only does Marxism demand using public schools to create a permanent welfare class, but now also use the library system as an extra-curricular extension of neo-Marxist indoctrination.
The spirit of the ALA clearly operates in diametric opposition to biblical values with an agenda to intellectually poison young minds. There will always be tension and conflict between our Creator and Lucifer, Creation and Evolution, Good and Evil. We can have one or the other but not both. Therefore, the Iowa Legislature should take measures to separate library boards from any ALA associations for the good of Iowa children. Iowa consisting of its own state library commission, local library boards and city councils will be sufficient to maintain a library system more in line with biblical, constitutional and traditional Iowa values without any neo-Marxist ideology or outside influences. Let Iowa say goodbye to the ALA like at least ten other state legislatures. Call or email your representative and senator and urge their immediate attention and action for legislation to sever ties with the American Library Association!
- Rick Phillips
Pella
