Republicans in Missouri, ascendant in the Legislature, voted to defund public libraries in the state because librarians objected to censorship and filed a lawsuit. There are 399 public libraries in the state. The bill has not yet been approved by the State Senate yet, so there’s a chance that the cuts might be reversed. PEN reported that nearly 300 books have already been withdrawn from circulation in response to censors.
Late Tuesday night, the Missouri House of Representatives voted for a state operating budget with a $0 line for public libraries. While the budget still needs to work its way through the Senate and the governor’s office, state funding for public libraries is very much on the chopping block in Missouri.
This comes after Republican House Budget Chairman Cody Smith proposed a $4.5 million cut to public libraries’ state aid last week in the initial House Budget Committee hearing, where Smith cited a lawsuit filed against Missouri by the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri (ACLU-MO) as the reason for the cut.
That will teach them a lesson! Reading is dangerous! Stay home and watch unfiltered porn on your computer, and you don’t need to learn any new words. Why read a book when you can get the real deal at home and be completely illiterate?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Maybe Student Library Supporters in Missouri will follow the example of Alive Awake Courageous Intelligent Students in Nashville TN.
There are many beautiful media clips of the Nashville college and high school kids giving Democracy a good GO in the halls of government Monday 4/3.
xoxoxoxoxoxo
Diane, I’m sure you’ve heard of Project Blitz, but I just learned about them. They’re behind a lot of this legislation instead of ALEC. They’re a Christian Nationalist group.
Sara
Hah! I had not. Thanks !
The GOP is flexing its reptilian brain with this bill. It would rather retaliate against librarians than serve the public interest.
Well said. Right on point!!
I grew up with Kansas City libraries as my”Go To” places! In grade school I got my books from the Bookmobile parked every 2 weeks at 33rd and Summit( now the Trafficway). A few yrs later I walked with my “best friends “ every week to the Westport library neat 39th and Main. We carried our summer book choices home in grocery sacks with handles attached!! And they were heavy! I became a library summer employee at Northeast library and Swinney library.( shelving and checking out books) during college summer breaks. My paychecks went toward my summer wedding costs in 1961. I have had active cards in Missouri,Ohio, Iowa, and Indiana! These days I am grateful to the public libraries still as I check out Large Print books!! Libraries were essential and remain so 76 years after I received my first library card! When our Bookclub votes next month’s selection, I still head for my treasured public library. Don’t destroy a jewel in our culture!
Ignorance is bliss???
Don’t know, but ignorance is definitely a key condition for Russian citizenship! Constitutional, even.
Almost as easy as Ukrainians hitting stupid Russian tank brigades in open fields and even when they try to hide. Man are they stupid!
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/nazis-burning-books.html?sortBy=relevant
Just looked up a short review I wrote years ago about a collection of essays about May 10, 1933. It was the first national action that demonstrated to all Germans that Nazis were now completely in charge and it was time to fall in line. Originally planned as a small event by right wing university students in Berlin, Goebbels recognized the propaganda value and took it over to make it a publicized, national event. Here’s how I sum up that review: “Amnesia itself can be the most profound of political victories.”
Well observed, Greg!
Tease. Post the link, Greg!
It’s too book specific, not much interesting in it. That quote was the only thing that stood out. Thanks!
Where are the SOR folks on book bans?
Silent.
What is SOR please?
Science of Reading
Thanks, Diane. It’s a good question, LetThemLearn. Anyone who sounds off in press about K12 literacy, for that matter. It shouldn’t be all on the shoulders of PEN and MLA. Love to see some thoughtful opinion pieces from the trenches too, like reading specialists. Of course they’d have to be retired or risk getting fired.
I agree with you that “reading is dangerous.” Reading leads to thinking. Thinking leads to discernment. Once a person can discern a hawk from a handsaw, well, say goodbye to every single thing that person thought they knew or understood. Out of the cave and into the light, so to speak. I mean, seriously, non-readers ensure the uninterrupted continuation of stupid and brutal ideas like American exceptionalism, manifest destiny, and the destructive global empire known as U.S.A. It turns out it is just too scary for people to tolerate divergent ideas.
Learning to see, to grok, to discern, to think, to (Zeus forbid) contemplate, all these things makes life more, not less difficult. Circumspection and contemplation have direct ties with self-government and empathy. And that is a dangerous combination. All sides of this cultural war are convinced that “something” must be done. And for the freed mind, It is dangerous to not suffer fools silently. In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man gets canceled!
Socrates was right, if the prisoners could lay hands on the one who wants to set them free, if they could lay their hands on the who went out of the cave only to have his eyesight ruined, they would rip him to shreds. It is dangerous business learning to read for all these reasons. But also, if people are reading, then they are not out buying stuff and Americans’ favorite past time, indeed it’s most necessary activity is consumerism; don’t stand in its way you Commie reader!
It is weird, but sometimes I think both Orwell AND Huxley were right. This whole social media-driven idiocracy seems hell bent on turning us against one another, and it is working. Little civil squads or morality police and punishments as archaic as their thoughts. Corporations disguised as parent groups become the arbiters of double-think. Ignorance is knowledge and freedom is slavery. Reading only adds uncertainty to their quite fixed and moral certitude. Meanwhile, everyone from 8 to 80 is lining up for their daily dose of Soma to quiet any discontent.
Yes, reading is dangerous.
Well said!
Eloquent.
This is fascist insane.
Still, I wonder how many of those public libraries also get financial support from their local communities. If Mississippi’s fascist loving MAGA-RINO controlled legislature cuts state funding for libraries, that may not close all of them. Some of them may still receive money from the county or city or towns they are located in.
Also, patrons may start donating what they can afford to keep their libraries open through fund raisers.
This lawsuit may go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if that legislation ends up being signed into law.
I was born into a poor family. While growing up. my parents didn’t have the money to buy books, so, once my mother defied the experts that said I was retarded (I had dyslexia – they didn’t know what that was back then) and would never learn to read and write by teaching me to read by herself, with advice form my first grade teacher, I peddled on my bike to the nearest library in the town where I lived, several miles away. I visited that library a lot because after I learned to read, I became an avid reader.
It helped that my parents, as poor as we were, were also avid readers. My dad read westerns and mysteries. My religious mother read santised romance novels where about as sexy as it got was hand holding.
If her romances had sex scenes in them, she stopped reading and started another book.
Watch unfiltered porn on a computer is easy to do in the country that produces more porn than any other country on the planet.
“The global leaders in porn are the U.S, taking a 60 per cent share of global internet pornography, Two thirds of all U.S porn sites are hosted in California with the country hosting a total of 4.2 million domains containing porn.”
Then there is this tidbit that will not phase MAGA-RINOs for an instant over their obsession to worship Traitor Trump.
“Trump Hotels Buck Industry Trend, Continue To Offer Guests Porn
While many name-brand hotel chains have severed ties with the adult film industry, Trump hotels have not.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-hotels-porn_n_581e2a45e4b0e80b02ca69e6
Still, even China can’t stop its citizens from watching porn, and the CCP even hired grandmothers by the thousands to help them crack down on porn watchers.
https://www.vox.com/world/2017/7/7/15922928/pornography-china-live-streaming-female-anchors-porn-censorship-dissent
Although I have no idea what the percentage of library funding is locally generated, again the affluent communities will be able to make up the difference and the poor ones are much less likely to.
The rural communities will be hit hardest. Alas!!!
Bob, my initial reaction is that all the non affluent communities would be affected roughly equally. However then I realized that St Louis county has two roughly countywide systems. Within the county systems there are both affluent and low income communities, which is a very good way to allocate resources. The small one town rural libraries will likely end up being hit the hardest. As a St. Louis City resident, I have library cards for all the systems.
In other news of unintended consequences. One of the reasons Tsar Putin gave for invading Ukraine was not wanting an expansion of NATO on his borders. And today, as a result of his invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s border with NATO was DOUBLED.
Brilliant, Vladimir the Lesser and Lesser. Here’s hoping that the great Russian people will soon see a way to excise you, a cancer on their body politic.
Per truthout 3/30/23: “The move by Republicans may also be illegal, as Missouri’s constitution requires the state legislature to provide funding for all free public libraries, though it doesn’t provide an exact figure or formula for how it must do so… Missouri’s librarians will likely challenge any drastic budget cuts, as the MLA has been organizing against right-wing threats to intellectual freedom for years.”
https://truthout.org/articles/missouri-gop-seeks-to-eliminate-all-funding-for-public-libraries-in-state-budget/