The Censorship Story I Cant Tell You: This Weeks Book Censorship News, March 25, 2022 – Book Riot

Theres a really horrifying censorship story unfolding in Anchorage, Alaska. But much as I wish I could tell it, part of the reason the true depths of whats going on there arent being shared broadly is because of how officials are using their states FOIA laws to keep that information impossible to access.

The story is out of the playbook were seeing across the country, and its destroying the Anchorage Public Library.

Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson won a very tight mayoral race in late May 2021. Of note were the tactics his team took to intimidate and suppress voters, including stationing people outside voting areas to watch who was going in and out of those areas. He is radically anti-LGBTQ.

Among the first tasks for Bronson was appointing a new director for the Anchorage Public Library. The most recent had retired, and the first candidate Bronson put forward was Sami Graham. Graham, who had failed in her attempts to win a school board seat the previous election, had no library experience, no library degree, and had reached out to Bronsons transition team about wanting to get involved somehow. She is a proud conservative.

After backlash from the public, the Assembly did not confirm Grahams appointment. Bronson needed to find another person, and he did immediately. This candidate was Judy Eledge who, coincidentally, also lost a school board election earlier in the year (indeed, in trying to pack the Anchorage Public Schools school board with a conservative slate, more than one did not succeed).

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Eledge also has no library experience, but her choice proved a little less controversial than Graham, despite her outspokenness as a conservative. She was the President of the Anchorage Republican Womens Club. She was a Republican elector for Alaska in the Electoral college.

Despite the fact the job required library experience and a library degree, Eledge was approved by the Assembly without being qualified for the role.

One of the powers of the Anchorage Mayor is that they can appoint who sits on various boards within city departments. Up to 150 board positions are available annually, and all board seats end after members have served for three years. In October of 2021, numerous library board seats were available for appointment.

Bronson packed the board with his friends, including Dennis Dupras, a state trooper (who has posted queerphobic, all lives/blue lives matter material on Facebook), Doug Weimann (with right wing affiliations), Travis Gularte (proudly posting right wing social media posts), and Deb Bronson (his wife). A fifth appointment was that of a teenager, Denali Tshibaka. Shell become important shortly. She serves as part of Anchorages Youth Advisory Committee.

The Anchorage Public Library board notes begin to shed light into what Eledge aimed to do in her role as Director. Among those were to ensure a safe environment for employees and others to have honest discussions with differing views and opinions, as mentioned in the October minutes. She met with leaders of homeschool cooperatives and began to invite them into library partnerships (the results of which arent clear). Likewise, Eledge began to talk about the librarys strategic plan, which, coincidentally, is under the Mayors direction.

When December rolled around, the new board was introduced by none other than Sami Graham. Its then things took a real turn. Eledge brought a Bible Story Hour to the library, allowing her pro-life, right-wing friend Wendy Perkins to partner with one of the librarians on this event.

Denali Tshibaka brought up inappropriate books during this initial meeting. Remember Denali is the teen appointed to the board for youth input. Perhaps its pertinent to mention that she is the daughter of Kelly Tshibaka, who ran a Trump-endorsed campaign to win Lisa Murkowskis U.S. Senate seat and lost. Decembers meeting minutes note that Denali found inappropriate books in the childrens section, specifically noting those were transgender books. Gularte bolstered her discussion by mentioning something about men in dresses being derogatory. Denalis task for the January board meeting would be to research these inappropriate books and present on them to the board.

In January, Denali gave a presentation to the board. Below are the minutes:

The board discussed options and landed on reorganizing the books via age group would be enough. Interestingly, Weimann noted he was having the same problem at his elementary school with inappropriate books.

This comes to light because Lily Spiroski, a teenager serving on Anchorages Youth Advisory Committee, stepped out of their role. They felt that Bronsons leadership was hateful toward queer people, and this move at the library showed the ways in which censorship of queer voices played out under his leadership (remember: he appointed all of those in support of this reorganization project).

Judy Eledge actually stepped down from her role as director in November, though she still played some kind of role thereafter. Utilizing the powers granted to her by the city charter, Anchorage Municipal Manager Amy Demboski took over control of the library as director in January. Dembowski wields her power in that role in some fascinating ways, namely in the fact shes issued gag orders to staff and administration in the library.

And its here where the story Id been hoping to tell falls apart.

On Tuesday, February 8, I submitted a FOIA request to the city of Anchorage. To do so requires sending the request to department heads, meaning that to FOIA information about the library, that request goes to the library director. As Demboski has ceded Eledge, this meant the FOIA request went to her.

I requested the following:

In the above-linked piece, Demboski reminds the library staff and administration that theyre not allowed to use email to communicate among city departments. This came February 10, two days after my request was submitted. Its likely a coincidence, but the message itself is chilling: staff cannot communicate.

A series of emails followed between myself and Demboski, including an initial response that no records could be quickly found. I would be able to continue to request, but because it would be time-consuming, there would likely be a fee assessed. Oh, and I needed to provide a list of all staff noted in my request, which I copy and pasted from the librarys website (seems like all staff wouldnt be a hard thing to search on their end, but I support I can copy/paste).

The note came back with the estimated fee: $940.

For being unable to find anything in an initial search to suggesting that the above search would take over 23 staff hours is certainly something. Without a budget for FOIA requests Id have paid up to $30 or so on my own Im unable to access information that should be publicly available.

But this is precisely what a corrupt system wants to happen. By making FOIA financially inaccessible, the full story cant be told.

Whats going on in Anchorage is whats happening in public libraries around the country. Among them, ImagineIf in Kalispell, Montana. In Pikes Peak, Colorado, the director leftafter the city council appointed a conservative board. The director at Mid-Continent Public Library in Missourileft for a similar reason, as his new right-wing board rejected inclusive programming.

Tune into this rock star panel of authors whove had books challenged, alongside professor Emily Knox, who is a scholar on censorship. The panel is Tuesday night, March 29, at 7:30 pm eastern.

For more ways to take action against censorship, use this toolkit forhow to fight book bans and challenges, as well as this guide toidentifying fake news. Then learn how and why you may want touse FOIA to uncover book challenges.

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The Censorship Story I Cant Tell You: This Weeks Book Censorship News, March 25, 2022 - Book Riot