A veteran librarian in western Michigan has seen her workplace become a lightning rod for a group of radical conservatives who want to ban books they believe promote pornography or LGBTQ issues.
Jean Reicher, who became librarian at Patmos Library in Jamestown Parish two and a half years ago, went viral in December 2022 after appearing at a library board meeting.
She said in her impassioned speech that in recent months signs had been put up around the city calling them “paedophiles”. Reicher added that she was photographed by strangers and received threatening phone calls.
Reicher told the board: “I moved to this city two and a half years ago and I regret it every day for the past year. That was awful.”
Jean Reicher, who became librarian at Patmos Library in Jamestown Parish two and a half years ago, went viral in December 2022 after appearing at a library board meeting
The library has historically relied on the millage, the number of dollars in taxes assessed for every $1,000 in property value. Donald Trump won 60 percent of the vote in Ottawa County, where Jamestown is located, in 2016 and 2020
Peter Bromberg, a board member at library resource center EveryLibrary, told the Los Angeles Times this week that librarians across the country are under a lot of stress over the book ban furor as “neighbors talk about being an arm of Satan.”
A 2021 national survey found that 27 percent of public libraries have laid off staff due to budget cuts.
In November, a group known as the Jamestown Conservatives won a victory when the library lost 84 percent of its $245,000 annual budget after the Millage renewal proposal was defeated in a general election by 55 percent of voters against.
The library has historically relied on the millage, the number of dollars in taxes assessed for every $1,000 in property value. Donald Trump won 60 percent of the vote in Ottawa County, where Jamestown is located, in 2016 and 2020.
Reicher said at the December meeting: “We were threatened. We are cursed. How dare you folks. You do not know me. You do not know anything about me. You said I sexualized your children. I’ll take care of your children.’
According to her LinkedIn page, Reicher previously worked at the Woodridge Public Library in Woodridge, Illinois.
She told the board: “I wasn’t raised that way. I believe in God. i am catholic I am a christian. I am everything you are.”
Reicher is far from alone.
Anti-censorship group PEN America says censors were employed in Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, South Carolina, Wisconsin and Georgia
The banned books were often young adult novels dealing with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer subjects or featuring queer protagonists
According to PEN America, a nonprofit group of authors, books that address LGBTQ and racial issues are the most targeted
Conservative attacks on schools and libraries have escalated across the country in the past two years, and librarians themselves have been harassed and even forced out of their jobs.
A middle school librarian in Denham Springs, Louisiana, has filed a legal complaint against a Facebook page that she called “criminal and a pedophile.”
When the Patmos library’s budget was cut, the president of the board of trustees, Larry Walton, said about 90 of the 67,000 materials in circulation “could be LGBTQ-related”.
While Jamestown’s Conservatives claimed the library was “nurturing” children with books containing explicit material and LGBTQ issues.
A local teacher, Jay Milkamp, told WOOD-TV in November: “We are very upset that our community does not want to support the library. We are Americans. We recognize freedom of speech.
“There are 67,000 books in this library, I read. Ninety of them are objectionable. I don’t think that’s a reason to downvote the Millage.
America’s 5 Most Banned Titles:
Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe has been banned by 41 school districts. The illustrated text depicts the author’s “journey of self-identity” and “what it means to be non-binary and asexual,” according to promotional materials.
All Boys Aren’t Blue, a series of personal essays by George M. Johnson, has been banned in 29 counties. The “Memoir Manifesto” tells the story of the childhood, youth and student days of its black, queer author
Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Pérez is a novel about the childhood romance between a Mexican-American girl and a black boy in 1930s Texas. It has been banned in 24 counties.
The Bluest Eye has been banned in 22 districts. The first novel by acclaimed author Toni Morrison tells the story of a black girl growing up in the 1940s and her sense of inferiority because of the color of her skin.
Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give has been banned in 17 districts. Inspired by the Black Lives Matter protest movement, it deals with police violence against minorities and was made into a film in 2018.
After losing funding, a GoFundMe page raised $12,000 for the library, author Nora Roberts donated $50,000, and a private family donated $100,000, according to the Huffington Post.
The American Library Association documented 681 challenges for books with 1,651 different titles in the first eight months of 2022.
For all of 2021, the ALA listed 729 challenges targeting 1,579 books. Because the ALA relies on media reports and reports from libraries, the actual number of challenges is likely to be far higher, the library association believes.
The number of books banned in the first nine months of 2022 exceeded the number of books banned in 2021, which was the highest number in decades.
Texas had the most bans with 801 in 22 districts, followed by Florida and Pennsylvania.
Just this week, a Florida school board made headlines when it most recently removed a book by Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison from its classrooms and libraries after a mother criticized it for ‘exposing children to pedophilia’ and running ‘Marxist indoctrination camps’.
Michelle Stille has blasted the Pinellas County school board for including Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” in her child’s intermediate literature class.
Stille, a teacher at a Christian school in the district, said she was “shocked that an adult would expose a 15-year-old to the book’s “explicit descriptions of illegal activities.”
Jessica Brassington of Mama Bears Rising, a group that says it is fighting for more oversight in education, told the LA Times that it is not trying to harm librarians or close libraries.
She said: “We want to protect our children. We’ve seen the dark side of what can happen beyond the book. Suicide. Alienation.’
Brassington added: “We want to know what books are available to our children. … The parents are bypassed.’