Book Bans Aren't About Books - My speech to the American Library Association

And how culture wars are real

The following is a speech I gave at the American Library Association conference in June 2023, edited a bit to make better sense to you.

Via Snopes: Moms For Liberty in TN tried to ban a book about seahorses - they argued that “there is "social conditioning" in the book, that there are concerns about the book and video "attempting to normalize that males can get pregnant" and the "suggestion that gender is fluid is too early" to be taught in first grade. It was stated that the book paired with the video is "indicative of an agenda".”

I’ve heard a lot of great stories over the last couple days of people who have successfully fought this fight and have awesome real-world tactics to share for you to implement. Organizations like Unite Against Book Bans, Get Ready Stay Ready, Pen America, BookRiot and more (Lots of links in GRSR, and I’m sure folks will post in comments!) have resources on this. 

I’m here because I’ve been using my social media platform to talk about this issue for years, and because I have an odd venn diagram of expertise that puts me square in the center of this fight.  I know a lot about how to pass legislation but I also know a lot about talking about politics online in a way that doesn’t just drive outrage but drives action. 

Libraries are under attack, caught in the crossfire of cultural wars. The thesis of my speech is - you can’t opt out of a culture war. Books bans aren’t about the books. They are part of a much bigger fight over who gets to control the contours of our society - what ideas, what people, what history are we going to allow to exist.  And you know that book bans aren't just about the books - but I think this is critical to investigate this because we don’t want to just win battles - but want to win the war. 

In this speech I’m going to argue that groups like Moms for Liberty are using a proven playbook to take over institutions and that, especially those of us who are library supporters, can’t just rely on Librarians to fight the wack-a-mole of book bans. There’s an unlimited amount of ‘just asking questions’ that will take up librarians time. Antagonistic tweets seeking oxygen - seeking legitimization. Harassment campaigns that will drive people out of the industry. 

So while I know it’s absolutely critical for you to be equipped with the tactics and techniques to fight book bans, I want to push you to think bigger about what we’re up against and how to fight it.  

Moms for Liberty is a conservative national advocacy group that, on the surface, seems innocuous, even admirable — mothers advocating for improving their children's education. But delve deeper, and you see a different picture. They're not advocating for a more comprehensive education, but rather for selective narratives that exclude voices and stories that don't fit their worldview. And it’s not just libraries they’re after, but our schools, our textbooks, our future generations' minds.

But I want to take a step backward for a moment - So imagine the United States’ political infrastructure is a puzzle, and each piece represents a different institution in our society — libraries, schools, legislatures, the judicial system. Now, imagine someone trying to control the entire puzzle by subtly altering each piece, one by one. That's precisely what's happening now.

What Mom’s for Liberty is doing isn't actually advocacy — it's an attempted takeover, not unlike the strategies employed by ALEC and the Federalist Society - two organizations you may never have heard of but whose effects you’ve certainly felt. 

ALEC is the American Legislative Exchange Council, which sounds like a benign legislative body. But, in reality, it's a network of conservative lawmakers and corporations that has been extraordinarily effective in manipulating state legislatures. ALEC crafts model bills, which are then introduced in legislatures nationwide. The Guardian revealed that in 2013 alone, 466 ALEC model bills were introduced, 84 of which became law. One of their most notorious pieces of legislation, Stand Your Ground laws, now exist in some form in over half of US states.

Parallel to this, the Federalist Society has been slowly but decidedly shaping our judicial system. The organization, which comprises conservative and libertarian lawyers and legal scholars, doesn't directly litigate or bring cases. Instead, they work by cultivating a network of legal minds that will judge cases according to their ideological leanings. Their influence is palpable. Three of the nine current Supreme Court justices — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — have strong ties to the Federalist Society. (As does, arguably, Thomas and Alito).

So, how does Moms for Liberty fit into this narrative? They are using similar strategies but in a different domain. ALEC shapes state legislation, the Federalist Society influences the judiciary, and Moms for Liberty is aiming its efforts at our schools and libraries. 

All three share a strategic blueprint. Each organization understands the power of small, local actions leading to broader change. 

These organizations are experts at controlling the narrative and using media to their advantage. They are shaping discourse to be in line with their conservative ideologies within their respective spheres - legislation, judiciary, or education. What sets Moms for Liberty apart is that they have harnessed the power of social media in ways that ALEC and the Federalist Society would dream of. By rallying support and organizing campaigns on social, they can quickly spread their message, gain new followers, and develop a disproportionate influence on public discourse.

And these groups are united by their conservative financial backing. Their supporters are often entities that fund other conservative causes, creating a concerted push for conservative values and policies. All these groups project an image of a grassroots movement. They want to appear as spontaneous, local initiatives. But in reality, they're well-orchestrated campaigns with a strong network of conservative backers. 

It's like a well-rehearsed flash mob pretending to be a spontaneous dance party.

Moms for Liberty is following a proven strategy and adapting it to the digital age. Their success isn't just changing the conversation; it's reshaping our education system and limiting our collective imagination. It's books banned for promoting "un-American" values, an exclusion of diverse voices, and the alteration of our children's curriculum to favor a single, biased viewpoint. This isn't just about the right to read; it's about our future generations' right to a complete and unfiltered education.

When we talk about culture wars we often are talking dismissively about ludicrous Fox News-fueled public battles over Christmas or m&ms or gas stoves.  But the term "culture war" itself was popularized by sociologist James Davison Hunter in his influential 1991 book "Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America", where he described a deep ideological divide in American society based on moral values.  The culture war is  a longstanding struggle over the soul of America, fought on battlegrounds ranging from courtrooms and classrooms to legislatures and, of course, libraries.  The strategic use of motherhood to further the agendas of white supremacy, patriarchy, and religious orthodoxy is not a new phenomenon. Early 20th-century groups like the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Women’s Auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan cloaked their rhetoric in maternalistic concern about the supposed sexualization and "softening" of children through socialist messages in schools.

In 2017 ALA started reporting a significant uptick in book challenges and censorship attempts. This increase coincided with a surge in socially conservative political activism, Donald Trump amplified this long-standing trend of social conservatism with his divisive rhetoric, activated social media warriors, and normalized a more combative approach to political activism. 

In the years that followed, we saw more groups rising to prominence, like Parents Against Bad Books in Schools and No Left Turn in Education. When Moms for Liberty was formed in January 2021, it didn’t invent the paradigm but it perfected it. 

In February 2021, Moms for Liberty launched its first chapter in Brevard County, Florida. The group initially focused on challenging school policies around mask mandates and school reopenings. Yet, as their membership grew, they began to broaden their objectives, SEL, DEI, CRT - eventually turning their sights on library content. (These messages were started by Chris Rufo - there’s an excellent New Yorker article on him.) The message resonates incredibly effectively with moms who felt excluded from traditional political conversations - your children are being shown pornography. It allowed homophobic people a way to cloak their bigotry in concern over exposing children to sexual deviancy. The premise is so thin it’s nearly an illusion. 

These targeted attacks are part of a broader pattern, an orchestrated attempt to reshape the narrative and dictate what our future generations are exposed to. But this isn't just about removing a book here or a book there. It's about promoting a single perspective that aligns with their ideologies.

Despite their sophisticated digital strategies, just like the 'book-burners' of the McCarthy era, today's culture warriors seek to control the narrative by silencing dissenting voices. They employ accusations of 'indoctrination’ and ‘grooming’ as weapons, much like the cries of 'Communist!' during the Red Scare.

Many of you might know the story of Ruth W. Brown the city librarian in Bartlesville, Oklahoma who was  fired in 1950 for disseminating subversive material and indoctrinating children. Her antagonists said she was threatening the “American way of life” - for including magazines in the library like The Nation and  New Republic and Soviet Russia Today. But what her firing was really about was her support of desegregation.  Her belief that the library should be a place for everyone and that race discrimination was against democratic and christian principles.  The attacks against Ruth were a way to silence proponents of racial justice and equality and preserve the conservative power structure. And the way they did it was to replace the library board with people who wanted to fire her - they worked within existing structures to eradicate ideas they didn’t like - and the people who push them. Ruth was the first librarian to receive help from the Intellectual Freedom Committee of the American Library Association. 73 years later we are in the same fight.  

We need to study their strategies, their tactics, and their endgame. Because they are using those tools and methods to make extremist ideas that are, frankly, unpopular spread and build political power without a huge critical mass.  

So you are like - Emily, but what do we do?? 

I have identified 3 main strategies - I’m first going to talk about what they’ve done and then my ideas for how we can respond: framing the Debate, filling the seats and creating connections.

I. Frame the Debate

At the core of Moms for Liberty's strategy is a masterful framing of the debate - we’ve all heard their tagline “I don’t co-parent with the government” and seen how they’ve used the power of narrative to drive political action. Narratives where they are the crusaders for children, protectors of family values, and defenders of religious freedom. 

Conspiracy theorist and Qanon sympathizer Lara Logan spoke at a Moms for Liberty event in Texas earlier this year and said: "We are in … a war of narratives … In fifth generation warfare, the narrative is the entire battlefield. It is not a tool. It is the war. It is the fight.”

We all know that  “Parents rights” means their right to enforce their parenting style on all children. Much like the framing of “religious freedom” and “pro-life” - the question we want to ask are: which parents? Which lives? Which religion?  

By setting the agenda and defining the terms of the debate, they steer the conversation to revolve around their key talking points. This tactic essentially confines us to their pre-set rules, limiting the scope of discussion and forcing engagement on their terms. Making us look ‘against parents’ instead of ‘for freedom.’

One of the most insidious aspects of their strategy is the creation of a false dichotomy. They paint a binary picture: positioning any critique or opposition as an assault on families and children. 

In this narrative, Moms for Liberty casts itself as the defenders of 'family values' and children's sanctity against perceived external threats. Within this narrative, they maintain an atmosphere of constant crisis, justifying radical policy changes as necessary safeguards for their cherished way of life.

They realize that people are easier to mobilize when they perceive a threat to their way of life. This fear-driven narrative lends momentum to their political movement, creating a sense of urgency that counters political apathy effectively.

A key component of their framing is also the establishment of a cultural identity as "joyful warriors", steadfast champions of parental rights, and vocal challengers to government intrusion into family life.

This concept resonates deeply with their target audience, which is primarily mothers who may feel sidelined in traditional political discourse. By establishing a narrative that elevates the role of motherhood within the political arena, they've transformed these mothers from bystanders to activists.

Actually - not activists. Warriors.  “joyful warriors” creates an immediate cultural identity that emboldens mothers to be more aggressive, use more outrageous methodologies and fight with the zeal of a religious warrior.

I often argue that the left has incorrectly categorized Moms For Liberty as a grassroots organization when in fact where its real strength lies is as a communications firm.

Moms for Liberty tapped into a pre-existing messaging infrastructure, especially on instagram and facebook, of momfluencers and moms with influence.  These aren't just moms sharing recipes and parenting tips anymore, they are digital warriors, using social media to disseminate their messages, rally their supporters, and orchestrate campaigns. They can shape public discourse around policy debates, positioning their stance as the 'common sense' solution.

Social media enables them to reach a wide audience, far exceeding the scope of traditional organizing methods. They're engaging with potential supporters, answering queries, sharing narratives, and forging connections. They're not just broadcasting messages; they're nurturing a community.

This community is not just beneficial for increasing membership numbers; it's also a valuable political tool. Through these social media surrogates, and the media attention they receive, they are deep in the war of persuasion. They’ve created the optics of a much louder voice, and a much larger presence, because of this messaging system.

Recent reports from the Washington Post show  that most book bans were requested by just 11 people. The rest of the grassroots base is an echo chamber for that work. Their messages are expertly designed to make their concerns appear as everyone's concerns, their battles as everyone's battles.

In the digital age, where information is plentiful and attention is scarce, the loudest voice often wins. Moms for Liberty are aware of this and are using it to their benefit. They're not just participating in the digital discourse; they're dominating it. And this digital dominance translates into real-world political power. 

2. Fill the Seats

We know that Moms for Liberty has translated the national culture war to local politics - but as a practical matter there’s a reason this is so challenging. Ballotpedia reports that last year they won 30% of the seats with endorsed candidates, which is a massive number for an organization that was less than 2 years old.  There are 81,000 school board seats in this country - I still haven’t found the data on library boards, but I bet they have it! It’s a massive undertaking that, without the digital power of the group, would be impossible to mobilize and coordinate. It also requires a massive training system, which they’ve been able to achieve through The Leadership Institute - a conservative organization that’s existed since 1979 and has capacity to train tens of thousands of people per year. 

In addition to rhetoric and persuasion, Moms for Liberty also resorts to tactics of intimidation to suppress and silence opposition. They weaponize motherhood to launch targeted harassment campaigns against critics. These campaigns, often relentless and personal, aim to wear down their opposition, damaging their morale and deter others from speaking out against them.

Their strategy extends beyond merely winning local elections. They use these positions to shape education policy at the community level. They're not just changing who's in office; they're changing the agenda. And while these may seem like small victories, they accumulate. We’ve seen how they are influencing statewide legislation, campaigns and even national policy discourse via one of their biggest supporters - Ron DeSantis.

3. Create Connections 

Meatball Ron brings us to the third thing - their national network. Moms for Liberty sit at the center of an ever-expanding web of conservative organizations. They began as a single chapter, but now they're a nationwide network of interconnected supporters. This growth didn’t happen in a vacuum, they are funded by a network of rightwing billionaires, promoted by long-standing institutions like the Heritage Foundation, work in parallel with other organizations doing similar work, and follow a coordinated messaging strategy lead by people like Chris Rufo and Ian Prior.

They're creating a network that extends beyond their membership to include influential policymakers and lobbyists, Pastors and Proud Boys. This allows them to magnify their influence, reaching into corners that might otherwise be inaccessible.

Their funders see the power of weaponized motherhood to bring new voters to the table. Suburban women are a key 2024 voting block.  In the same way the anti-choice and pro-gun movements have created massive one issue voting blocks, they are envisioning the same power of pro censorship moms. 

Their success is not an accident, it’s not an organic movement that’s sprung up independently around the country. It's the product of really smart, well-resourced and well-connected people who have a savvy digital presence, tactical engagement in local politics, and an intricate national network.  

Now to the real question - what do we do? I’m going to work backwards here:

1. Create Connections

I heard this echoed from every speaker I’ve listen to at this conference - we must reach beyond the boundaries of our libraries and connect with movements, organizations, and people who share our values.  This is more than just a battle over a few books, and we there are more of us who believe in the values of freedom and inclusion - but right now we are segmented based on issue instead of joined based on values. 

I’ve spent a lot of years working in the movement so I understand how challenging it is - but we have to move beyond the sandbox mentality - working together not only pools our resources but also widens our impact. It’s a network of people to fight against harassment. It’s building a consistent message that communicates our values creating not the optics of a loud voice but the reality of one.

There are a lot of organizations that are working on the local level, you know better than I do who is in your community doing the work and doing it well. This is the type of thing that rewards shoe leather work, reach out to ACLU, NEA and other legacy orgs, but also if there are facebook groups, instagram influencers and the local activists, we need to know and trust each other.  Organizations like BookRiot and EveryLibrary and PennAmerica are doing the hard work to provide you with resources on what is happening to libraries and books across the country, and I’m definitely looking to them for guidance on this work. 

2. Fill the seats 

We must make a more concerted effort to fill the seats on library and school boards. Progressive organizations like Run For Something (and I’m working on a special project with them!), Progressive Change Campaign Committee and RaceForward are helping folks run for school board and I saw that ALA just announced an effort to get more people elected to library boards (call me!). Here’s my prescription for this issue:

1. We need to stop acting like non-partisan means apolitical: People who care about this movement need to work the political systems - it means identifying potential candidates within our communities, and urging them to step forward, to run for office or do whatever it is that gets people on the library boards (it’s so confusing!!). 

2. Of course, we should also be ready to support these candidates - and we need to make this information accessible to people not already steeped in the library world. This support could come in the form of help campaigning, fundraising, navigating the complexities of whatever process it is that gets you put on the board!

3. We need to raise awareness about the activities of these boards - we need to meet people where they are, whether thats regarding the information they know or the platforms they use and help them understand what these boards do and why they are important.

3. Frame the debate

This is the big hard question that has undoubtedly eating up hours of comms professional meetings and spilled a ton of ink. And to a significant degree the problems we are facing are ones experienced over and over again in the movement - we are a big tent full of a diverse array of voices and ideas. They are all reading out of the same playbook.  

Before I go into this I want to say - we have a lot of messaging wins - everyone knows about the “don’t say gay bill.”  There are countless stories of communities fighting book bans, I was sitting next to someone on the bus yesterday who told me his community is having a surge of applications for the library board. 

1. Fragmented messaging doesn’t work on social media, where algorithms favor things that are being repeated - we need to find our message and our messengers and start repeating things over and over and over again.

2. We are allowing them to make the debate about individual books - it’s not about the books. It’s about one group of people trying to control everyone else and enforce conformity to their ideas, values and beliefs. Our concern is not merely about the right to read a particular book or access specific resources, but it is about the danger of allowing a single group to monopolize and dictate what ideas and what people are acceptable. 

3. Things that seem obvious to people who spend their lives in this space are not necessarily obvious to people who only hear the very loud messaging.  We need to be willing to say the things that seem obvious and (to repeat myself) say it over and over again.

4. Repeating their terminology reinforces those connections we need to stop our opponents conversion: what you negate, you evoke. Saying (what I said earlier) that it’s not about parents rights it’s about what parents have rights simply cements the idea in peoples minds. Anat Shenker-Osorio has tweeted about how testing of negations show that people recall the assertion but not whether it was true or false.

5. We need to move beyond defense to offense

   1. And this is best done  through mockery and humor 

   2. This is something that’s definitely hard for me to do, but I think it’s something important to talk about.  Research has shown that pointing out how ludicrous it is to want to ban a book about seahorses because they are gay is the most effective form of marketing. We need to make clear to future supporters how they will be viewed by their community if they support these extremist ideologies.

6. We need to stop feeding the rage farming - 

   1. We don’t need to reply to all trolling DMs or comments meant to sap up energy and time.

   2. Get comfortable with disagreements - we can’t let them bully us into silence.

   3. Calling out hypocrisy just incites backsplash (and gives you a sense of emotional fulfillment and likes on socials) as Lucy Green (of Get Ready Stay Ready) said yesterday, say it in your heart but not out loud.

   4. Emphasize the villains and what they take away from people in your community, short labels like nazi or fascist are not persuasive in interpersonal conversation, an example is talking about how they are wasting resources, pushing abstinence only education or turning public goods into religious ones.

7. We need to invest in messengers and messaging more

   1. Persuading people who are already activated on your side isn’t enough. (ETA: I never argue that we should cater arguments to converting someone whose bought into extremist right wing, but rather my argument is always that we need to reach out to exhausted majority/disengaged/people who care but just don’t know what to do/want to do more/people who are busy working jobs and putting food on the table and haven’t had time to pay attention, etc).

   2. Many of the people who we’ve relied on to be our messengers - teachers and librarians - are scared to speak out because they don’t want to lose their job. This is totally understandable and it is on those of us who have the opportunity to raise our voice to do so.

   3. Lucy Green also said yesterday - the media is interested in reporting on the horse race but not the stakes - we need our own messaging that makes those stakes clear, and we need to repeat it over and over again.

IN CONCLUSION

Today, we see haunting echoes of the past in the actions of Moms for Liberty and other such groups. They too are attempting to cast anything that doesn't fit within their ideological bounds as dangerous or harmful.

And just like Ruth Brown, librarians today find themselves on the frontline, defending our right to access diverse books and ideas. They stand against attempts to sanitize our literature, to scrub away the complexities of our human experience, and to narrow our world to a single, uniform perspective.

We are on the side of freedom, we want all kids to feel safe and supported and there is justice in this.  It’s a hard fight, and it’s frustrating that we are in it - but we there is also so much joy to be found in this work, so much community to be found and by enriching our own lives we can help our communities.  Thank you for your work - and while I don’t have all the answers I hope I’ve given you some food for thought and I’m excited to continue this conversation.