[00:00:15] Jon M: I’m Jon Moscow.
[00:00:16] Amy H-L: And I’m Amy Halpern Laff. Welcome to Ethical Schools. Our guest today is Amanda Jones, a school librarian in Watson, a small town in Livingston Parish in southern Louisiana. She grew up in Watson and attended the school where she’s now worked for 24 years. Amanda was the 2021 School Library Journal National Librarian of the Year. She is the author of the recently published “That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America.” Welcome, Amanda.
[00:00:45] Amanda J: Hi. Thanks for having me.
[00:00:47] Jon M: In 2022, you spoke at a local hearing of the Livingston Parish’s Library’s Board of Control on book content. The hearing was about public libraries, not school libraries, and you were speaking as a private citizen. What is a Board of Control?
[00:01:00] Amanda J: So, in Louisiana, and I’m not sure how it is in other states, but in Louisiana, our local libraries, our public libraries, are led by Library Board of Control members, and state law says that we must have five to seven. Our parish, my parish of Livingston, has nine. That in and of itself is a long story, but they basically oversee the public library system. They hire and renew the contracts for the public library directors and vote on budgeting and programming and things like that. And they also have the final say for book challenges.
[00:01:35] Jon M: What did you say at the hearing?
[00:01:37] Amanda J: Well, I don’t think I said anything very controversial at all. I said basically that, I reiterated three times, that we already have policies and procedures in place in our library, and if anybody disagrees with a book, there’s a challenge process and anybody can fill one out. And that we should trust our librarians and we should trust our library director. I also quoted the Trevor Project and I talked about sexual reproduction and sexual health books. But I said libraries, basically, libraries are for everyone, no matter your socioeconomic status, religion, race, gender. You know, libraries serve everyone in the community, but they did not like that I said that.
[00:02:16] Jon M: What is the Trevor Project?
[00:02:17] Amanda J: The Trevor Project, I don’t know if you would actually call it a non profit, an organization, I don’t, I’m not sure what the actual classification is, but they do research. And they study and they offer resources and assistance to the LGBTQ community.
[00:02:33] Jon M: So you said that they didn’t particularly like it. How did the members of the Library Board of Control respond to what you were saying?
[00:02:40] Amanda J: Well, so the actual members of the Library Board of Control responded well. They all smiled and clapped except for the one person who had put that content and signage on the agenda that night, all responded well. They smiled at me, one smiled at me, and I was like nodding, and you know, go ahead, keep going. The crowd clapped, everybody in the crowd. It was mostly residents of our community, and they all liked what I had to say. Many of them said the same thing as me, some of them a lot more passionately than I did. It was afterwards, when some extremists got involved, that the mayhem kind of started taking place.
[00:03:19] Jon M: So what happened then?
[00:03:20] Amanda J: So four days after I spoke, and I am a school librarian, but again, I was speaking as a public resident at the time, 44 year resident of my community, library card holder since I was five, and I was targeted by two men. Both men were at the meeting. One is from my community, who I do not know. I still to this day have never interacted with him online or in person. And the other one was an extremist. He’s the director of an outside extremist group that does not live or work in our community. And that extremist has been instrumental in the devastation of a neighboring town’s public library system, costing them millions of dollars to take over their library Board of Control, and even removing displays. They’re no longer allowed to have displays for women’s History Month, Black History Month, even Cajun Heritage displays. So two different men targeted me. It was an online attack campaign where they posted memes about me. The local person posted a meme with my face that he had taken from my professional website and said that I was advocating for the teaching of anal sex to 11 year olds. And the extremist group posted a picture of me with what looked like a target around my face and said that I wanted to give pornography and erotica to 6 year olds. And they went on to post more wild things within the day. And those comments, and it went on for several weeks. It’s still going on. I mean, it’s been two and a half years, it’s still going on, but it was very intense those first few weeks.
[00:04:48] Jon M: And how did your friends and neighbors react?
[00:04:51] Amanda J: Well, most people that I am friends with were silent because they did not, or I should say people in my community were silent because they were afraid of being targeted. A lot of my friends and family outside of our community were sticking up for me, but I did have a lot of what I thought were friends commenting that were joining in, people that were laughing and piling on. And, you know, the comments were atrocious. They called me a groomer, a pedophile, a sicko, a pig. I needed to be shot, slapped, purged. And this wasn’t just on these two men’s, their posts. They were tagging me, they were tagging my school library association, our state’s school library association, of which I was the president at the time. It was very awful.
[00:05:38] Jon M: How did your school administration and your colleagues react to you being attacked?
[00:05:44] Amanda J: So, when this took place, it was in July, so it was over the summer. But before I even went and spoke at that meeting, I did have my speech approved by HR because I wanted to make sure. I wasn’t sure if we were allowed to speak, what the parameters were, but I was told I was a resident and I had the First Amendment right to go and speak at my public library board. Afterwards, I got some quiet support from some people within the school system, and then a lot of them maybe ignored it. I did not get vocal support from anyone at that time.
[00:06:16] Amy H-L: And as time went on, did things change?
[00:06:18] Amanda J: Well, I’ve lost a lot of friendships. I would try to put myself in their position. They didn’t want to be targeted. And it has gotten a lot better at my school. I would say I’m supported by everyone now that I work with. And again, they may not be as vocal, but some have started posting vocally on social media, so that has gotten better, especially when my book came out and people started reading and they’re like, oh, we didn’t realize it had gotten this bad because I didn’t post on social media about it very often, so they didn’t know the depths of the harassment that I’ve been facing. I just kind of assumed they did because they saw it in the community, but they didn’t realize. Some of them have apologized. And then there’s some people I’m no longer friends with, but at work, everyone’s been great.
[00:07:02] Amy H-L: How does having books in the library with characters or stories about people from marginalized communities actually impact Black and other children of color or LGBTQ students?
[00:07:15] Amanda J: Oh, it greatly impacts them, just to have that access. You know, I’ve taught at my school for 24 years. And so now, I’ve taught for so long that my very first students are in their mid 30s. And so some of them work with me, and some of them substitute. I’m teaching a lot of children of former students, who have all noticed that our library collection is a little more diverse. I had a student who is Indian American, who is an adult now, and she came to substitute at our school, and she said, oh, let me walk around the library, because I was her English teacher, not her librarian, and she walked around, and she said, Ms. Jones, this library is so different from when I was here, because I see brown kids on some of these covers of these books, She said, when I went here, when I was in school, we didn’t have that, and I felt left out. She said that to me, and so it was a proud moment for me, but also, you know, I felt bad, like, how many other kids don’t feel seen? The Human Rights Coalition, I did a study in 2023 that said that there’s so many, I forget the percentage of students who attend schools that do not feel safe, particularly students from the LGBTQ+ community, but that nine out of 10 feel safe in the school library. And to me, that’s a huge responsibility I have. I want every kid to feel seen and heard and represented by the books on our shelves. Their families deserve that. And I think it’s important for us to have their stories on the shelves as well.
But then I look at it on the flip side. Whereas our school is 94 percent white, my child was a student at my school. I don’t want her to grow up to be an ignoramus. I want her to learn. Because when we read stories about people that are different from us, we learn empathy. And all of these kids could use a little more empathy in their lives, especially from what they’re seeing from the adults in the adult world, and all of the hate that’s being pushed.
[00:09:09] Amy H-L: How do you decide which books to purchase for the library?
[00:09:12] Amanda J: It’s a huge undertaking. I think people are under the impression we just go on Amazon and click, click, click. And that is absolutely not how that works. I mean, sometimes when the latest “Dog Man” book comes out, I’ll go click, click, click and get some fast copies of that. But a lot goes into it. We took, I took a whole entire college course on it, and I start out with, I give the students and the opportunity to tell me what they want in the library. And I usually do a lesson around book ordering time, and I’ll give them catalogs, and I’ll say, what do you want to see in here? What do you want more of? This year it was horses, horses and drawing books, and they wanted more manga. So we had to have a discussion about how it’s hard to find manga that’s age relevant to their age, which is 11. We had to have those discussions, but we go through catalogs. They give me suggestions. I have a book suggestion box. I also go to the teachers and I’ll say, are there any books that you need that can help with your curriculum that we don’t have here in the library? They’re really good about just telling me, though, throughout the year, and I’ll make a wish list for when we get money.
But once I get all of these ideas I go through them and I start looking through the different titles that are out that the kids and the teachers want and I start making a wish list and I go through every single title and I look at professional journal reviews and I see is this professionally reviewed for the age of of my students. So sometimes I’ll have a book on there and it’ll say ages 14 and up. My students are nine, 10, 11. I’ll say, okay, I have to take this book out. A lot of kids will ask me for books. A lot of kids have asked me for Stephen King. And I’m like, you know, I think Stephen King is great. Was I reading Stephen King when I was in sixth grade? Yes. However, and I explain to them, I cannot order that because it’s professionally reviewed for maybe high school or for adults. So I weigh all those decisions. I look at how much money I have and then I start looking at state award lists. I look at what were the Texas State Awards or the Louisiana State Awards? What were the Newberrys, the Caldecotts, the top math books, the top science books? I look at all of that. It takes a very long time to put together a book order. Then you have to narrow it down because we don’t even get a lot of money. It’s a very difficult process.
[00:11:19] Amy H-L: So are there any guidelines that you need to follow?
[00:11:22] Amanda J: Yes, we have a collection development policy and so forth. And most school libraries and public libraries have collection development policies. I will upload our collection into our online catalog and I will see how many books are outdated, especially technology. We’re talking about technology. I’ll say, okay, I need to update my collection, but I use the parameters of our collection development policy, which really states it’s basically what I just said, that’s those steps, but making sure that we are getting books that are professionally reviewed.
[00:11:53] Jon M: So what happens if there is a challenge either to the placement of a book or to having the book at all or whatever? What, what’s the process that you go through?
[00:12:04] Amanda J: So I have never had any formal challenges at my school. We have at the public library that I’ve been fighting, but in general what I’d like them to do is call me and talk to me about it, but that doesn’t happen. Usually people will turn to social media to complain about a book. I have seen that before, so I’ve called the parent and I say, hey, do you want to talk about this book? And it usually works itself out. But anybody can call and ask me questions about a book, and I will answer every single question that they have, and that’s their right as a parent or a guardian. If they’re not satisfied with my answer, sometimes I’ll offer, I’ll say, well, I can make sure that your child doesn’t check out those books, but I’m not going to, this book is professionally reviewed for our age group and the other kids choose to read it, so I’m not going to remove it from the collection just because you don’t like it, but your child doesn’t have to have it.
But if they’re not satisfied with that, they can do what’s called a formal request for reconsideration, and it’s a formal form that they fill out. And basically, it just goes above my head. You know, I have input, but what I’ll do is I will provide the principal with a list of all of the professional reviews, the awards, kind of like a book resume, I would put together and say, this is all the information about this book. And then the principal would have to make a decision and, you know, talk to the school board, or not the school board itself, the voting members, but talk to the superintendent and the library director at our central office.
[00:13:27] Amy H-L: So who makes the final decision?
[00:13:29] Amanda J: We’ve never gotten that far in my district. I would assume the superintendent. I have to go back and look. I haven’t looked at my policy in a while when it gets to that, that high up. I would assume my superintendent. I would assume also that if the parent is not happy with whatever choice that that parent can ask for the school board to look at, you know, and review it. I know if I wasn’t happy with the decision made, I would ask the school board as the librarian to look at it and it would be a discussion, but they would ultimately rule.
[00:13:58] Jon M: And in the public library, does it ultimately go to the Board of Control, or is the final decision made by the professional librarians?
[00:14:06] Amanda J: Well, it depends. So, in our public library, any book that’s challenged goes to a professional committee of librarians and stakeholders, and they will decide as professionals. However, in Louisiana, there is a law that states that if someone complains that a book is sexually explicit or if they think it’s sexually explicit, it automatically has to go to the Library Board of Control. So what you’re seeing, what’s happening in my parish public library system, people are writing that books are sexually explicit when there is no sex in them so that they will go to the Library Board of Control, so that they will skip the entire process of the trained librarians. And then it turns into a giant three hour long meeting where everyone screams.
[00:14:45] Jon M: And is there any appeal? I mean, if you had a Library Board of Control that was controlled by people who were interested in banning books, is there anything that, any higher body to go to or any court that one can go to?
[00:14:58] Amanda J: Well, at the librarian level, if they don’t write that it’s sexually explicit, there can be an appeal at that level, but that would go to the Library Board of Control. With the Library Board of Control, it’s pretty much final. Now, if ss a resident, and I’m the founding director of our local library alliance, the grassroots organization, if we were not happy with the decision, we would most certainly look into a court case to resolve that issue, particularly if marginalized groups were being singled out, or if it was moved based on viewpoint and not based on content.
[00:15:30] Amy H-L: Historically, book banning attempts were rampant during McCarthyism and then again during the Reagan years. What do you think is the impetus for the current campaigns?
[00:15:43] Amanda J: Yes, so it is cyclical, you know, and it’ll come and go, and I don’t remember, I know there was a, in the 80s, but when I first started teaching, you kind of had like the Harry Potter mania. And so there was the, oh, you have to protect the kids from turning into wizards. But that was, that was laughed at, you know, because there are no wizards, so it wasn’t harming, it wasn’t targeting a particular section of our society, although I guess you could say there are Wiccans, you know what I’m saying.
But now what we’re seeing, it’s completely different from what I saw when I began teaching. What we’re seeing now is people are getting hysterical at such a large level that’s being propagated and it’s just promoted on social media to where it becomes this sort of pitchfork scenario where we all have to go down to the library with our pitchforks or go down to the school. What’s happening now starts off with books, but the actions behind it are not really about the books. I mean, they are and they aren’t. You start with the book targeting. You look at American Library Association will list their top 10 banned books from last year. You look at the books that are generally censored or challenged and almost all of them or a large proportion of them are by authors or with characters of the LGBTQ community or authors and characters of color. And so that’s no mistake. They are trying to further other and malign and make these communities feel as if they don’t belong.
But it goes so much more into that. It goes into the politicians pick up this mantle of they promote it. Like my Louisiana governor, now governor, when he was running for attorney general, he picked up the mantle of we’ve got to protect the children and put out a Protecting Innocence Project report with these 10 nefarious books. I don’t think any of them were in children’s sections in any public library in the entire state, but from the way he talked, they were all in the children’s section, which they weren’t. And he created a hotline that you could call and report your local librarian or your local educator for giving sexual material to children, which was not happening. And so we’re being used as political pawns.
But it goes even further with that because once they swoop in and they, on this protecting innocent farce. They start building this legislation to defund and devalue schools and libraries. So there’s a much larger plan in action, which is to privatize public schools, voucher schemes, all of that, and privatize public libraries. And they’re not quiet about it. I mean, even U. S. Representative Clay tweeted out that one day all of our libraries would be church owned, privately owned. So there are so many factors to this right now, and it’s just compounded by social media. There’s so much misinformation and disinformation floating around, and people just believe everything they see on Facebook.
[00:18:40] Jon M: Now, that’s so interesting what you were just saying about the connection to privatization because I hadn’t thought of that connection, but you find that on almost anything you get to, that ends up being, you know, somewhere in the picture. But also something that’s sad is that while we tend to associate these efforts at book banning with far right extremists and MAGA and so forth, I’m in New Jersey, Amy’s in California. There were two recent incidents in New Jersey since the Israeli Gaza war, where a library was going to have the author of “P is for Palestine,” which is a children’s book that goes through the alphabet with words that are relevant to Palestinian children. And there was a huge furor about it. And in the end, the library ended up that the speaker did get to come, she did get to come, and then they invited an Israeli book author. You know, if you were going to have a Palestinian book author, then you had to have an Israeli book author.
And then there was an incident, which I was actually involved with, in Montclair, which is supposed to be a very progressive town in New Jersey. Jewish Voice for Peace was going to have a Quaker speak and was renting space in the library because the library rents out space to the community, or actually it may be free. I think they offer it for free. And there was going to be an event, which had no connection with the library except that it was going to use library space. And he was a Quaker who had visited the West Bank. And there was another furor about it because some people objected to the fact that it was Jewish Voice for Peace, which is an anti Zionist group. And there was this Zoom meeting at 11 o’clock at night on the Saturday night before the Sunday where the speaker was going to be about whether the library was going to allow the speaker, and ultimately the library said yes, mainly, I think, because a civil rights attorney told them they had no right to have viewpoint discrimination and they would get sued. But it was scary because, you know, it wasn’t one of the usual suspects, but it showed that it can happen in a number of situations.
[00:20:49] Amanda J: You know, if you’d asked me a few years ago, I would have said it was a southern thing, a southern problem. But as the past few years have gone by, I’ve started reading more news about censorship and speaking and it’s happening everywhere. It’s happening in red states, blue states, purple states. I was speaking with someone who lives in Manhattan the other day and I’m like, well, at least you don’t have this in Manhattan. And they were like, well, yeah, actually we do. It’s everywhere and it’s like, people just go to such extremes instead of having a conversation. I think a lot of these problems could be solved with conversations. Some can’t. But it’s just, I think social media compounds a lot of this. Social media can be used in a positive and a negative. So in the negative, it’s, let’s bring our pitchforks and go. But then I’ve used social media as a positive to help stop anti-library legislation. So it’s a double edged sword there.
[00:21:41] Jon M: If a librarian or classroom teacher is facing the kinds of demands for book removal or the kinds of attacks that you faced, to whom would you recommend that they should turn for help?
[00:21:50] Amanda J: Well, if it’s an attack, a personal attack, like mine was just so personal and lies and, you know, as a school employee, I would always hope you could turn to your own administrator and to your own superintendent. But I have a lot of friends who have done that and they got zero support. Some states have unions and some don’t. If you’re a state with a union, I would definitely turn to your union. But if it starts crossing the line into defamation and harassment, PEN America puts out a harassment guide for educators and students. And it’s very sad they had to do that. But read up on the PEN America’s harassment guide. You definitely want to report it. So if it’s threats of violence, things like that, you want to make sure you’re reporting it to your local authorities, to the FBI cyber crimes unit if it’s online.
But there’s not, there’s not a lot of help that you can get. Someone the other day, I saw a post that they’re waiting for the cavalry to come and then someone else said the cavalry is not coming. You have to saddle up and do it yourself. So that’s kind of what I had to do. I just kind of had to help myself and and it sucks.
It really sucks a lot, but there’s strength in numbers. And so there are a lot of school librarians. There are a lot of teachers and there are a lot of public and academic librarians out there who can offer advice and help. There are a lot of toolkits out there. There’s a “Get Ready, Stay Ready” online toolkit from the University of South Carolina and the University of Iowa, I believe. The American Library Association puts out toolkits for guidance. PEN America, the National Coalition Against Censorship. You can always contact the ACLU if it’s a First Amendment issue, because sometimes they try to silence you, your First Amendment rights. There’s usually a law clinic in every state, like ours is the Tulane First Amendment Law Clinic, or you can contact FIRE, right now I’m blanking out on what FIRE stands for, or the Freedom to Read Foundation. There’s lots of help out there, but it is difficult. And this, this is being fought on such a local level. It’s in little pockets. It’s like Swiss cheese, you know, they’re like little holes . And so national organizations, how do you help hundreds in every single state that are that are facing this? Because the people that are trying to push and ban books are very well funded and often school librarians like myself, we’re not.
[00:24:03] Jon M: FIRE, I believe is Foundation for Individual Rights in Education or something very similar to that. I think that’s what it stands for.
[00:24:10] Amanda J: Yes.
[00:24:10] Amy H-L: Have any of these minoritized groups, especially the parents of color, for example, or parents of children with disabilities, have any of them been supportive? Have they been empowered to speak up?
[00:24:25] Amanda J: We don’t really have any local groups like that where I live in Louisiana, but I know in Texas, right off the top of my head, I’m thinking about, and I forget the name, it’s Round Rock parents. I want to say they’re called the Black Parents of Round Rock or something similar to that, have really stepped up and helped in that area. And you look at different places. I know that Defense of Democracy has stepped up. Well, I’ll say not necessarily in my little local level, but in Louisiana, the Forum for Equality or Louisiana Trans Advocates, ACLU. Certain groups have, just not in my particular community, but in other places. I know in St. Tammany Parish in Louisiana, which is another parish in Louisiana that’s seen an exorbitant amount of challenges and hate and harassment of their librarians, they have a very strong coalition called Queer North Shore. And so it’s a lot of parents, because in St. Tammany Parish, that’s what they call their area, the North Shore. Queer North Shore and the St. Tammany Library Alliance are parents that are that are sticking up, especially parents of students from the LGBTQ community. So yeah, there are, it’s just hard to put out so many fires. Because it’s not, if you think about it, it’s not just the book banning that’s affecting them as, you know, you’ve got the other legislation, the “don’t say gay” bills and the taking away of rights of trans students. So when you look at the other groups, they’re trying to put out so many fires. And so the librarians are trying to pick up and cover the book ban aspect of it and do what we can.
[00:26:01] Jon M: Thank you. Amanda Jones, author of “That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America.”
[00:26:06] Amy H-L: And thank you, listeners. Check out our new video series. What Would YOU Do?, a collaboration with Professor Meira Levinson of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and EdEthics. Go to our website, ethicalschools.org, and click Vdeo. The goal of this series is not to provide right answers, but to illustrate a variety of ethical viewpoints. If you found this podcast worthwhile, please share it with someone at your school. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and give us a rating or review. This helps others to find the show. Check out our website for more episodes and articles and to subscribe to our monthly emails. We post annotated transcripts of our interviews to make them easy to use in workshops or classes. Contact us at [email protected]. We’re on Facebook, Instagram, and Thread. Our editor and social media manager is Amanda Denti. Until next week.