Imagine having a 10 year old daughter and her coming home with a book called A Mad Zombie Party. It's about Zombie slayers. Nothing like classic literature to enlighten and inform our young ones eh? Besides being Zombie slayers they are also teenagers who have casual sex. Awesome right?
"One and done. Bang and bail. Hit it and quit it."
Not exactly the Shakespearean experience we grew up with but how about this?
We currently have teachers, librarians, and others in education who think this kind of literature is good for teenage girls?
Is there anyone reading this that thinks this is appropriate for teen girls to be reading? The author has made it on the New York Times Best Sellers list and is promoted by Seventeen. And why shouldn't Seventeen promote a story about an 18 year old alcoholic zombie killer obsessed with a girl he dated for a year but turned into a zombie before he could sleep with her so he goes around sleeping with other girls who look like her?
Is this OK with you?
My brother and I recently had on Dan Kleinman (@SafeLibraries) on periscope to talk about the ALA, Drag Queen Story Hour, and the pedophile history some of those reading to our children have.
It's kind of long but it's important. Everyone in every city, especially those with kids, needs to be checking out their local libraries and paying attention to the books our young people are reading. The above example was from a friend of mine in Somerville, MA. She's a concerned mom who flipped through a book her daughter came home with but there are so many parents not involved in their children's lives it's easy for a lot of this garbage to go by unchallenged.
Below is a transcript of Dan Kleinman. He's been fighting this fight for a long time and we are hoping all of this knowledge will lead to others doing the same.
"My name is Dan Kleinman and I'm from SafeLibraries. I got started in this many years ago when I was listening to Doctor Laura. She had said on the radio that librarians were trying to, I don't know, sexualize children, something like that, by putting inappropriate material on them. And I thought to myself, that's crazy. No librarian is gonna do that. And I actually stopped listening to her at that time, because that was crazy. Then my kid was in public school, and the fourth day of Public School I had to read a book that was so totally inappropriate for my kid that I had to change the words. Something like, she went skinny dipping on the date with three guys. Ooh, la La. She said in a lusty voice. Now no kindergartner is gonna get that. Anyway, I went to the principal and I said, you know, "What kinda book is this?" And the principal reviewed it for four days and she said, "This book is so inappropriate for our school, I'm removing it from the library." I said, "Okay, why did you give it to my kid?" "Well, because our librarian was a member of the American Library Association and she was using an ALA recommended list for kindergartners of books."
Dr. Laura was right....there are people trying to sexualize our children and if we don't stop them.....who will?
The full transcript can be seen below.
- [Dan] Yeah, I'm here.
- Hey. So what I'd like for you to do is... I thought it was interesting when I first talked to you to introduce yourself and tell people how you got started and how you got the idea to get involved in libraries and what's going on.
- [Dan] Alright. Hello everyone. My name is Dan Kleinman and I'm from SafeLibraries. I got started in this many years ago when I was listening to Doctor Laura. She had said on the radio that librarians were trying to, I don't know, sexualize children, something like that, by putting inappropriate material on them. And I thought to myself, that's crazy. No librarian is gonna do that. And I actually stopped listening to her at that time, because that was crazy. Then my kid was in public school, and the fourth day of Public School I had to read a book that was so totally inappropriate for my kid that I had to change the words. Something like, she went skinny dipping on the date with three guys. Ooh, la La. She said in a lusty voice. Now no kindergartner is gonna get that. Anyway, I went to the principal and I said, you know, "What kinda book is this?" And the principal reviewed it for four days and she said, "This book is so inappropriate for our school, I'm removing it from the library." I said, "Okay, why did you give it to my kid?" "Well, because our librarian was a member of the American Library Association and she was using an ALA recommended list for kindergartners of books."
- Holy cow! Kindergartners. On the very first year, wow. Very inappropriate.
- [Dan] Yeah.
- But I thought it was interesting that Doctor Laura gave you that idea. I used to listen to her a long time ago. We know that you're over a target with everything that you're doing because you've been sued twice. And later on I wanna talk about the FOIA process. But on these, the Drag Queen Story Hours that were in the news, you know, in the last couple of months.
- [Dan] Right.
- Can you tell a little bit about how the story broke and how it came about that we found out that, you know, there's some pedophiles that are reading to our children?
- [Dan] Sure. Drag Queen Story Hours have been going on for a number of years. They started in San Francisco naturally and they've been picked up by the American Library Association who has been going out of its way to promote them in as many libraries as possible. The way that this came into the news was by whistle blowers from Mass Resistance. Mass Resistance is a pro family organization which decided to oppose these Drag Queen Story Hours. When they found that some of including one was a pedophile. So that made international news. It actually wasn't me, it was Mass Resistance that made this international news. And that's why we are here today talking about Drag Queen Story Hour in public libraries. Why? It's just National Library Week this week. And the American Library Association chose to label any whistle blower as a censor if they even complain about Drag Queen Story Hour.
- Wow! I know also that you had said, that they are preventing people from recording. I'm guessing that's only happening in Houston, right?
- [Dan] I'm sure it's happening to a number of places, but I did happen to observe it happening in Houston and I posted that, a video online in a post I recently published where the video was taken by Mass Resistance once again and a librarian comes right up to them and tells him to stop taking the video. Now the library had just made this their policy, didn't do it even in a public meeting. They just decided to arbitrarily and capriciously do it and apply it ONLY to the people opposing Drag Queen Story Hour.
- Yeah. And I know that, I did a story for this on Culttture C-U-L-T-T-T-U-R-E. I posted on their one of the videos, trying to keep people from filming that. Drag queens are, you know, are sexual in nature. I mean, they just are. So, you know, we don't have, you know, strippers coming in and reading books to our The video went viral. I bet a lot of libraries decided, well, okay, well we just won't let you record. which I don't think it's legal for them to be able to do that in a public, especially for public schools. You can record out in public, you can record at public meetings. So I don't know how legal, I don't know what the legalities of it are. Do you?
- [Dan] It's probably a good idea for libraries to prevent filming in the right circumstance. A bunch of public buildings do that. For example, the FBI or the division of motor vehicles can have up signs that say, you can't film in here. I don't know exactly how it applies to the library. The library might be ultimately right in doing that, but they did it the wrong way by just rushing it together without having the open public meeting that's required. And then applying it selectively just to the people they wanted to silence, right at the moment when it came out that the registered pedophile was reading to children.
- Right. Well, you know, if you're having, it's the American Library Association. This is supposed to be for the, you know, this is supposed to be something that's good for children. Why you wouldn't be able to record people reading to children scenes. You know, why? Why would we not be able to record that, if it's a good thing.
- [Dan] Well, I don't know. Another issue here is it's actually not a drag queen per se issue. The librarian types like to make it a drag queen issue so they can, you know, claim homophobia and say we have to be socially justice aware and everything. That's not the issue. Think about it as a matter of appropriateness. What if, because they say, well, it's a part of society [so kids should see] so sex work, as they claim. It's not sex work, it's really women being abused, but so is prostitution and so is nude bathing. Why don't they have nude bathers coming in too. That's not even an LGBT issue. That is the issue of inappropriateness and in fact, there may have been a law in Houston that prevented this very kind of thing that everybody just ignores because the librarians are assumed to know everything.
- Right.
- Right.
- More on that, on the stories about the pedophiles. The first one. In both of these stories about those known pedophiles reading to the kids, they're from Houston, right?
- [Dan] Right.
- And we're talking about molest. You know, one of them through the first story that broke was he molested an eight year old and, they didn't do the required background checks.
- [Dan] Yeah. Not only did they not do the required background check, but I looked online at a resource on Facebook that's an open public group where librarians chat with each other. And they mocked even the idea that they needed to background check drag queens, for being pedophiles because his attitude and with this attitude, this is why they don't do the background checks and this is why it's inherently dangerous.
- Right. And then the second guy, I think that one was a six year old. I think he had a record. I had papers on that one. But the fact that they're not running the required background checks, it tells me that they should be, the ALA should not be allowed to be associated with the school until they get their act together. Has the American Library Association, has it always been like this or did it change over at some point?
- [Dan] Okay. The American Library Association was not always like this. At some point, Judith Krug from the Illinois ACLU, a board member for three years, joined the American Library Association. She alone changed how librarians approached children. No longer would they keep children from inappropriate material. Now they would make it available to them and mislead their parents about what content was available so that the kids would actually get this kind of material. She then created office for Intellectual Freedom and the Freedom to Read Foundation and Banned Books Week. And ever since then, these organizations have been promoting Judith Krug's ACLU views into the American Library Association. And librarians who say otherwise have a very short career.
- Oh Wow.
- So this is Lewis here. I'm so glad you joined us today. You posted a video of an interview with the, I guess the ALA currently. I can't remember the gentleman who was interviewing her. But she kept talking about getting the kids information, getting them information over and over again. It was really creepy and I wanted to have you elaborate on that interview that she was doing. I can't remember the gentleman she was being interviewed by.
- [Dan] Who's she again?
- I think she is the head of the ALA currently.
- [Dan] Oh, that would be Deborah Caldwell-Stone, is the head of the Office for Intellectual Freedom currently. The head of the ALA changes every year.
- Oh, okay.
- [Dan] The president of the ALA changes every year.
- Okay.
- Right. So it's not just the Drag Queen Story Hour, it's other things. It's other materials and books that make it into our libraries that have no place in our library. And the first time I talked to you were telling me about how that process works. That, you know, most people aren't aware of everything that's in there and then what they do when it's brought to their attention. If you wanna pull that material out. If I as a parent go in there and see this, you know, this book that shouldn't be in there, can you get it pulled out I mean?
- [Dan] The answer is, it depends if it's a public library versus the school library. Public libraries are way more anything goes by design. School libraries however, you know, do have policies or standards that they need to follow. Even Judith Krug said that if a book doesn't meet a school's library policy, and I'm quoting now, "Get it out of there." So even the US Supreme Court said that as well. The Pico versus the Board of Education case. Says if a book is pervasively vulgar, you can remove it forthwith. Now, if it contains ideas that you don't want the kids to have, like communism, well then that you cannot remove forthwith. But if it's just pervasively vulgar, out it goes. It's perfectly fine to remove this stuff even according to Judith Krug, but you never hear that from the Office for Intellectual Freedom anymore. Now it's anything goes.
- Right, which is why I think that, and I might be wrong on this, but the amount of viewing porn and child porn is... the American Library Association is like the second biggest...
- What source for.
- It's a big source of it. And they fought keeping, when parents wanted to get the porn out there, out of there or put filters on the iPads or, you know, the American Library Association fights that.
- [Dan] Right. The American Library spent about $1.5 million to fight against the Children's Internet Protection Act and they lost. So as a result of losing, they hardly ever mention the case and they mislead people about filters so that you can effectively nullify the case. Because the reality is you could use this case to keep inappropriate material out of your library. And even in states, you can use the federal CIPA law as a model for state law and do the exact same things, whereas you would withhold money from a library unless they use filters to block porn. Now let me just add that filters are very good nowadays. And even a former president of ALA, Carla Hayden, who is now the librarian of Congress, said so when he testified to become the Librarian of Congress. She says all librarians oppose pornography and filters are pretty good these days. That's what she said, but once again, that's not what the American Library Association tells you now. So they try to mislead you to get around the case basically by lying to you.
- Right. I want people to be aware of this because I want people to know this is happening in every community. I sent you the tweet earlier about the Cookeville Tennessee, and judging from it, it was meeting today.
- Yeah.
- And, people need to be aware of what's going on so they can go and see for themselves, and if there is something like that one video that caught the drag queen twerking, you know, that stuff needs to be caught and called out. But it's happening everywhere. And I would've never, I would've only thought, you know, okay, well it's in San Francisco or in...
- Yeah, the major.
- Certain other places, but it's everywhere.
- [Dan] I must say the video of that guy twerking like crazy, I'm not certain if that is from a public library. In the Houston Public Library, one of the drag queens did turn around and say, "Let's turn around and shake your booty," and did gently kind of shake his booty, right in front of one of the kids who was there. It wasn't as dramatic as the twerking incident that I don't know exactly where that's from, but this is what happens at these at these particular events, and so there's that.
- Well people need to be to be aware of so they can, I mean, half the battle is this of being aware, showing up and pushing back because when this, when the story broke out recently on the first pedophile that they caught reading, they, I think temporarily said they were shutting down. I don't believe they were shutting down. They're just gonna wait things out, or start holding them somewhere else. They're just gonna wait until the public becomes complacent and we can't become complacent ever again.
- Yes. Not only are they gonna wait until the public becomes complacent, but they actually advise libraries to do just that, to wait until the thing kinda blows over and then go ahead with what you want. That's an organization called EveryLibrary, which does that which are ALA people who've created EveryLibrary to help promote libraries getting funding, great idea, but you can't do it by telling them to go ahead with the sexually inappropriate material and ignore the parents as long as you can, then attack them and wait til it all blows over.
- Right.
- [Dan] That is the strategy.
- Right. And as far as some of the people that attend, cause I'm thinking just like everything else, the left does a lot of it's astroturfed, a lot of these people are paid to be there, but you know a little something about them, some of them being paid, right?
- [Dan] I am a filing FOIA requests right now to get to that very question. And the library is fighting me every step of the way with every possible FOIA trick, you know, Freedom of Information Act trick, that they have up their sleeve and it's going to the attorney general.
- There's only one reason they would be fighting that.
- [Dan] In my experience FOIAing libraries, 90% of the libraries will respond to the FOIAs in a timely fashion. Of the 10% who do not reply, 100% of those have something to hide eventually.
- Right.
- [Dan] So the fact that this library is not responding to FOIA, is telling me, though I wanna prove it, that they are hiding something, although it's obvious because they let these pedophiles read to children.
- Right. So I was always researching this over the past few weeks. I came across information that shows George Soros Foundation supporting the American Library Association. But I don't have any documents to prove that. Do you know anything about that?
- [Dan] Yes. The George Soros Foundation has a bunch of 990s in which they do give money to the American Library Association. I believe they gave about a $1.5 million once, a bunch of years ago. I don't know what it is currently. And they used it for the purpose of creating literally fake news, of using libraries to create news. And the library association even bragged at the time that there were more libraries than McDonald's®. So this was gonna great. And they would teach kids how to identify fake news. And in some of the examples, Fox News was the company they were identifying as fake news, funded by George Soros.
- Of course.
- [Dan] And if I may, the American Library Association has a curriculum on privacy in schools, K through 12. That curriculum, I asked the head of the AASL, that's the American Association of School Librarians, who wrote the curriculum. They didn't know, because the curriculum came from the Soros people. And in that curriculum they tell things like you know, how to evade your parents telling you not to go to certain websites, how to evade things like that. So it's just like a Soros curriculum in schools with the pretty face of the American Library Association on it. Cause that's acceptable whereas George Soros would not be. And we know this is a fit. We know this is what they do cause Judith Krug bragged about this, about how if you're gonna the case, the best place to bring the case is as the American Library Association and not as the ACLU, cause that carries baggage, she said.
- Oh wow, that's scary. I also noticed, and when I was pulling out some things today, I just typed in Drag Queen Story Hour in the Twitter search engine and I noticed that here recently, there was some protests. I wanna say one was in Michigan, one was in Indiana. And what I'm seeing is, there's more protesters protesting against these Drag Queen Story Hours than there are supporters of it.
- [Dan] I believe there was even some protests in Atlanta today.
- Okay, I didn't see Atlanta yet.
- [Dan] Including documents handed out to legislators to explain what's going on. I think the Atlanta mayor may have said, well, if the library is not gonna take you, then I'll invite you right here into the government. Hey, I bet you she's not doing background checks on those people.
- Right. And it would be great if somebody there in Atlanta, you know, doing some FOIA requests to find out. But I just thought it was interesting cause one of them, I think it was the one in Michigan, and there was like, there was less than 24. And the local media was covering it. And the local media was the way you would think mainstream media is. They were kind of painting the anti Drag Queen Hour people as bigots. Although there was, you know, 10 times as many people against it. And I think that's what people need to understand is people think, you know, there's this demand for this kind of thing and there's really not, it's Astroturfed. And then, a lot of people aren't aware of it, but when they are, you know, they're getting involved in pushing back. And I think there's more of us than there are of them.
- [Dan] Well, when you say Astroturfed, the American Library Association is expert at astroturf. Even that head of the Office for Intellectual Freedom, for example, went on Wikipedia as multiple different users hiding her identity to change what it said about net neutrality to be what, okay. They also Astroturfed Banned Books Week because I proved that even though they have these lists for Banned Books Week about all these banned books, the reality is, there are very few bans on these books or challenges.
- Let me stop you there, about Banned Books Week. What is that?
- [Dan] That is an effort put on by the American Library Association, created by that former ACLU board member, to promote, well, it's supposed to be like promote reading, but it promotes attacking every single person who complains or whistle blows as a censor. That's what it is.
- Right.
- [Dan] And they fake their numbers just to take advantage of things. And it's basically astroturfing. And it's even harmful because when they fake the discrimination against the LGBT community, that actually results in increased discrimination and suicides. Because when you fake it, everybody thinks, well, that's okay, everybody's discriminating against them, so I might as well too. And there's studies that show this. So they're literally harming the LGBT community just to get them to amplify their message. And when I pointed this out in 2010, LGBT books fell off that list for two years straight, even after being on number one or number two in the list for five years straight. So I caught them astroturfing numerous times and they're doing it again with this Drag Queen Story Hour.
- Wow! I know, the Houston libraries where they said that they were canceling Drag Queen Story Hour, but I think it's actually back on, like for April 27th. I don't know, I need to pull up.
- [Dan] And let me add. in addition to astroturfing, they also give money to local public and they don't want it to be made public. So you never know when somebody who's in favor of drag queens, not being checked their backgrounds and reading to kids, is actually getting funding from the American Library Association and nobody knows about it. And that's because you're stacking the deck. That's what they do.
- Okay, so the American Library Association, is that a private? I mean it sounds so like publicly affiliate, you know like the FED, that's actually not....
- [Dan] It's just an association of librarians. They have no power in local libraries, except to the extent that all the librarians do what they say because it's career ending if you don't.
- So let me ask a question about that. You said that earlier is that librarians that buck the ALA, they have a short career. What is that ALA's influence on them? They are just an association of librarians, so what gives them that power?
- And they're not supposed to have the power, but they have the perception of it.
- [Dan] I'll give you an example. There was a guy named Greg, I forget. He used to run a website called Shush. And he was running in an ALA election. He's a conservative librarian. And when he ran in that ALA election, the person who was running the election decided to leave his name off of the ballot, so no one would vote for him. And then she said, "In order to be fair, I'll also leave my own name off the ballot." So this is an example of a career ending move for people that the American Library Association does to people who are conservative or say things like you shouldn't be sexualizing children in public libraries or promoting child pornography, which by the way the American Library Association facilitates child pornography by telling librarians they are not police, they're not judges. They cannot determine what is child pornography. Only a judge can do that and only on a site by site basis, so they can do and nothing about it. And one more thing, when I pointed that out to the American Library Association, that it was written in their policy sample policy for librarians to use, they deleted it from the policy, but
- Oh my goodness. so there are librarians out of a job because they pushed back or?
- [Dan] And it's not only that. There's librarians who are out of jobs because they don't like being sexually harassed in libraries and they complain to their managers, and the managers say, "If you don't like what the patrons are doing, then don't let the door hit you on the way out." Okay. This comes from law cases where librarians have sued over this stuff where I'm getting this information.
- Have any of these librarians, have they ever won any of these lawsuits?
- [Dan] Well actually the American Library Association likes to brag about this because these people usually settled their cases. One settled for I think 750000, another for 340000. I'm not really sure. So the ALA says, "Well, the fact that they settled means they were just trying to get rid of the case. There was nothing there." The ALA has literally said such cases are "dubious," and that they, any cases that ever have happened, never happened because it's so fact specific to prove it that it will never happen. This is the American Library Association ENABLING sexual harassment of librarians to protect their policy.
- So in these settlements, who funds that? Does the ALA have insurance for stuff like this?
- [Dan] The settlements are never against the ALA. It's always the librarians.
- The librarians themselves.
-the libraries.
- Okay.
- Oh Wow! So taxpayers.
- So county and city governments are paying these out?
- So tax payers?
- [Dan] Yes. Taxpayers are footing the bill for this ultimately.
- Okay, so on these settlements, do we know like the amounts they're settling?
- [Dan] Well, it depends on the settlement and you can look some of them up. I don't mean you personally, but anybody can look some of these up. I catalog some of them on my website. I'm hoping that by... you know, I've gotta tell you, nobody's helping librarians who are sexually harassed by patrons. Okay. They're helping them if they're sexually harassed by each other or by some other means. But if it's by patrons viewing porn, no one in the American Library Association helps them because the answer is you gotta stop the ALA policy of anything goes in public libraries and start listening to local law or state law that applies, and could block this porn. But for the ALA claiming that you can and people are fooled.
- Well you would think that the libraries, especially these public libraries where the children use so much that you would be able to at least put filters or try to keep that stuff out. I don't understand that. So on that, the FOIA process, I think the FOIA process is something that we all need to learn about. Cause I know that did Judicial WatchⓇ is doing some great things with it. And I know sometimes it takes a long time. I know that when you do your FOIA request that they really try to delay and delay and delay, but you're getting a lot of good information through that process. And, how involved and complicated is it? Is it different in different communities or you just need to learn the process and?
- [Dan] Well you need to realize that it's actually kind of easy. You know, it doesn't take much to file a FOIA request. You can just write a paragraph and send it in on an email to your library and they basically need to respond. But states do have laws on this stuff. And there's a national organization, NFOIC are the initials, where you could go up and you can find sample FOIA requests for your state and get a really good head start on how you write up these requests and what to expect. And then you fill in the information you want and you see what comes back. And pretty soon you become an expert at this if you do it enough.
- Yeah. I think another thing that people can do is you can just put in the Google search engine Drag Queen Story Hour. Cause that's how I found the one in Cookeville, Tennessee. I'm pretty sure that we've had some here in Memphis, Tennessee. But I think a lot of people would be surprised in small communities, in rural communities, that this is happening all over the country. In Houston and some of these bigger cities are getting the coverage, but it's happening everywhere.
- [Dan] When you read what the librarians are saying about this on their Facebook group, they're are saying things like, "well I'm a librarian in a fairly conservative area of Louisiana. How do I get, and I'm trying to figure out how to get my library to host Drag QueenHour. Can anybody help me?" And then they get dozens of people that come in there and give them ideas. So if you're asking how does this stuff start, it's because they're getting it from the American Library Association. They're trained in ALA-approved schools. They're getting into libraries and then they go ahead and they do this. Now, the American Library Association has just made their number one goal, social justice, no longer literacy, that they said that's back, that's on the back burner now. Social justice is their number one goal and they need to get into communities and change them from within. That is their latest training for librarians.
- Right All kinds of companies use the SPLC to root out other hate groups when they're like the biggest hate group of all.
- The ADL.
- [Dan] So does American Library Association.
- Yeah, they use SPLC too.
- Yes, their librarians block people as a result.
- Oh, so I bet that the SPLC has Tracy's group listed as a hate group? Do they or she's on their radar?
- [Dan] I assume they do. I think Mass Resistance is considered a hate group. Okay.
- Anything that's pro family.
- [Dan] Basically.
- Pro traditional family.
- Tracy Shannon just said yes.
- Oh yeah, well, that doesn't surprise me.
- [Dan] I will say this about the hate groups in libraries, and that is that the Office for Intellectual Freedom has actually tried to convince librarians to stop blocking "hate groups" from library meetings rhythms. But their librarians, the social justice warriors among them, basically counter attacked their own Office for Intellectual Freedom and got them to withdraw their guidance on that, because the Office for Intellectual Freedom actually sees that there are libraries that get sued for this regularly and constantly lose. So they tried to advise librarians, stop blocking the "hate groups," they have every right to be there. And the social justice warriors were not happy with that, and attacked the American Library Association, and said, #NotMyALA or #NoHateALA was a hashtag for example.
- Wow.
- So you touched on it before, but the Office for Intellectual Freedom.
- [Dan] Yeah.
- And I'm sure that's totally opposite of what they actually do.
- [Dan] That's right.
- Who funds them and where do they come from?
- [Dan] Well, that was created by Judith Krug, the Illinois ACLU board member. And I don't know who funds them any more than I know who funds whatever. But I do know they do get funding from Playboy Foundation and George Soros and sources like that besides the other means. They charge for online webinars. You know, you'd think that they'd have intellectual freedom, but they charge to watch their webinars. They charge their materials. I'm in one of their intellectual freedom manuals
- Oh really?
- [Dan] Oh yeah, they like me.
- I'm sure it's glowing.
- [Dan] Did I answer your question? I forget what it was.
- Yeah. I mean, yeah, you touched on it. I'm gonna look into them some more.
- Yeah, them, and then you said another group earlier. EveryLibrary or...
- [Dan] EveryLibrary.
- Where do all these, you know, it's not just the American Library Association. There's all these other groups that work with them. I just wonder what the uniting... It's just like a spider. It's like they have their tentacles in so many different groups and I have to wear, I don't, how do they get to funding for this? I don't understand the funding. It just seems to be massive.
- [Dan] It sure is. And they're slipping money to advocates who take their position and crush everybody else. And then you know mislead people. So it really is unfair. In fact, their first tactic when somebody raises a complaint about anything is to basically attack them all as censors. They don't even take the time to figure out if there really is a legitimate issue that somebody is raising, which does happen. There are legitimate issues, sometimes not sometimes there's crazy people. What do you want? It's everywhere. But sometimes there's Legitimate issues. They don't care. They're just gonna go on the attack right away because they, and they sent out a message to all the people following them. So this is group attack designed to immediately scare people out of looking into the issue any further. That's what they do.
- It's key that people, when that's happening that you pile on, that you do more scrutiny. And the more people show up, which I think they are. When I was looking through Twitter and seeing all the different protests in the different cities at these Drag Queen Story Hour and seeing so many people out there, even though local media is covering them as bigots, it's important for people to just push back. That's how you defeat them. These people can only be successful, you know, in darkness.
- [Dan] Yeah. And I see Tracy Shannon is one of the people following me. Tracy is one of the leaders in the Houston So you know, if you were to
- Tracy increased the public library fund, increased funding from 2016 to 2018 by 570%.
- So the Houston public fund, so that's taxpayer money, right?
- [Dan] It would seem so. I mean, I'm gonna guarantee you, this FOIA practice they're doing of constantly going through to attorneys is gonna cost a lot of money. In Orland Park, Illinois, for example, would cost over a half a million dollars just to do this kind of FOIA practice to prove. The library was eventually forced to admit that they were covering up child pornography. So that's what they were trying to hide, and they even had to raise taxes in Orland Park, Illinois. Those don't care. They were protecting the American Library Association's policy, and the leaders of the ALA repeatedly appeared in that community to ensure that everybody got the message that protecting child pornography is not what librarians do. But they don't tell you that they also tell librarians, you cannot identify what is child pornography. So anything goes.
- Wow! So they are not just condoning the porn, they're condoning child porn.
- [Dan] Yes.
- Wow! What did they say? I mean, child porn, that's illegal.
- [Dan] They don't care. The librarian in Orland Park won an award for protecting intellectual freedom. ALA told some library school up there to give them the Intellectual Freedom award, which they got. I think one of the organizations in Houston may have just gotten an Intellectual Freedom Award as well. No, it was another town in Houston where the ALA gave them $5000 and the Intellectual Freedom Award for protecting inappropriate books in schools if I recall. I think it was Highland Park, Texas, in particular.
- Wow! They got money for that.
- [Dan] Oh yeah, the ALA is really experienced on how to work the system and get what they want.
- Well, so what should parents, what should they be looking for when they go into just a public library? When I went to the Desoto county public library, just yesterday, my daughter...
- It's in Mississippi.
- In Mississippi, just right outside of Memphis. So what should be prying? What aisles that you go down?
- [Dan] Where to start is to be aware of this situation in the first place.
- Right.
- [Dan] I wasn't aware. I even heard Doctor Laura and didn't even pay attention to her, but when it happened to my kid, that was a different story.
- Right.
- [Dan] Same thing for other parents. They need to be aware of this. Once they are aware, then they have their eyes opened a little bit. One way to to the libraries. If the website recommends or says it follows the American Library Association or follows their policy or recommends their policy, that is a red flag right there.
- And Tracy Shannon just commented that we should be looking at in the teen section.
- Oh, well of course. Shannon Tracy said something a minute ago about $40 million from the city to the libraries and $40 million. That's a lot of money. I wonder where would all that 40 million go? I mean, you've already got this library established, you've already got the books. A lot of this stuff is just online. I don't know.
- [Dan] Well I guess it depends on the library. Some of the libraries are just wasteful when it comes to architecture. In Orland Park, they proved that some of the library trustees were getting gold gifts during Christmas, that they were forced to return and they actually brought their gold back and returned it to the gold store. They could be stealing. In Orland Park they had beautiful shades that work at night with a touch of a button automatically, it's overkill sometimes.
- Oh my gosh!
- [Dan] But that said, a lot of times there are very useful reasons for having funding in libraries. They're very good, depending on what it is, as long as you don't have the American Library Association influencing them. They can be a huge help for your communities.
- Yeah. I just, I hope more people will get involved, find out what's going on in their community. And I think that, we need for people to know and get it to the mainstream that the American Library Association it's not benign, it's not a good thing. It sounds, you know, educational and it's anything but.
- [Dan] Right.
- So I really appreciate you joining us and we're gonna be following these stories. I'm wondering, is there more going on with the background checks for some of these others, you know, two pedophiles have been busted so far? I'm sure there's more.
- [Dan] Frankly, apparently it's easy pickings. It's just a matter of somebody like the Mass Resistance folks picking up a computer and investigating these people. I personally don't have the time. I personally don't make Drag Queen Story Hour my personal issue. I'm just concerned with the American Library Association misleading communities. But I'm thankful for whistle blowers like them who do go out of their way to disclose these things. And that's why we are here tonight because they did the groundwork.
- Yeah, they did some great work.
- Well where can folks find you in your work?
- [Dan] I don't know, Google SafeLibraries. I'm @SafeLibraries on Twitter. I'm at safelibraries.blogspot.com. That's where you can find my publication. I have another one at librarians.cc, which is specifically directed towards the sexual harassment of librarians whom I'm trying to help.
- Yeah.
- [Dan] And if they wanna send me a confidential message, they can send it to SafeLibraries@pm.me, which is protonmail dot m-e. That's how they can find me.
- Well we're gonna remain in touch and just so you know that anytime you know one of these FOIAs or are you get information on something you think the public needs to know. You know, we can just do a random scope to bring attention to it because I really wanna start focusing on bringing this out to the mainstream. And I think with the stories, with the pedophiles reading has offered us a, and a unique opportunity because it almost reached the mainstream.
- [Dan] Well, it went international.
- Yeah, yeah. So I wanna keep the focus on while it's fresh and I think I have a feeling that more stories are gonna come out about other pedophiles and maybe not necessarily in Houston, in other places because other people are gonna start looking into it and, and sometimes that's all it takes is just shining the light of day on these issues.
- [Dan] Yeah.
- So I really appreciate you.
- [Dan] Well, thanks, but I appreciate you for having me on and being able to state these things in an open manner that other people can hear so they can get educated and start their own journey.
- Yeah.
- [Dan] I can't do it myself. I need to get other people to understand what's going on and take a look in their own communities and decide to do something.
- Yeah. I really appreciate that. I was gonna ask Tracy if she wanted to call in and talk about some of these stories. So I don't know if Tracy has any time, but Dan we'll be in touch and definitely keeping this story alive.
- Definitely.
- [Dan] Thank you.
- All right.
- Thank you.
- [Dan] Thank you.
- I don't know if Tracy has time, but you're welcome to call in. You know, I wasn't aware of this story. I'd heard about the Drag Queen Story Hours, but then when it broke and, somehow I got in touch with Dan, and then I wrote the story forward about it in Culttture, and then I started delving into the issue and man, it's everywhere.
- Well it's another rabbit hole with just corrupt institutions in it.