PW "Freedom to Read" Issue: Leila Green Little's "Modern Day McCarthyists"

Publishers Weekly’s Freedom to Read issue has many must-read articles, but I feel compelled to highlight one: Leila Green Little's "Modern Day McCarthyists: The Fight Against Book Bans in Llano County.” (While you are about it, however, also check out “The Resistance: Five People Standing Up to Book Banners” and so many others.)

Little’s (I apologize if it should properly be Green Little) is one of the people from Llano, Texas, bravely fighting the local county commissioners’ narrow-minded efforts to gut the public library—an effort that has alas been all-too chillingly effective.

The late Joseph McCarthy would be proud to see his legacy carried on by the hate of so many who are waging a war, ostensibly against books but really against Americans they don’t like and indeed against the use of government funding to represent all Americans and deny the promise America has made but not yet fulfilled for so many.

Here’s a hopeful snippet, but do read how the local officials have undermined a democratic institution:

The lawsuit brought by my fellow plaintiffs and me may very well create case law that will positively affect public libraries across America. But lawsuits alone can’t save the library in Llano—or any anywhere else—from death by a thousand cuts. Only community support can do that. This surge in book banning will end only when we collectively demonstrate that book banning will not win elections, cannot win in court, and that attacking librarians and educators is broadly unacceptable.

That lawsuit’s next chapter will play out on September 28th. It is no exaggeration to say that it will be consequential for libraries everywhere, even in states with Freedom to Read bills. If the side supported by the conservative states filing amicus briefs to say libraries are “government speech” and collection and programming can be controlled by local elected officials wins, there could be a legal wedge for undermining the independence of libraries everywhere. If that decision were to go to the current Supreme Court, can anyone be confident of good sense prevailing?

Let us hope that Ms. Little is correct that they “cannot win in court.” The alternative is frightening indeed.

In a related matter, please consider signing EveryLibrary’s Petition against Project 2025. “Libraries are mentioned multiple times throughout Project 2025. On page Five they call for arresting and registering all librarians as sex offenders.” Talk about misguided and misdirected rot. To (somewhat mis-) quote Mr. Stephen Colbert. “Sex offenses? That isn’t why people go into librarianship. It’s why they go into the clergy.”