Veteran librarian ‘regrets every day’ moving to Michigan city at center of book prohibition wars
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A veteran librarian in western Michigan has seen her workplace become a lightning rod for a group of radical conservatives seeking to ban books they believe promote pornography or LGBTQ causes.
Jean Reicher, who became a librarian at Patmos Library in Jamestown Township two and a half years ago, went viral in December 2022 following her appearance at a library board meeting.
She said in her passionate speech that posters have been put up in the town in recent months calling her a ‘pedophile’. Reicher added that she has been photographed by strangers and received threatening phone calls.
Reicher told the board: ‘I moved to this city two and a half years ago, and I’ve regretted it every day for the past year. This has been horrible.
Jean Reicher, who became a librarian at Patmos Library in Jamestown Township two and a half years ago, went viral in December 2022 following her appearance at a library board meeting.
Historically, the library relied on millage, the number of tax dollars assessed for every $1,000 of property value. Donald Trump won 60 percent of the vote in Ottawa County, where Jamestown is located, in 2016 and 2020
Peter Bromberg, board member of the EveryLibrary library resource center, told the Los Angeles Times this week that librarians across the country are under a great degree of stress amid the furor over the book ban, as ‘the neighbors talk about them being an arm of Satan’.
A national survey 2021 found that 27 percent of public libraries have laid off staff due to budget cuts.
In November, a group known as the Jamestown Conservatives scored a victory when the library lost 84 percent of its $245,000 annual budget after the millage renewal was defeated in a general election with 55 percent of voters. against the proposal.
Historically, the library relied on millage, the number of tax dollars assessed for every $1,000 of property value. Donald Trump won 60 percent of the vote in Ottawa County, where Jamestown is located, in 2016 and 2020.
Reicher said at the December meeting: ‘We have been threatened. We have been cursed. How dare they? You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me. You have said that I have sexualized your children. I am preparing your children.
According to his LinkedIn page, Reicher previously worked at the Woodridge Public Library in Woodridge, Illinois.
She told the board: ‘I was not raised this way. I believe in God. I am Catholic. I am Christian. I am everything you are.
Reicher is far from alone.
The anti-censorship group PEN America says censors have been busy in Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, South Carolina, Wisconsin and Georgia.
The banned books were often young adult novels that dealt with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer themes or featured queer protagonists.
PEN America, a nonprofit writers’ group, says books dealing with race and LGBTQ issues are the most frequent targets.
Conservative attacks on schools and libraries have been rampant across the country over the past two years, with librarians themselves being harassed and even forced out of their jobs.
A high school librarian in Denham Springs, Louisiana, filed a legal complaint against a Facebook page that labeled her a “criminal and pedophile.”
At the time the Patmos Library budget was cut, Board of Trustees Chairman Larry Walton said around 90 of its 67,000 circulating materials “could be LGBTQ-related”.
While Jamestown Conservatives maintained that the library was ‘priming’ children with books containing explicit material and LGBTQ themes.
A local teacher, Jay Milkamp, said WOOD-TV in November, ‘We are very upset that our community does not want to support the library. We are Americans. We recognize freedom of expression.
‘There are 67,000 books in this library, I read. Ninety of them are objectionable. I think that is not a reason to vote for the millage.
The 5 most banned titles in the United States:
Gender Queer: A Memory by Maia Kobabe was banned by 41 school districts. The illustrated text traces the author’s “journey of self-identity” and “what it means to be non-binary and asexual,” according to promotional material.
all boys are not blue, a series of personal essays by George M. Johnson, was banned in 29 districts. The ‘memoir manifesto’ chronicles the childhood, adolescence and university of its black and queer author
out of the dark by Ashley Hope Pérez is a novel about teenage love between a Mexican-American girl and a black boy in Texas in the 1930s. It was banned in 24 districts.
the bluest eye it was banned in 22 districts. The first novel by celebrated author Toni Morrison tells the story of a black girl growing up in the 1940s and her feeling of inferiority due to the color of her skin.
The hate you give by Angie Thomas was banned in 17 districts. It was inspired by the Black Lives Matter protest movement, is about police violence against minorities, and was made into a 2018 film.
Following the loss of funding, a GoFundMe page for the library raised $12,000, author Nora Roberts donated $50,000 and a private family donated $100,000, according to the Huffington Post.
The American Library Association documented 681 book challenges through the first eight months of 2022, involving 1,651 different titles.
In all of 2021, the ALA listed 729 challenges, targeting 1,579 books. Because the ALA relies on media accounts and reporting from libraries, the actual number of challenges is likely to be much higher, the library association believes.
The number of books banned in the first nine months of 2022 was higher than the number of books banned during 2021, which was the highest number in decades.
Texas accounted for the most bans, with 801 across 22 districts, followed by Florida and Pennsylvania.
Just this week, a Florida school board made headlines when it became the latest to remove a book by Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison from its classrooms and libraries after a mother criticized it for “exposing children to pedophilia” and organizing “Marxist indoctrination camps”. ‘.
Michelle Stille criticized the Pinellas County school board for including Morrison’s ‘The Bluest Eye’ in her son’s advanced literature course.
Stille, a teacher at a Christian school in the district, said she was “shocked that any adult would expose 15-year-olds” to the book’s “explicit descriptions of illegal activities.”
Jessica Brassington of Mama Bears Rising, a group that says it is fighting for greater oversight in education, told the LA Times that they are not looking to harm librarians or close libraries.
She said: ‘We want to protect our children. We have seen the dark side of what can happen beyond the book. Suicide. Alienation.’
Brassington added: ‘We want to know what books are available for our children. …Parents are being overlooked.’