NBC Chicago did a an investigative report on area book challenges and the latest politicized topic called "book bans". Awake Illinois President Shannon Adcock spoke on behalf of our 25,000+ advocates to NBC Chicago's Bennett Haeberle.
While only a few quotes were highlighted from the hour-long interview, her comments have been well received by Illinois citizens and parents, regardless of political affiliation.
"I've seen Awake IL posts before but this segment made me consider the topic differently." -Democrat Teacher, Chicago
"I don't want this stuff shown to my grandchildren. We should know what's being promoted in schools and libraries." - Grandmother, Cook County
Most Americans support maturity indexes for content shown to children as do our members. Our organization has never called for book challenges or bans but we support the rights of citizens to petition their elected officials and tax payer funded entities on this issue. We encourage parents and communities to be engaged on this issue by pursuing this library call of action. We do not support the Marxist/indoctrination agenda of the American Library Association, which is a private organization. Most IL libraries do NOT rely on state funding for operations. Rather, taxpayers are the primary funders of local libraries.
The American Library Association President Emily Drabinski has publicly proclaimed she is a Marxist. Her 2013 publication titled "Queering the Catalog: Queer Theory and the Politics of Correction" asserts librarians have a duty to talk to students about this effort.
"A queer approach to the problem of library classification and cataloging demands that these reflections of ideology be left as remnants in the structure and that librarians be prepared to teach students how to read what they discover in the text that is the knowledge organization system itself."
If you disagree with the American Library Assocation, please participate in this call of action. We encourage you to be engaged on this issue and to contact us with updates on this effort in your community.
