A New Way ALA Misleads Parents: The National Trainer Who Wrote as the Local Director

Peter Bromberg:
EveryLibrary Board of Directors
Director of the SCLSNJ

This is another method by which the American Library Association (ALA) and its political partner EveryLibrary mislead parents and elected officials. It is not a false job title. It is a national advocacy officer, trained to switch language by audience, writing as if he were only the county library director. Further, he uses his own technique to manipulate the public in an effort to excuse local librarians for promoting Chicago ALA's own political goals that harm children.

On Sept. 1, 2026, New Jersey Hills published an opinion column by Peter Bromberg, identified only as director of the Somerset County Library System of New Jersey (SCLSNJ). The piece is titled “‘Liberty for All:’ Public Libraries and the Promise of America.” It quotes Ronald Reagan and James Madison. It calls libraries “strong supporters of parents and families.” It says libraries “curate age-appropriate zones and displays.” It tells readers that if a title offends, they are “free to reach for something else.”¹

That is the local byline. It is not the whole record.

Bromberg became SCLSNJ director on Aug. 1, 2025. For the four years immediately before that he was Associate Director of EveryLibrary, the national 501(c)(4) that organizes against book challenges and trains library boards in political messaging. On May 30, 2025, announcing the Somerset job, he wrote that he looked forward to “continued service on the EveryLibrary Board of Directors.” EveryLibrary’s board page still lists him. His own résumé lists the associate-director post as May 2021–June 2025 and the board seat as 2014–present. When SCLSNJ hired him, MyCentralJersey reported the EveryLibrary job. The system’s official staff bio does not. Neither did the column.²

EveryLibrary is not a book club. It is the national political-action shop for libraries. Its companion 501(c)(3), the EveryLibrary Institute, publishes training for the same fight. Bromberg was the named presenter for the Institute’s webinar “Advocacy in a Polarized World,” that teaches Arnold Kling’s Three Languages of Politics and how to “intentionally use language” across the spectrum. In 2021 he gave the Utah Library Association the talk “Advocating Effectively Across the Political Spectrum.” In September 2023 Niche Academy listed him, then still with EveryLibrary, on a webinar that walked the same framework and a “27-9-3” message formula: 27 words, 9 seconds, three points, mapped to the audience.³

The worksheet for that method is not a rumor. A 2023 EveryLibrary Institute handout, Library Board Policy and Messaging Playbook, includes a page headed “The Three Languages of Politics,” filed under “Intellectual Freedom and Book Challenges.” The page tells staff that progressives, libertarians, and conservatives each have a default moral language, then gives the assignment:

• Progressives: frame the library in “equity, social justice, a leveling of the playing field… and equal treatment for all.”
• Libertarians: frame it in “liberty, self-determination, and support for those that are motivated to help themselves.”
• Conservatives: frame it in “preservation of tradition, local community history, help with assimilating new arrivals, and traditional American values.”⁴

A related EveryLibrary presentation the same spring supplied fill-in sentences for the conservative ear: the Constitution, the First Amendment, Freedom of Religion, the Founding Fathers, and “We don’t want to chip away at the Constitution.” Another line: “We should never usurp the role of parents.”⁵

Read the Somerset column against that page. Bromberg did not write in the progressive dialect. He wrote in the other two.

• “Freedom. Liberty. Justice. For all.”
• “Self-determination, intellectual freedom, and liberty for all.”
• “Forge our own destinies without government overreach.”
• USA250. Reagan. Carnegie. Roosevelt. Madison.
• America versus “authoritarian regimes where state officials strictly dictate what citizens read, think, and believe.”
• “Strong supporters of parents and families.”
• “The parent’s role to set and enforce boundaries.”
• “Family values.”
• If a book offends, “we are free to reach for something else.”

That is the conservative and libertarian tip list, aimed at a Somerset Hills paper, in the same week the same paper group was covering a Pride-program petition and a local official urging towns to question library programs.⁶

The column never quotes the rule the script is built to protect.

Article V of the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights says a person’s right to use a library “should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.” ALA’s official interpretation, “Access to Library Resources and Services for Minors,” is plainer: the right to use a library means “free access to all services, materials, and facilities and unrestricted use of everything the library offers.” Restrictions based solely on age, apparent maturity, educational level, or legal status “violate Article V.” ALA “opposes any efforts to restrict access based on age.”⁷

A children’s room is furniture. Under that interpretation it is not a lock. “Age-appropriate zones and displays” is what the playbook would call conservative language. “Unrestricted use of everything the library offers” is the written professional rule. Only one of those sentences appeared in the newspaper.

Parents and elected officials are the intended audience for the first sentence. They are not told about the second. They are also not told that the author spent four years as the national group’s associate director, remains on its board, and taught librarians how to switch dialects by audience so the access policy still wins.

Using different words for different listeners is ordinary rhetoric. Hospitals do it. Campaigns do it. The problem is the combination: a national advocacy officer, writing as a local director, in a live materials fight, in the dialect his shop published for conservatives, while leaving the shop and the age rule off the page.

The authorities the column skipped are the ones that actually speak to minors. In United States v. American Library Association (2003), Justice Kennedy wrote that “the interest in protecting young library users from material inappropriate for minors is legitimate, and even compelling, as all Members of the Court appear to agree.” President Eisenhower, at Dartmouth in 1953, told students not to join the book burners, then added the clause library essays usually drop and ALA's own 2025 movie "The Librarians" actually dropped: use the library “as long as that document does not offend our own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship.”⁸

Madison on knowledge is not an answer to age. The playbook does not ask directors to answer age. It asks them to talk liberty and family until the question of age goes away.

Somerset County’s Library Commission sets policy for SCLSNJ. It can ask its director, in public, three questions that do not require a theory of anyone’s soul:

1. Does SCLSNJ adopt ALA’s Library Bill of Rights and the Minors interpretation as collection policy?
2. If a parent asks that a child’s card not check out adult or s[*]xually explicit titles, will the system honor that limit?
3. Why did a column on “liberty for all,” published during a local program fight, omit the author’s EveryLibrary board seat and the Institute’s published conservative-language tips?

Those are records questions. The playbook page, the résumé, the LinkedIn post, and the byline are already public. The only thing missing from the newspaper was the second half of the sentence.

Parents who only read the byline were not given the shop, the script, or the age rule. That omission is the method. 

So this is a new way ALA misleads parents and politicians: 1) the national trainer who wrote as the local director to 2) attempt to manipulate local people into affirming Chicago ALA’s anything-goes for children policies, 3) using the very means by which he trains people to manipulate others.

The Three Languages of Politics

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Notes:

1. Peter Bromberg, “‘Liberty for All:’ Public Libraries and the Promise of America,” New Jersey Hills / Bernardsville News, Sept. 1, 2026, https://www.newjerseyhills.com/bernardsville_news/opinion/columns/liberty-for-all-public-libraries-and-the-promise-of-america/article_0cc5e4e4-ff48-44d3-a095-fbf5befe4dc5.html.

2. Somerset County Library System of New Jersey, “Peter J. Bromberg,” staff biography, https://sclsnj.org/about-us/staff/peter-bromberg; Peter Bromberg, résumé, https://peterbromberg.com/resume/; Peter Bromberg, LinkedIn post, May 30, 2025, https://www.linkedin.com/posts/peterjbromberg_after-nearly-4-years-at-everylibrary-i-activity-7334307222258143233-Vt7C; EveryLibrary, “Board of Directors,” https://www.everylibrary.org/board-directors; Cheryl Makin, “Somerset County Library System has a new director,” MyCentralJersey.com, June 30, 2025, https://www.mycentraljersey.com/story/news/local/2025/06/30/somerset-county-library-system-has-a-new-director/84259228007/.

3. EveryLibrary Institute, “FREE WEBINAR: Advocacy in a polarized world,” presenter Peter Bromberg, Associate Director, EveryLibrary, https://www.everylibraryinstitute.org/advocacyinpolarizedworld; Peter Bromberg, “Advocating Effectively Across the Political Spectrum,” Utah Library Association Annual Conference, May 21, 2021; Peter Bromberg, “Future-Proofing the Library,” Niche Academy webinar, Sept. 6, 2023, https://www.nicheacademy.com/hubfs/Future-Proof%20Your%20Library%20(Niche%202023)%20(1).pdf. Bromberg’s résumé also lists the NJLA Public Policy Forum keynote “Libraries are Political (And So Can You!),” Livingston, N.J., Nov. 14, 2025.

4. EveryLibrary Institute, Library Board Policy and Messaging Playbook (file dated April 1, 2023), p. 4, “The Three Languages of Politics,” circulating as https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hvATAuYlYrTv7rHfEDNr7bz2qb8BEWjB/view. Parallel text appears in “Real World Policy and Messaging,” June 2023, Wisconsin Public Library Consortium packet, https://www.wplc.org/files/5a115d098/Real-world-policy-and-messaging-June-2023.pdf. Arnold Kling, The Three Languages of Politics (Cato Institute).

5. John Chrastka, EveryLibrary, “Answering Censorship Challenges: EveryLibrary’s Fight for the First Initiative,” Towson University, April 27, 2023, https://towson.libguides.com/ld.php?content_id=71758347 (conservative sample: Constitution, Founding Fathers, “We don’t want to chip away at the Constitution”; “We should never usurp the role of parents”).

6. New Jersey Hills package teaser published with the Bromberg column: “Pride v. Prejudice? Petition to Keep County Library Branch Starts as Sweeney Urges Other Towns to Question Programs.” Peapack-Gladstone is a SCLSNJ member community.

7. American Library Association, Library Bill of Rights, Art. V, https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill (“age” included 1967; reaffirmed 1996); ALA, “Access to Library Resources and Services for Minors: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights,” https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill/interpretations/minors.

8. United States v. American Library Ass’n, 539 U.S. 194, 215 (2003) (Kennedy, J., concurring); Dwight D. Eisenhower, commencement address, Dartmouth College, June 14, 1953.

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Opinion for Publication Submitted to Editor September 1, 2026:

New Jersey Hills:

Peter Bromberg’s Sept. 1 column, “‘Liberty for All:’ Public Libraries and the Promise of America,” identifies him only as director of the Somerset County Library System. That title is true. It is not the whole identification.

From May 2021 until June 2025, Mr. Bromberg was Associate Director of EveryLibrary, the national 501(c)(4) that organizes against book challenges and trains library boards in political messaging. On May 30, 2025, announcing the Somerset job, he wrote that he looked forward to “continued service on the EveryLibrary Board of Directors.” EveryLibrary’s board page still lists him. His résumé lists that board seat from 2014 to the present. MyCentralJersey reported the EveryLibrary post when he was hired. The system’s staff biography does not mention it. Neither did the column.

EveryLibrary Institute published the method. A 2023 handout, Library Board Policy and Messaging Playbook, includes a page headed “The Three Languages of Politics,” filed under "Intellectual Freedom and Book Challenges.” It tells staff that progressives, libertarians, and conservatives each have a default language, then assigns the frame:

Progressives: “equity, social justice, a leveling of the playing field… and equal treatment for all.”  

Libertarians: “liberty, self-determination, and support for those that are motivated to help themselves.”  

Conservatives: “preservation of tradition, local community history, help with assimilating new arrivals, and traditional American values.”

A related EveryLibrary presentation the same year supplied conservative sample copy: the Constitution, the Founding Fathers, Freedom of Religion, and “We don’t want to chip away at the Constitution.” Another line: “We should never usurp the role of parents.”

Mr. Bromberg’s column is written in the conservative and libertarian dialects. Reagan. Madison. The Constitution versus “authoritarian regimes.” “Freedom. Liberty. Justice. For all.” “Self-determination.” “Strong supporters of parents and families.” “Family values.” If a title offends, “we are free to reach for something else.” It is not written in the progressive dialect. It was published as the same paper group covered a petition and a local official urging towns to question library programs.

The column never quotes the rule that script is written to protect. Article V of the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights says a person’s right to use a library “should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.” ALA’s official interpretation, “Access to Library Resources and Services for Minors,” states that this right means “free access to all services, materials, and facilities and unrestricted use of everything the library offers,” and that limits based solely on age, apparent maturity, or legal status “violate Article V.” A children’s room is furniture. Under that interpretation it is not a lock.

“Age-appropriate zones and displays” is what the playbook would call language for a conservative paper. “Unrestricted use of everything the library offers” is the professional text. Only the first sentence ran.

Using different words for different listeners is ordinary rhetoric. The problem is the combination: a national advocacy officer, writing as a local director, during a local materials fight, in the dialect his shop published for conservatives, while leaving the shop and the age rule off the page.

The authorities that actually address minors were also left off. In United States v. American Library Association (2003), Justice Kennedy wrote that “the interest in protecting young library users from material inappropriate for minors is legitimate, and even compelling, as all Members of the Court appear to agree.” President Eisenhower, at Dartmouth in 1953, warned against book burners then added the clause usually dropped: use the library “as long as that document does not offend our own ideas of decency.”

The Somerset County Library Commission sets policy. It can ask, in public, whether SCLSNJ adopts the ALA Minors interpretation; whether a parent may limit a child’s card; and why an EveryLibrary board seat was omitted from a column on “liberty for all.” Those are records questions. The playbook page, the résumé, and the byline are already public.

Dan Kleinman  

Chatham, N.J.

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