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

---

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.

---

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.

NOTE ADDED 2 SEPTEMBER 2026:

Tonight I spoke at the commission meeting wherein Peter Bromberg is a member. He was there. So I confronted ALA head on. You see, people, it's not that hard. I've done it before. Don't be intimidated by them.

Here is what I said, along with other graphics showing the extent of the problem. It's my own recording as the commission makes no recordings.

Tonight I spoke at the library commission meeting where American Library Association and EveryLibrary’s board member is also a commission member.

Hear 👂 me speaking, asking where his loyalties lie and whether there’s an ethics issue.

Related pics tell a story of harm by ALA. https://t.co/pRqX0uHSgg pic.twitter.com/GH9abciIRv

— Dan Kleinman @OccupyLibraries (@OccupyLibraries) September 3, 2026

—

URL of this page: 

safelibraries.blogspot.com/2026/09/a-new-way-ala-misleads-parents.html

Follow Protect Salado Kids on X: @ProtectSaladoKs

Follow Kelly on X: @patriotesse

Follow Dan on X: @OccupyLibraries @SafeLibraries @WLibraryA

Join World Library Association:

WorldLibraryAssociation.org

Legal Defense for SLAPP Suits Against Free Speech

ALA Caught Hiding Data on 'Banned' Books — Again

The American Library Association [ALA] has again been caught hiding data on "banned" books:

• "We Tried — And Failed — To Identify the Most Banned Book in America," by David Goldenberg, FiveThirtyEight, 22 June 2015, hyperlinks and footnote removed, highlighting mine:

So I got in touch with the ALA to get the full data set, and to verify that its numbers were sound. That proved problematic.
....

I was hoping to find out more about challenges to “Tango” — what types of challenges have been made, how the challenges were relayed to the ALA, etc.  But I soon found there was no way to get any raw data about challenges, as the Office for Intellectual Freedom refused to give me access to its database or any more details about the methodology behind its collection of challenges beyond what’s on the website.  In my initial interactions with the ALA, a spokesperson offered to schedule an interview with someone “to get a perspective beyond the numbers,” but despite repeated requests, no one was made available.  I was, though, given this statement: “OIF maintains the database for internal staff use, as a means of encouraging libraries to report challenges, and to create awareness of the importance of protecting and celebrating the freedom to read.  Because the censorship database does not have the statistical validity demanded by many social scientists and researchers and may be vulnerable to misinterpretation and misuse, we must deny any request asking OIF to share raw data.”

The American Library Association is saying that its challenge database isn’t statistically valid and that despite the hundreds of news articles about its list, the database is not meant for public consumption.  I sent a list of follow-up questions about the database and the publicity around it, but an ALA spokeswoman said no one would be able to comment until at least July, citing busy preparations for the organization’s upcoming annual conference.

The list’s statistical validity is in question because we have little idea how it is put together.  We don’t know how challenges are collected — based on past descriptions from the OIF, it seems like an amalgam of news reports and calls from concerned librarians.  We also know that at least one author self-reports challenges: Parnell tells me that he lets the ALA know whenever he hears news of “Tango” coming under fire.  (Whether those reports make it into the tally or not is unknown.)  In addition, the ALA’s system seems to be agnostic to the type or severity of the challenge or its effectiveness. A parent questioning whether a Batman picture book is age-appropriate for the kid shelves appears to be given the same weight — a “challenge” — as a school board removing “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” from the syllabus of schools throughout an entire county.

“We lose a bit of our rhetorical power when we put them under the same umbrella,” said Jessamyn West, founder of Librarian.net, a popular progressive site about librarian-related issues.  A former ALA councilor just a decade ago, West is no longer a member and has used her site to note her issues with conflating these very different types of challenges, noting that questioning whether something is age-appropriate is very different from wanting it gone altogether.  “How we count things and how we reflect those to the people is super important,” she told me.

It may not be rigorous or even particularly accurate, but the ALA’s yearly list has drawn attention to many books.  Perhaps as a result of that spotlight, “And Tango Makes Three” has been a huge hit, at least as far as books go.  It has been debated on “The View.”  A decade after it was published, customers still buy dozens of copies a day on Amazon.  It has been translated into 11 languages and even turned into a play.  Simon & Schuster released a 10th anniversary deluxe edition of the book in early June, complete with an audiobook narrated by Neil Patrick Harris.

In the accompanying press release, David Gale, a vice president at Simon & Schuster, says: “Although ‘And Tango Makes Three’ has been on ALA’s list of ‘Most Frequently Challenged Books’ many times, readers worldwide have embraced its heartwarming message about the true nature of family and love.”  Gale’s quote begins with “although,” but the more appropriate word may be “because.”  Sometimes controversy can get a book — or a list — some extra attention.

I say again because I exposed a recording I made of an ALA-listed author admitting that ALA fakes its annual list.  And I spoke directly with the man at ALA who compiled the list one year and he too admitted ALA faked the numbers ("dozens" was really four).  I stopped "And Tango Makes Three" from being falsely listed after five years straight and thereby hurting the LGBT community with faked claims of discrimination:

• "Banned Books Week is Gay Promotion? Author Admits ALA Faked 2010 Top 10 Challenged Book List," by Dan Kleinman, SafeLibraries, 26 September 2011.

Notice how ALA would not answer that reporter's questions, dragged things out interminably, then refused to answer his questions.  It is one way ALA continues to get away with making up the numbers, by never responding to requests for information by reporters that ALA thinks might hurt ALA's agenda—except that one time that one ALA employee answered my questions, revealed ALA faked the numbers, then was somehow no longer working with ALA, the Office for Intellectual Freedom specifically.

Then reporter David Goldenberg zeroed in on exactly what I already reported, namely, one librarian gently points out so no one hears how she knows ALA is misleading people, and he cites the very source I already cited.

More significantly, ALA fakes the numbers of "banned" LGBT materials to whip people up into a frenzy.  As David Goldenberg put it, "Sometimes controversy can get a book — or a list — some extra attention."

Bingo.  Who cares if the LGBT community gets harmed in the process, right?  The ends justifies the means.

And I reported this four years ago.  Only now is a single reporter finally raising the issue again and finding the same deception.

How many more years will it take for main stream media to finally stop reporting on falsified numbers based on smoke and mirrors?


NOTE ADDED 23 JUNE 2015:

Stung by the truth and its being so publicly available, ALA OIF has gone on the offensive, responding repeatedly on Twitter and with a blog post that absolutely misleads people and completely ignores that it has been caught faking data and removing "And Tango Makes Three" from the list as a result.

How dare a "freelance journalist question[] ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom's reputation and professionalism"!  Protest too much?  Read:

• "On Data and Confidentiality," by ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom, OIF Blog, 23 June 2015.

NOTE ADDED 24 JUNE 2015:

Even the author can see he is attacked by ALA's "Office for Intellectual Freedom" that cannot stand anyone exposing how it manipulates people, data, media, etc.:

The @ALALibrary releases a combative response to my @FiveThirtyEight article about its database of challenged books http://t.co/rPVk0rK6BY

— David Goldenberg (@dgoldenberg) June 23, 2015

Of course it would be helpful to include the link to the press release: http://t.co/gxwSx9NHaF

— David Goldenberg (@dgoldenberg) June 23, 2015

I, by the way, challenged ALA OIF to a public debate.  It will not tolerate public debate because it cannot control the message.  And in a rare instance where it was forced into public debate, it lost spectacularly, like when it was forced into admitting library filters work well and no longer block health-related information (link).

Here's my debate challenge:

Both false + misleading. I challenge you to PUBLIC DEBATE. #alaac15 #libchat RT @OIF: It’s not about the numbers. http://t.co/hQiDhTV490

— Dan Kleinman (@SafeLibraries) June 23, 2015

URL of this page: tinyurl.com/ALACaughtAgain

On Twitter: @ALALibrary +Valerie Hawkins +Banned Books Week
 @dgoldenberg +FiveThirtyEight Channel @FiveThirtyEight @OIF #alaac15 #BannedBooks #BannedBooksWeek #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqi #msm

Follow @SafeLibraries