Public awareness of crime, sexual harassment in libraries, and inappropriate books and web sites in schools due to American Library Association policy. ⚖️
School librarians now directly attack parents. At an upcoming annual conference, librarians will get pins to wear saying, "Librarians: Tougher than Your Challenge." So when a parent meets a librarian about inappropriate material in a school library, the librarian may be wearing a pin saying, "Librarians: Tougher than Your Challenge." That's librarians directly attacking parents, created and egged on by American Library Association (ALA). It's bullying—by librarians—to keep kids reading sexually inappropriate materials in schools. It's time to remove all ALA influence, both in policy and people.
These pins will be handed out by the American Library Association [ALA] at an ALA conference called LibLearnX:
For those who do not know, school librarians have been actively pushing sexually inappropriate material on school children. ALA trains librarians that sexually inappropriate material that could be immediately removed from schools under Board of Education v. Pico for being pervasively vulgar should instead be "reframed" as "diversity" and "inclusion." Meanwhile, in obvious projection, "ALA Blames Parents for 'Toxic Framing' of Explicit Books."
Any parents waking up to this reality are challenging these books in schools across America, often being silenced by school boards (and media) that cannot bear to hear the explicit words and see the graphic child p r n pictures their children are getting from their school librarians. ALA spins this as a rising tide of censorship, racism and homophobia, and even created Unite Against Book Bans as a direct result of parents successfully using Pico to remove "Gender Queer: A Memoir" by Maia Kobabe from public schools.
Media repeats the ALA lie that the First Amendment requires schools to make available any material of any kind because, under ALA's so-called "Library Bill of Rights," it's supposedly age discrimination to keep children from any material whatsoever, and to hell with what Pico says.
So ALA's Booklist, used by schools to evaluate materials appropriate for students, is handing out buttons to librarians telling them not to let book challenges by parents succeed in removing sexually inappropriate material. At ALA's LibLearnX. Government employees learning to better sexualize children in government schools, and getting little buttons/pins from ALA Booklist to keep the training top of mind and to send a signal to complaining parents.
ALA's LibLearnX has a "Statement of Appropriate Conduct / Virtual Meeting Code of Conduct." The ALA Booklist pins buck up school librarians to bully parents, meanwhile the ALA itself demands, "ALA has zero-tolerance for any form of discrimination or harassment." Can you believe what kind of two-faced people are librarians? Don't screw each other, but parents? For parents, librarians are tougher than any challenge and no matter what they do, their children are going to read sexually inappropriate material no matter what parents say.
Action to take:
Wake up that librarians directly target school children and parents,
they have rigged the system to sexualize and indoctrinate children,
It is time to remove all influence of ALA from public schools and libraries.
Remove the policies.
Remove the people, both employees and board members.
Stop using public funds to send librarians to ALA and state library association conferences that are merely mini me's where librarians learn to sexualize children.
Since we've put it back into the news, I want to go through the Groomer Clown Story Hour issue by doing a thread on an academic paper they wrote about it themselves. (Will unfold as a reread the paper)https://t.co/W4mxawLNb8pic.twitter.com/6laD4dnU2r
— James Lindsay, Mr 2023 already (@ConceptualJames) December 20, 2022
Know that it is us parents in the vast majority, not the ALA-trained groomers using flimsy excuses like reframing explicit material as diversity and inclusion and using a fake ALA poll for Unite Against Books Bans showing most people oppose book banning. No kidding! But that's not the issue. The Harris and Rasmussen polls ALA ignores are the issue, that the vast majority oppose explicit books in schools, the opposite of what ALA says. That's why ALA ignores those polls—and that's more evidence of the dishonesty of ALA and why its policies need to be extirpated. This graphic from ALA Unite Against Book Bans is a flat out lie:
Do not accept any book reviews from ALA Booklist or other sources ALA pushes since ALA Booklist is handing out pins to encourage librarians to automatically defeat any challenge by any parent. Talk about bias! If you get any documents from schools or any policies or book review decisions referring to ALA Booklist, know the fix is in and parents have lost out to the overwhelming bullying of ALA librarians trained to defeat parental requests, even by use of illegal means, with policies that bake in the bias.
Librarians will do anything at all to sexualize school children. Anything. Then they will brag about it to each other on Facebook in ALA Facebook groups or crypto ALA Facebook groups (those run by ALA librarians without displaying official sponsorship by ALA). TikTok is another place librarians brag about sexualizing kids against their parent's express wishes, just search Libs of TikTok @LibsOfTikTok on Twitter for the word librarian. So investigate such sources to get inside information. For example, it is how I learned that Houston's public library did not vet two convicted pedophile drag queens who wagged their behinds in children's faces even though the library has a policy to vet everyone—because the woke librarians felt vetting a drag queen would be a microaggression.
Well, we parents should wield our collective power—since we are in the vast majority as the Harris and Rasmussen polls prove—to rid the schools of the ALA policies and its acolyte employees and board members.
It's time to stop the sexualization of school children by librarians, and it's going to be parents and their allies who will be stopping it.
Here's a new pin: "Parents: Tougher than Your Chicago Illinois Trained School Librarian Following ALA Policy."
LIBRARIANS @ALALIBRARY OPENLY DEFY PARENTS TRYING TO STOP SCHOOL CHILDREN FROM GETTING SEXUALLY INAPPROPRIATE MATERIAL IN SCHOOLS AND BRAGGING ABOUT IT—HOW THEY ARE “TOUGHER THAN YOUR CHALLENGE.”
A spy reveals librarians train to circumvent communities and local laws to target children. Even main stream media are beginning to notice. For example, read Joy Pullmann in the Federalist who befriended a spy to expose the damaging information:
Can you believe a spy is needed to reveal how librarians target our children? Can you believe librarians are targeting our children, even in schools? Can you believe American Library Association is facilitating this targeting? Thank goodness for the spy.
The spy revealed gender insanity and other things. Gender ideology harms children. For example:
"Gender Dysphoria in Children and Suppression of Debate," by Michelle A. Cretella, M.D. (president of the American College of Pediatricians), Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Vol 21 Num 2, Summer 2016, Pages 50-54: "A review of the current literature suggests that this protocol is rooted in an unscientific gender ideology, lacks an evidence base, and violates the long-standing ethical principle of 'First do no harm.'"
Library law requires libraries to act for the use and benefit of the public. Gender insanity is neither useful nor beneficial for children, quite the opposite, as the above article by the President of the American College of Pediatricians reveals, "First do no harm." Thus it violates the law. Notice you never hear about that from ALA while ALA misleads and acts in the dark to thwart the law, and spies are needed to reveal this. In short, already existing law can to used to stop the gender insanity in public libraries, if only communities become aware of the law and apply it. For example, Drag Queen Story Hour is likely illegal and must be stopped. If libraries will not change, municipalities can force them into compliance with the law, and the public need not approve library levies.
Who will be the first to sue the ALA for misleading communities into violating the law, for harming children and communities?
Here is the story in full with the information from the spy, thanks to Joy Pullmann, followed by another revealing story that cites Joy Pullmann:
21,460 Attend Library Conference Featuring Workshops On Drag Queens And Queering Elementary Schools
At the American Library Association's annual conference, the nation's librarians learned how to circumvent community objections to events like Drag Queen Story Hour and other outrageous, taxpayer-purchased materials.
The world’s largest library association’s annual conference this year featured more than 100 workshops with an “equity, diversity, and inclusion” theme, according to the American Library Association’s conference catalog. That included workshops with these titles (some shortened): “Creating Queer-Inclusive Elementary School Library Programming,” “Developing an Online Face for a Lesbian Pulp Fiction Collection,” and “Telling Stories, Expanding Boundaries: Drag Queen Storytimes in Libraries.”
The ALA annual conference’s workshop selections also included “A Child’s Room to Choose: Encouraging Gender Identity and Expression in School and Public Libraries,” and “Are You Going to Tell My Parents?: The Minor’s Right to Privacy in the Library.” Politically charged talks and workshops like these formed at least one-third of the conference offerings, according to the ALA’s own description and a review of the conference catalog.
The titles and descriptions of the conference’s approximately 300 workshops and talks are not available online. They were only published in a conference app and paper catalog reserved to in-person attendees, many of whose attendance was underwritten by taxpayers through local library budgets. According to the ALA, 21,460 people attended 2019’s annual conference this June, approximately 4,000 more than last year.
The attendee who gave me her conference catalog and mobile app access has told me of internal conflict between her public library employment and Christian faith due to the saturation of this kind of bias in the interconnected library and book publishing worlds. More examples of this extreme bias permeated social media under the conference hashtag, including for some reason having librarians weigh in on U.S. border security and make plans for removing the category “illegal aliens” from their collection catalogs. The conference of course featured bisexual bathroom facilities.
Look--#ALAcouncil can be agile and timely! @7shores's resolution on library services for children in detention centers, denouncing existence/conditions of centers and calling upon libraries provide outreach & services to centers and migrant families, passes unanimously #alaac19
Follow-up to SAC II meeting on "Illegal aliens" #LCSH: a working group has been formed to investigate & report on ways that individual libraries can change this heading in their catalogs. @dnjoudrey@aboutness & I et al. will be part of this group. Want to volunteer?? #ALAac19
Just watched a guy figure out his very first gender neutral bathroom. Walked in, walked out looking confused, saw the sign, read it, shrugged, walked back in. <3 #alaac19
An Obsession on Dividing People Based on Skin Color
A large portion of the “equity, diversion, and inclusion” workshops focused on race. One subdivision of these was for participants in ALA’s Spectrum Leadership Institute, which grants a $5,000 scholarship and $1,500 stipend to attend the ALA conference. White people need not apply. See the application criteria:
A Saturday morning workshop entitled “Talking with Kids about Race: A ‘how to’ workshop” discussed, according to its conference description, “individual and systemic racism, intersectionality, and white fragility, as well as participant-guided topics to give attendees concrete tools and the confidence to address these issues with young people in the communities they serve.”
The slideshow that accompanied the workshop and was available on the conference app told participants that the United States is “a country built on white supremacy. White supremacy is the operating system in the US.” It also states, “If you are white, the strategies we are sharing today push against white fragility and racism. Pay attention to your reactions and be aware of your body right now. You might be uncomfortable. That’s OK.”
The handout for a Friday workshop on “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) tells participants “Leaders on DEI efforts can always expect pushback on those efforts… pushback happens because effective DEI efforts challenge the status quo, and it can feel threatening to many when we start to change ‘the way things always have been.’ Leaders on diversity, equity, and inclusion must expect and manage this pushback” (emphasis original).
Notice how this encourages librarians to resist feedback from patrons and taxpayers, placing public employees over American citizens and undermining classic American consensuses about public service and government’s proper subjection to the will of the people.
Celebrating Queer Sex with Public Resources, Even for Kids
The workshop titled “Telling Stories, Expanding Boundaries: Drag Queen Storytimes in Libraries” featured Michelle Tea, a lesbian who started drag queen events at a public library in San Francisco. It also featured a “drag queen storyteller” reading to the audience, according to the workshop description.
The description in the conference app says: “The DGS [sic, for Drag Queen Storytime] program has been immensely popular with many audiences at libraries across the country, but it has also produced its share of resistance and controversy. The panel will discuss how DGS was developed and originally implemented, how librarians have been using it today, how institutions have dealt with specific successes and controversies, and how DGS relates to intellectual freedom.”
The workshop speakers included ALA’s Kristin Pekoll, the assistant director of the organization’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. Pekoll was active in several workshops dedicated to challenging local communities and patrons’ opinions about appropriate taxpayer-provided materials and events. Another included librarians discussing how they handled patron complaints about a Black Lives Matter display in the children’s department, a Banned Books Week display, and a librarian-provided LGBTQ reading list for teens. These patron objections were treated as attempts at “censorship.”
A visual from Pekoll’s office says one of the five main kinds of “censorship” is “requiring parental permission to access content.” On another panel she participated in, another public librarian who initiated a drag queen story time gave audience members advice about how to overcome community objections to such events, according to a writeup of the event in Library Journal.
Larson shared her library’s effort to create and promote Drag Queen Story Time. Within an hour of the event being featured in the library’s newsletter, complaints arrived via phone and emal [sic]. After the event was picked up by conversative [sic] news outlets, calls started coming in from across the United States. As a result, the library coordinated with local police for added security during the process.
When planning programs, Larson advised librarians to make sure that reference and circulation staff are supported; have a prepared statement about how a program supports the library’s values. Be clear in your goals and prepare stakeholders, such as a Board of Trustees. After the success of their first event, they hosted more without incident.
The ALA also provides librarians “crisis communication plans” to shield themselves from altering events or materials they provide with public resources that generate a public backlash, such as the drag queen story hours. A third librarian who hosted drag queen story hours, this time in a Philadelphia-area public library, told the audience the ALA helped him resist community objections to the events.
The June 24 workshop on “Creating Queer-Inclusive Elementary School Library Programming” discussed “ways to dismantle barriers” to such programs, including “crafting arguments,” “reviewing legislation,” and “listing talking points.” The description makes it clear that the workshop is not about only selecting books on this topic but also creating “services and programs.” Please note: The title says elementary school. That’s children younger than 13.
One of the presenters for this workshop, Lucy Santos Green, is the incoming chairwoman for the Educators of School Librarians section of the American Association of School Librarians. Let that one sink in. Then juxtapose it with the description of the workshop about underage children’s “privacy rights” from their parents, which “explore[d] positive and proactive ways that libraries can protect minors’ privacy and confidentiality” and insisted children “have a right to privacy and confidentiality in what they read and view in the library.”
At still another ALA conference workshop, participants brainstormed a list of book recommendations featuring “non-trad families,” which included the titles “My Brother’s Husband” and “Pregnant Butch.”
All these people, and this large organization that serves almost exclusively public institutions, clearly feel completely comfortable broadcasting their cheerful feelings about queer sex — and other extremely politicized and controversial subjects — in public. Have any of them ever stopped to think about how their decision to do so may contribute to some of the polarization, alienation, and anger Americans are experiencing towards each other currently?
Are all these supposedly well-read people completely ignorant of the fact that the majority of the world’s religions and religious adherents, which comprise the clear majority of the world today, plus the vast majority of cultures in world history, consider the kind of behavior they’re cheering depraved, damaging to children, self-harming, and socially destructive?
At least half of America does not agree with bisexual bathrooms or denying opportunities to white people based on their skin color. They are not on board with “queering” public elementary school libraries. How can we trust these librarians’ judgment and management of public resources after seeing this kind of bias, which is extreme to the point of open hostility against our deepest values?
ALA’s leaders and workshop approval committees don’t have to agree, of course. But could they at least, as the woke say, engage in a bit of perspective-taking? Or would they prefer to continue abusing the public trust placed in them and the public institutions they influence? What do they think will be the outcomes of that decision?
What a moment to meet Palaces for the People author @EricKlinenberg. He says: “Libraries stand for and exemplify something that needs defending: the public institutions that – even in an age of atomization and inequality – serve as bedrocks of civil society.” #ALAAC19#LOCatALApic.twitter.com/zmVHlBdqt5
NOTE: Within the above article reporting on self-arrogated free speech advocates planning to bypass community concerns to target children in violation of law and community standards, the following ALA censors block me, a whistleblower, on Twitter—including the ALA President and antisemite Loida Garcia Febo:
Andromeda Yelton, @ThatAndromeda, "Superpositive wrecking ball of goodness. Like putting your finger in an electrical outlet in a good way. @ALA_LITA Past-President. Software dev @BKCHarvard."
Loida Garcia Febo, @loidagarciafebo, "ALA President 2018-2019. Libraries pillars of public education. Communities. Reading, Wellness enthusiast. English/Spanish/Latina/Librarian • LoveAccents"
How can we trust these librarians’ judgment and management of public resources after seeing this kind of bias, which is extreme to the point of open hostility against our deepest values? https://t.co/Aqfg916oyR
What image comes to mind when you think of or hear the word librarian? For me that image is of a conservative person (and truth be told always a woman). By conservative, I refer not to politics or ideology (I imagine librarians have always come in a variety of ideological flavors) but instead of one with a conservative sensibility or temperament which includes a certain respect for tradition and decorum. And, that makes sense (at least to me) for those who are charged with preserving and providing access to a significant portion of our cultural heritage. In recent years, however, that image is fading fast for me.
Pride Month is celebrated at the Boston Public
Library in June 2018 – Image credit
Keith J Finks / Shutterstock.com
A couple of weeks ago, the American Library Association (ALA) held its annual conference and it was a cornucopia of leftism and the stupidest aspects of today’s identity politics according to this July 10, 2019 article by Joy Pullmann at The Federalist. The leftist bent of the conference also clearly shows at the ALA’s review of said conference. The ALA seems to be entirely on board and supportive of every aspect of the LGBT agenda including, regrettably, what I call their war on childhood. The conference involved many workshops including “Creating Queer-Inclusive Elementary School Library Programming,” “Telling Stories, Expanding Boundaries: Drag Queen Storytimes in Libraries,” and “A Children’s Room to Choose: Encouraging Gender Identity and Expression in School and Public Libraries.” And, of course, these sort of endeavors are to be encouraged and undertaken by librarians and school teachers regardless of what parents may think as per the workshop “Are You Going to Tell My Parents?: The Minor’s Right to Privacy in the Library.” The conference also had the usual paeans to racialist thinking and behavior such as the workshop “Talking to Kids About Race: A ‘how-to’ workshop” which included the current racial grievance industry charges such as white supremacy is the operating system in the USA, and white fragility is a tool of white supremacy. Oh, and I am happy to report that the conference was able to approve a motion that denounced detention centers for illegal immigrants. How daring of them!
I suppose I should’ve been surprised by Ms. Pullmann’s article, but I really wasn’t. It seems the ALA has been moving to the left for several decades now. I first became aware of this shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In the immediate aftermath of those attacks the Congress passed and President Bush signed into law what was called the Patriot Act, the purpose of which was to strengthen national security. Specifically, the ALA opposed Section 215 of that law, which provided for the collection of “business records,” as per this fact sheet prepared by a group in support of the law. To be fair, there were legitimate concerns regarding this provision of the law and the Congress eventually allowed Section 215 to expire in 2015. That said, the ALA’s reaction to the law was hysterical and went beyond criticism to willful disobedience of the law via purposeful destruction of records they thought pertinent to the law.
The main reading room of the
New York Public Library –
Image credit Keith J Finks / shutterstock.com
Around the same time, librarians were in the news for another issue. At some point twenty or so years ago, libraries began to connect to the internet and provide computer terminals for their patrons. This is all well and good; however, hardcore pornography was and is readily available and accessible on the internet and, although filtering systems exist to deny access to the porn, the ALA and librarians across the country have refused and continue to refuse to provide these filters on first amendment and other spurious grounds, despite the fact that the computers are regularly used for the viewing of hardcore porn. The silliest aspect of this issue is that until the introduction of the internet into the libraries no one ever went to a library to view pornography.
More recently the ALA has eagerly joined in on the current practice of expunging from polite society dead white people for some real or imagined transgression against one the pillars (sex and race) of today’s identity politics. In 1954, the ALA established the Laura Ingalls Wilder award – a lifetime achievement award for authors and illustrators of children’s literature – and named her as the first recipient for her “Little House” books. In 2018, the ALA renamed the award the Children’s Literature Legacy Award because her work does not comport with the ALA’s “…core values of inclusiveness, integrity, and respect” since her books “…reflect dated attitudes towards indigenous people and people of color.” In their announcement stripping Wilder of her honor, the ALA also made sure to congratulate themselves for not removing these horrible works from their library shelves. How generous of them.
With their appetite whetted by the Wilder award renaming, the ALA decided to take down a much bigger fish in the library world in 2019 – that of Melvil Dewey, the inventor of the Dewey Decimal system of library classification. And so at this year’s annual conference it was decided to strip Dewey’s name from the American Library Association’s top award – the Melvil Dewey Award- which is awarded annually to an individual who has demonstrated “creative leadership of a high order” in such fields as classification and cataloging, library management, and library training. It seems that Mr. Dewey had a bit of a #metoo problem. According to one biographer, Dewey “…was a serial hugger and kisser,” while another biographer stated that Dewey engaged in “unwelcome hugging, unwelcome touching, and unwelcome kissing” with women subordinates over a period of decades. Sounds a bit like Joe Biden, doesn’t it? He also has another problem in that he discriminated against Jews, Blacks, and others in a club he owned.
Whenever I hear or read of these situations of an organization taking a decidedly progressive turn, I am reminded of Robert Conquest’s Three Laws of Politics, the second of which is “Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.” It is remarkable how often this process comes to pass. It is almost as true and immutable as Newton’s Three Laws of Motion. I should note, at least in passing that authorship for this law seems to be in dispute. It is also regularly assigned to John O’Sullivan, a former editor of National Review. If anyone can clarify this conflict, please feel free to speak up.
I mentioned earlier my image of a typical librarian. The clip below from the 1940 movie The Philadelphia Story presents a somewhat exaggerated version my typical librarian.
Copyright 2019 Silent Cal Productions, LLC.
NOTE ADDED 16 JULY 2019:
Excellent comment below I'm republishing here so it gets seen:
David Anderson
Mon Jul 15, 09:11:00 PM 2019
As readers here may know, in March of 2018, the Public Library Association (PLA) hosted its biennial national conference in the City of Brotherly Love – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – and among the programs offered was one entitled “Drag Queen Story Hour: Reading Fabulously”.
Shared with attendees for titles to read in setting up their own DQSH were those that “best support a program for young children exploring gender fluidity.”
First listed on the program handout touting the spread of “The Ever Growing Queendom” was Rachel Aimee, New York City DQSH chapter founder.
Speaking of spreading, those in the audience during the DQSH presentation of that March meeting of library enthusiasts – official representatives and staff - from across the country may or may not have known that Aimee co-founded in 2005, developed and was editor-in-chief of “$pread”, a sex-workers magazine.
“$pread” was “criticized by some branches of feminism that believe that sex work is inherently degrading.”
Aimee believes otherwise.
Aimee’s “$pread” website declares of her magazine staff, “Most of us are real sex workers. Among us are street workers, pro-dommes, escorts, strippers, nude models, porn workers and pretty much anything else you can think of.”
“The assumption that sex workers are too dumb to publish a magazine really pisses us off,” Aimee wrote.
When asked what was next for “$pread”, Aimee responded “We’re looking for sex workers to paint, mutilate, or otherwise decorate sex toys” for her then-upcoming show’s special exhibit entitled “One Sex Worker Nation Under Dildo.”
If your search engine is set to filter out adult content, then you may not know what ‘dildo’ means, nor the world Aimee envisioned.
Did the members of your library association where you live attend the Rachel Aimee, NYC Director of DQSH, sponsored event at the March 2018 Public Library Association conference in Philadelphia?
And, just as important, even as political districts vet their candidates, does your library district screen for character those who would stand before your children, your grandchildren, the children of your community?
Orland Park Public Library
Virtual Services Manager Jason Rock
The Orland Park Public Library1 has a well-earned reputation for being a problem child library with spending problems. This is the same library that was caught using taxpayer money to buy its board members gold jewelry2 and fancy steak dinners. It's also the library that squandered half a million dollars or more3 fighting FOIA production and violating the Open Meetings Act (while also wasting taxpayer money on expensive donuts, out of town trips, and other treats for staff and board members). While the reckless spending seems to have been toned down when it comes to board member gold and steak dinners, in one area the waste of taxpayer money seems to continue unabated at the OPPL: sending staff off on expensive trips to "conferences."
With public entities all across our state forever moaning about budget problems (or in the case of the OPPL, insisting they need endless levy increases and more taxpayer money), isn't it time to start questioning how necessary out of town trips are for staff members who want to go to fancy conferences? Couldn't the learning they need be done right here in Illinois, particularly for public employees who are so close to Chicago (which is one of the training and conference capitals of the world).
Why does the Orland Park Public Library need to use taxpayer money on a trip for two to San Francisco?
In March 2016, the OPPL sent Assistant Director Robin Wagner, pictured below, and Virtual Services Manager Jason Rock,4 pictured top right, on an all-expenses-paid-by-taxpayers jaunt to San Francisco, California, to attend something called the "2016 Innovative Users Group Conference." Large sums of taxpayer money are funneled into lobbying groups like the American Library Association (ALA) by way of these conferences, as public employees spend many hundreds of dollars just to register for the conference. Groups like the ALA that put on these conferences then use that taxpayer money to lobby state and local governments for changes that benefit the organizations. Those changes are not always beneficial to the public. Without these conferences (and the annual membership dues that public employees pay to groups like the ALA), these lobbyists would not have nearly the revenue stream they currently do with so much public funds being funneled into them by way of the registrations for these events.
This is one of the great injustices in our country right now: taxpayer money every day is being handed over by public employees to lobbying groups who then push agendas that harm taxpayers. This is like money being taken from you and then giving to someone who will punch you in the face at some point. So you end up, in effect, paying someone to punch you in the face. This wealth transfer from public bodies to private lobbying groups by way of expensive conferences has to stop.
Orland Park Public Library
Assistant Director Robin Wagner
The OPPL spent $650 just to register Wagner and Rock for this conference. Thousands of public employees attended this event. That's a lot of taxpayer money ending up in the hands of a lobbying group...but at what benefit to the public?
Was it worth all this to send two public employees to San Francisco for several days (or was it all just a big punch in the public's face)?
$650.00 for conference registration
$396.97 for Wagner's plane ticket
$1,232.24 for Wagner's hotel charges and food
$407.20 for Rock's plane ticket
$869.88 for Rock's hotel charges
$98.89 for Rock's food
TOTAL = $3,655.185 (not including the payroll costs for Wagner and Rock to still be paid their salaries for the four days they were away from the OPPL on their San Francisco trip, but were still on the clock)
Some of the illegally obtained gold and money
returned to Orland Park Public Library
Was this San Francisco trip for two worth all those thousands of dollars...or could everything they learned have been done in Chicago at similar events or online in virtual training sessions?
While public employees might all love the idea of taking a "free" trip to San Francisco, no trip is really "free" because taxpayers have to foot the bill for all of this.
One of the most easily controlled expenses that public bodies can look at as a way to trim budgets is to evaluate the necessity of out-of-town travel for public employees. Is flying all the way out to San Francisco really the best use of public money? Should a library that always pleads poverty and desperation when it's time to raise the tax levy again really be sending not one but TWO of its employees to California for a conference, when it doesn't look like anything said or done at the conference couldn't have been achieved at similar events closer to home? Did you know Innovative holds the same training sessions in Chicago?
If Illinois ever wants to start digging its way out of the financial mess that it's in, one place to start may be saying NO once in a while to employees who want to go far away to expensive conferences.
ENDNOTES:
Orland Park Public Library, Village of Orland Park, Cook County, Illinois: http://www.orlandparklibrary.org/
It is possible the above exposé led to the immediate resignations of the two people named above, including one who resigned the next day then left a day or two later:
