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FROM SCHOOL LIBRARIAN TO ACTIVIST: ‘THE HATE LEVEL AND THE VITRIOL
IS UNREAL’  
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Alexandra Alter
September 3, 2024
New York Times
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_ Amid a surge in book bans nationwide, the Louisiana librarian
Amanda Jones was targeted by vicious threats. So she decided to fight
back. She went to court against her attackers, and then wrote a book.
And, she still a librarian. _

In her new memoir, Amanda Jones highlights the threats that
librarians face., Credit: Lily Brooks for The New York Times

 

One Sunday morning two years ago, Amanda Jones, a middle school
librarian in Watson, La., woke up and saw an email on her phone that
left her shaking and breathless.

The expletive-laced message from a stranger accused her of being a
pedophile and a groomer, and concluded with a threat: “You can’t
hide. We know where you work + live. You have a LARGE target on your
back,” it said. “Click … Click … see you soon!”

It was part of a deluge of online threats and harassment that Jones
has faced since the summer of 2022, when she was one of around 20
people to speak out against book banning during a July meeting at her
local public library.

A fight broke out over whether the library should remove books with
content that some deemed inappropriate for children. Like
many librarians
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the country, Jones found herself caught in a vicious battle over which
books belong in libraries — a debate that has divided communities
and school boards as book bans have surged
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United States.

But the attacks on Jones have been particularly intense, and
unrelenting, because of her response: She fought back.

After commenters on social media accused her of seeking to sexualize
children, Jones filed a defamation lawsuit against two men and the
organization Citizens for a New Louisiana, a group that has pushed to
have books that they consider erotic or sexual removed from the
children’s section of libraries. She co-founded Louisiana Citizens
Against Censorship, which lobbies against
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that would place new restrictions on libraries. And she’s
highlighting the threat of censorship and the pressure that librarians
face in a memoir, “That Librarian,” which Bloomsbury published
last month.

“Before all this, I was just a school librarian, but they wanted to
silence me, so I thought I would do the exact opposite and become an
activist,” Jones said during a phone interview. “What we’re
seeing now is full-scale attacks on people’s characters if they
stand up for books. The hate level and the vitriol is unreal to me.”

 
Jones is among a handful of librarians who have filed lawsuits in
response to book banning attempts.  (Credit:  Abdul Aziz / New York
Times)
As books about L.G.B.T.Q. issues, sexual health and race and racism
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been targeted for removal, libraries have become a new battleground
in a bitter culture war
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Sweeping laws that impose restrictions
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content have been passed in more than a dozen states. Librarians —
who are trained to curate collections that reflect a range of
political views and subjects — have quit their jobs after being
harassed for opposing book bans, or have been fired after refusing to
remove books. Some have been reported to the police by community
members who accuse them of peddling pornography.

“We’re seeing increasing attacks on librarians and libraries,
ranging from character assassination and the use of social media to
inflame and intimidate, right up to bomb threats,” said Deborah
Caldwell-Stone, the director of the American Library Association’s
Office for Intellectual Freedom.

A handful of librarians, like Jones, have turned to the courts to
clear their names.

In 2023, a librarian at a New Jersey high school, Roxana Caivano,
brought a defamation suit
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a group of parents who had disparaged her online and at a school board
meeting, in some instances calling her a pornographer and child
predator because she stocked the graphic memoir “Gender Queer
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Caivano, who is represented in the case by her husband, had argued for
keeping the book on the shelves.

In the fall, the former director of the Campbell County Public Library
in Wyoming, who was fired after she refused to remove disputed books
from the children’s and young adult section of the library in
Gillette, Wyo., filed a federal lawsuit
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defamation and the violation of her civil rights. The librarian, Terri
Lesley, filed the suit against three community members who accused her
of providing obscene material to children, and had reported her to the
county sheriff’s office in an attempt to have her arrested.

And earlier this year, Suzette Baker, a former librarian in Llano
County, Texas, brought a lawsuit
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library officials and the county, arguing that her First and 14th
Amendment rights were violated when she was fired after she refused to
take contested books out of circulation. All three librarians’ suits
are ongoing; Baker and Lesley, who are both represented by the
Denver-based civil rights attorney Iris Halpern, have argued that they
have been discriminated and retaliated against for defending books
that deal with race or L.G.B.T.Q. issues.

A lifelong resident of Watson, a small town near Baton Rouge, Jones,
46, was raised in a politically conservative Southern Baptist
household, the daughter of a mechanic and a kindergarten and Sunday
school teacher. She met her husband, also a Watson native, when they
were in the first grade. She has been a teacher and librarian in
Watson for 23 years, working at the same school she attended as a
girl.

She’s never considered calling anywhere else home.

Two years ago, Jones’ life was upended overnight. It started when
she saw that her local public library had listed “book content” on
its board meeting agenda. At the meeting, a board member said she was
concerned about books for children and young adults that had
“inappropriate” content, but didn’t mention particular titles in
her public remarks.

When members of the public were invited to comment, Jones spoke first,
and argued that libraries need to reflect a broad range of ideas.
“Just because you don’t want to read it or see it does not give
you the right to deny others or demand its relocation,” she said.
“If we remove or relocate books with L.G.B.T.Q. or sexual health
content, what message is that sending to our community members?”

 
Jones is a lifelong resident of Watson, La., and has been a teacher
and librarian there for 23 years. “I’m the town pariah now,” she
said.  (Credit:  Lily Brooks for The New York Times)
The blowback was vicious. A group called Citizens for a New Louisiana
— which, according to its website, is seeking “to remove
taxpayer-funded pornography, erotica, and gender dysphoria propaganda
from the children’s section of library systems” — posted a photo
of Jones on its Facebook page. The photo’s caption asked, “Why is
she fighting so hard to keep sexually erotic and pornographic
materials in the kids’ section?”

Another message on Facebook, posted by a local resident, accused Jones
of “advocating teaching anal sex to 11-year-olds.”

Jones was stunned. She hadn’t mentioned any particular books at the
meeting, and was certain that there was no pornographic material in
the library.

The Facebook posts drove a flood of remarks calling her perverted, a
sick pig and trash. Commenters said she should be fired. She got death
threats. She recognized the names of some of the people who shared
negative posts about her — people she had known since kindergarten,
parents of her former students, members of her church, people she
thought of as friends.

As the onslaught continued, Jones began having panic attacks. Over the
next weeks and months, she fell into depression and became so stressed
she started losing her hair. She struggled to eat and lost weight.
Eventually she took a leave of absence from her job.

Jones, who has a teenage daughter, worried for her family’s safety.
She started carrying a Taser, mace and a handgun, and had security
cameras installed in her home and car. She was scared to go to
restaurants, worried that someone might spit in her food. When she
went to her daughter’s band concerts, other parents around her
whispered and stared.

Two years later, she still feels like an outcast, she said. She gets
her groceries delivered now. She stopped going to church, and instead
does Bible study online at home.

“I’m the town pariah now,” Jones said. “I get called a
pervert. I can’t grocery shop or go to the store without being
called names.”

Jones’ friend Andrea Trudeau, a library information specialist at a
middle school in Illinois, said she worries about Jones’ safety and
mental health.

“She’s carrying a very heavy burden,” she said. “She’s
working in the community where she lives, and she can’t escape
it.”

Jones knew filing a lawsuit would expose her to more criticism, but
decided she needed to defend herself. In the fall of 2022, she filed a
defamation suit against Michael Lunsford, the executive director of
Citizens for New Louisiana, and the man who posted a meme with her
photo that claimed she supported teaching 11-year-olds about anal sex.

The lawsuit was dismissed less than a month later, when a judge ruled
that the defendants were expressing their opinions online and not
defaming Jones. After a higher court declined to hear her appeal,
Jones recently asked the Louisiana Supreme Court to review the
decision, and is still seeking to take her case to trial.

“The crazy thing about this case is they get to wave the freedom of
speech flag in the lawsuit, but what started all this is they want to
ban books,” said Jones’s lawyer, Alysson Mills, who is based in
New Orleans and has a background in First Amendment law. “What
we’ve been arguing ever since is you don’t have to agree with
Amanda to see the injustice of her situation.”

Jones has paid her legal fees, which so far have totaled more than
$60,000, with the help of a GoFundMe campaign.

Lunsford — who has continued to post negative comments and videos
about Jones — disputed that he or his group had defamed her.

“We reported what she said at the meeting — that’s not
defamation,” he said.

He said his organization has continued to focus on Jones because she
has lobbied against measures that would require libraries to remove
material with sexual content from the children’s and young adult
sections. Titles his group objects to include “Dating and Sex: A
Guide for the 21st Century Teen Boy” and “Let’s Talk About
It,” a sex education guidebook for teenagers, which is aimed at high
school-aged readers and contains graphic illustrations of people
having sex and masturbating.

“She’s actively engaged in this battle,” he said.

 
Jones, left, speaking at a Louisiana bookstore. The online attacks
have ramped up as she promotes her memoir, she said.  (Credit:
 Billy Gibson/Livingston Parish News  //  New York Times)
With the publicity surrounding her book, Jones said that the online
attacks have ramped up again.

Her family members declined to be interviewed for this article because
they feared they would be targeted online as well, she said. She was
alarmed when Lunsford, in a recent YouTube video, put her home address
on the screen when he pulled up the business filings for Louisiana
Citizens Against Censorship to show that she was listed as one of the
organization’s directors.

“It’s Banana Jones, the girl who sued us because she couldn’t
take the heat,” he says, while displaying her address. Asked about
the video in an interview, Lunsford said he had “no idea” that it
was her home address and was simply sharing a public business record.

Still, there have also been hopeful moments for Jones. Former students
have reached out with messages of support. Authors whose books have
been banned have praised her memoir, including Nikki Grimes, Jodi
Picoult and Ellen Oh.

And Jones has been hearing from other librarians from around the
country. Some are grateful that she has taken a stand. Others share
distressing stories about harassment that they’ve faced for opposing
book bans.

“It’s heartbreaking,“ Jones said. “It’s very hard, because I
can’t tell them it’s going to get better, because there’s no
guarantee that it will.”

_[Alexandra Alter [[link removed]] writes
about books, publishing and the literary world for The Times. More
about Alexandra Alter [[link removed]]]_

* Libraries
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* librarians
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* book bans
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* book burning
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* censorship
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* MAGA
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* Right-wing agenda
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* right-wing tactics
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* Louisiana
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* school boards
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* school books
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* LGBTQ
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* sexism
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* misogyny
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* war on women
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* transgender
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* Civil Liberties
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