PA FREEDOM CAUCUS TO LIBRARIES: “SERVE PENNSYLVANIANS OVER RADICAL SPECIAL INTERESTS”
Harrisburg, PA- As the Pennsylvania budget remains incomplete, the Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus is demanding conditions that any library receiving taxpayer funding, whether through the general fund budget or a state special fund, be prohibited from diverting any funds to the American Library Association.
The Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus had initially called on all Pennsylvania libraries to cut ties with the American Library Association in July due to the agenda of their newly elected president, Emily Drabinski, a self-proclaimed Marxist. Drabinski’s publicly stated, radical agenda attempts to hyper-sexualize children, sow division in our school and community libraries, and turn libraries into centers for social organizing. Upon assuming the office Drabinski said, "as ALA president, I will direct resources and opportunities to a diverse cross-section of the association and advance a public agenda that puts organizing for justice at the center of library work." Drabinski is also on record downplaying the prevention of access to sexually explicit materials by minors in libraries, (illegal in any other circumstance,) as a mere “book ban,” and marginalizing any and all critics as “dangerous, Christo-fascists.”
“The ALA’s agenda is clearly partisan and far afield from the mission of our community and school libraries and Pennsylvania taxpayers must not be forced to underwrite this national organization’s efforts,” said PA Freedom Caucus Chairwoman, Dawn Keefer (R-York). “The ALA contradicted their own claim of being ‘a non-partisan organization committed to serving people of all backgrounds and ideologies,’ when they selected Drabinski - who specifically sought the office with a campaign to take on politically conservative groups - to lead their organization,” she continued.
Drabinski, herself, was shocked by the ALA’s selection of her for president, posting on her @edrabinski Twitter account on April 13, 2022: "I just cannot believe that a Marxist lesbian who believes that collective power is possible to build and can be wielded for a better world is the president-elect of @ALALibrary. I am so excited for what we will do together. Solidarity!"
During this budget impasse there has been silence from library groups on the ALA’s liberal agenda as they eagerly await state funding. The Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus recognizes the valuable role libraries play in Pennsylvania communities and looks forward to funding libraries that can be a resource for all Pennsylvanians. However, libraries must be judicious with their often-limited resources and diverting even one dollar to a now politically driven and Marxist-led organization cannot be deemed fiscally prudent nor mission-aligned under any standards.
Choose your battles:
1) If the language of the legislation forbids recipient libraries (whether those libraries be organizations that are part of public, Government institutions or whether those libraries be "stand-alone", private entities [or "component organizations thereof]), to "divert" or "allocate" ANY funds (regardless of funding-source) to the American Library Association,...
...the Commonwealth is likely to be required to defend itself from lawsuits that challenge the Government's authority to limit non-Government organizations' use of THEIR OWN funds (assuming that the legislation doesn't require the disbursing Agency to, itself, require the recipients to sign a pledge, as a condition of recipients' "receiving Government money", to the effect that "the recipient will not financially nor otherwise materially contribute to the operation, maintenance, financing, reputation, nor existence of the American Library Association") as those organizations might, otherwise, see fit.
a) The lawsuit is likely to allege capriciousness [i.e., "denial of due process"] in the Legislature's "black-listing of the American Library Association", UNLESS THERE ALREADY EXISTS some kind of document that can be ACCURATELY described as a "finding (being the end-result of AN INVESTIGATION)" BY BOTH HOUSES OF THE LEGISLATURE, which summarizes testimony of relevant, Economic-Policy, State-Security, and Public-Diplomacy Agencies of the Executive Branch, detailing:
==> the nature of the danger that Communism represents, to the Commonwealth, even in the 2nd decade of the 21st Century;
==> the nature and extent of the obligation that falls upon the Government of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to "shun" and/or "black-list" Communism; and
==> the extent to which State-Government support for "an American Library Association in which Communism and Communist sympathies of ALA Leadership are deemed irrelevant to the achievement of the mission of the ALA (and, even, under the ALA 'umbrella', 'the achievement of the missions of member Libraries, in Pennsylvania, if not beyond, also')" threatens the ability of the Government of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to achieve ITS mission (as outlined in the "Preamble" portion of the Constitution of the United States of America [not to mention similar passages within the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania)...
...AND which [i.e., "the FINDING (in the form of a Joint Resolution, sent to the Governor for ratification/acknowledgement), which"] declares the American Library Association to be "THEREFORE ineligible to receive public funds that are administered by the Government of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania".
b) The Legislature either behaves in a manner consistent with "the Rule of Law [as distinguished from Demagoguery]", by ensuring that "due process" is evident in every Legislative action, or it places "at-risk":
==> the "public funds" that the Government requires, as that Government's "due", from private-sector individuals and entities for whom the [State] Government is "that which IS SUPPORTED AND SUSTAINED (as distinguished from 'the source of those funds which support and sustain [the private-sector individual or other entity]"; and
==> public offices (and the power exercised by those offices), more than "'merely' public funds".
2) If the language of the legislation forbids the expenditure, allocation, or "diversion" of PUBLIC FUNDS, by recipients of those public funds,...
...the Legislature should know that, "If Grandma gives me $10 as a birthday present, imploring me to spend the money on something OTHER than 'fast cars and faster lemons'; and James Hedges gives me $10 as a birthday present ON THE CONDITION THAT I DON'T BUY ALCOHOL, WITH IT,...
...I might buy alcohol, with Grandma's $10; and use Mr. Hedges' $10 on those cars and lemons that my Grandmother did not look kindly upon;...
...IF I had lost all sense (probably, through too much "sense-a-million"), and didn't know, WHILE DOiNG IT, that I'd probably never get $10 from EITHER of them, ever again.
(Except, maybe, "indirectly, in the form of bologna, cheese, and mustard sandwiches, at the soup-kitchens run by charitable organizations that were, now, the recipients of the 'endowment' money that I'd shown myself unable [or unwilling] to manage, on my own.)