The Librarian Who Fought Christian Nationalist Book Bans and Won

Brad Onishi: Welcome to Straight White American Jesus. I'm Brad Onishi, author of Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism and What Comes Next, founder of Axis Mundi Media. And just so excited to be with you this Monday, as I am every Monday, but today I get to speak to Amanda Jones, author of That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America.

So Amanda, thanks for being here.

Amanda Jones: Thanks for having me. I'm excited.

Brad: I am excited to talk to you for so many reasons. The book you've written is great, and I think is going to provide folks who don't know about it—I'm sure many people listening already know about it—but folks with some just great insight into what's happening in our libraries and our schools, why the book banning stuff continues to pop up, and what they can do to fight back. I think that's our goal.

Let's start here. I love your story, and I was just telling you that off air. I love everything about your biography. You grew up in a small town. You spent most of your years in that small town. You live next door to your parents. Explain yourself, Amanda Jones. Tell us about your story.

Amanda: I do live next door to my parents. So I grew up in this very small town called Watson, Louisiana, and we have two red lights. I work at the middle school that I attended as a child, and I've worked here for 25 years. And I now have multiple "grand students," which are students of kids that I taught. Some of them I've taught both parents, so I think I met like 50 or 60 grand students this year. But I've lived here my entire life.

And, you know, small town Louisiana—we were raised in this town Southern Baptist. Most people in my town are Southern Baptist growing up, and Southern Baptist and Republican. And so I was raised pretty much the same way everybody else in my town was raised. And here we are. I'm 47 now.

Brad: What made you want to be a librarian? You're the librarian at the middle school you went to. What made you want to work in a library?

Amanda: I just love to read. I wanted to be around books. I did teach English Language Arts for 14 years in the classroom. And I just think sometimes you have a calling for it. I know when you have—in college, we took in Sunday school, we took the spiritual gift test, and that was my spiritual gift, was teaching. And so I just love what literature has done for me and the way books have shaped the way I am as a person, and I wanted to be able to provide that for my students.

Brad: You know, when I think about somebody with your life story, I think, as somebody who spent most of your days and years in a small town in one corner of this country—but I'd venture to say, and I'm happy for you to tell me I'm wrong, but or to tell me how to think about this more accurately—but I'd venture to say that reading and books have opened up worlds for you that are multi-dimensional and expansive and have opened horizons for you, even though we might think of you as somebody who spent most of your time living in this one place, in this one small town.

Amanda: Well, you're not wrong. You look like me. But yeah, everything, I think, that I grew up to be as a reader—my parents always, you know, my mom is a retired kindergarten teacher. She read to us out loud. We went to the library every week with friends and the minivan and, you know, we'd go check out all the books.

And the thing about books is that there's a quote by Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop that says books are windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors. And so for me, I was able to see myself in a lot of the books, but also travel. Now as an adult, I've traveled to multiple countries and 30 states. But growing up, we didn't travel a lot. We didn't have a lot of money, and so I traveled through literature and through books. And I've been all over the world through reading.

And I think people underestimate how much reading can change you as a person. I mean, I remember reading The Joy Luck Club in high school. I remember reading The Color Purple and reading about people that weren't just white, I guess—just other than white people, and that there were other races and cultures and religions. And we grew up, you know, I grew up hearing "we're a melting pot." And so—but then it didn't look like a melting pot where I live. But in the books, yeah, I learned about other cultures, religions, and races. And I would not be the person I am today without books.

Brad: I love that. I feel the exact same way. And I'm just going to take a minute, because, friends, I think personally I'm excited for this interview, and just to get to meet you, Amanda, because for me personally, librarians are some of my favorite people in the whole world. I think librarians are, like, if you said "my favorite civil servant," I would say the librarian.

And we're going to get to this in your story. But librarians are like that quiet kid often, who, if you push them on the wrong issue, they become a fierce, ferocious stand-up person who's not going to take any guff, even though you think of them as the quiet person working at the quiet space.

But I just want to praise libraries for a minute, and this is all a setup. People don't worry. This is not just me blathering. But I moved to a small town recently. I take my little kids to the library all the time, and I don't care where I am, I don't care what I'm doing. When I walk into a library, I feel two things. I feel like I'm so excited because there's so much in that room or set of rooms that I can learn, and everything you just said, there's so many sliding doors and mirrors and open windows. And it also feels like a safe place. Like the library just feels like this place where everyone's safe, everyone is included, and it doesn't matter who you are, you get to come here.

And I have gotten that feeling in a 1,000-year-old library in Oxford. I have that feeling in my tiny public library in my little town, and everywhere in between. So I just want to say thank you to you and every other librarian in the world for making those spaces possible. And we're here to talk about you defending libraries so voraciously.

Amanda: The thing about libraries—because I'm a school librarian, but I love the public library just as much—there was a study that was done by the Human Rights Coalition in 2023, I believe it was, and it talked about how unsafe a lot of students feel. They surveyed so many students and how unsafe they feel at school. But nine out of 10 students from the LGBTQ+ community said that they feel safe in the school library. It was like a huge study. And so to me, that's a huge responsibility, especially for someone like me, who every student in my community will have me as a librarian. I'm the only middle school—and the people that hate me can't stand it—but every kid will have me. And I hope that for the two years that I have them, because I only have them for fifth and sixth grade, I hope that I can make them feel safe and loved and maybe give them some home-run books that'll make them love to read if they don't.

Brad: That's right, that's right. I love that.

Brad: Okay, friends, so we've reached the point in the movie where we've, like, zoomed in on this idyllic small town. Here is Amanda. You grew up there. You had a good childhood for the most part. You went back home, you bought the house next to your parents. You became a librarian. And then we're like 20 minutes into the movie, and here comes the menacing music.

In 2022, there's outside groups threatening your public library system in town. It's a kind of statewide effort in Louisiana. It's not people local to your parish, it's not people really local to your community. But nonetheless, they were encroaching on your library system. What were they doing?

Amanda: There's an extremist group in Louisiana, and I don't like to name them because I don't like to give them publicity, but they have declared war on all 64 library systems, parish library systems, in Louisiana. And they started in 2018 with Lafayette Parish Library, and they were instrumental in costing Lafayette Parish $3 million in funding to their public library. And they waged it all on this war of "protect the children from the evil librarians" and whatever they thought was happening in libraries.

But you fast forward to 2022, that same group set their sights on my community, and they don't live or work in my community. And they do what extremists do, and they take a page from a book out of context, and they posted it in our local Facebook group, and they fired everybody up. And so they were, "Everybody needs to get down to the library board meeting."

And so everybody did, only they weren't expecting everyone to be supporting the library. There were only two of them that were against the library at the meeting, and that was the extremist group. And then one was a grandmother who legitimately was believing these things that were being said. But yeah, we went to speak out for our public library in 2022 because someone on our Library Board of Control was working with this outside extremist group to—basically she had put content and signage on the agenda, and it was right after Pride Month, and we all knew what was coming. We all knew.

Brad: Yeah, yeah. So you decide, "I need to get to this meeting and I need to say something." And again, I just—it's not clear yet, friends. Amanda's somebody who—you lived in this town. You grew up in this town. You work at the middle school you attended as a young person. You're somebody who knows this place. You know the faces. They know you. You've taught kids, and some of those kids grew up, and now you're teaching their kids.

And so you're speaking at the library meeting, not as somebody who's new to town, not as somebody who's unsure of the dynamics socially in this community. You are somebody who is fully ensconced in every dynamic of this place. You speak up. What did you say?

Amanda: Well, basically, I just gave a speech about how we already had policies and procedures in place at the library, and that if anyone doesn't like a book, there's no reason to create this panic. Just fill out a challenge form and ask for it to be reconsidered. I didn't talk about a single title. I just talked in generalities about policy, and I talked about how we needed to trust our librarians who had library science degrees. And I quoted the Trevor Project, and I talked about why intellectual freedom is important and why censorship is bad. And I mean, it was a standard speech that pretty much any librarian would give, I guess.

Towards the end of it, I did say I was a parent, because I'm a parent of a child in my community. And I did say towards the end that the community that I grew up in, that I was speaking in, said that God is love, but that as an adult, I realized they only meant God is love if you have the same political and religious beliefs as them. That I don't think flew over so well. But I even remarked to the woman who put it on the agenda that I hope my fears were unfounded, and that it was all a misunderstanding. But it wasn’t.

Brad: Well, and you know, the story is, of course, what happened next. And so you give a speech that's policy-centered, you give a little commentary at the end. And I will just say, as somebody who's done this a lot in his life, religious bigots don't like it when you show them that you know the Christian tradition better than them, and that you are able to do things like quote scripture or talk about God being love or caring about the vulnerable or those in need. Nothing triggers them more than realizing that you know more about their sacred text and traditions than them.

So I think we all know what you might say, but I probably—if folks have not read the book, they have no idea the extent of what happened next. It is truly astounding. So give us just a little snapshot for those listening at home.

Amanda: So four days later, after I gave my speech, four days later, I woke up to a targeted harassment campaign. Two men. One posted a picture of me with a target around my face that said I was giving pornography and erotica to six-year-olds. I don't even teach six-year-olds. And then there was another man that does live in my community. He posted a picture of me with—he had made a meme that said I advocate the teaching of anal sex to 11-year-olds. And both of them were putting that I was a school librarian and where I worked.

And the comments were wild already. When I woke up that morning, it was—everybody suddenly had an opinion. Everybody was like, "Oh, well, I guess you never know people." And "Look at—you know, she's a groomer. She's a pedophile. We need to purge her, slap her, kill her." Some people were like, "Oh, wait till I see her on the street." These are people that I all knew in my town. The lady who taught me kindergarten wrote online that I was a groomer. So I don't know that she remembers she taught me kindergarten, but these are the things I'm seeing when I wake up.

And it was astonishing to me, because back in 2021, I actually got National School Librarian of the Year, and so they paraded me all around the town. "Look at how great she is," you know. At the school board, my school board representative was reading a letter: "She's the best thing that's ever happened to our community."

And then you fast forward to 2022, and two random men that I had never seen, never interacted with, not in person, online, anything, make these allegations against me and the entire community turned on me. I will say—I won't say the entire community. I'll say that half the community turned on me. The other half were scared into silence.

And so I cried for a couple of days. I cried—I didn't know you could cry so much that your eyes fall shut. I didn't know you could cry to where your sinuses just clog up and you can't breathe. And people think, "Oh, well, it's just on the internet." No, no. People were texting me. It was on every social media platform. They were bombarding my family members. My 97-year-old grandmother—she got messages as well. The only person that didn't was my daughter, and she was 15 at the time, and that's because I had taught her how to protect herself on the internet, so she was a little incognito. But her friends were taking snapshots and texting it to her.

So, you know, it was just a barrage, and it went on—it's not, "Oh, this went on for—" No, they continued to post about me for weeks. They've continued to post about me. One of them continued to post about me. It's been three and a half years, and just awful accusations and horrible things that they've said about me. But what blew my mind was that people believed it.

Brad: Did you ever think about leaving?

Amanda: Oh, no. I mean, I won't say it didn't pop in my head, like, "Oh, I could leave." But no, this is my town. You know, I don't say it's my town, but I live here. I grew up here. And so first of all, I'm not gonna let anybody run me off from my own community, especially not people who don't even live here. And second of all, if I left, who's there for the kids? I mean, there's other people I work with—wonderful people—but I can't be assured that the next librarian is going to make sure that every kid in the library feels represented and seen and heard and feels safe. And that's important to me.

Brad: So targeted harassment. This is not expected. You know, sometimes folks might think, "Well, this happened, and I'm going to wake up tomorrow, and the text messages and the Facebook wall is going to be a mess," but that's not the case here. You give a speech—sounds pretty benign. You wake up to people from outside of your community in a targeted campaign to hurl hate toward you. And obviously you cried for a few days, and that makes complete sense.

What did you do next? When did you decide that not only were you not going to leave, you weren't going to take it, but there was action you needed to take that would combat what was happening?

Amanda: I was also—it was so surreal. I had panic attacks, and it was just—I don't even really truly remember those few days. My therapist has told me that I have PTSD. Who thought you could get PTSD from going to speak about your library?

But I decided pretty early on that as a librarian who teaches social media and how to stay safe on the internet, and as an educator who for 20-something years has taught the kids that when something happens, they need to report it, I felt like I needed to practice what I preach. So I filed a police report. They're like, "Oh, there's nothing that can be done. Too bad, so sad."

And so I just decided to file a lawsuit. And so I filed a defamation lawsuit, and people will have you—the men will have you believe it's a court case because I want to put porn on the shelves in the library. No, it's a defamation suit against these two men. And so I filed suit.

And, you know, it costs a lot of money. So I didn't realize—I was so naive. I was so, so naive. I had never been in the courthouse. I did not know how to get an attorney. It was horrible. And I thought, "Well, I finally got an attorney." And she said, "Well, she needed a retainer, $7,500." Well, I'm a school librarian. I don't make a lot of money. So someone started a GoFundMe. And so I told my husband, I was like, "I really want to file this lawsuit." And he said, "Go big or go home." So he says, "As long as we don't go into debt, go big or go home." So I filed a lawsuit.

Brad: You filed a lawsuit. And I mean, you're already outlining for people the barriers to fighting these fights, because if you want to curtail the people defaming your name, if you want to curtail the targeted hate, you have to go through the legal channels. And in this country, that means a $7,500 retainer just to start, just to get the process going, much less the ongoing fees, the entire long-term process and so on.

What's going on with that lawsuit? I think there's some fresh news, or at least some updates to that three years later.

Amanda: The judge dismissed it, and she said, "Oh, it's just their opinion that you teach children how to perform adult sex." No, that's not an opinion. That's patently false. And she labeled me a public figure, and so a public figure, you have to prove a fourth prong of malice, and I could, but she didn't, you know—

Brad: I love going through celebrity gossip magazines and just seeing my favorite librarians. You know, I think of librarians as public—that's my favorite thing. Like, wow, the glamor, the glitz. What brand are you wearing today, librarian in Columbus, Ohio or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania?

Amanda: It was wild to me. Now I will concede now I am a public figure after I've written a book and I'm in a documentary, and I was named to Time 100 Next. Okay, I'm a public figure now. But at the time, I was a small-town school librarian.

And so she dismissed it. Oh, and they celebrated. They were praising Jesus, because I guess you praise Jesus that you get away with defaming someone. Oh, you know, I had to walk this gauntlet of church-goers out to my car. Had to be escorted to my car. It was horrific.

And so she dismissed it. And I thought, "Well, this is crap." Not only did she dismiss it, but she said I had to pay their court costs and their attorney's fees, which was a slap in the face. So I ended up getting another attorney. My first one—she just wasn't her expertise. And I have a shark now, so it is her area of expertise.

But to cut a long story short, we went through the appellate process. We went to the First Circuit Court of Appeals. We went all the way up to the Louisiana Supreme Court. It went back down to the Louisiana First Circuit. And basically, it has been ruled that now, as of the past few weeks, I do have a right to a trial. It was more than just their opinion, and the judges said that, yes, I can prove—I have a good shot of winning.

And so I was granted a case. So before we could even get to the case, though, one of the men did ask to settle. And so I have, as of today, settled with one of the parties—the local guy. I settled for $1 and an apology, which is all I asked for. Which is all I asked for three and a half years ago. So he could have saved—he said he could have saved my family and his family a lot of heartache. But I guess pride goes before the fall.

And so yeah, $1 and an apology. That's all I'm asking for. Now he is gonna have to pay his half of the court costs, but I waived attorney's fees for him, which—I've spent $80,000 on attorney's fees, and I waived it for him because he is a parent. And although he didn't think about my child or me, I'm thinking about his kids. And so it's not fair. The father's sins shouldn't affect his children and his spouse. His spouse had a lot to say about me too, but you don't—

Brad: Well, you've learned way more about the folks in your community, I think, than you wanted to. And I'm sure that, you know—well, I know that in the book there is just a chronicling of that in harrowing ways.

I want to zoom out for just one minute and ask, what are one or two things people need to know about the efforts to ban books in the United States that you have learned in the three years of fighting this fight?

Amanda: So the thing that I learned, because at the beginning I thought it was all about the books. I just thought it's about the books. Yeah, it's not about the books. I mean, it is, but it isn't. The books are part of a broader picture.

In fact, I created a roadmap, is what I call it, a roadmap of the attacks on our libraries. And I helped found an organization called Louisiana Citizens Against Censorship. And so anyone who wants to Google can go and see that roadmap on our website.

It starts with the books, and it starts with the fact that they want to—these people want to, you know, obviously they only want certain viewpoints in the library, in a public and school library. But it goes into—they're not just trying to marginalize those people that are already historically marginalized. So they're trying to tell those people from these communities that the books—you know, let's be honest, most of the books that are challenged are written by people of color or people from the LGBTQ+ community, and so they're trying to silence their voices.

But it goes even broader. Libraries are being used as political pawns for legislators, anyone running for office, whether it's school board, library board, all the way up to Governor, all the way up to President of the United States. And, you know, they use this as an issue so that they can run on these platforms that they're going to save the children, and they're going to come in with all these solutions to problems that don't exist, because no one's harming the children in libraries.

But it goes even bigger than that, because then they start legislating. They have all these horrible bills and, you know, every state has seen these bills that they're trying to criminalize librarians for having, quote-unquote, "sexually explicit material" in the libraries. But they don't define what sexually explicit is, so that could be a statue of David in an art history book, you know. And so librarians are scared. They want to put us in prison.

I know in my own state, my former school board rep ran on this platform of protecting everyone. And she got—she won her seat as state representative, and she filed a bill immediately that, had it passed—and by the way, they nicknamed that the Amanda Jones Bill, my former friend and school board—yeah, love her. She filed HB 777 that, had it passed, librarians who attended American Library Association conferences could have had to serve two years hard labor in prison, which is so nuts.

But the overall plan—over all of it, because it's all of that—but the overall plan is to push in white Christian nationalism, authoritarianism, and privatize schools, public schools, and privatize public libraries. It's a grift.

Brad: If you can chip away at the funding anywhere in the public school system, you can get to a place where those public schools are not solvent. They can't exist. And then we see the other pivot, which is to vouchers, which is to sending public money to private schools. And all of a sudden you're in schools that can restrict the viewpoints and the histories that are taught. The curriculum can be designed and engineered to look more like PragerU than something like a pluralistic and diverse and multicultural curriculum. And so it is a grift.

And, you know, I think what's amazing too—sorry, I'll just be quiet here and get back to our program—but the idea that you would "save the children," this has always been the strategy. If we can convince you that we are on the side of the children, whether it's in reproductive rights, whether it's anywhere we feel like we can win the battle in the public square.

And I guess just before we go to ways people can fight back, my last question is, just, did you see that play out in your fight, which is small-town folks, normal, everyday parents getting suckered into this idea that their kids needed saving from these nefarious forces that were somehow in the library teaching them all manner of perverted or adult or rated-R material that all of a sudden was this big, bad demon that was going to come get their children? To me, there are extremists and agitators, but there's this big group in the middle of folks who just get sucked into this online and on Facebook, and that's where a lot of the problem lies.

Amanda: It is. I saw people that I've known my whole life just get suckered into this. You know, there are people—students that I taught in their 30s—that have come to the library board meetings, and they walked in the room, and I wave at them: "Hey." And then I see them go walk over and sit with the church people. And I realized, and I look at those kids, and I'm like, "Well, they all came from broken homes. They've all been groomed by these pastors to do these pastors' bidding." And it's something I've seen in my community time and time again.

And also, I call it the Fox News effect, because my parents, case in point, they brought me up in a household that was very strong Republican, strong Southern Baptist, "Love thy neighbor as thyself," champion the underdog, Constitution is key. And then after they've retired, they sit in front of Fox News 24/7, and suddenly these values and morals and things that they've taught me, that they instilled into me, I'm not seeing them saying the same things anymore. And then they—it's like that for a lot of people in my community. And then they turn and they say, "Well, look at Amanda Jones acting like this. She's woke. She's a liberal." And I'm like, "I'm just doing what you raised me to do. It's not my fault you've lost your way. I'm the product of my upbringing," which was also to be exposed to books.

So I'm just—yeah. But it's normal people that just get sucked into it, and they believe everything they see on social media, everything. And that is the tragedy, I think, that had we not had COVID, where a lot of people were quarantined and we were at home for a lot more time than we used to, we saw that rise in social media, which just has exacerbated this. And people have lost all rational thought, and they're so quick to see somebody post something, and everybody wants to pick up their pitchforks and kill the beast. And they don't want to slow down and realize maybe there's not a beast there anyway.

Brad: Well, but—or maybe they could realize, like, "Hey, you know, when I was 12, I used to go to a library where Amanda Jones worked, and that was a really good experience for me as an awkward pre-teen, and that woman was nice to me, and I felt safe in that place. What would it take for that space and that woman to turn into this demonic child-grooming pervert that people are saying?" Maybe I should ask myself, like, "Huh, I have had a lived experience with that person. I've gone to that library, and now I'm supposed to believe it is a perverted dungeon of sexual debauchery."

Amanda: They all do this under the guise of protecting children, but they set the most horrible examples for how to act and behave to children. Because what kind of person wants to destroy their child's school librarian, or their—what kind of person, what kind of example is that to set? You know, we must destroy, because it wasn't just that they objected to my speech. They wanted to destroy me as a person. Yeah. And my story is not unique. This is happening in every single state. I can name a librarian in every single state that this has happened to. Yeah. And it's like, kill, kill, kill, destroy, destroy.

And it's not all alt-right, far-right people. It's people in the middle as well. And I just beg of them, like—even, and I go back to my parents, they'll watch Fox News, they'll say, "Did you see such and such on the TV?" And I'm like, "Well, just last week, they posted about book banning, and I explained to you how wrong that was. Where's the leap to the thought that maybe everything that's on this show is not—" Yeah, or "everything you see on social media is not true." But people, I think people are angry right now, and they just want to be angry. Well, I don't know.

Brad: They think that destroying someone or something is going to make them feel better. And, you know, I'll just say one more thing, and we'll go to what people can do to fight back.

The expert on democracy and the demise of democracy, Barbara F. Walter, always says, "The first thing you could do to strengthen American democracy is regulate social media." People can post what they want, but there has to be notes that say this is true, this is not true, this is inaccurate, this is a lot, you know. And every time Barbara Walter is asked, "What should we do to fix our public square?" that's the first thing she says.

And as you're talking right now, I'm just like, what—there's a good case in point. Here's a woman who grew up in this town, a small town, works at the place she went to school, everybody knows who she is, and they were still able to convince folks in town that you were doing all of these ridiculous things and grooming and pedophilia, whatever, even though most of them had been with you at the school, been students, they knew you, et cetera.

Brad: So all right, chapter 15 of your book is all about how people can fight back. Let's give people three ways they can fight back before we go. And then they're gonna have to read the book to get the rest.

But you mentioned a great place to go, which is We the Librarians, which shares stories about different librarians, but is also a place people can encourage their local librarian who may be under attack or getting threatened. What is We the Librarians? Why is that a helpful way for people to contribute?

Amanda: Well, I haven't really kept up with them in the past few months, but I'm assuming they're still doing—what they'll do is they'll send notes, positive notes. You can sign up to send positive notes to other librarians. You can report if something is happening to a librarian, so that those librarians can get positive notes. Because I know that over the past three and a half years, for every death threat I've got, I got a thousand positive notes—not from people in my community, but from people outside of the community.

And so those positive notes really make a difference. And I'll go to book signings, and people will flip me cards. And those notes, really—I have binders. And so when I'm in court and I'm having to deal with all of these awful things, I just flip through my binder of positivity. So yeah, you can definitely—but you don't have to use it. Call your local library, call your child's school librarian, and say, "Hey," or send them an email. "Hey, I just want to let you know I'm on your side. If you ever need my support." That's really the simplest thing you can do.

If you want to get out into a broader—do something a little broader, I would say that you have to pay attention. It's apathy that got us here. You have to pay attention. You have to watch your school board meetings. You have to watch your library board of control meetings, your city governance. Watch those agendas. They all post them 24 hours in advance. And if something doesn't seem right, it's probably not right, and you need to go and speak out about it.

And speaking out—I don't mean actually speak out, because speaking out can come in different ways. You can just—a lot of places you can fill out a card saying you oppose, but you don't want to speak out. I know you can do that in the legislature. But speaking out as in, like—we have a lot of people in my town who support the library, but they don't want to get up and speak, so they wear purple to our library board meetings, because red and blue makes purple, and librarians should be nonpartisan, and we should all want libraries. So, you know, find little ways to speak out however you can.

But fill out those—on social media. If you're following like American Library Association or EveryLibrary or National Coalition Against Censorship, they put out petitions all the time. Sign those petitions, because a lot of times people say, "Oh, well, what's my signature gonna matter?" Well, in Louisiana, we had nine anti-library bills, and we ran as Louisiana Citizens Against Censorship. We ran a campaign, an email campaign, and we sent 44,000 emails to the legislature, and they cited that as to why they didn't pass eight of those nine bills. So they do make a difference.

You've got to vote. You've got to vote. And then I would say, lastly, if you're looking for a way to help, look up—look at our website. Louisiana Citizens Against Censorship. We have a resource toolkit geared for students, parents, community members, people from all walks of life and ways that they can help. But you've got to stay informed and pay attention.

Brad: One of the trickiest things for me in this whole domain is the difficulty in publicly opposing somebody who is saying, "Well, I'm here to protect children. I'm just a concerned mother, and I don't want this book, and I'm holding up a book that has a page that I'm reading from that has some material that sounds really, really raunchy."

And I think there's folks out there that are like, "Okay, I'm gonna sign these petitions, I'm going to send emails, I'm going to pay attention, and I'm going to get involved." And friends, it does make a difference. I want to shout out SoCal Extremism Watch, which watches the PTA and school board meetings in Southern California, and they are making a massive difference in those communities facing down the same church people that you're talking about, Amanda, who flood those meetings and try to take them over. You have to—you know, one of the biggest things you mentioned in the chapter is to form an alliance. You have to form alliances with like-minded parents and community members and work together, because the other side is doing that already, and they have been.

But what happens when I'm in a place, online, in public at a meeting, and somebody says, "Well, do you want these gross books in our library? Look what this says. I'm just a mom who doesn't want my little, impressionable children getting groomed. I guess you're just on the side of the pedophiles." What am I supposed to say to that?

Amanda: I always, when they say that, I say, "What book are you talking about, and where is it found in the library?" Because chances are that book is not found in the children's section of libraries. So I always say, "Give me a title."

In fact, that's what my alliance—so I founded an alliance in my community for our public library, Livingston Parish Library Alliance, and that was the first thing we started was if somebody's telling you something that seems so outlandish, let's get to the bottom of it. Tell them to give you a title, and they'll give titles, and we say, "Oh, well, that's in the adult section where it should be."

And if they say, "Oh, well, I don't like a book like Pride Puppy, because it's a puppy in a parade," well, then I explain to them there's nothing sexual in that book, but you don't get to decide, because you're homophobic, that that book doesn't get to be accessed by everybody else in the community.

But just get down—I never talk about the books. What book are you talking about? And then if it's a book, and they say, "I really don't think it should be there," that is their right, and I believe it is their right to go and file a reconsideration form. I don't want to deny them that right.

That's not what we're seeing. We're not seeing organic parents that actually have real concerns. In fact, the American Library Association, in their latest report on book banning, 72% of the book bans have come from political action groups in the past year. It's not organic.

Brad: It's astroturf. It's the federal incurring on the local.

I'll leave you with this, and I'm curious if you think this is a helpful way to go about this. But one of the things that has occurred to me in these debates is that I know that you're supposed to be the super-parent because you are so concerned about every book in the library, you're making yourself out to be a superhero as a parent, and you're making it out like the rest of us simply don't care.

And I think the response for me is like, I grew up in a town with a strong public school system. I went K through 12 in public schools, and I now have classmates of mine who are MAGA school board members who are saying, "Well, I can't believe the things that are in our libraries that we grew up in."

And my response is like, you know, when we grew up, we had parents who cared about us, they talked to us, they worked through really important issues with us, like things about our community and race and sex. And, you know, they didn't do everything perfect. And I think a lot of us have decided we want to do better and improve upon the experience we had with our own parents, so we're going to even be more intentional about talking to our kids about the most important things.

In your house, that might be race, or, when it comes time, things related to sexuality. It could be about Jesus. Those are important things too. But you know, Dave, I'm a pretty good parent, and I'm there when my kid falls down and scrapes their knee. I'm also there to talk through all the confusing and hard and devilish aspects of being a human being. There's just a lot to work through, Dave, and I'm here for that. Are you?

Because if you're not, that's fine, but we can't do your job for you, Dave. If your kid's out in public and they are exposed to ideas or words or other things that are scary to you, you can't blame me for that, and you're going to have to pick it up as a parent, David. Okay? That's your job. That's snarky, but—

Amanda: I would say too, you know, if you are a parent that does want to control what your kid is reading, but then you give them unfettered access to iPads and phones, you're being a little hypocritical, because I don't know any kid that's wandering around the library one—

Brad: Let me see what I can find. They're—

Amanda: Having in their hand as if—

Brad: In 2025, the easiest way to look at forbidden things is by getting them in print.

Amanda: Yeah, I'm gonna go find that one book that that lady posted on Facebook and go find it. No, I tell people, you know, my six-year-old nephew can type in XXX in his phone and be exposed to all sorts of things, which is ironic because I as a librarian, my school—librarians teach internet safety, and they don't like me teaching internet safety here. So is it really about protecting the children, or is it really about control?

Brad: But you're making a great point. Hey, you want to yell at us about this one book in the library, and then when we get home, you're too busy—whatever you're doing, Dave, I don't know what you're doing, watching TV—or you just don't have time for your kids, so you're like, "Yo, take the iPad," and four hours later you check on them. Well, who knows what they were looking at during that period, bud? You know, that's something to think about.

Brad: All right, I need to let you go. Folks are going to want to follow along with you and the book and any events you might still be doing for the book. So what's the best way to link up with you, Amanda?

Amanda: I'm trying on Instagram. I haven't been on it too long, but it's @ThatLibrarianJones on Instagram, and I'm also on Bluesky at @LibrarianJones. I have a website, LibrarianJones.com. It is so out of date. I do try to keep the updates—the court updates. I've got to do one tonight. But I try to keep it up and running, but usually I post on Instagram, on Bluesky.

Brad: Well, thank you for dropping by. Thank you for writing this book. Thank you for standing up for libraries, for free speech, the freedom of thought, the flow of ideas. I will always say thank you to a librarian anytime of the day, and just appreciate everything you're doing.

As always, friends, we'll be back with "It's in the Code" Wednesday. We'll be back on Friday with the weekly roundup. We're doing this three days a week. If you can think about supporting us, it would help us out a lot. You can catch us here on the podcast or on YouTube, and there's just so many ways to support what we're up to. So please check that out in the show notes. Think about becoming a paid subscriber or sending in a donation, buying some merch, whatever you can do.

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