David McAvoy stepped up to protect his local library from censorship, and you can, too.

Bad news, everyone. Book banning is back. Free speech advocates report a hurdling spike in attempts to scrape schools and libraries of materials on LGBTQ themes, racial history and sex education. 

In Arkansas, Craighead County was the canary in the coal mine on this latest wave of censorship rolling across the country. First Amendment defenders in Jonesboro have been busy for months fending off calls to scrub books on puberty, sexuality and gender from the shelves. One of those 1A defenders is David McAvoy, a paralegal by day and a clear-thinking, dedicated organizer of the group Citizens Defending the Craighead County Library by night. The group notched a win by defeating a proposal to give library board members veto power over materials they deemed inappropriate. But they took a hit in November when library Director David Eckert quit to pursue a job in a different, presumptively more forward-thinking state.

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McAvoy shared what it takes to hold the gates to knowledge open when so many are trying to push them shut, and what he sees ahead in the fight against censorship.

So what kicked off this fuss over what’s on library shelves?

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It first became apparent back in June, when the library got complaints over a Pride Month display. There was a children’s section display with things like a book about the two penguin dads. There was one about a bear who felt like a bunny rabbit, things like that. None of these books had anything particularly offensive to them. The one book that the opposition focused on was “The GayBCs.” They singled in on this page where it says “B is for bisexual,” where it explained that some boys like boys, some like girls, some like both. People said that was inappropriate to teach a child about.

There were a lot of exaggerated things said about it that were just not grounded in reality. Then our state senator, Dan Sullivan, put a call out on Facebook to go complain to the Quorum Court in July to try to get funding cut for the library. It turned out they couldn’t do it, because a bunch more people showed up in support of the library. 

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And what inspired you personally to take action?

My spouse and I are a gay couple. We don’t have children, but we have nieces and nephews. There were all these people coming in and saying these books were inappropriate. Darrel Cook, a Craighead County JP, said they should put them in a private room with the pornography. What library has he been going to?

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It’s the old saying, when books burn, in time, people will burn. This isn’t about just pages and what’s written on those pages. It’s about ideas. It’s about people who are vulnerable, people these folks have picked out because they don’t like this trait or that trait about them. History shows that’s a very dangerous thing. That’s how the worst things in history got rolling.

The people who have organized around this recognized it for the dangerous and awful thing it is, and we’re not going to let it happen in our community.

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How would you sum up the mission of Citizens Defending the Craighead County Library?

We’re basically trying to prevent censorship in our public library and keep it an open, inclusive place with something on its shelves for everyone in our community.

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What was your strategy to keep books from being banned?

So some of us started talking on social media, we started texting, and a lot of us have banded together to stop this. We pushed back hard and have been really successful with it. People who tried to censor the library have been significantly outnumbered.

We were very well organized. We just listened at the first meeting, which was kind of a circus. We saw that to get on the agenda you had to put in a request so many days before the meeting, so we organized our requests and made sure we had speakers. The other side hadn’t put in any requests to speak. When they realized what was going on they had a total freakout.

This debate can feel pretty personal and mean-spirited, and you’ve been in the trenches for months. How do you keep going?

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We’ve all had days when we’ve been upset and emotional about it. There’ve been days when I’ve been as mad as a wet wasp, but we all provide shoulders for each other when someone is upset. We calm each other down. If someone is exhausted and can’t do any more of the work, someone else will pick up the slack for a while. That’s really what has been the backbone of it.

Who in the community has stepped up?

So, these people who have been singling out people who are different started with LGBTQ people, but are now moving on to their other “undesirables,” and that’s really brought us all together, across the spectrum. We’ve got pastors in churches, allies, lots of people who are looking at this and seeing how it started with LGBTQ and is creeping into critical race theory, so they’re ready to get involved. [The book banners] helped unite our community by attacking us. That’s proven to be a very powerful thing, that we’re all here for each other and support each other. And we’ve won some battles, but the wolf is always at the door. We’re seeing this kind of thing across the country now. 

 

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