The Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy (BBFFL) will honor the far-left radical American Library Association (ALA) at a gala event in Washington, D.C., next month. The former Republican First Lady established the BDFFL in March 1989 for Family Literacy to promote literacy programs.
The foundation will host its “National Celebration of Reading” at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, October 11, 2023.
“Recipients of the 2023 Barbara Bush National Literacy Honors Award will be the American Library Association and social media influencer Oliver James,” BBFFL announced in a press release. Oliver James is a 34-year-old TikTok influencer who is teaching himself how to read.
Far-left journalist and MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart will emcee the gala event and New York Times bestselling authors Cheryl Strayed, Steven Rowley and Rebecca Yarros are featured in the lineup. Former U.S. Congressman Mike J. Rogers (MI) and his wife Kristi Rogers will serve as chairs for the event.
The ALA is reportedly the oldest and largest library association in the world, with 49,727 members as of 2021.
Under its influence, woke politics have invaded public libraries across the nation, twisting them into radical-left strongholds that regularly host obscene “Drag Queen Story Hours” for children, while disfavoring Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House on the Prairie” as an undesirable reflection of “dated cultural attitudes toward Indigenous people and people of color that contradict modern acceptance, celebration, and understanding of diverse communities.”
Earlier this month, the self-avowed “Marxist Lesbian” president of the American Library Association declared that public schools and libraries need to be “sites of socialist organizing” at the Socialism 2023 conference in Chicago.
Emily Drabinski, who was elected president of the nonprofit ALA in April of 2022, has been openly hostile toward Christians and “normal family types” over the years.
She has reportedly stated that her “queerness includes the subversion of those kind of normal family types,” has criticized what she calls the “Christo-fascist right,” and defended drag queen story hours as a “space based on an ideology that centered notions of queerness and difference rather than democracy and citizenship.”
In a 2013 article headlined “Queering the Catalog: Queer Theory and the Politics of Correction,” Drabinski criticized the Dewey Decimal System for including “overwhelmingly Christian” works.
Earlier this year, the ALA offered a guidance on how to thwart Christian actor and author Kirk Cameron’s reading events at public libraries.
🚨 1/ BREAKING: We have obtained exclusive evidence that the taxpayer-funded American Library Association @ALALibrary is circulating guidance to sabotage conservative or Christian parent groups from gathering in public libraries on August 5th. One ALA director gave suggestions on… pic.twitter.com/iBqwIChNhJ
— BRAVE BOOKS (@BraveBooksUS) June 26, 2023
Over 50 public libraries denied or ignored actor Cameron’s requests for a story-hour slot to read his new children’s book. According to his publisher Brave Books, however, every library it contacted had hosted “drag queen” story hours or other “queer friendly” programs for kids.
While it actively discriminates against Christian groups, the ALA offers a “toolkit” for public libraries to defend their Drag Queen story times and obscene LGBTQ children’s books.
Senators Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Mike Braun (R-Ind.) and Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) recently called on the Institute of Museum and Library Services to halt all federal funding to the ALA pending the outcome of an investigation into the alleged discrimination against Brave Books.
“The ALA should not be eligible to receive federal funding should an investigation find that the ALA violated the First Amendment rights of Americans,” the senators’ July 28 letter said.
Republican lawmakers across the nation appear to be slowly waking up to the far-left’s capture of the nation’s public libraries and are increasingly calling for the ALA to be defunded.
The State Freedom Caucus Network has taken a lead on the effort, calling on states to “ensure that no taxpayer dollars can be used by these associations or by state and local libraries to support the ALA in any way.”
“Our libraries are local treasures,” the network said in an Aug. 3 open letter. “We will not let them be overrun and held hostage by a radical organization acting well outside what its core mission should be.”
The Montana State Library Association voted in July to break off from the American Library Association, saying the state constitution “forbids association with an organization led by a Marxist,” the Times reported. Texas has also ditched the ALA, according to the paper.
The Bush family led the Republican party for twelve years through the presidencies of George H.W. Bush (1989-1993) and George W. Bush (2001-2009).