The culture wars have slammed into “Surf City USA” like a rogue wave.
In the March 5 primary election, voters in Huntington Beach approved measures pushed by local conservative elected leaders to require voter identification in municipal elections and to limit which flags could fly on city property.
The latter effectively prohibits the display on the city’s famed pier and other city property of the rainbow Pride flags that the LGBTQ+ community has embraced.
But what really has much of the citizenry worked up is what they see as the conservative majority’s meddling with the city’s public library, which by most accounts is a well-run, well-used cultural crown jewel.
Last October, the conservative council majority passed a resolution seeking to stop children from having access to books and materials containing “any content of a sexual nature.” Some books about potty training and puberty have already been moved to the adult section of the library, and library supporters expect dozens of volumes about “gender identity” and race to be the next up for “relocation.”
Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark and her three conservative compatriots on the seven-member council also have approved the creation of a 21-member “community parent-guardian review board” that would decide what library materials to procure and where to place them.
Perhaps most concerning to many library proponents was the council’s authorization on March 19 of a bidding process that could put a private company in charge of managing the library.
In 2023, public libraries saw a 92% increase over the previous year in the number of book titles targeted for censorship.
In recent years, right-leaning politicians and activists such as Moms for Liberty have agitated for more community control over library materials in public schools. Now they are focusing on public libraries — which have long been bastions of community engagement and the right to read.
In a state that swings mostly blue, Huntington Beach moved further to the right in 2022 when a conservative majority took control of the city council.
Book-banning or book “relocation” efforts strike many library advocates as straight out of the MAGA playbook. The American Library Association (ALA), the American Civil Liberties Union, Authors Against Book Bans, EveryLibrary and PEN America are resisting, with mixed results, the efforts to limit access to books.
A few states have passed laws that could impose severe penalties on librarians, including fines and prison time, if they distribute material deemed to be obscene or harmful.
In 2023, public libraries saw a 92% increase over the previous year in the number of book titles targeted for censorship, the ALA said in a report released March 14.
“What started in school libraries has now moved to public libraries,” said Martha Hickson, 64, a librarian at North Hunterdon High School in Annandale, N.J. “Public libraries are under attack as well.”
Hickson’s fierce resistance to book bans has helped galvanize support in her community for students’ right to read. She acknowledged that her union membership and tenure have protected her.
“I’m fairly senior in my career,” she said. “If I were a younger librarian who needed to work for another 20 years or so, I might not be so willing to fight. They might quietly remove books from a shelf to avoid controversy and stop ordering such books. That concept of soft censorship is very hard to measure.”
Among the volumes that were initially moved from the children’s section of the Huntington Beach Public Library were books about potty training and puberty.
Carol Daus, a board member of Friends of the Huntington Beach Public Library, a nonprofit group that supports the library’s mission, is one of many residents appalled by the council’s actions.
“Our award-winning public library is being tarnished because of four people who are more interested in promoting an ultra-far-right political agenda than meeting the needs of 200,000 residents,” she wrote in a letter to the editor in the Los Angeles Times last November.
Her concern has only grown in recent months, during which librarians have been disparaged in public meetings as groomers and pedophiles. On Facebook and other social media sites, library supporters who handed out leaflets opposing the book relocations were similarly branded.
“I was so protective of this library,” Daus said in an interview. “I raised three children here and have spent so many hours in the library. … What [Van Der Mark] is trying to do is relocate books that she is uncomfortable with. This really irritates us. What gives her the right to determine what we feel is appropriate for our children?”
On a visit to the Dion Neutra-designed central library in early March, Daus pointed out signs of change. In one area, a Teen Central sign was taken down, and comfy seating that had encouraged teens to relax and read or meet up with friends was removed.
In the children’s library room, a faux ship features seating for young readers, cartoon images of a fish and an octopus, and a book on a mast with the words: “Once upon a time ….”
A small sign on a bookshelf reads: “Books in this section of the Children’s Non-Fiction Collection may have been relocated to the 4th floor of the Adult Collection in compliance with City Council Resolution No. 2023-41. Only adult card holders and minors with the Youth Access library card will be able [sic] check out these items.”
Among the volumes that were initially moved from the children’s library were books about potty training and puberty. A few such titles were returned after community members protested.
The current list of relocated books mentions 30 titles. But Daus suspects that number will grow once the new review committee takes aim at dozens of books about “gender identity” and people of color. Based on Van Der Mark’s and others’ remarks about books over time, the library community senses that the review committee will simply choose not to acquire new books on these topics if it deems them objectionable. One clue, Daus added, is that the city will not be acknowledging Pride Month in June. In past years, the library set up a table featuring books with LGBTQ+ themes.
A handful of Republican-led states have passed laws that make it a crime to lend certain library books to children.
In a recent segment on KCAL, Allison Lee, PEN America’s Los Angeles director, asked Van Der Mark about Everyone Poops, a silly and popular 1977 classic by Tarō Gomi that was moved from the children’s section. “What is so scary?” Lee said. Van Der Mark indicated that the committee would look at the book and likely return it to the children’s section.
Lee said the city had created a “censorship committee of other people, not professionals, who will decide for you, for me, for other parents what our children can read instead of allowing us to make those decisions for ourselves.”
One outspoken opponent of the right-wing agenda is Kanan Durham, 32, a transgender man who works in Huntington Beach. He has channeled his dismay into activism as executive director of Pride at the Pier, an Orange County queer political advocacy nonprofit organization. Durham works closely with a number of the progressive grassroots organizations in Huntington Beach that are pushing back on changes at the library.
For two hours every Sunday, Durham joins members of HB Banned Book Story Time, an ardently pro-library group, at a table in front of the Huntington Beach Public Library. They display the books about puberty, potty training and human biology that have been removed from the children’s library. The group has said that it is seeking to educate library patrons about the nature of the relocated books and to get more people involved in the political process.
Advocates of public libraries say the book-banning and book-relocation campaigns show disrespect for professional public librarians and place important decisions about reading materials with people who have no expertise and might not fully read and consider any books at issue. They say parents should trust trained professionals to curate reading materials. (The Huntington Beach librarians belong to unions.)
The ALA and other groups have decried the rise of what they say are copycat bans. Many groups fomenting for book bans rely on Book Looks, a website started in 2022 by a now former member of the Brevard County, Fla., chapter of the “parental rights” group Moms for Liberty. (In 2023, the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled Moms for Liberty an extremist group.)
A handful of Republican-led states have passed laws that make it a crime to lend certain library books to children.
In Arkansas, a federal judge last summer temporarily blocked portions of a new law that would create criminal liability for librarians who distribute “obscene” or “harmful to minors” content.
In February, West Virginia Republicans passed a bill in the House of Delegates that would remove criminal-liability protections for schools, public libraries and museums. The state Senate has yet to take up the measure, which could lead to prison sentences and fines for public librarians who display or distribute “obscene matter to a minor.”
“Government officials should not force their own personal beliefs onto the public.”~ Barbara Richardson, retired Huntington Beach librarian
Occasionally, librarians and other advocates promoting freedom to read prevail.
In Jamestown, Mich., voters last November approved funding for the public Patmos Library after having voted the year before to defund the library because of some residents’ concerns about books with LGBTQ+ themes.
In Glen Ridge, N.J., in 2022 and 2023, an organization called Citizens Defending Education challenged six titles, including books about gay identity and puberty, at the public library. The community resisted.
“We probably had the best experience anyone could have,” said Tina Marie Doody, the library’s director. “There was an overwhelming community response against removing the books, and the library board unanimously voted to keep the books on the shelves in their original locations.”
One critic of the changes looming in Huntington Beach is Barbara Richardson, who worked at the central library in Huntington Beach for 32 years, first as a children’s librarian and then as senior librarian. She retired in 2020 and has been an on-call substitute for the library’s storyteller program.
“In the beginning, I couldn’t believe it,” Richardson said of the decision to relocate books from the children’s library room. “I spoke out against it at City Hall and wrote letters to the editor. I asked: How are you going to do this? Who is going to decide? These books have been well reviewed for children. Who gets to decide what’s considered obscene?”
Richardson said many public librarians have felt intimidated by the challenges to their professional integrity and accusations that they have attempted to “groom” children. At a council meeting on April 16, Melissa Ronning, a Huntington Beach principal librarian and former children’s librarian, resigned in protest of the council’s censorship. Many in the audience jeered her and sarcastically applauded her announcement.
Daus said Assembly Bill 1825, the California Freedom to Read Act, now under consideration in Sacramento, could serve as a counterpoint to efforts to limit access to books. The measure would require the governing board of each public library to establish a written policy for the selection and use of library materials that would adhere to the ALA’s Library Bill of Rights. Public libraries would not be allowed to prohibit books “because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval of the ideas contained in those materials.”
On March 29 in downtown Huntington Beach, library proponents staged a silent protest march. They carried signs reading “FREADOM” and “Keep Our Libraries Public.”
Daus and other library proponents fear that the privatization fix might be in. Library Systems & Services LLC (LS&S) — a private company that manages libraries in Upland, Escondido, Palmdale, Riverside County and elsewhere throughout the nation — approached the city and said it could operate the library “at a substantial annual cost savings.” Michael Posey, a former Huntington Beach mayor, is a sales executive for the company.
“They have to find savings somewhere,” Patrick “PC” Sweeney, political director at EveryLibrary, said of LS&S. “Typically, it’s by slashing budgets for staffing or collections.”
Daus said libraries managed by LS&S tend to focus on bestsellers and end up resembling cookie-cutter bookstores. Some cities, she noted recently in an opinion piece for Voice of OC, end up canceling or not renewing their outsourcing contracts with LS&S because of “poor performance, a loss of community control, no transparency and unanticipated costs.”
Library proponents vow to maintain their hands-off-our-library commentary and protests.
“Government officials should not force their own personal beliefs onto the public,” said Richardson, the retired Huntington Beach librarian. “I have never heard from any of the children or parents that I served in the 32 years I worked at the library that they were harmed or mentally damaged by any of the library books they checked out.”
