Crowd Gives Library Board the Finger After Library Director Is Fired

Source: Daily Beast

'YOU SUCK'

Crowd Gives Library Board the Finger After Library Director Is Fired

A longtime library director refused to rid its shelves of content. When the library board gave her the sack, all hell broke loose.

Michael Daly
Special Correspondent
Updated Aug. 01, 2023 8:25AM EDT Published Aug. 01, 2023 4:58AM EDT

As a cold civil war is waged in libraries across the nation, a conservative library board in Wyoming retains far-right fame for having led the fight against an organization viewed as a bastion of wokeness.

“We are the first library board to remove association with the American Library Association (ALA)—the first in the nation,” Chelsea Butler, chair of the Campbell County Library Board told The Daily Beast on Monday. The board broke with the ALA in October.

On Friday, the conservative majority of Butler’s board chalked up what seemed to be another clear victory. As was first reported by the Cowboy State Daily, the board voted 4-1 to fire longtime library director Terri Lesley after months of tension surrounding her refusal to weed out the library’s shelves based on a vague new policy aimed at shielding children and teens from sexual content.

But the board underestimated the cumulative appeal of someone who had long labored with a belief that the purpose of a library is to serve others. A tweet about the meeting by the Wyoming Democratic Party was probably also a factor in who packed the standing-room-only meeting on Friday. Video shows that the great vocal majority of those who packed the meeting on Friday—maybe all but 20 of 250—rose to give Lesley a standing ovation as she departed.

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Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/crowd-gives-campbell-county-library-board-in-wyoming-the-finger-after-library-director-is-fired