FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Clean Up Alabama's Sarah Sanchez - Jeff Poor Show - Tuesday 8-06-24
(upbeat music) From Bucks Pocket to the shores of Orange Beach, at all points in between, an insider's perspective on Alabama politics. It's the Jeff Porshow. ♪ I don't think I ain't done it this way ♪ Welcome back to the Jeff Porshow here on FM Talk 106.5. Once again, I am not Jeff Pors. Jeff Pors is my illustrious boss over there at 18.19 news. I am merely a lowly news reporter here filling in the forum. Text line is open, two, five, one, three, four, three, zero, one, zero, six. Unknown caller says, I am laughing at your response to the text. Keep up the good job. Don't be a stranger. Well, thank you so much. I think I'm funny from time to time, but it's always good to hear good feedback despite what Jean has to say, who I have been informed is actually a gentleman. So feel free to text back, girl name. Coming up, we have Sarah Sanchez. She is the assistant director at Cleanup, Alabama. That was started as a response to the preponderance of sexually explicit children's books that were found initially in the Prattville Library and it has since grown all over the state and they have been very involved and the lawmakers, the governor and everyone else in between has started voicing their opinion on what has become a very, very, very hot button issue in the state. So Sarah, how you doing today? - Hello, I'm doing great. How are you? - I'm doing quite well. Thank you so much for showing up. I'm glad to have you. - Sure, I'm glad to be here. - So for those who don't know, maybe just give like a brief blurb about yourself and Cleanup, Alabama and how you started and what you've been doing for the past year. - All right, well, it started out when I heard about a girl named a girl, a gal named Hannah Reese, a fellow homeschool mom was showing up to City Council, reading out some books that she had found that were wildly inappropriate for kids under 18 in our local library. When we saw her launching this movement, so to speak, we jumped in because we wanted to lend a hand and I say we, my husband and I, and so we just began, we thought bringing this to the attention of our city and our county that they would do something about it because we generally were under the impression that these are, for the most part, Christian, conservative, public officials, but it turned out to be quite the fight. There was a lot of pushback and from liberal people in our community and our politicians, unfortunately, were very weak to that pressure and we really had to keep fighting, keep fighting, take this to the state level and just really, we had to mobilize our community to show up to these meetings and get involved and even then it was just, it was a lot harder than we thought it would be in our so-called conservative community. But we're here now and we've had, we've been successful in seeing a conservative library board and stated in our local Autogaprapo library, they have enacted a policy that protects children from explicit content, they have stood strong on this even in the face of a lawsuit now that they are at the federal level that they're looking at and we also have seen state code changes in the Alabama Public Library Service that sets these state codes and they released the funding to libraries based on their being in compliance with these codes. So that has been a success and we're just hoping that everybody, we can only do so much. We can, our local library is where we fight the best and that's the same for every person in Alabama. So we're, why we want to lend a hand and support to anyone that's fighting this fight in their own community at the end of the day, they're the ones that have to see it across the finish line. - Well, you mentioned that federal lawsuit that was brought up and that occurred in Pratt, though, after they made, they had a complete remake up of the board, the library board over the past year and they implemented certain policies and the left-wing types of people that were supportive of keeping the sexually explicit children's books in the libraries, they filed a federal lawsuit challenging those rule changes, claiming they were unconstitutional, et cetera, et cetera. Maybe talk a little bit about that and maybe why it's so important for people not in the Prattville and Montgomery area, why it's relevant for them. - Sure, so Prattville Library is the tip of the spear and their stand on this, as they fight this in court, what we're gonna see is that really, this is a challenge at this point, it's not just a challenge on Prattville Library Code or Prattville Library Policy. Prattville Library Policy is now, it's aligned with the state code for all libraries. So actually, this is not just a challenge on Prattville, this is a challenge on the state library code, ultimately. And that's not where the case is right now, but because of that, and because of the alignment that we have with the state code, our library attorneys, they have filed, they shared at the last library board meeting last week that they have filed a motion to dismiss the case. However, the plaintiffs have also filed a motion to amend their case. So because there is some editing of the policy, not to compromise the policy, but to bring it fully in alignment with state policy, so that their case could have been dismissed because they could say, look, we're just doing what state policy requires here. But it is important because it really, any library is watching this right now to see, first of all, how expensive is this? This is an expensive fight, and we do have to pay our attorneys, and that doesn't necessarily, you can't necessarily come out of the library budget for multiple reasons, but ultimately we're gonna see, is this a fight that people really believe in fighting? And if we, at victory at this level, means that it just opens the floodgates for other libraries in the state to follow suit without fear of being sued. So we're gonna watch and see what happens. A lot of it's in motion right now, so we're really waiting to see what the judge says about these different motions to either amend it or dismiss it. - Yeah, it also seems like if they accept the amended complaint that it seems somewhat likely, even, that the state would have to get involved in litigation of what they're challenging is directly related to the state code that would fall under the attorney general's purview, and then it would become an issue where it's a state issue fighting this in court and not just the Prattville Library. Shifting from Prattville, though, I know that in the Huntsville Madison County Library, they've had some issues with the recent code changes from the Alabama Public Library Service and the possibility of losing out on state funding. Do you have any update on that on what's going on in Huntsville and Madison? - Yes, they are continuing to approve books that have been challenged in that library that are just totally explicit. There was another one that was just recently, like in the last few days, approved to stay in the young adult section. It's called "Tricks" by Ellen Hopkins. I've read, I've reviewed that book myself. I will never get it out of my head. I was so disturbed by the graphic nature of what was depicted. And it just goes so beyond informing about sex trafficking, for example, in this issue. It too, I mean, I don't know how you would read it and not have some sort of trauma from it. So anyway, they are continuing to push this and they want these books in their library. They are very clear about, "Oh, these are our reasons why we want these books. We want people to know about these issues. We want kids to know that this is going on." But it just goes so beyond that. They want kids to have their hands on this stuff. Their library is totally fine not getting state funding at this point. They said, "Keep your money, APLS. We want to give our kids muddy books." So we'll take the nasty books and you keep your money. And the issue there will be, can they get city officials who can appoint solid library board members? So that is basically a holdout up there right now. And we're just praying for a breakthrough. And we're hoping that everybody local up there will really get involved in their city council elections, make sure I know there's a couple people that are up for reelection up there. They need to get good, solid, conservative people in there who can make a difference in the appointments on the library board because the current ones are not protecting our kids. - Yeah, and it obviously is a statewide issue and you're, but it seems that you're focusing on the local aspect of it, which is ultimately where these decisions are made. Huntsville Madison being a great example of that. But I mean, going back to the statewide aspect of this, obviously I covered the legislature. I was down there the whole time we were in session. And there were several bills that they put out to try to address this in one shape or another, whether it's regulating the content or talking about state funding. It seemed like that, well, most of the bills, if not all of them, if memory serves me correctly, sort of got drowned out by all the noise around gambling, like a lot of other bills. So talk a little bit about that and then maybe tell us what your plan is to do as far as advocating lawmakers leading up to 2025. - Okay, sure. So currently we have pre-filed representative Mooney's bill and the number just fell out of my head. I think it's HB4, I just had it up on my computer, sorry. - I think you're correct, I think it's HB4. - Yes, so this bill is basically the bill that, I think it's pretty much the same as what he introduced in the last session. It almost made it through, but it got lost in the sad thing around gambling or the clock just ran out. It sucked all the oxygen out of the atmosphere. And so his bill would basically require, well, it would change the criminal code for obscenity law to include libraries on certain things, certain aspects. So that they would be held the same standards as other institutions and businesses that you cannot offer certain types of materials to minors. So now the people who hate this bill are screaming that we want to arrest librarians, right? That's the big argument against this bill. Nobody wants to arrest a librarian. I have not met anyone that really has it out to just go lock up the sweet lady who is doing children's story time hour, like nobody's going after that person. What we do want is to simply hold them accountable the way we would hold any other business, any other entity accountable, and you cannot offer these things to kids. So we are hoping that that bill will have more momentum that it'll get through, that maybe we won't have so many other issues, clouding the atmosphere, that issues that we really don't need in terms of protecting our kids. And so we'll be hoping to be down there, talking to people, answering questions, and just getting all of our supporters across the state involved to communicate with their representatives that they definitely want to see this bill move forward. There's also a bill in the Senate that's been pre-filed, SB6, I believe, and this is pre-filed by Senator Elliott and just recently here. And it's, this one, we're a little more, the jury's out, we're, as a group, Cleanup Alabama, we're not sure that this bill helps us, actually. It would provide for appointing authorities to be able to dismiss library board members, like basically fire them with the two-thirds vote. And if that were the case in many of these communities where library board members are trying to take a stand, you have some liberal, local, like, city and accounting authorities that could get rid of these people in a retaliatory way. And so we prefer that maybe we don't over legislate in this area and we think that probably the current accountability system could be sufficient. So that's something that we're very cautious about right now or open to discussions, but definitely not as, we're not as gung-ho on that one, I guess you could say. - Okay, that makes sense. - And yeah, I know if that answers your question. - No, no, it does. We only got a few minutes left here. I wanted to touch on one final thing. Obviously, you've been petitioning, you guys have been petitioning the APLS board. It does have a bit more friendly votes on it now, obviously our next guest, John Wall, he's a member of that board. What is going on as far as dealing with APLS? Obviously, APLS Director Nancy Pack is, you know, is who she is and there's been some tension there. What do you guys have going as far as dealing with the APLS? - Well, the thing, the major challenge has been the confusion among a lot of the local libraries trying to understand when they need to align their policies, like what's the deadline in order to get their funding. So there was a lot of conflicting information, whether or not that was purposefully made confusing. I will leave to other people to decide, but it was confusing. Our advisors are telling us that it's by the end of September that libraries need to have their policies in compliance with APLS code. And we really appreciate the APLS board. They have taken a lot of heat to take a stand on this. And, I mean, really nasty people come out and they may not always be the most powerful people in the room, but they're always a nastiest and most unhappy people in the room. And sitting through a lot of these board members, whether it's your local library board or the APLS board, they sit through a lot of attacks and a lot of unpleasant commentary and to give those people their right to speak. And we just appreciate everyone that has been taking that heat and taking that stand to get these changes in place. And I would like to also throw it out. Our local library, once again, we are the tip of the spear on this, the Prabha library. And we just, if this is something, maybe your town has a handle on their library. Maybe you're not sure where to start and maybe you don't have time to go to meetings. Maybe you would like to donate money. We could use all the help we can get in fighting our legal battle, because us fighting our legal battle, we're going out ahead of all the other libraries and all the other communities in fighting this battle. So if you can visit support, appl.org, it supports alpha, papa, papa, lema.org. There is a button there to donate and any amount helps. And this goes straight to our legal funds to fight this case to help our library stand strong so that other libraries can also stand strong. And we just really appreciate all the prayers and support and just being able to communicate all this information with everyone. - Well, hey, thank you so much for your time. Appreciate you coming on. Once again, that was Sarah Sanchez with Cleanup, Alabama. This is the Jeff Porsche on FM Talk 1065. Be right back. (upbeat music)