Death Panel podcast hosts Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Jules Gill-Peterson speak with Mariame Kaba and Melissa Gira Grant about the importance of understanding the library as a site of political contestation and a rare expression of the commons in contemporary US life, and how left organizers are fighting back against right wing attacks on public space.

Transcript by Kendra Kline. (Kendra is currently accepting freelance transcript work — email her if you need transcripts!)

Melissa Gira Grant 0:01

To just kind of shorthand this as “book bans” I feel like leaves out that this is a very targeted effort about erasing certain people's stories or restricting young people's access to vital information about gender and sexuality, vital information supplementing what they're getting in the classroom, which might be very little when it comes to the history of white supremacy in this country and its present.

Mariame Kaba 0:24

The library is, for me, the last of the public goods that exist that we don't have to ask people to dream about making. It exists. It is here. And if we lose it, we will not get it back. These are political institutions and all of them are sites of contestation.

[Intro music]

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:16

Welcome to the Death Panel. Patrons, thank you so much for supporting the show. We couldn't do any of this without you. To support the show, become a patron at patreon.com/deathpanelpod. The work we do is only possible because of the support of our patrons, and as a thank you for your support, we give you 52 extra episodes a year and access to our entire back catalogue of bonus episodes. Anyways, if you'd like to help us out a little bit more, you can share the show with your friends, post about your favorite episodes, pick up a copy of Health Communism at your local bookstore, preorder a copy of Jules' new book coming in January, called A Short History of Trans Misogyny, or request them both at your local library, and follow us @deathpanel_. So today, I am here with my co-host, Jules Gill Peterson.

Jules Gill-Peterson 2:00

Hi everyone.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 2:01

And the two of us are joined by two fantastic returning guests and friends of the Panel, to talk about libraries as an intersecting site of struggle against fascism and eugenics in the United States right now. So first, joining us today is Mariame Kaba. Mariame is an organizer, educator, archivist and curator whose work focuses on ending violence, dismantling the prison industrial complex, transformative justice, and supporting youth leadership development. She is the author and co-author of several books, including We Do This 'Til We Free Us, No More Police, and Let This Radicalize You, as well as the children's books, Missing Daddy, and See You Soon. She has also co-founded and is part of so many different organizations and projects, but the one that I'm going to name today is For the People: Leftist Library Project, which is a decentralized, autonomous, volunteer driven group working together towards a primary goal of identifying, resourcing, training, and helping to elect or appoint leftist candidates to public library boards across the United States. Their website is librariesforthepeople.org, if you want to check it out. Mariame, welcome back to the Death Panel.

Mariame Kaba 3:04

Thank you for having me.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 3:06

And next we have Melissa Gira Grant. Melissa is a journalist, author and documentary filmmaker, who as a staff writer at The New Republic has been tirelessly covering the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, health and reproductive justice, as well as the so-called law. Melissa is the author of the book, Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work published by Verso and is working on her next book, which is forthcoming from Little, Brown, called A Woman is Against the Law: Sex, Race and the Limits of Justice in America. As I mentioned, Melissa has been covering these things closely for years now at TNR. But today, we're also going to be specifically talking about one piece of hers from the beginning of September called “Librarians Didn't Sign Up to Be Queer Activists -- but This Year, They Are,” which is about what has sort of been short handed as a fight against book bans, and how that's actually much more than a kind of simple conversation about censorship and book removal from libraries. So Melissa, welcome back to the Death Panel. Always so nice to have you on.

Melissa Gira Grant 4:06

So great to be here. Yeah, I'm gonna steal "so-called law," just so you know.

Jules Gill-Peterson 4:11

That's a good one.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 4:12

Hell yeah. It's all yours. Honestly, though, Jules and I are both so excited that you two could join us for this conversation today. You know, we had been texting and discussing your article, Melissa, which just talks about how the Right is targeting public libraries, not just as a project of sort of moral outrage and the policing of sexuality, though that is of course part of it, but it takes kind of the angle that the attacks on libraries are part of a larger strategy to undermine and dismantle public institutions, public goods, outflank the left, and really ultimately assert who society is for. And I said to Jules, you know, I think the ideal version of our conversation would be to discuss this article with Mariame, who has been working on the For The People: Leftist Library Project, which again, is this explicitly political project aimed at building left power to protect, defend and expand public libraries, really kind of recognizing and describing the problem explicitly as about both censorship and divestment and deliberate attempts to weaken free resources for communities. So ultimately, what we're talking about today is how this is part of the logic and process of extractive privatization that our political economy has also been oriented around incentivizing. So I think just to start us off, so everybody listening is on the same page. Melissa, do you mind walking through briefly your argument in your article, and then I think Mariame, it would be great to then afterwards get into a brief overview of what For the People: Leftist Library Project is doing. So again, Melissa's article is from September 15th, in The New Republic, and it is called, “Librarians Did Not Sign Up to Be Queer Activists -- but This Year, They Are.” So for those who maybe, you know, don't have much context for what's going on beyond this kind of broad discussion of book bans, drag story hour bans, and library or school board takeovers by conservatives, you know, Melissa, can you walk through how your article expands that frame a bit, and what you get into in terms of sort of locating libraries as sites of intersecting struggle?

Melissa Gira Grant 6:19

Sure. I mean, the short version is, it's all the same people, you know? We're talking about people who were spending the summer of 2020 pushing back on the uprisings after the murder of George Floyd, or people who've been obsessed with shutting down drag story hour, people taking over school board meetings and library board meetings to threaten people who are doing the work of education and librarianship. It's the same groups kept coming up over and over again. And so for me anyway, as someone who'd been reporting on those groups before they took this hard turn into going after the institution of the public library, had been reporting on their anti-queer and anti-trans politics, on their politics of sort of a white supremacist revisionary history that they, you know, always comes hand in hand with this. It felt like, by the time this entire part of their fight about libraries had been short-handed as like, there are book banners coming, there are book banners coming, we have to save the books, it risks leaving out some very important things. One being that it's not just books, right? I mean, consistently, even before these groups have been organized in the way that they are right now. The books that they wanted to remove were most likely going to be books that had subject matter around race, particularly around Black history, and the Black present. One of the books that they've been going after is like a very recent, kid friendly biography of Supreme Court Justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson. I mean, it's just ridiculous, like the level of stuff that they go after. I understand why people are like, really that? Like, this is absurd. But also, consistently the top books that are challenged year after year, before these groups got together in this particular way, have been books about queer life, trans life, and particularly by queer authors of color. So to just kind of shorthand this as book bans, I feel like, leaves out that this is a very targeted effort about erasing certain people's stories, or restricting young people's access to vital information about gender and sexuality, vital information supplementing what they're getting in the classroom, which might be very little, when it comes to the history of white supremacy in this country and its present. And that the groups who are pushing these things also have a broader anti-LGBTQ, and racist program that they are pushing. It didn't feel coincidental to me that a lot of the people I met in the course of reporting this piece and an earlier one in March, the librarians who are like kind of on the frontlines of this were queer librarians and trans librarians, who for them, you know, it wasn't just about defending the books, but it was about protecting the library as a space where they and their patrons felt safe and free to be there and have free inquiry and not have to worry about these Christian nationalist groups coming in and you know, in some instances, following patrons around, recording them, following library workers around, recording them, harassing them. For them, it's a workplace issue as well. And that's a huge part of the conversation that's really been left out, where, you know, the people who are being targeted are the same people who are writing the books that are getting banned, are the same communities of people, sometimes the same people. And that this is a fight about people and politics and not a sort of abstract fight about free speech and censorship.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 9:49

Absolutely. I really appreciate the way you laid that out, Melissa. I think you know, I was in an event that Leftist Library Project did in early October, Mariame, it was the one that was called, I think, How They Did It, which was about two different community-based projects in very different contexts. And the one that was based in the South, which was the Louisiana Citizens Against Censorship, they had been dealing with specifically some of these kinds of like arbitrary book challenges, right? And what was just so striking about the discussion, and what folks were bringing to that was just how small and sort of centralized some of these like points of opposition were, where it's like, okay, it's this one person kind of going around the state of Louisiana, rallying this up, but the effect of it in terms of like how capturable certain aspects of state and local government can be, but also, you know, that the banning of the books, even though that is often like specifically, that that sort of point of censorship is the first thing that's discussed when this is talked about, that that is actually just sort of so arbitrary, and secondary to the actual like material concerns that these people are using banning books as a tool to achieve. So Mariame, do you mind, for folks who may not have heard of For the People: Leftist Library Project, just talking about sort of the goal that everyone involved in this is sort of working towards, and how you see sort of the importance of also like the left rising to the occasion here?

Mariame Kaba 10:08

Yes, of course, thanks Bea, for that. I, as with everything, almost in the last over 10 years of my life, I've gotten myself into this because of a ridiculous tweet [laughter].

Jules Gill-Peterson 11:44

That's real.

Mariame Kaba 11:45

[laughing] I was getting so frustrated. And I'd been progressively getting more and more frustrated over the years, with the way that this conversation has been centered. And with kind of the -- what I see as a lot of the people on the left's kind of not being on the field at all, not having -- not taking seriously the importance, I think, of this institution beyond the romantic vision of quote, "the Library" with a capital L, you know? I like the library, right? And it's like, yo, these are political institutions. And all of them are sites of contestation for much broader fights that we on the left say we care deeply about. And as I was just noticing more and more frenzy around the banned books, I tweeted last year, we're just -- let's just get together and run a whole bunch of leftists to these library boards, right? Let's build power for governance, let's not be here kind of like putting our fingers in the dike while the water is coming at us in big numbers, and we're always -- like, we're gonna get drowned eventually. Why can't we be proactive around these ideas? And so I was like, you know, I'm gonna do this [laughing] in the next year, and starting in 2023. And I didn't really deeply think about what that was going to entail. But I just was like, I'm just saying it. And you know, when you say things in public, which I forget a lot, that it's public. I don't know if some of you are like this too. But like that, you know, people are actually reading it. It's not your friggin diary or you know, single train -- I'm a person who thinks -- like, I'm in my head a lot. And what Twitter did for me, was to just let me have a brain dump kind of situation, but I'm doing that like in front of a lot of people, right. And I always -- I sometimes don't make those connections in my own head. But anyway, so somebody reached out to me in the new year, like, early in January, and they were like, hey, I saw this tweet from you last year, I made a bookmark that I would come back around and reach out to you. What are you thinking about? And also, here's what I could do, which is my favorite kind of people -- like reach out, you know? It's not like, hey, what are you going to do? It's like, hey, I have an idea too. And I have these ways of being able to like execute my idea, would love to talk with you more. And that was Dylan Flesch, who ended up being one of our -- with me, first steering members, for For The People: Leftist Library Project. So just wanted to give a little context to your listeners about, first of all, don't put your bullshit out on Twitter and then [laughter] --

Mariame Kaba 15:08

It will come back to you.

Mariame Kaba 15:08

It will come back to you, always, in whatever ways. And then, you know, also to show how the beginnings of a thing aren't necessarily always like, deeply thought through, planned out, you know, we just kind of sometimes have to move, given the context and the climate that we're in. Anyway. So backtracking to your original question. So For the People: Leftist Library Project, we basically have like very simple propositions. We think that public libraries need our help, and by our, we mean specifically leftists. So public libraries need leftist help. That they are currently and always have been targeted by reactionaries, but they're also targeted by liberals. And I think that is really important to underscore, because libraries, public libraries in the United States are suffering death by a thousand cuts. And that has been going on for generations. And a lot of those people who are proposing those cuts are so-called progressive elected officials and "liberal" constituencies, right? So that's something that we want to insert into the broader conversation. It's not like the reactionaries are the evil people who are trying to defund public goods. No, they're not alone. They have like totally willing partners on the "other side" of the, you know, very short two party system kind of spectrum. And then, so we are proposing that the left need to protect, defend and expand public libraries. And why do we think that? We think that because we know that libraries are really among the last public spaces where people can simply be without having to purchase a good or service or spend any money at all. I'm Emily Drabinski, who we had our second event that we ran in March, when we launched this year, Emily calls libraries, "public goods shared in common and distributed to everyone." And I love that. And like where do we have that under late stage capitalism in the United States, right? So because it's so unique of a thing that we have, and because with all of the issues that are attendent within all institutions, so I'm not -- again, not to romanticize the library. That's not what this is about. But to say that the library is, for me, the last of the public goods that exist, that we don't have to ask people to dream about making. It exists. It is here. And if we lose it, we will not get it back for a very, very long time in this country. Why? Because the Right has been so successful, at expropriating, exploiting, divesting from, privatizing everything, so that a generation of people could not, if you ask them today, to imagine an institution like a library, it would foreign to them. They wouldn't believe it. They would say it was unrealistic. They would say it was impossible. And so that means a lot to me, because I spend a lot of time thinking about an abolitionist horizon, and what it's going to take in terms of institutions, for us to realize, and get closer to that horizon. And this is one of the very few ones that exists now, that we don't have to imagine, but that we have to strengthen and expand and address the contradictions of, rather than start from nothing and try to build from there. So that's a little bit about kind of the overview of FTP. We have a steering group that includes six people. And then we have wonderful volunteers that support in so many ways. Over 400 people have signed up to be data volunteers for us, helping us with a massive data project, which is the first of its kind, which I could talk about later. And then I'm just gonna say the final thing is that FTP's goals are really to recruit and train leftist board candidates and people, if they hear this before our deadline, we're taking cohort applications until November 15th. We are here to empower people on the left to self-organize and take action in support of their public libraries and to expand them. And then we're here to provide resources for library defenders at our website and other spaces. So that is -- kind of, that's in a nutshell what we're up to and what we're trying to do.

Jules Gill-Peterson 20:22

Ah, what a very elegant and like, just motivating account of why mobilizing around libraries is, in fact, so important in and of itself, and also in this moment for the left. And I really am so excited to talk about the nitty gritty and the nuts and bolts of how this work is being done. But maybe before we jump into that, I mean, yeah, I just kind of want to -- want to ask you both, since you're here and you know, we have such a interesting opportunity to really kind of hash this out. Like I feel very convinced that libraries represent an important problem for the left. Exactly in the ways you were just saying, Mariame, that they're the last sort of public good, but they also have been subject to this sort of decades long series of attacks and actual material divestment, that they've been hollowed out in a way that is really representative of a broader record of the last 30 or 40 years in this country. And I guess I kind of want to just tie that back to Melissa's piece and ask you both, I mean, what is the sort of -- I don't know, what is the sort of central dilemma do you think through which the left has kind of failed so far to mobilize in a sophisticated way here, because I feel like, I don't know, the pet theory I've been turning over in my head, but as someone who also ruminates too much, I'm so delightful to turn this into a conversation instead, it's like, you know, it seems to me that the culture we're framing, you know, that is sort of the dominant media narrative or dominant public narrative here is really depoliticizing, in the sense that culture war implies a separation between the cultural or symbolic domain and the material, you know, lived bread and butter world. And libraries, of course, are an important institution that remind us that those things aren't separable. But I sometimes think like, the opponents, the anti-library folks, and the kind of just sort of, you know, almost predictable extremism of their moralized rhetoric and their targets, is sometimes depoliticizing, or is used to depoliticize, like sort of from the kind of liberal center perspective that is much more interested in just claiming that those people are stupid or ignorant or deficient or backwards, and therefore, are not genuine opponents, are not really politically efficacious, and that it's better to sort of look down on them and make jokes about them, or dunk on them on social media. But ultimately, that requires, because it's a symbolic battle, it requires no real effort on the part of anyone. And that, you know, that sort of center, kind of refusal to act has a kind of depoliticizing, almost like ripple effect on the actual left. But then I also wonder if part of the issue for the actual left has been that the culture war framing makes libraries seem so symbolic, as if then there isn't anything materially at stake, as if censorship is just as simple as, do you get to read this book or do you not get to read this book, as opposed to a library is a central public resource where people go, you know, to get access to public internet or you know, go to get access or referral to social services or to apply for jobs or to -- I mean, Melissa, you talk about the long waiting list for a carpet cleaning device, you know, at a Detroit library. So I'm just wondering, like, this is something that I just feel so plagued by these days, like, what is it about these sorts of culture war framings that has unfortunately kind of demobilized, you know, is that it? Is it something about the kind of false separation of culture from bread and butter political needs and are libraries then really maybe kind of like one of the best counterpoints that we could mobilize?

Melissa Gira Grant 24:35

I have like eight million thoughts. I'm going to try to keep them somewhat brief. Yeah, I mean, this is just like a huge conversation. And I feel like very rarely this is the entry point into it. The culture war, symbolic, sort of I'm here to defend this copy of Maus, way of this being positioned neatly forecloses a lot of the actual political opportunities that are in this fight. I've talked to Emily Drabinski several times over the course of this year, you know, she was coming into the American Library Association as President, in the midst of all of this. And you know, long before she even assumed the office officially, became a punching bag on the Right. And that was sort of a wake up call for me, in terms of my own persistent romanticization of libraries. I was really shocked and disappointed to not see sort of more of the institutional parts of librarianship not come out and support her. Like to be honest, I don't think the ALA has done a great job of supporting her in public. That's just my personal opinion. But when I talk to individual library workers, they are very clear on the fact that the reason that Emily Drabinski become a right-wing scapegoat is because -- it's not just because of libraries, it's because she positions the libraries as this kind of opportunity on the left. That this is a site of struggle, that this is about material needs. You know, she was the one who brought up the carpet cleaner, and it's so real. Like, one of the things she said to me is that libraries "can meet the needs of the public, they can do what we want the state to do -- which is to care for the public, to provide public resources that are distributed equitably in the community." But then when the fight around, this is all defined around the book, this is what she said, "If we limit our analysis to just the problem of censorship, then the solution can only be to keep that book on the shelf." And that is not enough. And in fact, I think sometimes that's the easiest part. But I understand why it's attractive, especially to liberals, because then they aren't indicted in all the ways that they have been killing libraries by a thousand cuts, they don't have to answer for the fact that they don't understand what library governance looks like. I mean, I didn't understand what library governance looks like until I started talking to library workers and going to library board meetings. And the ones that I chose to focus on, were in a liberal community. So I went to the suburb of Detroit that's sort of historically known as like its gay suburb, or its gayborhood. And, you know, most of the library workers who are really engaged in this stuff at that community library in Ferndale were queer, or trans, or both. They, you know, were coming to this with a very of the moment understanding of free speech that was really deeply nuanced. They had internal conversations, as many library workers have, about do we have to let Nazis hang out at the library? Do we have to let far right groups rent rooms from us? Like, you know, are we a content neutral institution? Or do we have a political voice that says, if we give space to these groups, we are endangering others who we also have a responsibility to. And so that was -- that was a huge wake up call for me in this reporting is like seeing these sort of moments where the romance of what libraries are, as Mariame put it so well, run up against the actual conflicts that are happening and opportunities to get into them. You know, this town hadn't had any threats of book bans when I first started reporting on them, but the library workers knew it was coming and started organizing ahead of them. And the vehicle through which they were organizing was a union. And let me tell you, did their nice liberal ally library board not like that [laughter]. And refused to recognize the union, and are still -- you know, I wouldn't say they're not bargaining in good faith, but like, they're very resistant to the idea that they aren't all just friends who like love books or something. And that like, there's like library workers who are literally on the front lines when far right and Christian right groups come in and harass them. And they don't feel like the library board has their back. And it was just like so obvious to me what the point of intervention is, which is like, well, who's on the library board? Like if the library boards are full of people who are like fine to let things get cut, fine to sort of turn their back on library workers when they need them, but just like love books, like how insufficient that is.

Mariame Kaba 29:08

I'm thinking a lot about kind of -- I've been arguing that the public library is probably the last US institution where the word commoning makes any sense at all. And it's for that reason, for me, that public libraries are important sites of struggle for leftists. And that because public libraries, we've talked about, are communal, communal goods, that under capitalism, these goods are always at risk of being privatized or plundered or extracted. And this, this is precisely why they are under attack by the reactionary right wing. I feel like without that being the center, the free speech stuff is just -- that is just not it. That's not why they are the center fight for the Right. The Right has a larger project, y'all, that has been a long-term investment. And we aren't in the same way so explicitly clear about that. You know, we, on the left, at least I thought, that our goal in part was to refuse -- refuse kind of like the forced conversion of life forms into market relations. That that was an essential value, that we do not want a commodified public library, right. And more importantly, that our goal should be to encourage and expand democratic public control over all our institutions. Like these are things that I think we -- somehow if you talk to people on the left, like people agree with, but we aren't making it central to our fight and constantly talking about it, in the same way that the Right is committed to having an ideological and material struggle against these institutions. And for me, I've been thinking a lot, Brett Story, who I really appreciate a lot, who's an abolitionist thinker and filmmaker, did 12 Landscapes in Prison Land [referring to “The Prison in Twelve Landscapes"], I think is the name of the film, I'd have to find the exact thing. I'm sure we can find it and put a link for people. She -- I heard her giving a talk a few years ago, and she mentioned this thing that has stuck with me all the way since. She said that a lot of us in this current moment, like we don't have a vocabulary or a grammar for the commons anymore. So that means that what's been lost to us is the commons as a way of thinking about, she said, how we belong to each other. And that to me was like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Because for me, interdependence, belonging to each other, all those things are such important, crucial planks in the left political project. And we don't know how to have that conversation in public anymore. We don't have that conversation in explicit terms in common anymore. And libraries, to me, can actually help us to rediscover a grammar for the commons. And the fact that -- and that's something we desperately need, as we build towards, for me, an abolitionist horizon. So I feel very strongly that the institutions -- the institution of the public library, therefore, is just incredibly important to the broader, larger project on the left - in this moment, and moving forward. And that's in part why it's so essential for me, especially for young folks who did not grow up steeped in the ideas of commoning, or in the ideas of a grammar and a vocabulary for the commons, and aren't steeped in having grown up in a society where our interest in pushing for an understanding of how we belong to each other, that claiming that space back for this is going to help develop the muscles we need for demands for more public institutions, more public goods. It gives us the grammar for understanding Medicare for All. It gives us the vocabulary for making demands that are beyond individualistic ones, and that tell us that we deserve to have public goods that are shared in common for everybody. Like, does that make sense? I maybe -- I feel like maybe I'm not making --

Jules Gill-Peterson 33:43

Oh, hell yeah.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 33:45

Definitely.

Mariame Kaba 33:46

Okay. Yeah. So that -- so to me, I want us to get to the crux of that as the -- because the Right understands this, though. Do you know what I mean?

Jules Gill-Peterson 33:56

Mmhm.

Mariame Kaba 33:56

Like they get it. It's why they fight so hard on public schools. That's a big, huge part of it, right? To the years and years of cutting away, delegitimizing. Yes, it's also for the ideological reasons of, in some places, a way for us to push for different ways of thinking about ourselves in the world, and a rethinking of history and a teaching new ways of being able to see the world. Yes, that's part of what the fight is. But if that were only it, we wouldn't have to be so worried, in my opinion, because there are other ways that we can disseminate information in this age, right? That's not it. It's that if we lose the publicness of education, we lose so much. We lose so, so much, right? Because as it stands right now, yes, it's been privatized, but you can still send your kid to a public school anywhere in this country. And that kid could have come from anywhere, and you have a place for them to be for eight hours a day where they are mostly safe. Even though we live in this time of mass shootings, schools are still one of the safest place for children to be in this country on a day to day basis. Their homes are much more dangerous than their schools are. So I think this is the crux of the fight. And I really would like people to think about it more deeply, talk about it in their own communities, understand why it matters, why we must make the fight, why we must center our struggles in this place, in order to expand, grow, insist on more, more, more, more, not less.

Melissa Gira Grant 35:53

Can I build something off to the side of that really quickly?

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 35:55

Oh, of course.

Melissa Gira Grant 35:56

So the schools piece is what this reminded me of, what reminded me of this. You know, one of the buzzwords both of the attacks on libraries, but also the attacks on schools, is this idea of parental rights. And, you know, part of what I've been trying to do is let people more easily make the association between parental rights and the destruction of public good. Parental rights is, you know, there's one way you could argue with the concept of parental rights. And, you know, I see parents do this around libraries, too. I'm the only one who gets to decide what books my child reads, right? Like, not you, you can decide what books your child reads, and I get to decide what books my child reads. And the more exciting, future forward, inspirational, brave position that, you know, librarianship takes is, you decide what books you read, including when you're a minor. And no, we're not going to share checkout histories with people's parents, because we understand what that might expose them to. No, we are not going to start limiting what books young people can take out based on what their parents say they can and cannot read. That is counter to this institution. But it's a lot easier, I think, particularly for liberals to sort of get into this, no, I'm the better parent, or like fight it on that grounds, because it's -- they perhaps are also challenged by this idea of young people having autonomy. And it's the same error I see around how this plays out in the public school fight, which is, you know, there are groups, we've talked about them before on the show, like Alliance Defending Freedom and other Christian nationalist projects that came out of the homeschool movement, which is, you know, not a homeschool movement. It's a destroy public schools movement. But what it presents itself as is, oh, kids should have choices, parents should have choices, they should be able to go to whatever school they want to go to. And they're getting more successful every year and every successive iteration of the Supreme Court, of creating a system of education in this country where our public funding could be handed over to individual families to pay for their child's Christian nationalist homeschool education. That's the system that they want. You can't fight that by saying, oh, well, that's not a great educational program, or not everyone's going to choose that. Like the way to fight that is on this much bolder level of like, you cannot dismantle this institution. Like as Mariame said, if we lose libraries, we're not going to get them back. If we lose public schools, we are not going to get them back, not for a long time. And that's -- that's sort of like the only intervention I have in this, at this point, which is to just say, like, don't believe the language the Right is handing you about what they're fighting on. And this is going to require maybe some bravery and going out on a limb, particularly when it comes to children, than the left has been great at.

Mariame Kaba 38:57

Yes. I just want to say, add one thing to what Melissa said, which is absolutely that we are making the case, at least I am, that children are not your private property.

Jules Gill-Peterson 39:07

Yeah.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 39:08

Mhm.

Mariame Kaba 39:08

And y'all, that is a fight on all sides.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 39:13

Phew.

Mariame Kaba 39:13

Because we have people who think their children are their own personal private property, and we are saying no, actually, we believe in the village. Oh my god, right? We believe in the village. No, your kid is -- I have no, I have no biological children, you know, but I own something. So that means I pay taxes that go towards your schooling of your children. And I'm happy that that's the case. I am thrilled that that's the case, because I see your child as somebody who is the future of our society, and I believe in a society, right? So there you go, at the crux of this again. So go ahead, Jules, sorry to interrupt you.

Jules Gill-Peterson 39:59

No, no, not at all. I mean, I just -- part of what I'm hearing both of you saying that really just clicked in for me, right, is sure, let's not totally take at face value the language that the Right uses, but also, let's not just leave it at that, because I feel like that's been like, oh, well, when the Right talks about school choice, it's totally in bad faith, and they're perverting the word choice. Okay, sure. What is the leftist politics of a different form of choice, right, the idea of young people being able to choose what books they read when they go to the library, right, not this sort of privatized, private property, Christian nationalist version of choice, but the left is not offering its own affirmative, positive concepts, you know, different kinds of collective intention, different kinds of, you know, yeah, communal forms of redistribution or ownership. There's a sort of -- I feel like part of what I'm hearing, and part of what's really landing for me is just how, how much has been given up, as you were saying Mariame, and therefore, how little the left is proposing on its own terms. And maybe it just comes back to that kind of perennial notion of politicking, as struggle, you know, if the left is not forwarding its own vision, a more democratic, or an abolitionist and a public vision of these kinds of concepts, then it can't struggle, it cannot genuinely struggle against the right-wing versions, and also, frankly, the liberal versions, which would like us to simply go back to a sort of abstract romance and ignore the last 40 or 50 years of the destruction of the public and just cling to a kind of dictionary definition of censorship in reading and literacy and not actually examine their material context. And it just -- yeah, I don't know, I mean, you can hear in my voice, I just feel very charged up by by -- by seeing all of these connections between what both of you are saying.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 42:03

Yeah, absolutely.

Mariame Kaba 42:04

Sorry, Bea, one more thing I would love to jump in on here --

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 42:08

Go for it.

Mariame Kaba 42:07

Is that, also, I'm so resonating, Jules, with what you said about the affirmative -- the affirmative case that ought to be made, that we actually have the language and all the fucking analysis that all these fucking leftists are constantly bandying about. We have it. We have it. We're articulating it here, right now, in this space. And I think it's convincing to large swaths of people. So we're not in a defensive mode here, actually. And this is one of like my -- I constantly feel the sense from people of the onslaught and the overwhelm, and those are real, and those are true, but we also have built some stuff up over the generations. We have a language. We have, supposedly, I think, values. Why aren't we leaning truly into those, right? Libraries, public libraries in particular, are social infrastructure. You all on this show consistently talk about the social infrastructure needed for public health, okay. The library is a parallel set of social infrastructure, which means that the actual physical spaces of these institutions, the actual organizations shape the way people interact with each other. Think for a moment of any public spaces, or any spaces we have in this country, public or private, where people across class meet up regularly. You go into a library, a middle class family in there with their child for story hour, and a houseless person sitting there for a cooling station, or a -- in what part of the United States is that shit going on in? Somebody mention, somebody tell me if it exists. If somebody who's listening to this comes up with that space, I'm giving you $100 for it, okay? [laughter] Because it doesn't exist any more. It doesn't exist anymore. It is -- you know, what Melissa pointed out in her article. All the things about the free access to books and cultural materials, but it also offers, you all -- I don't know if you've had this experience before. My aunt, when she -- before she passed away, God rest her soul, spent so many hours at our local library. Why? For companionship, because she had other older adults there who would meet up and they would have crochet hour, they would have book club meeting, they would meet up to exchange recipes. Some of us were latchkey kids in Gen X. Do you know who were our best friends? Our local librarians, because we all went from school to the library, and I'm sorry to say, but it's true. They were our de facto childcare workers for our parents who couldn't afford those hours for us to go to a special childcare center, right? My mother learned English at the local library. My mother did not come to this country speaking English. She took ESL classes at the library. That's how she learned how to speak the language, okay? Like I want people to understand, you don't have to have an imagination to think about creating this institution. It exists now. Fight for it.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 45:29

Absolutely. No, and I really appreciate so much just everything that we've gone through so far. Like, I don't -- I didn't realize how much I had really been like yearning to have this conversation, like this is just the -- the thing that is so I think frustrating is that oftentimes, we are sort of in a position where, you know, like, the left approaches problems reactively, right? And that is like sort of used as this almost like prefigurative way of foreclosing on certain possibilities. And part of this is, is just in response to like the repressive social and political structure that that we live under. Part of this is how things within capitalism are structured. But I think especially, you know, the ways that libraries exist as a commons, right, which as you're pointing out, Mariame, it is so rare to think of a space like this that exists, and it's vanishing sort of before our eyes, it's something that is also not a foregone conclusion, by any means. It's a site of contestation, because it's a really important site of contestation. And it's something that, you know, we need to proactively get in on, I think, as a left. There, you know, are so many threads of what we've been talking about today that are just like ringing a bell in the back of my head that's making me think of the 1933 book by Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, where he talks about, like part of the fascist project is to make every family into a proxy for the nation, right. And that's what we're really talking about, in terms of like privatization, it's not just like that privatization is bad, because it means someone makes a buck, right? What we're talking about is the sort of sequestering of different aspects of public life and the declaration that those things are no longer in the commons, right? And what's ultimately going on, whether we're talking about public schools, or libraries, or even just municipal budgets, in general, and kind of municipal infrastructure, whether that's like trash services, or other things like, you know, maintaining parks, or building parks in the first place, designating land as parks, things like that, you know, the Right sees these as a space of contestation and struggle, sort of presenting these opportunities to further privatize life, to further reinforce the idea that each family unit is a nation, and that child is not only the property, but the future and the product, the commodity, like the GDP of every family is the child. And this is the kind of view of sort of families as they exist as a very small but numerous political unit within the fascist state. And this is something that, you know, Reich's looking at things like 1932 speeches made by Hitler and the ways that people, you know, in Germany at the time are sort of using, whether it's sexual repression or a kind of call to preserve the sort of GDP and growth and property of the state of Germany through preservation of children, right. Like, ultimately, this is a project also of statecraft and of statecraft that we can't sit out of, right. It's an important sight of contestation and intervention, because it represents like a huge affront to this idea that each family is its own little nation, and that children belong to each family, and that each family has a kind of duty to the national project to be in competition with all the other families, right, and the idea of a space like this, being able to contain whatever books they want, but even beyond that, being able to generously and bountifully, you know, fund these institutions to provide a more robust commons in the community, like that idea, in and of itself, is a huge affront to fascist political, economic ideology, like at its core. And that's why I think it's so important to kind of really drill down like, what do we actually really mean when we talk about censorship and privatization, right? Like we're talking about the struggle for political and social life at the end of the day.

Melissa Gira Grant 49:52

To add something to that too, like, on the one hand, the public library represents this like radical, but shouldn't be, commitment to the idea of the commons. But within it, there's competing and differing ideas of what that means. And that is also great. Like I remember from some of the library workers I talked to, but also others that didn't make it into the story, so this isn't just specific to Ferndale, you know, there's this sort of trope of like, oh, gosh, the librarians didn't sign up to run a homeless shelter, or oh, gosh, the librarians didn't sign up to be a safe injection site, you know, like this kind of knee jerk, pseudo compassionate, sometimes response to what it is to see houseless people and people who use drugs in a public space, that people, you know, feel they have a right not to see those things, or to share space with folks who are houseless or who use drugs. And there's actually like multiple ways that you could respond to that, right? Like, yeah, wouldn't it be great if there were resources to meet those people's needs in different ways, so that somebody doesn't have to worry about running the circulation desk, and getting out the Narcan? Like, yeah, that would be great if everything were more resourced. But the answer to this isn't like, well, we have to get those people out of this space, because it's only our space. That's counter to what the space is. And I think, like, protect -- like there are ways that we have been challenged around protecting the commons of the libraries outside the rubric of the book banning and free speech stuff that for me, sometimes, are really clarifying, just like, well, what are we defending when we're defending this space? And it is that, as Mariame said, and as you said, Beatrice, it's like this is the one place where everybody equally can enjoy the same public good. And that is, that is something that like you we can't take for granted that people are on board with that, and something to defend, because we already, as Mariame said, we have it. And we can have much more interesting fights about what that looks like to live together in common, when we don't have to like fight for its existence. Unfortunately, right now, we have to do both.

Jules Gill-Peterson 51:49

But it does feel like a useful exercise. I mean, like, it's precisely because it's so worth fighting for, it also feels like a, I don't know, just in my head trying to remember the last time I feel like I was talking about successes and mobilization in leftist projects. Yeah. So I'm kind of curious, like, you know, I'd love to hear, Mariame, like, you know, both about some of just the actual tactics and projects, you know, we alluded to some of them at the top of the show, but just actually some of the things that, you know, FTP is working on, and some of the ways it is mobilizing people. And maybe one thing I'm super curious about, in talking about that, is actually to get your sense of like, yeah, what does seem to persuade or motivate people to, you know, to actually participate? I mean, obviously, I think there's just a lot of people who want to get involved and want to get active and want to be a part of this work anyways. But just sort of curious as, you know -- as yeah, as FTP is sort of getting to work, and actually organizing and figuring out different ways to, to mobilize the left in protection of and in expansion of public libraries, yeah, what are some of the nitty gritties, and what are some of the interesting lessons or experiences that you're a part of there?

Mariame Kaba 53:15

Yes. Thank you for that, Jules. I think, as with everything that I've always ever done in my life, and any formation and organizing work that I've been part of, I'm constantly taken aback about how -- I don't know, you would think that people -- it makes logical sense to think, you know, well, people love the library, right? They'll say, I love the library, I love my library, you know, whatever. But that doesn't -- that doesn't translate to people taking any action at all. Anything, you know? It's just like, it gets left into a sentimentality and the feelings, but not concrete, like, what are you actually going to do to protect, expand, get involved in a real way where the library is in the wrong direction, right? Like, how, how are you going to get involved in like actual governance and stuff? And part of that is that most people don't even know that there is such a thing as a library board. There's a lack of information around do people even know how their libraries get funded? Do they think it's from the federal government? 'Cuz it's not, right. Like do they think -- like, how do these institutions actually work? So there's a lot of need for kind of like, basic 101 stuff, which always takes up so much of the time in everything that you end up doing, is like the constant need for education around some just very basic stuff, which we have hit up the -- you know, we've come to the wall on right now, which is that, you know, we're gonna have to step back and offer kind of understanding your library 101 sessions in 2024. Because it's clear to us how few people actually know anything about how libraries work. So that was, um -- it shouldn't have been a surprise to me at all. Because of course that's true, right. And it's not -- and actually, people aren't to blame for that. We don't know how anything works in this country, on purpose. So, so that's been a thing. And so now we're really taking a step back and we're going to create kind of a basic hour long session that will be recorded, that people will be able to use in their communities, to help people understand that landscape, like how libraries actually work, how they're funded, how they're governed, you know, things like that. So that's one thing that we're really going to be focused on in the next few weeks. The second thing is, even when you inform people that they can do something, like run for a seat, or seek appointment for a seat, there's a gap between people knowing that information, perhaps even people being offered a way into that, and then people actually choosing to take it on as a project. That gap between I didn't know this existed, oh, now I know it exists, oh, and there's this place where I can be part of a cohort team of people that are looking to do this, but I actually have to do this, right? And that, that area of the push to actually make the leap is the crux of the difficulty of organizing people. And we're in that mode right now, which is getting people to move from yeah, that's a good idea, to no, I can do that, to I will do that, right. And so we're working on that right now, with our first cohort, we're looking to have about 30 people participate in that. We're also, through our website, we offer people lots of other ways to be involved, if they don't want to be involved in governance, and you know, power at that level of, you know, taking over the boards. There are so many other ways that they can get involved. So I encourage people to have a look there. And I think people might be interested in some of the lower lifts. We really want people to start attending their local library board meetings. We have a really cool thing that's a library board watcher thing that we made, that's basically a way to think about it, like we do court watching, we want people to do board watching and you can have a bingo card. And you know, we're trying to make things fun, accessible for people to be able to use, give them a central place to go at LibrariesForThePeople.org, to access that, share the information in their communities. We have -- we created like fun stickers and one page handouts and things that people can post in their communities, share. We did a Libraries and Lemonade Stand project this summer, and we encouraged people to use the material, have a lemonade stand to talk with their neighbors about their local public libraries. We're using, by all means, every means we know about how to organize people, we've been trying to kind of put into place and have layers of ways that people can connect to this. But in the end, it's just going to be a slog. It's just going to be a slog. We are a -- I mentioned -- you mentioned at the beginning, we are decentralized, we are autonomous we are not linked to any organizations, we have no money, we're raising none really, you know, except for stuff to cover cost for access for our virtual sessions, so we could have ASL and live captioning. That's basically what we're doing. So we're not bound to have to like put in so much energy to keep ourselves going. But we're also a time limited project. We've given ourselves a five year window to -- with our goals in mind, of having x number of people that we help to either get appointed or to elect to these school boards. And that's what we're focusing on like a laser, is to reach that particular goal and a couple of other goals we've set for ourselves. So we don't see ourselves as like a space in perpetuity. We really want to be an intervention and a galvanizing force. And we'd love it if a whole bunch of other people start their own For the People, if they want to, in their communities, in the ways that they see fit based on their hyperlocal context. We are a national focused group, because frankly, it doesn't exist at this point [laughing]. So we are trying to catalyze that. But that's it. We're not, we're not -- and we're also not proprietary. Please use the materials we've made. They're for you to use and download and adapt, more importantly, for your context. We don't purport to know everything that everybody needs. But we are thinking and trying to anticipate what we think is needed. We also are open to you letting us know what you may need. Email us, and if you come up with something, and also more importantly, can you make shit, you know, can you do stuff? Please make your offerings. Come to the table and be like, I think this could be great. Great. Go for it. Like, we are literally not gatekeeping anything. We want you to do your thing. So that's a little bit about that.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:00:53

Thank you so much for that, Mariame. I also wanted to shout out the second group that was part of the October 5th teach in, that was the Hennepin County Library Patrons Union, because to speak to, you know, the point that we kind of made a little bit earlier when we were talking about, you know, libraries being this place of access to public space, like that point of access is also a point of struggle, too, and they in particular, this is up in Twin Cities, like Minneapolis, Minnesota area, the fight that they've been engaged in has been very different than the fight that the folks in Louisiana were engaged in. And I think that's what is really fantastic about this project is that it also creates a kind of container for these two contexts to come together and not be, you know, framed as sort of competing library projects, right, because the point is a kind of broad coalitional collaborative toehold almost, as SPK would say, like, this is the kind of toehold that we need. It won't, in and of itself, produce the kind of revolutionary results that we want. But it gives people an entry point from so many different angles. You know, the folks in -- at the Hennepin County Library Patrons Union, who I so appreciated, they were all together in the room, masked at the event with masks. And they talked about the work that they had been doing around Naloxone and the ways that folks were being essentially like given trespass citations and banned from the library for all sorts of things, targeting specifically Black kids in the library, trying to remove, you know, control sort of who the library is for and how this is not some sort of simple point of negotiation, but is more a kind of complex political, economic dynamic that relates, you know, not just to the kind of structural racism that is a kind of obvious dynamic, but also to staffing and also to resources and these kinds of choices, and the fact that the library is one of these only spaces, right? And that that rhetoric that Melissa named, that sometimes you hear about like well, the library's not supposed to be a homeless shelter, right? So part of it is about sort of declaring, like, no, these spaces are for everyone. And I think they did such a good job, you know, just in one year, just transformatively changing the relationship of their community to those spaces.

Mariame Kaba 1:03:19

I agree. And I also just think, you know, just last night, we ran a criminalization 101 for information workers. And you know, we are not -- again, we are wide eyed and aware of the fact that these are not institutions out of time and space. These are institutions that are grounded in -- under capitalism in our oppressive fucking country. So all of the, you know, what is it, what Morgan Bassichis wrote years ago, you know, the reason it's so hard to uproot oppression is because the very systems that we're fighting against live within us. But it's absolutely true that the very systems we're fighting against live within all our institutions, too. So we have to be vigilant. We have to -- again, contestation, struggle, fight, all those things are not just words, they actually have a material impact if you actually take them seriously and wage the fight. So yes, I love what the Hennepin County Patrons Union is doing. We should have patrons, you know, there are over nearly 10,000 library systems in the US, okay. That's a lot. So that means like, you have opportunities over and over again. And these library systems aren't just systems, they're not just all the libraries, right? There's more than that number, by far, of individual local libraries in this country. So if you are in a space, you could start your own patrons union and you know what, the folks at Hennepin County, they are open to talking with you about how they did it themselves. This was why we did that session called, How We Did It. We wanted to give people a vision of how just people in their communities got together and they made something, and they're making it work where they are for their local context. I put a tweet out, and here we are. We're making this shit happen, against my will. No, just kidding. [laughter] Y'all, I have a lot of stuff to do, and I keep having more things to do. I don't -- I'm like, when am I going to be done? I, you know, they -- a lot of people, my haters would like me to go away. So would I. I would also like me to go away. [laughter]

Melissa Gira Grant 1:05:25

it's like a -- an excess of creativity, I'll say, is the only problem with working in library spaces at this point, like the people that I -- like I have a lot of optimism because I feel like if you want to talk about people who like have creative ideas about how to work collaboratively, like not all library workers are like that, but I think a disproportionate number of them are and have their own ideas of what organizing can look like in ways that makes sense for their community. Like I just feel like there's a certain -- like the library workers in Ferndale wanted a way for the community to show up for them, anticipating harassment, anticipating attacks. And they also needed a way to protect themselves. And they're like, oh, a union. That's exactly what a union does. Let's have a union. And as soon as they had something to go to the community with, to say like, support us doing this, people showed up. So I have a lot of optimism about that too. Like library workers know the communities that they're situated in. And like, that's the only way I've been able to sort of piece together how libraries work. Because like Mariame said, like they don't want us to know how these institutions work, because then that means we might build power within them.

Jules Gill-Peterson 1:06:30

But the very fact that there are 10,000 -- like, it's actually --

Melissa Gira Grant 1:06:35

That's a lot of possibilities there.

Jules Gill-Peterson 1:06:36

Yeah, exactly. And it also means that this struggle isn't going to be fought in one -- in one venue. And so it's like, everything is open, everything might be on the line. But it's also not this, like, you know, it doesn't have the same kind of inherent risks and depoliticizing fears and anxieties that I think often come from these kinds of banner headline fights that are organized around one massive national institution or might involve, you know, at some point, one national election or one Supreme Court case, right? This is where the kind of, you know, peculiar set of very, very, very local forms of politicking in the United States is a place where, you know, the left can really think about success and also experiment and can actually enact, yeah, you know, a democratic principle, which is that there isn't a one size fits all prescription here. I mean, that's part of what I think I hear both of you saying, right is like, this is also a moment to really, you know, to try to demystify, and then to actually take action in a way that is pretty immediate. And, you know, you can kind of expect to see things play out in a relatively reasonable period of time. I don't know, I just think this is like, this is really galvanizing.

Mariame Kaba 1:08:01

It is, and I -- this is -- I am so glad that you have that sense too, Jules, because like, this is an opportunity, y'all. We can actually do this.

Jules Gill-Peterson 1:08:11

Right.

Mariame Kaba 1:08:11

You don't need to -- in order to run for a library board seat, you don't need a trillion dollars, right? You don't, you could do it on 100 in someplace -- like we -- it is so accessible to us right now. Like why -- we all need to be flooding the zone, right? And it's such an opportunity for us to feel a sense of direct power. We are not, I'm sorry, I don't, I'm not gonna say it because -- about 2024 and the Democratic Party, or whatever. I'm just not going to be involved, okay. But I -- you can be involved here. You can have a sense of agency that is actually -- you can make an actual difference. It is possible to do here, you know. I mean, it's something, if also just on a very, for people who cannot run for something, whatever, a lot of the library boards now, they meet on virtual. So you don't even have to leave your house to watch the meeting and be engaged, you know? I feel like there's issues of access and other things like that. You can find so many ways to be involved. You don't have to -- it's not about protesting in the streets mainly, it's not about -- like there are so -- you can get a library card. You can get everybody in your direct circle to get library cards. Like there are so many ways of involvement. There's a wonderful zine that Erik Ruin out of Just Seeds put together a few months ago, called The People and The Library. And it's a small thing. It's not even a book. It's a zine, that is reflections on grassroots efforts to preserve and expand the library in Philadelphia. Years ago, they threatened to close a whole bunch of public libraries in Philadelphia. The community came together and saved their libraries. Take that zine, which I'll send him -- I'll put a copy for Bea to put onto this show notes, so you can get it, read it, and then have a discussion with your friends. Get them on Zoom and talk about like, oh my God, what did you learn from this? How might we even apply this to other things that we're doing that aren't library related? What are the lessons we are learning here about grassroots organizing? I mean, there's so much to -- there's so many wonderful possibilities. And I feel all the time, I constantly just am in wonder over all the things that we can be doing to make our lives more livable, to make ourselves more kind of legible to each other, and to insist on a vision of the world that is our vision of the world, rather than constantly being afraid, cowering, worried, angry, whatever. I mean, all that's true, too. But gosh, there are other things to do as well, you know.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:11:02

Absolutely. So I know, Mariame, that you have a hard out that is coming up. And so, before we let you go off to do a very important walking tour that we don't want to keep you from, just as a final point, I wonder if you wouldn't mind talking a little bit about the data project that Libraries For the People is doing right now. Because I think in particular, this is a point where, especially our listeners who, you know, do that, like this is a great way for people, specifically like I think coming from the Death Panel community, to get involved. And then we'll keep going after we say goodbye, and we'll miss you. But before you run, I just want to make sure that we get a chance to talk about this.

Mariame Kaba 1:11:44

Wonderful, thank you so much. Yes. So again, thank you for having me and for giving me a chance to talk about libraries, which you can tell I'm passionate about, I think, right?

Jules Gill-Peterson 1:11:54

Oh yeah.

Mariame Kaba 1:11:56

Yeah [laughing]. So much so that I went back to school in my 50s to get a library science degree, so you know how that goes too. But anyway, so I -- so part of our -- I mentioned to you before, Dylan, who is the person who reached out to me in January. Dylan is a person who is holding down our data project. And we figured out pretty quickly that there were no -- there was no data or information pre-existing that maps out all of the library board seats that are available in the country. And so therefore, it's not shocking that people A) don't know their library boards, but B) if they wanted to get involved, how would they be able to figure that out? They'd have to go individually to all of these 10,000 library systems to get that information themselves. That makes no sense. So we started on this project, spearheaded by Dylan, to find all of the library boards in the country, figure out which of the library board seats are elected versus which are appointed. And what we have is an opportunity for people to connect, and volunteers have been taking batches of 25 to 100 libraries, and contacting them individually to find out, going to find out if there's a website, getting that website, figuring out from the website what they say about the library board seats in their community, getting that information down, deciding and figuring out whether or not they say that they're an appointed system, or a elected system, finding out who appoints if it's an appointing system. So we are 75% of the way done with that data project, that first phase. We have all the batches currently checked out. However, we have deadlines for when volunteers need to get batches back to us. And when those deadlines pass, the batches go back into the system and get reassigned to new volunteers. So we're always looking for new data volunteers who will be able to help us. There will also be a phase two of this project. So we're looking for volunteers for phase two. They can find more information about it on our website. We have found, so far, just I can let folks, listeners know, surprisingly, we had initially thought it would maybe be 50/50, 50 appointed seat -- 50% of the board's having appointed seats, and 50% perhaps being elected. We're finding that actually, it's 75% appointed and 25% elected. We're also finding that many states either are all mostly or entirely appointed, no election at all. So doesn't that tell us again, a thought about maybe we need to be in some cases pushing for democratic control of these particular institutes, you know what I mean? So there's a potential here for more fights in the future that are about why are you just doing appointments? Like what is going on here and who's getting appointed to these seats, right, depending on who the municipality -- then what municipality is that's making the appointments. So anyway, we are -- we're learning things from the data. We are planning to make this data available to Run for Something as one space, so that when you go to their website and you plug in, I want to run for something and you're, let's say in this case, under 40, it'll come up with the available library board seats, as well as all the other information that you already can get from their site. And then we're looking for other spaces as well that might want the data so that they can also share with their constituents. I've been having lots of one on one meetings with people in library land, I've been having one on one meetings with people that are doing more general national organizing around various issues, including school boards, and other things like that, which are just the natural part of organizing. And people keep saying, you know, we didn't know that there were board seats, but also amazing that there will be data on that. Anyway, folks who are interested can definitely go to our website, sign up. We welcome everybody. And just last thing I want to say before I head out, I just want to also again, point out how much of an opportunity we have in this moment, how much of an opportunity we have not just in this realm, but in so many other spaces. And that it is so incredibly important not to feel a sense of foreclosed -- foreclosed dreaming. We don't just dream individually, we dream collectively. And that is incredibly important for a leftist project. And I really want all of us to not be so overwhelmed by the horrors that we're dealing with. Right now we are dealing with a full on genocide in Palestine and it can be -- it is seductive as hell to just be like, fuck it all. This is not worth it, there is nothing we can do. We are 100% powerless. You know what, what if all of that is true? What if all of that is true, and you still have to live tomorrow. That means you have a choice to make about the actions you choose to take. And whether or not those actions yield some sort of immediate results, we can only control what we do, how we do it, with what intent we offer it, and we can put it out into the world and see whether eventually it will matter. So I hope people take that with them and keep pushing, keep working, keep doing what we all can. We have to push to belong to each other, as Brett mentioned, kind of early on. And we have to push back on this ethic of, you're on your own. We have to constantly be pushing for, we're in this together. And I think the pandemic has really, to me, shown us the importance and the revolutionary importance and power of saying no, we're in this together. We're in this together. I'm going right now to do some tours of an exhibition that I co-curated, called Return to Sender. It's about prison and censorship. Prison as censorship. And our last day of the exhibition being open is tomorrow. But so you -- when you hear this, the exhibition will have closed. But the thing that I've been really, really wanting people to sit with is an insistence that we're in this together, that these things are not separate from each other, that everything is happening all at once, all at the same time. And so that's actually empowering. It gives us an opportunity to have influence. Don't be crushed by the weight of the world. So I just want to say that. My deep appreciation to you all here at Death Panel. Thank you, Melissa, for your work. You give me so much of a sense of agency and hope. So thank you all.

Melissa Gira Grant 1:19:02

Thank you.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:19:02

Aw, thank you, Mariame.

Jules Gill-Peterson 1:19:04

Oh gosh, thank you.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:19:05

So appreciate it. Thank you so much for taking the time, we'll let you go.

Mariame Kaba 1:19:09

Thank you.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:19:10

But we'll wish you were here for this next part because I know you'd be here for it [laughter].

Mariame Kaba 1:19:13

I can't wait to hear this, like post, you know, when the whole thing comes out. I'm excited to hear about it.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:19:20

Exactly.

Mariame Kaba 1:19:20

All right, take care, y'all.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:19:23

I'm just feeling so revitalized right now.

Jules Gill-Peterson 1:19:28

Seriously.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:19:28

And I wanted to make sure though, that, you know, we got a chance to talk about that because Phil and Abby in particular, and probably any of Phil and Abby's colleagues will tell you how the kind of fantasy of what data actually exists and how accessible it is, is actually very different than the reality, and the reality is exactly what Libraries For the People is actually trying to address here. That like so many times we've been like, hey, Phil, how's your week going? And he's like, well I'm just chasing down Medicaid data and it is taking hours and hours and hours. So I wanted to make sure that we got like specifically a chance to talk about that project and their requests for help there, because I know that there are a lot of people who are like Phil and Abby's colleagues who listen to this show, who have a lot of experience, who do this every day in the function of their job, and who may be looking for a way to use their skills towards something that aligns with their political goals. But I also wanted to make sure that we got a chance to talk about this beautiful synthesis and historical analysis in your piece, Melissa, which focuses also on this moment and libraries as a site of struggle, how this is part of a kind of resurgent Red and Lavender Scare. And this is a point I think you make masterfully in your piece in TNR in September. So do you mind for folks who haven't read it, just sort of setting up what I'm talking about here and how you see this as part of a kind of resurgent McCarthyism or resurgent anti-communist political rhetoric that kind of forces people to put themselves in a position of distancing? I mean, we kind of referenced this a little bit when we were talking about the ALA and Emily Drabinski and kind of the lack of full throated support that we would have loved to see in that instance. But do you mind sort of contextualizing what your actual sort of broader point is there about basically the relationship of everything that we've been talking about to the fascist project?

Melissa Gira Grant 1:21:29

Yeah, absolutely. I want to put in a brief shout out for the data project also, because I did a little bit of work on it. If you love PDFs, this is the contribution for you to the library movement. There's so much data that is just sitting there on the open web even, that's just badly organized, that will show you how these libraries work. And I was just like, okay, this is an actual skill that I have in my day job, doing research, that matters here. So it felt really good to get to do it. You know, there's the Red Scare component of what's going on with the attack on libraries certainly doesn't begin and end with Emily Drabinski, but I'm going to start with her because I feel like her experience coming into leadership at the ALA made this un-ignorable. Like, I am sure that this is a long-standing dynamic within librarianship, like the left has a lot of work to do within libraries, that doesn't mean libraries are all on the left. There's quite the opposite. And there's also, I think, this tension within librarianship of, you know, being a space for everybody somehow being compromised by having politics yourself, like this fear that like, well, this won't be a true space for everyone if we somehow politically take a stance on, it's good to have a free space for everyone. It gets very twisted in a way that the Right is very good at twisting it, when they'll say okay, if you all believe in a free space for everyone, with all ideas represented, then like why won't you let Kirk Cameron come to your library and read creationist fables for children? It's like a great wedge to sort of drive librarianship apart, this question of like, how political can you be? And so there was some -- when Emily Drabinski was elected, and many library workers told me this, they specifically voted for her to assume the ALA presidency because she supported library workers as workers. That was kind of how this started, you know, she's a labor organizer. She sees libraries as a labor issue. And this was before all of the far right attacks on libraries, but absolutely connected to them. Because I think what the far right was able to do, and people like Christopher Ruffo, who are like incredibly upfront about this, was to seize on her as this kind of scapegoat, because she publicly identified as a Marxist, and also as a lesbian. And I do think that there is -- you know, those words, when wielded by those groups who have access to things like a tweet that can show up on Fox News three hours later, scapegoating somebody, leading to harassment and abuse of that person, leading communities to sort of feel like do I have to show up for this person or should I distance myself from this person, because what if I get pulled into this fight? Those were still very powerful words to use against not just Emily, but I think, you know, libraries as a whole, as a system, as an institution. And the Right will also hide behind this, these aren't supposed to be political places, these are supposed to be for everybody. But of course, we know they don't mean that either. But it's this like smokescreen around this entire conversation of like, you're for everybody's politics, but you can't have politics yourself. But I would hope everything we said earlier like kind of gives lie to that. Like no, like believing in what this institution does, this radical proposal that everybody should have access to this level of, whether it's companionship and crocheting, whether it's a place to come out of the heat or the cold, or a place to have your book group, a place to drop your kids off after school and know they're going to be safe. Like that is an opportunity that should be available to everyone. Like, I don't know how you separate politics from that proposition. Like, there's a part of me that's like, if you really believe that, aren't all library workers Marxist? I don't know. But like it's, this is so -- it's so at the heart of it, and also, I think there's a lot of like resistance to confronting this. And so, you know, what I admire about Emily is at no point was she like, I'm not a lesbian, or I'm not a Marxist, right? Like, she didn't say like, oh, I know those are really scary things, but I don't want you to be scared of me. Like those are who she is. It's part of her identity. And she was actually completely, you know, horrified at the way that she said it was used as sort of a bludgeon against other library workers. So you know, as one example, Montana has like a state library oversight body that, in a theatrical move that meant absolutely nothing, but you know, was a statement of politics and another form of scapegoating, said that they were going to dissociate the Montana Library Association from the ALA. And they cited Emily specifically, they cited her being a Marxist and a lesbian. And I mean, as much as that was about Emily and sort of putting Emily in her place. I think it was also about disciplining the ALA and also disciplining the library workers of Montana. I mean, like, what is it to hear that in your own home state? And so the stance that they took, this is the the Montana Library Board that wanted to dissociate from the ALA, they said, "Our oath of office and resulting duty to the Constitution forbids association with an organization led by a Marxist." And it's like, did you guys even ever pay attention that much to the ALA's politics until right now, or was it just useful for you to seize on somebody who is openly expressing their politics, and a politics that's like completely in alignment with this institution, in my opinion? So it's like this dance, I think, that's still playing out, because it's very easy to say like, oh, no, that doesn't matter. That's irrelevant. I'm just as good a librarian as anybody who isn't a Marxist or a lesbian. And that wasn't the response that I was seeing from the library workers who supported Emily, and they kind of did their own organizing, put out their own statements when the ALA and the Montana Library Association statements I think were deficient and didn't name this dynamic, but like, going after somebody for being a Marxist is a Red Scare revival. Going after somebody for being a lesbian, as much as we live in this fantasy of acceptance and, you know, same sex marriage fixed everything, like that's a very powerful thing, especially in concert with her Marxist politics. The Red Scare was a Lavender Scare. They're very inseparable in some ways. And I found this horrifying quote from McCarthy, who, when he was getting bothered by reporters about his House Un-American Committee's activities, he said to them, "If you want to be against McCarthy, boys, you've got to be either a communist or a cocksucker." Like there's a certain poetic unity and horror in this and I think, I don't know, like, I still don't really know how best to respond to it. Because part of me wants to say like, aren't we past this? Haven't we done this? Isn't this our history? Like, don't we know where this goes? But if the last few years have taught me anything, it's like no, even when we like "know better," this history actually has not worked itself out of its institutions. It's still a lever that somebody can pull. And what I would rather see and what I'm trying to embody, in the way that I'm writing about this, is like owning these things as the goods of the library. So I'm just gonna read a part of what I wrote. "Libraries are a place where queer and trans kids might feel freer. Libraries are like a kind of social collider: a space intended for people to freely cross paths with ideas and others unlike themselves. Libraries are tools for getting people the things they need and want for free. And it's these truths that demand our defense." Those are harder truths maybe for some people to defend than the abstract idea of keeping a book on the shelf. But I feel like unless we defend those truths, we're still going to be on the backfoot.

Jules Gill-Peterson 1:29:13

Yeah. I mean, uh oh, I'm having that feeling where like, there might be another Death Panel episode coming into existence right now. So you know, maybe we should talk more about this at another time. But I just wanted to say, I'm so -- I mean, I'm a Melissa Gira Grant Super Fan, so no one's going to be surprised to hear me say this, but I just -- I'm so glad you connected it to the Red Scare and the Lavender Scare. And I also have been thinking a lot about that time period lately. I mean, I think part of the reason why it's recurring is actually that it never ended. And I think that's because anti-communism, and actually the kind of homophobia that was built into anti-communism was a bipartisan political project, ultimately, and you know, kind of going back and looking at the homophile organizing around the Lavender Scare in the Civil Service in Washington DC in the 60s, I mean, this is also about the kind of liberal triumphalism about how we -- how we defeated the Lavender Scare, which like we didn't. But it was this like totally individualist lawsuit model of, I need to get my job back. It wasn't -- it was precisely the respectability politics of no, I'm actually a really good IRS worker or State Department worker who just happens to be gay, but I'm happy not to be gay at work, you know, and I actually never was a communist and I don't even like communists either, right? It was the worst possible "triumph" that could have happened. And so, the actual structural political project that was homophobic, anti-communism was never defeated. Just some people carved out, you know, a respectable path for their own neutrality. And so the dilemma was preserved, and the dilemma has persisted. And so now it can antagonize, you know, so many different sectors, including libraries, public schools, academia. I mean, I just think this is a real -- this is a place where the left has lost a lot of ground as well. And I think people feel really overwhelmed. And the one thing I was thinking as you were talking, Melissa, I was like, well, what does the cheapness of these accusations do, right? Again, there's this -- the emergence of snarky, liberal smug, looking down upon the Right's cheapness of language, their use of Marxism, socialism, communism, their accusations of grooming and pedophilia, the absolute, you know, just sort of hackneyed destruction through over-usage of the term "woke," you know, all of these things, I find the dominant reaction is to sneer and be like, oh, they're so dumb. No, they're not dumb. The thing that it does is it inhibits solidarity. I mean, that's what it's doing. Because it's saying, we're tar and feathering, you know, the head of the ALA, so you're not going to want to be associated with that person. We're tar and feathering people so they become, you know, essentially on an informal blacklist, and we're gonna make you do that dirty work for us by making you afraid to be in solidarity with them, make you afraid to be associated with them. And that is a really powerful political tactic straight out of the McCarthy playbook, right. And it's one that was never defeated because it has continued as a central pillar of US politics. I mean, you know, again, another episode, but obviously, the way that people's free speech is being completely overrun if they support free Palestine and the impossibility like -- that I'm verging on in some places in Europe now, it is like illegal to just go out and protest on the premise that, you know, Palestinian resistance is anti-colonial struggle. All of these kinds of things, right, where the liberal political institutions have always been illiberal, but this kind of homophobic and anti-communism, I think, is something that, you know, that we really have to deal with, because we're already dealing with it, in this loss of solidarity and in this fear, and in this kind of self censorship, or just that feeling of like, you know, I don't want to get 200 emails where people are going on weird, long rants, throwing all this language at me. So actually, maybe I won't make a public statement or you know, actually, maybe I won't attend this protest. Or maybe I won't stick my neck out, you know, for this other person who's been tarred and feathered in the public sphere. I mean, I really think there's something so central here, that actually gets us to the material context of how homophobia, transphobia and anti-Blackness actually really work in the so-called culture war sphere, so it's just like, there's so much going on there. Yeah.

Jules Gill-Peterson 1:34:10

Absolutely.

Melissa Gira Grant 1:34:11

I'm glad you mentioned Palestine too, because I feel like this was on my mind, this is towards the end of October, the Republicans finally have a Speaker of the House now. And I made the mistake of watching his acceptance speech.

Jules Gill-Peterson 1:34:25

Oh no.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:34:25

Oof.

Melissa Gira Grant 1:34:25

[laughing] I know. Just parts of it, because he's a rabid Christian nationalist, former ADF attorney. This dude's like in my wheelhouse, so I was like, I have to watch this. And like three sentences, maybe not that many, but pretty early in, he went on an extended riff about how, you know, we are an anti-Marxist, anti-communist country, and I was like, what is this doing here?

[Clip] Mike Johnson (New Republican Speaker of the United States House of Representatives) 1:34:47

It was in 1962, in 1962, that our national motto, In God We Trust, was adorned above this rostrum. And if you look at the little guide that they give tourists and constituents who come and visit the House, if you turn in there to about page 14, in the middle of that guide, it tells you the history of this. And it says very simply, these words were placed here above us, this motto was placed here as a rebuke of the Cold War era philosophy of the Soviet Union. That philosophy was Marxism and communism, which begins with the premise that there is no God. This is a critical distinction that is also articulated in our nation's birth certificate.

Melissa Gira Grant 1:35:28

Like, why are you putting this here? And some -- and I made a kind of like naive post about it on Bluesky. And some of the responses I got back was like, well, of course they say that, they don't mean anything, like they just do that now, and it's like, right, but why? Like we should not be lulled into this being normal now, that we are hearing, you know, these denunciations of groups that, on the one hand, do not have the kind of political power that these figures on the Right invest them with, but on the other hand, they hold great power when it comes to pushing people away from them. And I don't think the right response here is to say, like, whatever, there's no Marxists in Congress [laughing], right? It's like no, like, they're hitting on something, they're trying to pull us apart, and they're labeling a scapegoat. And that is real and that is happening, no matter how much they believe in that person actually being a Marxist or a communist. It was never about that person actually being anything, it was about forcing you to renounce it for yourself, for others. And, yeah, that's not symbolic, as you said, there's deep consequences for that.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:36:37

It's so important. And I mean, I feel like when people dismiss that kind of rhetoric as being like, well oh, of course, you know, of course this, of course that, and kind of downplay the significance of, for example, like really overt speech against communism as a kind of almost paramilitary other state that the US is at war with, literally sort of re-performing the Cold War with this abstract, you know, specter of the communist state within, right, which is like a whole sort of mindfuck to look at from like a perspective of sociology of disability in particular, but I feel like when that comes up, like fucking Erving Goffman is just screaming in his grave and scratching at the fucking coffin to get out, to be like, no, oh, my god, like this speech matters. This is backstage becoming front stage speech, like his whole idea of dramaturgy, right, the quote that everybody says and nobody like stops to think about, of all the world is a stage, right, you know, we're actors, we're here to perform, was about the idea of how speech and communication and interpersonal interaction, social relationships are governed by a series of sort of performances and agreements, right. And we have a kind of front and center public performance that we're willing to sort of present to people and that's an active state of sort of performance and negotiation with the world around you, where you try and meet norms and match and sort of demonstrate that you're a member of society, right? And then you have the backstage performance, which is the private self, the things that, you know, you say in the absence of public view, right, like, on and off the record kind of idea. And, you know, the ways that this like idea is used and abused and misread abound, but at the core of it, right, like, what it speaks to is that public speech is always a social reproductive action, right? Speech, of any kind, whether that's being openly anti-communist in your acceptance of the appointment of Speaker of the House, or it's a book where communism is in the title, right, which was not easy to do and get published, frankly, as opposed to what some people have thought. It's, you know, fundamentally, about a provocation, right? And in one hand, like the provocation is that communism is not allowed, should not be on book titles, should not be published, should not be a book in a public library with the word communism in it, right. And the other hand, it's to force them and sort of set opposing negotiations and propositions of no, communism is a word we should say, and we can believe and build towards, you know, and that struggle, right, isn't just symbolic, right? Like it is a literal action that we perform over and over on the show when we say, request Health Communism and A Short History of Trans Misogyny at your public library, we are saying like, you know, that the reproduction of speech, like whatever it is, actually always matters, unfortunately, right? Quite unfortunately.

Melissa Gira Grant 1:40:09

Yeah. There are times when I'm like, why did I put "whore" in the title of my book? I'm so fucking over it. And I'm grateful that I did, because every time somebody says it with a smirk, or with a like, oh, well, that's interesting. I'm like, okay, this book is doing some interesting work in the world, even when just other people say the title and feel the need to reposition themselves around it. It doesn't feel great, but you know, like that -- it doesn't feel symbolic to me in those moments. These aren't just words in those moments. And yeah, like, I think it's so comforting to be like, oh, well, whatever, you know, as you laid out, Jules, like this isn't just in our past, we never actually fully resolved this. We didn't deal with both the Red Scare and the Lavender Scare, we just sort of like held it at bay with respectability politics, at best. It's, I think -- it doesn't feel great to realize it's still with us, and I want to acknowledge that. But also, we can't just say like, well, these are just words, and we're just going to move on because those people aren't being sincere about their politics, they're just riling up their base or whatever they tell themselves they're doing. Meanwhile, we have library workers whose work emails are getting FOIA-ed for the word communist, Marxist. Social justice was one of the words that these -- the Right are using to FOIA library workers' emails. It's very real.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:41:24

Yeah, well, you know, this is ultimately about the reproduction of who society's for and who it's not for, even down to the kind of disproportionality that Mariame was pointing to, in terms of these library board seats being majority appointment, right. And this being a position or a type of aspect of the municipality that is seen as actually inherently political because it's within whatever the entrenched politics of governance may be at that moment, right? Like these -- the frustrating thing, I think, that ultimately can come of the over-simplicity of the way this is conveyed also as a struggle, or as even just a description of the problem, or what's going on, is that, just to echo everything that everyone said for the last hour plus, you know, this is about not just like putting the book back on the shelf. And that is important, sure, but the ultimate struggle is actually not only, you know, much bigger, but it also is a moment where you can actually really see with quite remarkable clarity how the state builds itself, and how each of us as individuals have our role to play and our parts to play and the norms that we perform, and the ways that we talk about things and talk to each other, whether that's libraries, school boards, COVID, or Palestine, really matter, because they not only shape our political language, but they shape our political reality at the end of the day. They shape what is reproduced. You know, I'm thinking so much of the conversation that I had with Rasha, where they talked about, you know, the things that sometimes are repeated, that you don't necessarily -- necessarily know exactly what you're saying, right? Like, you know, theory isn't just theoretical, theory is also about what are the ideas that we perform in everyday life for each other? And how do we set and model expectations of the people that we're in social relations with? And that's kind of ultimately like what's at the core of also what's at stake in the issue of censorship, right? Like, that's why censorship matters, because it closes off opportunities for other ways to be in the world and says that they're not okay. And we don't want that.

Jules Gill-Peterson 1:44:08

Mhm.

Melissa Gira Grant 1:44:08

Oof. I do still feel very energized, I have to say, like, this entire time, I keep thinking of what it was like the first time I went to a library board meeting. And the library board seemed very anxious, because there were only two people in that room who weren't on the library board. [laughter] And they just had it in their mind that like anybody that we don't recognize is here to fuck with us, right? But I mean, also, it was like, oh, they're so used to not interacting with the people who they are working on behalf of, that really, one or two people showing up can make a profound difference in the power dynamic. And if I had to leave people with anything, it would be that, you know, even on Zoom, like they're just used to nobody paying attention to them, which the Right has exploited very masterfully. But in solidarity with librarianship, it's also very easy to show up, literally show up in this moment for them.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:45:02

And in so many different ways too.

Jules Gill-Peterson 1:45:04

Exactly.

Melissa Gira Grant 1:45:04

Yeah, Download some PDFs. Figure out how your library board is constituted. The amount of our government that's just hidden in bad documentation. It was a real revelation, even just for a couple of hours. Yeah.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:45:18

Everything is like this. You know, the fantasy of competency is alive and well in the United States. It's our main power and export [laughter]. But no, I think this is such a great place to leave it. Melissa, thank you so much. Mariame, now that you're listening at home to this last part, thank you as well, so much. And folks, again, if you want to get involved with any of the organizing that the Leftist Library Project is doing, that For the People: Leftist Library Project is doing, their website, again, is LibrariesForThePeople.org. We will put links to everything Mariame mentioned in the episode description, of course, and also to Melissa's piece, which again is called Librarians Didn't Sign Up to Be Queer Activists -- but This Year, They Are, which was published in September by The New Republic. Melissa, as always, such a pleasure to have you on. Mariame, likewise.

Melissa Gira Grant 1:46:18

Thank you guys, as always.

Jules Gill-Peterson 1:46:19

Thank you.

Melissa Gira Grant 1:46:20

Anytime. I'll be back.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:46:21

Thank you so much. And patrons, thank you so much for supporting the show. We couldn't do any of this without you. To support the show, become a patron at patreon.com/deathpanelpod to get access to our second weekly bonus episode and entire back catalogue of bonus episodes. And if you'd like to help us out a little bit more, you can share the show with your friends, post about your favorite episodes, request your favorite books, including Health Communism, and A Short History of Trans Misogyny, and all of the fantastic books by our two guests today at your local library, and follow us @deathpanel_. And as always, Medicare for All now, solidarity forever. Stay alive another week.

[Outro music]

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:50:10

All right, that was so fun.

Jules Gill-Peterson 1:50:12

Hell yeah.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:50:12

Seriously.

Jules Gill-Peterson 1:50:13

I was like, if I didn't have things on my schedule this afternoon, I was going to be like okay, can we just start recording a second episode right now about the Lavender Scare [laughter]?

Melissa Gira Grant 1:50:23

Right?

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:50:23

Yeah, well --

Melissa Gira Grant 1:50:25

Hold that thought, Jules.

Transcript by Kendra Kline. (Kendra is currently accepting freelance transcript work — email her if you need transcripts!)