More on the campaign to ban books from school libraries

Moms for Liberty is a recently hatched nationwide group that circulates lists of books it wants to ban from public school libraries.

Ruth Ewig, a Fairbanks Mom for Liberty, says the Moms want to ban objectionable books from public school libraries, but she objects to me saying that the group wants to ban books from libraries.

Ruth Ewig testifying to the Fairbanks school board in April.

She wrote a letter to the Daily News-Miner July 19, complaining about a blog post that appeared here on June 6.

Here is the blog post in question.

Ewig said I am a “woke journalist” and it is a “distraction from the truth” for me to say her group wants to ban books from school libraries. She says they want to ban books from libraries that Moms have decided are pornographic and aimed at indoctrinating kids.

One of her fellow liberty Moms told the school board in June she wanted “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison and other books to be removed: “I think we need to stop what we’re doing right now, get in our vehicles, go to every school, pull these books, is what I think.”

As I wrote here in June, Ewig makes regular comments on right-wing blogs in Alaska, about such topics as Dominion voting machines, evolution, abortion and a Fairbanks school curriculum “submitted through the lesbians, feminists and homosexuals within the UAF and Human Rights Commission.” Last November she complained about “pornographic librarians” in Wasilla.

Ewig, who wore her Trump hat to the school board meeting, wrote with her husband in 2022 that Critical Race Theory is being taught in Fairbanks. “Biographies in this curriculum are of Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Malcolm X, Angela Davis, etc. Missing is our classical education, however, are many, many positive heroes and role models.”

“The NEA and Lbrarians and other unions (AFL-CIO) are the unelected thugs running the country,” Ewig wrote on April 12, 2023.

In 2021, she and Jon wrote that atheists and pantheists control Fairbanks.

They singled out my twin brother Terrence, who died in late 2020, along with me and librarian Greg Hill as bad influences. Apparently we were deemed to be the all-powerful Trilateral Commission of Fairbanks.

The pantheists and “also atheists are in control here in the Interior,” Ruth and Jon said on the Alaska Watchman blog. “The UAF leaders dominate and train their students to always vote. These atheists and pantheists control the News Miner throughout especially with Dermot Cole’s column, and previously his twin brother Terrence writing in the Community Perspective and the Librarian Greg Hill having a column and as an example ‘ganging up’ on former legislator Dick Randolph. We notice that Dermot is now a medical expert whose column is being printed in an Anchorage newspaper with his so-called ‘expertise.’”

Speaking of so-called expertise, in an April meeting this year, Ruth held up a list of what she called “bad books” in public schools. This apparently is the list circulated by Moms for Liberty national HQ.

“Porn books are in our classrooms and our libraries,” Ewig said.

“The required reading list for eleventh and twelth graders is completely woke,” said Ewig.

“The books are as follows: Anti-white, 26 books. How many of you are whites? Because these are anti-white. Anti-Christian, 11 books. How many people are Christians? These are anti-Christian.”

She ran out of time before mentioning the other objectionable categories, which were listed by another Mom for Liberty in June as 14 “sexually explicit” books, 26 “anti-American” books, 8 “anti-men” books and “an entire homosexual section.”

Moms for Liberty want to be able to decide what materials the children of other people should have access to in school.

Here is a Brookings Institution report on the Moms movement.

Luckily, I know exactly what my twin brother would have thought about all this. He would have said that Moms for Liberty is like Doc Marquis all over again.

In 1991 in Fairbanks, when the “Impressions” textbook series led to a prolonged fight about reading and schools, opponents of the books brought Doc Marquis to Fairbanks to share his so-called expertise on witchcraft and the evil he saw hidden in nearly every chapter of the textbooks.

Expert Doc claimed to have been a warlock from age 3 to 23 and that he had witnessed human sacrifices and had life and death power over 1,000 witches.

Doc also claimed to have spent 2,000 hours studying the textbooks and finding countless signs of evil, a statement that my brother said brought to mind his favorite literary hero, Don Quixote.

“Like the Doc, the Don spent all of his waking and sleeping hours poring over his books, and in fact Quixote read so many books of chivalry and wild tales of romance that ‘his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind,’” my brother wrote in 1991.

“We should encourage honest discussion. However, it seems to me that we have reached a sad point in the history of the community when otherwise good and kind people start witch hunting, inspired by someone who claims to have been a witch himself.”

“Don Quixote was a loving Christian soul who did not hurt anyone but himself with his outlandish beliefs. Doc Marquis can’t hurt anyone either, as long as we reject the poison he has been preaching.”

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READ ALL ABOUT IT: In a less controversial reading issue, school board candidate Morgan Dulian had a great idea for the Golden Days Parade Saturday and it worked exactly as planned.

Dulian and a small army of volunteers handed out 2,000 used children’s books along the parade route.

We didn’t need another parade participant handing out candy, but recycling donated books was exactly the right way to start a campaign for the school board and to emphasize how important it is for families to read to their children. Dulian’s won the Best Political Float award, deservedly so.

“Hopefully we sparked as a few readers and built connections in families by giving them a new book to read together at bedtime tonight,” she wrote Saturday on Facebook.

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