Dan will be at the county’s quorum court meeting tonight with the extremist group Moms for Liberty
Saline County is next on the book-banning, library-defunding train, barreling toward full-on fascist policy in the state of Arkansas. Craighead County provides the blueprint, having defunded its library just last year with ample help from State Senator Dan Sullivan.
This legislative session Dan spent many hours defending SB81, which allows parents to challenge books they believe to be inappropriate. Challenges can be appealed through local government, and librarians can be criminalized if a book is deemed “obscene.” Sullivan appeared to avoid the term “book banning,” and instead focused on “parental empowerment,” a term his camp has used ad nauseam.
Those who testified in favor of the bill, many of them Moms for Liberty members, read cherry-picked excerpts of books for shock value. But let’s be clear about what they were fighting for: not only do I not want my kid to have access to this material, I don’t want your kid to, either. Parental empowerment for me, not for thee.
Dan’s efforts to spin this bill away from a “book banning” bill and toward one that helps [conservative, white] parents raise their children how they choose are obvious. After championing the extremist group’s pet project, he is something of a Moms for Liberty celebrity. The same is true, apparently, of Dan’s reputation among the Saline County Republican Women, who called him “Book Ban Dan” in their happy birthday post to him this weekend.
It’s clear Saline County is next on Sullivan’s priority list; Dan is planning to make the trip to central Arkansas for the Quorum Court’s vote on a resolution requiring librarians to rearrange shelves to bored, rightwing extremist moms’ liking. The meeting is tonight, Monday April 17th, at 6:30 pm. Many members of the community will be showing up to slow the roll of censorship in Arkansas. Stay tuned to see if they’re successful.
