God. Depressing. Louisiana is trying to criminalize ALA membership. Libraries or individuals joining the ALA or accepting funding from it would be punished with jail time or a $1000 fine.
In the name of Zoia Horn, let's remember: when they send librarians to jail, things are in a very bad place.
as terrifying as this is, it's important to realize that these kinds of politicians submit these kinds of bills all the time and the vast majority of them never go anywhere. these bills exist to troll their political enemies ("owning the libs" being the core policy of the Republican party at the moment) and rile up their base. and when they fail to make it out of committee, the politician can claim that they're fighting against Big Library or whatever
this is the bill in question. it has no other sponsors other than the newly-elected Representative Dickerson (who literally joined the Louisiana House in January of this year) and has currently been referred to committee. I am no expert on Louisiana politics, but the rep in question hasn't passed any bills that didn't have a bunch of co-sponsors except for a nonbinding resolution commending "women in industry in Louisiana for their essential roles in the state's economic, social, and cultural development". based on my experience with other state legislatures, I think it's very likely that this bill will not be taken up by the committee and will die there, like most own-the-libs bills submitted by freshmen legislators as part of their first session for purely promotional reasons
I'm saying this purely for a sense of perspective. this is absolutely something that needs to be paid attention to, and it's absolutely the kind of shit that signals the GOP's full embrace of fascism. but it doesn't mean that Louisiana is going to be throwing librarians in jail yet, just that a single freshman rep in the state thinks that this is good meat for her base. what will be worrysome is if the bill makes it out of committee
