A bill in Louisiana, HB 777, would make it a crime for librarians to use public funds to join the American Librarian Association or attend an ALA conference, punishable with prison time and hard labor for up to two years.
@jensorensen The article doesn't seem to support the headline. It also says "librarians would be sentenced to hard labor for daring to join their largest professional organization". The HB777 text they quote, however, 'only' bans the 'use of public funds' to do so. Still bad, of course, but let's stick to facts. So I'd love to know if librarians doing all this with their own money, are also 'criminalized'.
@jensorensen ah the US. Land of the Free, indeed. Y'all are so fucked that if I were to look up the term, I'd find a map of your country next to the definition.
If it weren't, indeed, for all the children suffering under that, I'd say, Louisiana is welcome to this kind of policies and we'll leave it to evolution to sort it all out. I have a firm belief, that, suppressing proliferation of knowledge is not a long-term survival advantage. The knowledge-hungry will flee the place and they yokel will be left. The next power outage, the next epidemic the next famine will
wipe them out.
@jensorensen I was gonna say this must be an unwanted side-effect of a larger bill. But no, literally the whole bill is no longer than half a page, only mentions librarians joining the ALA, and assigns punishment more severe than punishment for assault in Louisiana.
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