Update: The pop-up event at ICPL on Saturday was postponed due to a winter weather advisory. The new event date has yet to be announced.
The Banned Wagon is coming to the Iowa City Public Library (ICPL) on Saturday, as the library hosts a pop-up event where Annie’s Foundation will be giving away free copies of books that have been banned from school and public libraries around the country.
“They specifically do this at schools and in communities that have been impacted by adverse legislation, which we’ve had quite a bit of in the last year,” Sam Helmick, ICPL’s community and access services coordinator, told Little Village.
The two-hour event, which starts at noon on Saturday, will be on the Ped Mall in front of the library. In addition to the banned book giveaway, the ICPL Bookmobile will be there to help people sign up for library cards and check out (and checkout) ICPL books. There will also be crafts, as well as the chance to talk with members of Annie’s Foundation and Students for Human Rights at Iowa (SHRAI) about the freedom to read and other intellectual freedom issues.
Annie’s Foundation, a Johnston-based nonprofit, formed in 2022 to oppose the growing efforts to ban books and otherwise restrict intellectual freedom in Iowa. It’s named in honor of the late Ann Lohry Smith, an Ankeny parent “who inspired other parents and community members with her fierce defense of public education,” the foundation explains on its site.
Last year saw a massive surge in attempts to ban books in schools and public libraries around the country, as “number of titles targeted for censorship surged 65 percent in 2023 compared to 2022, reaching the highest levels ever documented by the American Library Association (ALA),” according to a report the ALA published last week.
The report identifies 1,247 demands to ban 4,240 different titles in 2023. It also breaks down ban attempts by state. Iowa had more titles targeted than any of its neighboring states, except Wisconsin. With 259 titles targeted by people who wanted them removed, Iowa ranked number seven on the ALA list of states with the most censorship attempts in 2023.
Iowa could have ranked even higher if SF 496, which Gov. Reynolds signed into law last May, had been allowed to go into effect. The bill contained provisions requiring public school districts to remove all books with “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act” except for approved science or health class text.
Supporters of the bill in the Iowa Legislature — only Republican lawmakers voted in favor of it — made it clear the books they wanted removed were ones with LGBTQ characters or themes, but needed to craft the ban more broadly in order to try to avoid having it struck down as unconstitutional.
But the broad language of the bill, and the refusal of the Iowa Department of Education to provide guidance on how districts were to implement the book ban, led to confusion and sweeping book removals.
The Iowa City Community School District (ICCSD), for example, ended up temporarily removing 68 books, including landmark works of literature (Ulysses by James Joyce), literature so embedded in contemporary culture that everyone knows its name (The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood) and an essential work by Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye. It also resulted in the removal of nonfiction works of history (The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, Iris Chang’s widely praised study of the atrocities — including massacres and mass rapes conducted by the Japanese Imperial Army after its 1937 invasion of Nanjing), as well as Not that Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture, a collection of essays on the harassment and violence women face, edited by Roxane Gay, a leading American essayist.
On Nov. 28, the ACLU of Iowa and Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of SF 496 — which also contained other measures aimed to LGBTQ students — on behalf of seven students and Iowa Safe Schools. Two days later, attorneys representing the Iowa State Education Association and Penguin Random House filed another lawsuit in federal court challenging SF 496’s book ban.
The cases were combined, and on Dec. 29, Judge Stephen Locher issued a temporary injunction stopping the enforcement of SF 496. ICCSD and other districts returned the books they removed to library shelves after the injunction was issued.
But requests from the public to ban books — either from people acting on their own, or generated by rightwing groups like Moms for Liberty — go beyond targeting titles with LGBTQ material, and often include books addressing the lives and experiences of people of color, and examine American culture and history in ways people who rely on conservative media for information don’t approve of. And this year, the Republican majority in the Iowa Legislature turned its attention from books to libraries.
“This year they’re going after public libraries’ funding,” Helmick said. “They tried to eliminate all codified funding for public libraries, and take the control of libraries away from library boards, who are appointed by their mayors and councils.”
“If you don’t have to fund libraries, if that funding is no longer codified, there are small and rural libraries that would have closed as they have to make tough decisions amid economic hardships,” they explained. “And if you no longer permit your library boards to serve as the governing stewards of public libraries, you double the workload of a city council. You lose credentials and specialized-focus that is necessary to meet accreditation standards by the State Library.”
“Board members have to go through training for everything for intellectual freedom to collection development to First Amendment law. Councilors would have to take on that work and that legal liability without any extra resources.”
Helmick traveled to Des Moines to testify against the bills aimed at libraries, and they weren’t alone. After the Iowa Library Association and groups like Annie’s Foundation raised pubic awareness of the bill, there was strong pushback from the public.
“Iowans love their libraries,” Helmick said. “Seventy-four percent of Iowans have at least one library card. We have more public libraries per capita than any other state in the nation.”
And despite recent actions by the legislature, Iowa also has a long tradition of defending the right to read freely, Helmick pointed out. The Library Bill of Rights adopted by the American Library Association in 1939 was drafted by Des Moines Public Libraries Director Forest Spaulding.
“This is our legacy,” Helmick said.
The pushback was successful. The bills targeting libraries died without ever getting floor votes in the House or Senate.
But Helmick feels certain the bills like those will be introduced again. Beyond culture war imperatives, there are companies who see a library’s loss of funding or independence as a chance at financial gain.
“There’s money to be made privatizing access to information and opportunity, which is what libraries provide,” Helmick said.
ICPL is hoping for good turnout on Saturday for the Banned Wagon, but there are ways to support the library and the freedom to read beyond the pop-up event on the Ped Mall.
“The best way to advocate for your library is to use it,” Helmick said. “I encourage everyone to get a card and use it today.”
