Friday, January 30, 2015

Starting a Dialogue on Sexual Harassment in Libraries

"the conversation starts here...
ALA Chicago Midwinter Meeting"
Here is an example of how librarians feel about sexual harassment of librarians and how it is a topic many wish to avoid.  "[S]exual harassment and misogyny [is] rampant it is in the [librarian] profession." "Sometimes, worse than the harassment is the pushback from peers for speaking out about our experiences."

I recently tweeted quotes from this, prompting others to tweet and retweet about it, including the author, including how ALA Midwinter will not be discussing the issue (#TeamHarpy), so this clearly hits a raw nerve.  

For a blog called "Sexual Harassment of Librarians," this is a must and I hope to "get that conversation flowing" with these excerpts:

by Lisa Rabey
American Libraries
10 June 2014

[Elided.]

And yet, here I am in a new profession that is predominantly female and on some levels, the sexism and misogyny is a lot worse than during the dot-com boom.

Since the beginning of my library career, I’ve been very public about sexual harassment and misogyny and how rampant it is in the profession. The more I and others write, promote, and talk about the library world’s dirty laundry, the more our detractors come out to rebut and shame us for speaking out.

Sometimes, worse than the harassment is the pushback from peers for speaking out about our experiences.

[Elided.]

We need to stop turning a blind eye. We should stop shaming people for speaking out against the indifferences they see at local institutions and at national levels. We have to stop using the word “diversity” as our motto if we’re not willing to really work on making our profession diverse.

We need to stop claiming that libraries are progressive unless we really want to be progressive.

[Elided.]

And be vocal. Be persistent. Be brave. And most of all, get that conversation flowing.


NOTE ADDED 2 FEBRUARY 2015:

I changed the graphic from the ALA Midwinter 2015 logo to one showing the ALA saying "the conversation starts here...," and that is entirely relevant to the point to "get that conversation flowing."  That is exactly what I am doing on this new blog called, "Sexual Harassment of Librarians."

Also, I add the following notice:
© Copyright 1997-2014, American Library Association 
The American Library Association is providing information and services on the web in furtherance of its non-profit and tax-exempt status.  Permission to use, copy and distribute documents delivered from this website and related graphics is hereby granted for private, non-commercial and education purposes only, provided that the above copyright notice appears with the following notice: This document may be reprinted and distributed for non-commercial and educational purposes only, and not for resale.  No resale use may be made of material on this website at any time.  All other rights reserved.

NOTE ADDED 25 FEBRUARY 2015:

DMCA (link) complaint, presumably by Lisa Rabey, has been successful.  I was trying to "be vocal.  Be persistent.  Be brave.  And most of all, get that conversation flowing."  So I am acting accordingly to remove most of the content.  (Librarians getting others to remove content.  Hmmm.   On sexual harassment of librarians, no less.  Hmmm.  By a librarian being sued for claiming without evidence that another librarian is a sexual harasser.  Hmmm.)

I still urge you all to read all of what Lisa Rabey said about the pervasive sexual harassment within librarianship (link).

And I'm still building this resource that I know for a fact is already helping at least one sexually harassed librarian who specifically praised this new resource despite Lisa Rabey's DMCA statement (link).


NOTE ADDED 28 MARCH 2015:

Warning: Lisa Rabey has admitted she lied (link) about a certain librarian being a "sexual predator."  She destroyed the career of that librarian.  The article of hers that I extensively quoted above has been roundly criticized as follows: "One of the vigilantes was then given a platform in the American Libraries magazine."  See:


Also, I wrote the following:




URL of this page:

Monday, January 26, 2015

No Smut At Work, Please

by Gary Young
The National Law Journal

15 September 2003


Are sexual harassment law and the First Amendment on a collision course? If so, which one will give way?

A federal lawsuit that ended in a settlement last month poses those questions in a particularly sensational fashion.

On Aug. 15, the Minneapolis Public Library announced that it had agreed to pay $435,000 to 12 employees-lead plaintiff Wendy Adamson, five other librarians, five aides and a page-who accused the library administration of subjecting them to a hostile work environment by leaving them exposed to pornography.

On First Amendment grounds, library officials refused to intervene when patrons used library Internet stations to display sexually explicit material.

Adamson and her colleagues (11 of the 12 were women) claimed not only that they were exposed to objectionable material, but that the administration's laissez-faire attitude led to overt acts of harassment, such as catcalls, masturbation, physical threats and stalking by patrons.

The work environment greatly improved in 2000, when the administration finally reacted to their Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaint, the employees said. But they pursued litigation in Minneapolis federal court for compensation for three years of suffering, among other reasons. The settlement brought Adamson v. Minneapolis Public Library, No. 03-2521, to a close.

Some experts see the settlement as the victory of a common-sense interpretation of the First Amendment rights of library patrons. Others worry that it inches the legal system further along a slippery slope that will one day lead to the outright triumph of workplace rights over the First Amendment.


First of its kind

There has been wide speculation that employers may face liability if they fail to stanch offensive material injected into the workplace by third parties using the Internet, such as pornography spammers. The Minneapolis case appears to be the first in which an employer has actually paid out.

Robert S. Halagan, the Buffalo, Minn., solo practitioner who represented the 12 plaintiffs, said that the decision is the first of its kind of which he's aware.

Still, he dismissed the idea that he's set a precedent with far-reaching implications. "You won't see another case like it," he said, because other libraries have been willing to place reasonable restrictions on Internet use by patrons.

Law Professor Robert M. O'Neil, who directs the University of Virginia's Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, agreed with Halagan on that point. He said that the issue of whether a library can put restrictions on its patrons' choice of Internet material has largely been rendered moot by the U.S. Supreme Court's June decision in U.S. v. American Library Ass'n Inc., No. 02-361.

In that case, the court upheld the Children's Internet Protection Act, a 2000 law that requires libraries receiving federal funds (virtually all of them, public and private, according to O'Neil) to use filtering software to prevent children from being exposed to pornography on the Internet.

The law allows libraries to disable such software when adults want to access a blocked site "for bona fide research or other lawful purposes."

Writing for a four-member plurality, with which two justices concurred, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote, "A library's need to exercise judgment in making collection decisions depends on its traditional role in identifying suitable and worthwhile material; it is no less entitled to play that role when it collects material from the Internet than when it collects material from any other source."

O'Neil conceded that material considered offensive on racial or religious grounds can also give rise to hostile work environment claims; The Internet protection act decision might not be dispositive in those cases, he added, since such material is less likely to be deemed harmful to children than pornography.

Even so, O'Neil said, "This kind of conflict is unlikely to arise again." He said that if such a complaint were filed in the future, most employers would take steps to remedy the situation.

"It's not censorship for a librarian to tap a patron on the shoulder, tell him that what he's viewing offends other patrons, and ask him to use a corner terminal," he said.

Eugene Volokh, a University of California at Los Angeles law professor currently visiting Harvard University, is not so sanguine about the impact of the Minneapolis settlement.

It's not that he thinks librarians should have no say in what gets displayed in public areas or that library administrations should be prevented from placing restrictions on what their patrons view.

What he finds troubling here is that it was "the threat of federal enforcement" that brought the library around to settlement. He worries that publicity from this settlement will lead other libraries to impose restrictions on Internet access, not because it makes good management sense, but because of that threat. "The federal government is pressuring the nation to adopt speech codes," he said.

Volokh argued that the danger of sexual harassment law trumping the First Amendment is not limited to public libraries, since private employers are also liable if they create or tolerate a hostile work environment. Finally, the danger is not restricted to libraries, since "every place is someone's workplace, whether it's a park, a library or an art museum," he said.

A hypothetical

To illustrate how bad things could get, Volokh offers the example of a private research library devoted to the medical aspects of sexuality. If librarians found offensive the images and texts they were required to handle, he suggested, the library would be required to restrict the free flow of information to avoid creating a hostile environment.

Volokh's proposed solution is to impose sexual harassment restrictions only on workplace speech that is one-on-one. "If a speaker says something to a recipient, and the recipient has made it known that the speech is offensive, then I see no great need for First Amendment protection," he said.


Adamson, who took the lead in organizing the protest against the Minneapolis library's policies, said that she understands Volokh's misgivings.

After seeing Volokh refer in print to "squeamish librarians," Adamson, who considers herself liberal, wrote to him to explain that she and her colleagues were not stereotypical, prudish librarians, and she has since carried on a correspondence with him.

Adamson said that when the library first installed terminals in 1997, "I was so excited about the Internet that I could hardly sleep at night." And while she admitted that she does not have a ready answer to Volokh's worst-case scenario, she added that Volokh has not answered her question: "What were we supposed to do?"

Adamson said that between 1997 and 2000, when she and her colleagues filed a complaint with the EEOC, the administration was so loath to interfere with the viewing choices of its patrons that it chastised a security guard for telling a 6-year-old boy that he shouldn't be looking at pornography.

She said that the library fell under occupation by about 25 "sex addicts" who came in every day to use the terminals, deliberately tried to embarrass and intimidate the staff, lured children into viewing pornography and made violent threats.

"I don't care how pristine the First Amendment is, you can't use it as an excuse for not running an institution in a responsible way," she said.

After Adamson and her colleagues filed their EEOC complaint and a television station ran an account, the library administration finally took action, she said.

The library took a number of steps, such as insisting that patrons pay a fee for printouts and moving terminals to a central location. In Adamson's view, the most effective measure was the posting of a notice at each terminal that the public display of obscenity violated Minnesota law: the 25 men "crawled back under some rock" and never appeared again.

In 2001, the EEOC ruled that there was probable cause to believe that a hostile work environment had existed before the library adopted its new policies. Although the U.S. Department of Justice declined to bring suit, it gave the go-ahead for the 12 employees to sue on their own.

Forging ahead

Halagan said his clients decided to proceed with litigation, despite improved conditions at the library, because they were entitled to compensation for three years of suffering, including chastisement by the administration "for daring to think that they had rights in this area."

He said that they did not want to work a financial hardship on the library, noting that the $435,000 settlement falls within the limits of the library's insurance policy.

A second motive for proceeding was "to send a message to other libraries that this is an issue they should take seriously."

The library's director, Katherine G. Hadley, who was appointed to that post earlier this year after the board of directors allowed her predecessor's contract to lapse, declined to address the specifics of the plaintiffs' allegations in the interest of "moving forward." But she added that she stood by the library's official settlement statement that it "regrets that it did not respond sooner to the charges presented."

Volokh has his supporters, but his position appears to be the minority view among scholars.

Feminist scholar Catharine MacKinnon, a law professor at the University of Michigan, wrote in an e-mail message, "The First Amendment does not protect sexual harassment at work in any form, including through pornography. The pornography that came into the librarians' workplace via the internet created a hostile environment for their work because they were women. This is sex-based abuse, not protected freedom."

Professor Miranda McGowan of the University of Minnesota Law School, who has written on the First Amendment implications of sexual harassment law, said, "Volokh ignores all the contextual factors that courts and people in the workplace pay attention to."

She claimed that those who see sexual harassment law as infringing the First Amendment conflate two things: what is considered speech in its ordinary sense and what is considered speech for First Amendment purposes.

A threat like "I'm going to kill you," while certainly speech in the ordinary sense, would often be considered more conduct-like than speech-like depending on the context in which it is delivered and thus might not be deemed entitled to First Amendment protection, she said. McGowan admitted that libraries, newsrooms and universities can pose troublesome issues, because institutions devoted to the give and take of intellectual debate may have to tolerate speech that would be considered objectionable on a factory floor.

But she pointed out that the conduct in the Minneapolis case went far beyond mere speech. In any event, she said, she is more confident than Volokh that workplaces and the courts will be sensitive to the contextual niceties.

David Oppenheimer, a professor at Golden Gate University School of Law and the author of a critique of Volokh's position, argued that sexual harassment is not the steamroller that Volokh makes it out to be.

Asked what he would do if he were an employer in Volokh's worst-case scenario, he said he would sit down with his employees and work out a compromise to let the library pursue its mission while respecting the feelings of employees who strongly objected to certain materials.

"Volokh underestimates what reasonable people can accomplish," he concluded.



Source: "No Smut At Work, Please; Minn. Librarians Settle with Officials," by Gary Young, The National Law Journal, 15 September 2003.

© ALM Properties, Inc. 2003.
Republishing under US Copyright §107 Fair Use.

Read more: http://www.nationallawjournal.com/id=900005393712/No-smut-at-work-please


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Friday, January 23, 2015

Constructive Discharge of Librarians

Sometimes librarians are sexually harassed in the public library where they work. This can be due to patrons viewing Internet pornography.  Some libraries allow porn viewing despite the law as a direct result of American Library Association [ALA] pro child porn training/policy applied locally.  When librarians complain to their managers about such harassment, they are sometimes told don't let the door hit you on the way out.  You see, to stop the harassment, the library would have to filter the Internet and jettison the ALA's anything-goes policy.  For some, ALA rules are too precious to toss aside just because, as they might see it, some prudish librarian alleges she's being sexually harassed when, as ALA teaches, no librarian has ever been sexually harassed nor ever will be (link).

It may be "constructive discharge (link)" to tell a librarian/library employee to go take a hike when he/she complains about being sexually harassed by porn viewers, depending on the circumstances and the extent of a hostile work environment (link).

Librarians who quit may not even realize they've been essentially fired.  Constructive discharge (a kind of wrongful termination) makes libraries and municipalities (that take no action to stop libraries from acting outside the law) subject to liability.

Here are possible/potential examples of constructive discharge or constructive dismissal by librarians and library employees working in public libraries following ALA diktat to allow unfiltered porn where management told them to go take a hike:

Orland Park Public Library employee Linda Zec said (link):
I also finally speak out because after conversations that I had while I was employed at the OPPL with my director and assistant director, I was told that I could quit if I did not like their policy, with no hard feelings.  ....  I ... was being told I could like it or lump it.  ....  I was told by Director Weimar that porn was protected under freedom of speech.  ....  I was basically told ... to leave it alone.  I took her stern warnings as, "You cause trouble, you lose your job," which I really did not want to do because I really enjoyed being part of the library family.  I just did not like the pervs [air quotes] that came in and made me feel uncomfortable.  However, my husband did want me to quit.  So eventually, after enough complaining, I did so.
Birmingham Public Library librarian Barbara Ann Wilson was told, "If you don't like it leave" (link).  The graphic at top right illustrates this statement.

A dozen librarians in Adamson v. Minneapolis Public Library (link) revealed:
24.  In 1997, Lawson was advised by Plaintiff Nancy Corcoran that staff members were being regularly exposed to obscene and sexually explicit materials at their work place and throughout MPL.  Lawson responded by memo rejecting any responsibility on the part of the library to monitor or restrict access on the Internet.  Lawson went further to formulate and implement a policy under which MPL would allow complete and unfettered access to the Internet by any patron.  Lawson and MPL took the position that the only relevant concern was the First Amendment rights of the viewers of obscene and pornographic materials, and that it would not be permissible for MPL employees to take any action that would interfere with patron access to these materials.
There are other cases, I just think three examples is enough.

I'm hoping writing my opinions/observations here will help librarians obtain justice, deter library management from practicing constructive discharge, and wake up local communities and governments to the possibly of serious liability costs if they allow libraries to continue to serve porn and child porn despite the law.

Sexual harassment of librarians must stop, even if it means tossing aside ALA diktat and installing Internet filters as part of an effective solution to stop Internet porn viewing (link).

It's the right thing to do, the latest case being from just yesterday:



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Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Library Insider Linda Zec Gives Scoop on Porn in Libraries

Linda Zec
Here is Orland Park Public Library (link) former employee Linda Zec speaking on her experiences as the target of sexual harassment resulting from that library refusing to filter out porn.

Her experiences include library management misleading the media and telling her to not let the door hit her on way out if she wants to quit "with no hard feelings."  "I could like it or lump it."
I was told by Director Weimar that porn was protected under freedom of speech. I wanted to get the info out there so the public realizes that their taxes were paying for potential pedophiles, rapists, and other generally creepy folk to stop on by and use the computers on a taxpayer's dime.
From the caption written by Megan Fox (link) on the video:

Published on Nov 19, 2013:

This is PART FOUR in a series of videos filmed at the Orland Park Public Library's Board Meeting on 11/18/13.  In this video Linda Zec, a former library employee, delivers an inside look at what really goes on inside the library.  She gives all the details on the porn openly viewed there and rebuts some of the lies that the library spokesperson has been telling in the library district's efforts to hide the truth from the public.  Linda Zec ran for the library board in the past and hopefully will run again in the future so she can deliver an insider's perspective on how to clean up the library's ongoing porn problem.


That video was so shocking it even made the news:
The below shows the American Library Association implying Linda Zec was not sexually harassed, no librarian ever was despite all the lawsuits and major settlements, and no librarian ever will be.  Of course, it is ALA's own policy applied locally that results in librarians and library employees being sexually harassed by unfettered porn and child porn viewers, so naturally ALA would say, nothing to see here, move along:
Here is a transcript of what Linda Zec said in the above-linked YouTube video.  It really is shocking:

TRANSCRIPT OF LINDA ZEC
ORLAND PARK PUBLIC LIBRARY BOARD MEETING
18 NOVEMBER 2013

Linda Zec: I speak to you all tonight on a subject that I have stayed relatively quiet about over the last seven to eight years since my discovery of it: porn in libraries, specifically my library.  The library which I am an avid user, supporter, and ex-employee.  The library that not only watched my sons grow up but so many neighborhood kids.

As I just stated, I am a former employee and I worked under the direction of Sharon [inaudible 00:30] at the time, assistant director Mary Weimar, and Mike, who was my IT head of my department.  I worked along many wonderful people, some of whom still work at the OPPL.  I worked in the adult IT area, the area that's in controversy right now.

I tried to stay quiet but due to recent public statements by the library on radio and TV, I find myself breaking my silence.

I do not know Ms. Fox, and as I stated before, I don't even care how she came across the knowledge of porn at the OPPL.

The truth is, it exists.  It exists to a point that I as an employee was able to easily recognize the creepy, "regular"—I put that in quotations—patrons, and on which days they were most likely to enter.

I also finally speak out because after conversations that I had while I was employed at the OPPL with my director and assistant director, I was told that I could quit if I did not like their policy, with no hard feelings.  Truthfully, that stayed with me after all these years.  It bothered me that I, a relatively intelligent person with high moral background and terrific worth ethic, was being told I could like it or lump it.

Director Weimar, who's office is behind locked doors, never had to endure sitting in the presence of porn watchers for hours, or then have them suddenly look up at you and stare at you.  I can't tell you the number of times I would say "Creepy" or "I am so creeped out" to my coworkers, or take off for the solitude of the classroom and leave my coworkers just so I could regain my thoughts. It did not make for a pleasant atmosphere.

I am not only a former employee, but I am also a taxpayer here.  I'm a real stakeholder.  I realize that this controversy does not lie with just OPPL, but with libraries across the country.

I was told by Director Weimar that porn was protected under freedom of speech.  I wanted to get the info out there so the public realizes that their taxes were paying for potential pedophiles, rapists, and other generally creepy folk to stop on by and use the computers on a taxpayer's dime.

I was basically told, as I sat in then Assistant Director Weimar's office, to leave it alone.  I took her stern warnings as, "You cause trouble, you lose your job," which I really did not want to do because I really enjoyed being part of the library family.  I just did not like the pervs [air quotes] that came in and made me feel uncomfortable.

However, my husband did want me to quit.  So eventually, after enough complaining, I did so.

The library is a relatively safe atmosphere, but most people assume it's totally safe.  It's not.  It's not the atmosphere that one expects with their tax dollars.  It's a place that, because of the lack of proper computer usage policies, people will sit for hours to view pornographic images, and I mean hours.

Another pathetic note: we had patrons that would come in job hunting only to be turned away because the computers were in use.  I'm not saying that they were all in use because everybody was watching pornography.  Some were there that just maybe should not have been for a long time.

As a taxpayer, I want my money spent wisely, not carelessly.  Porn has no place and serves zero purpose in the library, none.  Please stop going public and saying OPPL does not allow obscenity, because I can describe some pretty sexually graphic images that I saw.

And if the library board and the directors are all fine with the decision to allow unfiltered internet on taxpayer computers then please at least have the guts to stop trying to cover it up.  Let it be known that some images viewed in the adult computer area may not be suitable for children under 18 and that some of the images may be sexually graphic in nature.  Make it known that you are fully aware of the possibility that people may view things that may be disturbing to them.  Don't go on radio or TV trying to make the library sound so G-rated and then some of the images on the computers are clearly XXX-rated.  Sure, downstairs at the OPPL little kids are having fun while upstairs the big kids were having their version of fun.

As for computer screen filters, I'm talking about front of the screen so you can't see, that's a joke.  This is a public place.  There is no privacy due to anybody that comes to a public place to look on a public computer.  You are not, you are not, you are not.  These are public computers.

As a person that was subject at times to less than desirable ...

Speaker 2: Time. [inaudible 00:05:10]

Linda Zec: Done?

Speaker 3: Done.

Linda Zec: [inaudible 00:05:17] I'm sorry

Multiple: [crosstalk 00:05:25]

Linda Zec: Thank you so much.  I appreciate that.  Just two lines.  As a person that was subject at times to less than desirable work conditions and is still bothered by it, and as a taxpaying patron, I find no value in allowing porn in our library.  I appeal to the library board to consider filters in the adult area and a strong, no-porn policy for the safety of patrons and staff.

[Applause.]

### 30 ###

NOTE:  Linda Zec used to write this blog but abandoned it.  I picked it up when Google allowed.  I will use it to write about sexual harassment in public libraries that occurs as a direct result of following ALA diktat to allow unfettered Internet access.  Linda Zec is an example of a victim of that very policy.  She was victimized not only by porn viewing patrons but also by a child porn enabling library director like Mary Weimar in OPPL.  Yes, child porn.  OPPL has been covering it up for years and has taken steps to continue covering it up, even winning awards for its illegal actions.

Linda Zec does not like anyone writing about her, so I apologize to her ahead of time, but this issue is too important to keep silent about.  ALA has been keeping silent about it for a very long time.  It's time to speak up.  I've been writing about these kinds of incidents for years.  Now I have a separate blog dedicated to this very topic and I invite contributors.

By the way, today, for the third year in a row, ALA has been named as one of the nation's leading contributors of sexual exploitation, the Dirty Dozen list (link).  Linda Zec is an example.

SEXUALLY HARASSED LIBRARIANS ARE WELCOME TO CONTACT ME AND PUBLISH ANONYMOUSLY OR OPENLY HERE.  ALA WILL NOT HELP YOU.


NOTE ADDED 22 JANUARY 2015:

I have to add a note now that ALA members have chosen to publicly criticize me personally for writing this blog post and to hell with the issue of sexually harassed librarians.  Here's an example:


The issue of sexual harassment of librarians is basically never addressed by ALA, ALA media like American Libraries, nor library media generally, like the Library Journal.  While I have been writing about it for many years, library media almost completely ignores it.  Until today when they found I said, "Linda Zec does not like anyone writing about her."

ALA has let the problem of the sexual harassment of librarians just fester.  Finally, some librarians calling themselves "#TeamHarpy" on Twitter are raising the issue and librarians are finally talking about it, and even Library Journal has written about Team Harpy, but Team Harpy is only interested in the limited context of a single male librarian supposedly harassing dozens of women at library conferences.  Not in the context I raise of the nationwide sexual harassment of librarians due to library porn viewers where that porn is only there in the first place due to ALA policy and despite the law.

Librarians are really afraid of speaking out against ALA's "Office for Intellectual Freedom" that spreads the pro childporn policy nationwide.  Yes, pro childporn.  And when they hear me do it, a few attack, like Andy Woodworth did.

Here's Jeff Regensburger joining in:


Of all the intolerant people in the world, the free speech librarians can be the worst.  One library employee is even suing me for defamation for writing this about her homophobia:


So when I step outside the boundaries of ALA and library media's ability to shush me and shush the topic of sexual harassment of librarians attributable to ALA itself, such as by using a Twitter hashtag, that must not be tolerated and I must be ridiculed.  Like this librarian, Nicholas Schiller:


So now I've been called "really awful" and everyone's told that I don't "give a damn about the victim's requests."  Nevermind that they completely ignore the issue of sexual harassment. 

Allow me to respond.

Librarians and library media are absolutely silent on the sexual harassment of librarians caused by ALA itself, except in rare pieces where the person being harassed is essentially ridiculed for saying so.  That's for fear of ALA, among other reasons.  Just look, for example, how I'm being treated and the issue is being ignored just for my writing about it.  It's bullying, plain and simple, only I'm not intimidated because I can't lose my volunteer librarian "job."

Linda Zec made a public statement in a public meeting at a public library that allows and covers up child pornography in accordance with ALA policy.  Yes, child pornography, the library has even finally admitted to it and to the coverup.

Linda Zec spoke about 1) how she was sexually harassed,  2) how it was directly tied to unfettered porn in that library, 3) how her library management spouted the ALA's "porn is free speech in public libraries" mantra, and 4) how she was told to get out if she does not like being harassed.  She was given a whopping five minutes to say this and was even cut off mid sentence when she hit the five minute mark.  Go ahead, watch the video.  Even Linda was not allowed to speak at some point.

Further, Linda Zec herself said that, referring to the library, "This is a public place.  There is no privacy due to anybody that comes to a public place...."  So she knows her public statements in a public meeting at a public library are public and in the public domain.  As they are in the public domain, I may write about them even if Linda Zec would prefer I didn't.

I said, "Linda Zec does not like anyone writing about her," and that is correct.  But:
  • given the circumstances in which I am using her words to expose sexual harassment in libraries that directly results from ALA policy, her not liking people to write about her weighs less heavily in the balance.  
  • Given that ALA and library media and librarians generally are absolutely silent on this issue, there are few other really good sources to address the issue.  Linda Zec is one of the brave few—and notice it took her 8 to 9 years to finally speak up. 
  • Given that ALA itself, Deborah Caldwell-Stone from OIF, went into Linda's very library, her very home town library, and implied Linda was not sexually harassed, no librarian ever is, and no librarian ever will be, 
then exposing how ALA is directly responsible for the sexual harassment of librarians outweighs someone's dislike of people writing about them.

If those harassing me and ignoring the issue instead worked to stop the sexual harassment of librarians by patrons fueled by ALA OIF's pro childporn policy, I would not need to be here saying this in the first place.  It's your failure for not addressing this already, not mine for being so effective in raising it that multiple librarians are attacking me personally and ignoring the issue.  Don't blame me for persistently raising the issue.  Don't blame me for creating a transcript of Linda Zec who finally spoke up after 8 to 9 years of fear proving the direct connection between ALA policy and sexual harassment in libraries.

Linda doesn't like people talking about her.  I get that.  But the interest in stopping sexual harassment of librarians far outweighs her dislike for people writing about her.  Besides, I'm not really writing about her, instead I'm writing about sexually harassed librarians, how they are being harmed, and what can be done to stop that.

Are you?  Andy Woodworth?  Jeff Regensburger?  Nicholas Schiller?  American Libraries?  Library Journal?  #TeamHarpy?  Hello?