Georgia
Legislation proposes banning use of Georgia tax dollars for American Library Association, affiliates
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/cmg/OT3T3JQPMFFBBILDTKO4N6HARA.png?ssl=1 "Legislation proposes banning use of Georgia tax dollars for American Library Association, affiliates")
ATLANTA — A group of 22 Georgia state senators proposed new legislation that would prevent any Georgia tax dollars from being used for the purchase or funding of materials, services or operations offered by the American Library Association or its affiliates.
The legislation, Senate Bill 390, says “the bureaucracy that has developed around the certification of librarians has become heavily intertwined with and influenced by the American Library Association,” and that the current ALA president is a self-declared Marxist.
As a result, the bill says the ALA is using the librarian certification process to promote a political ideology and that Georgia taxpayers do not want to use tax dollars to support this.
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Currently, Georgia requires librarians be certified by the ALA to work as librarians at public libraries, which the proposed bill says “has not benefitted the residents of this state.”
The Georgia Secretary of State’s Office currently lists a requirement for certified librarians to receive their certificate from a program accredited by the ALA. No alternative options are currently listed for state approval of a librarian certification. The bill does not provide additional options.
The bill says the Georgia Library Association, which is an affiliate of the American Library Association, should no longer be involved in this affiliation. The bill does not include examples of initiatives or programming that specifically promote specific ideologies in the findings it cites as reason for proposal.
Additionally, the bill calls for the state to no longer require librarians working at public libraries be certified by the ALA or allow public money to be used to support the organization.
SB 390 specifically would ban the Board of Regents for the University System of Georgia, as well as any city, county or regional public library trustees, from using public or private funds to pay for the materials, services, or programs offered by the ALA and its affiliates.
The bill also bans the Georgia Department of Administrative Services from accepting bids or proposals made by the American Library Association or any of its affiliates for state contracts.
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It is worth noting that the current official listing of affiliated organizations of the American Library Association contains 27 institutions, including the following:
Should this legislation pass in the Georgia Assembly, the variety of materials held in Georgia’s public library and university library systems could be broadly impacted, due to the scope of materials the affiliated organizations cover.
As proposed, and without any revisions, modifications, or legislative substitutions, the materials that could be potentially impacted include topics on legal cases and precedent, literacy initiatives to increase reading comprehension and capabilities in Georgia, stage production scripts and analyses, research and books on and from Latin American literature and texts, medical texts, patent and trademark research, Chinese-American literature and materials, Jewish library materials and texts and more.
The bill does not specify if the current materials obtained on loan or through cooperative agreements with the ALA would require removal, nor if current agreements would be voided, should they exist.
The bill also does not specify how the materials in question, be they archival documents or any books, would be either re-obtained without using the offerings of the ALA, nor is there a series of carved out exemptions for future materials and trainings.
Channel 2 Action News has reached out to senate staff of the bill’s sponsors for specifics on how these questions may be answered during the legislative session. We have also reached out to the University System of Georgia for information about the scope of relevant materials currently in the USG collections.
An ALA spokeswoman provided the following response to the legislation:
“The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonpartisan, non-profit organization. While we respect the rights of individuals to exercise their freedom of thought and expression, ALA does not align with, endorse, or promote the political beliefs, values, or ideologies of any one individual—including its elected leaders and members. ALA is guided by a single mission: “to provide leadership for the development, promotion, and improvement of library and information services and the profession of librarianship in order to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all.”
If passed, the legislation would take effect on July 1, 2025.
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Georgia
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A Georgia state judge has thrown out a conspiracy theory-fueled lawsuit against Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) that sought to open the state’s election-night operations center to far-right observers.
Filed by Republican lieutenant governor candidate Greg Dolezal, along with other GOP plaintiffs, the lawsuit attempted to force Raffensperger to allow poll watchers and members of the MAGA-controlled State Election Board (SEB) inside the state’s Emergency Operations Center, where statewide vote totals are received and published.
In her dismissal order, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Melynee Leftridge wrote that Dolezal — the only plaintiff who had standing to bring the suit — failed to show that state law required Raffensperger to permit public access to the Emergency Operations Center.
“No polling, voting, scanning, tabulation, verification or adjudication of voted ballots takes place at the Emergency Operations Center,” Leftridge wrote. “All such activities are conducted at the county level, where poll watchers and members of the State Election Board have access to observe them.”
While the Republican plaintiffs asserted that Raffensperger undermined trust in the electoral process by limiting access to the center, the suit was widely seen as an attempt to invite partisan interference in Georgia’s elections.
While plaintiffs sought access for Georgia’s May 19 primary races, they likely would have attempted to maintain access for future elections, including the state’s primary run-offs this week and the general election in November.
Dolezal, who is in a close primary runoff, has made election skepticism a central component of his campaign. Earlier this year, he called on the SEB to take over control of Fulton County’s elections based on nonexistent claims of voter fraud.
Georgia
Dry Leaf review – three-hour amble around the football pitches of Georgia in search of a daughter
Georgian film-maker Alexandre Koberidze appeared to revive the spirit of the French New Wave with his previous film What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? – an unhurried, meandering and garrulous movie with its own cheeky sort of low-tech magic realism as it followed its nose around the city of Kutaisi. His new film is a mystifying three-hour road movie, shot (as was his debut film Let the Summer Never Come Again) on low-res video, like that of an obsolete cameraphone. It is even more challenging and I have to admit it defeated me, despite some intriguing qualities, including a dry touch of comedy.
A middle-aged man called Irakli (David Koberidze) receives a letter addressed to him and his wife, Nino (Irina Chelidze), from their twentysomething photographer daughter Lisa, announcing that she wishes to disappear from their lives. A police officer tells them that Lisa is an adult who can do what she likes. But an oddly emotionless Irakli sets out to track her down anyway, even though another more conventionally plausible movie would have found room for a conversation about the cost of a private detective. Lisa was photographing football fields when she vanished, so Irakli’s plan is just to drive around the country’s football fields, asking people nearby if they’ve seen her. The result is many desultory conversations with people who are apparently nonprofessional actors.
With Irakli in the car is Lisa’s friend Levani who is … invisible. We hear him. We don’t see him. (The same goes for some of the people that Irakli talks to.) This invisibility creates a baffling extra level of oddity and contrivance to this film, which, for me, added and created nothing. As a formal experiment, Dry Leaf has its own conviction and self-possession and there is a deliberate, if opaque artistry here: one shot shows us a dry leaf under Irakli’s car-tyres, another gives us wet leaves in a waterfall. The soft-edged, pixelated look is, however, interesting and surprisingly watchable, bringing a kind of painterly effect.
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