Don’t put that book down just yet — the sad saga of an irrational initiative to close the public library in Dayton has taken a hopeful turn.
Columbia County Superior Court Commissioner Julie Karl has issued an injunction that temporarily blocks the asinine measure — which calls for the dissolution of the county’s whole library system — from being placed on the Nov. 7 ballot.
Good.
Karl’s order holds until a Wednesday hearing that will consider whether the measure would cause harm to public services and deprive Dayton city taxpayers of their voting rights.
It should go without saying that closing down the library most definitely would harm public services. And since Dayton residents wouldn’t even be allowed to vote on the measure — it would only appear on the ballots of county residents who live outside the city — some voting rights clearly would be bypassed.
According to extensive reporting by the Yakima Herald-Republic’s sister paper, the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin, the initiative came about after a gaggle of Dayton-area residents got it in their heads that a handful of books in the library addressed subjects they didn’t want to hear about. And for some reason, they figured their views were more important than the rest of the county’s — so in their distorted view, the books had to go.
The library board, however, refused to remove the books.
That set off a furious petition drive that eventually yielded the names of 10% of Columbia County’s registered voters — enough to meet state requirements for putting the idea of dissolving the library system up to a public vote.
But then a community group called Neighbors United for Progress stepped in.
Hoping to save the Dayton Library, the group filed a lawsuit against the county and the leader of the petition effort, Jessica Ruffcorn. That’s what led to Karl’s order last week.
If wiser heads prevail in this debacle, the initiative to close Columbia County’s library system and the cringeworthy push to throttle free thought will end after next week’s hearing.
As we noted recently, this is exactly the kind of thinking that keeps countries like Afghanistan and Iran in the Dark Ages when it comes to individual freedoms.
It’s also noteworthy that the petitioners intentionally boxed out the voters of Dayton — the people who live closest to the county’s only public library. They’re the ones who’d likely have the most to lose by a possible closure, so the odds are good they’d also be the most likely to oppose the measure.
It suggests that the petitioners knew that their idea would be unpopular, yet pressed forward with it anyway. They’re unabashedly comfortable overriding the wishes of the majority of their community.
That flies in the face of democracy — which the petitioners could learn more about if they cared to visit, say, a library.
We strongly urge the Columbia County Superior Court to grant the wishes of Neighbors United for Progress and keep this initiative off the ballot.
It’s a ham-handed, but dangerous, attempt to slip religious nationalism in the back door of one of our country’s most cherished and beneficial institutions: the local library.
Time to turn the page on this nonsense.
The post A plot twist in the misguided efforts to shut down Dayton’s library first appeared on Latest American News.
The post A plot twist in the misguided efforts to shut down Dayton’s library appeared first on Latest American News.