LAFOURCHE PARISH VOTERS - PLEASE GO VOTE AGAINST DEFUNDING LIBRARIES

Thibodaux branch

If you live in Lafourche Parish, Louisiana, please go vote against de-funding parish libraries to build a new jail.

Library funding in Lafourche Parish, Louisiana, may be diverted to a new jail thanks to a legislator who doesn't approve of the library's programs. Jail proponent and chair of the Lafourche Parish Council Lindel Toups supports a ballot measure that would take funding away from libraries.

“They’re teaching Mexicans how to speak English,” Toups told the local Tri-Parish Times, referencing Biblioteca Hispana, a Spanish-language section of one of the nine branch libraries. “Let that son of a bitch go back to Mexico. There’s just so many things they’re doing that I don’t agree with. ... Them junkies and hippies and food stamps [recipients] and all, they use the library to look at drugs and food stamps [on the Internet]. I see them do it.”

"We are here to serve all of the residents of Lafourche Parish," Library System Director Laura Sanders told the Los Angeles Times. "It doesn't matter what ethnicity they are -- we serve them all."

The comments by Chairman Toups suggest that he would prefer people in the parish not to have access to learning materials and activities, even as it's obvious the chairman's grammar could use a bit of polishing.  I'm sure the library has books that teach grammar to people whose first language is English.  That's not to mention the expletive.  Oddly enough, in my visits to the Thibodaux branch, I don't see what Toups sees.

So, my fellow citizens, please go vote.

Update on the vote to defund libraries:

John Chrastka’s brigade of pissed-off librarians came into the game late in the Louisiana parish ballot referendum defunding libraries for jail money. 

But the social media blitz appears to have paid dividends, both for library funding in Lafourche parish (Louisiana’s term for a county) and for the profile of his political action committee, EveryLibrary. Voters on Saturday rejected by about a five to four margin a ballot initiative to cut library funding to finance the construction of a new jail, a move that would have quickly sent the libraries into deficit.

Excellent.  Folks around here like their public libraries.  Lindel Toups' inflammatory comments, which the newspaper was wise enough to print, probably went a way to help defeat the ballot initiative.  Toups would do well to remember that the libraries have computers and access to the internet, so word gets around.