How nonprofits do the ALA’s bidding in Christian County

The American Library Association is a massive NGO trying to use local people to force national politics into our libraries and schools. We stop them here, now, or we surrender good ground forever.

Documented Evidence and Key Sources

This analysis draws from multiple investigative sources, including:

• "Washing the Spider Out" by David Rice (HickChristian, January 30, 2025)

• "U-Turn in Education's Actions and History" by David Rice (HickChristian, April 16, 2024)

• "Frenemies of the Library: When Fundraising Folks Fight Community Voices" by David Rice (HickChristian, February 23, 2024)

• "How Chicago's ALA Co-Opts Local Governments: St. Tammany Parish Louisiana" by Dan Kleinman (SafeLibraries, December 29, 2024)

• Social media documentation collected from U-Turn in Education and Friends of the Library accounts (2023-2025)

Coordinated Advocacy System

While presenting as separate organizations with distinct missions, U-Turn in Education and the Christian County Friends of the Library appear many times to have coordinated efforts. Behind the scenes, it is possible, they may be interlocking mechanisms of a complex advocacy system. Their advocacy and goal alignment reveals a strategic partnership that amplifies their collective influence over library policies and practices. It is quite possible these individuals have connections through other affiliations which they haven’t revealed.

As I meticulously documented in my January 2025 investigation: "The [local] connections spread out to the Christian County Library which is tied to Missouri State University and Community Foundation of the Ozarks through podcasts and grants, all tied to staff and family members of staff."

Shared Public Appearances and Advocacy

The most visible evidence of coordination appears at public meetings:

1. Synchronized Meeting Attendance: Both organizations consistently attend the same Library Board meetings, often with members strategically positioned to dominate public comment periods.

2. Complementary Messaging: Representatives from both groups echo similar talking points, creating the impression of widespread community support for their shared positions. On Thursday, 3/27/25, Lonnie Brandon, the president of the Friends, mentioned worries about the Library closing. On Saturday 3/29/25, Ruth Ann Maynard echoed similar fears. She’s the secretary of the Christian County Library Foundation.

3. Tactical Public Presence: As documented in my January 2025 investigation, U-Turn's leadership explicitly describes how members "show up very early to pack the front of the meeting space as much as possible," a tactic that Friends of the Library members have been observed employing at the same meetings. To counter this, I’ve been sitting in the front row whenever possible.

As Amanda Jones revealed in her book "That Librarian" (cited by Dan Kleinman): "One thing I love about the St. Tammany Parish Library Alliance is that the members of the alliance show up very early to pack the front of the meeting space as much as possible."

Political Activism Beyond Book Sales

The February 2024 HickChristian article "Frenemies of the Library" provides direct evidence of the Friends of the Library's political activism beyond simply selling donated books:

1. Direct Lobbying Against Democratic Control: The article documents an email from Lonnie Brandon, President of the Friends of the Library, urging members to oppose House Bill 2498 which would require library boards to be elected rather than appointed. The email explicitly states: "This bill will also give the now-elected Board of Trustees the power to approve or reject all library employees, programs, activities, and volunteers."

2. Financial Support During Content Controversies: The November 2023 Friends of the Library meeting notes indicate that the group provided "$20,000 given to the Library when the State threatened to take away money from the Library because of the porn in the library." This demonstrates Friends’ financial involvement specifically tied to content policy disputes.

   

3. Coordinated Messaging With Library Administration: My investigation notes: "The Library does not control the FoL's board nor does it control their decision making, in theory. In practice though, the FoL lobbies for what the Library lobbies for and fights against the community."

4. Strategic Framing of Content Disputes: The former FoL president's November 2023 remarks, as documented in the article, included subtle criticism of community members who opposed certain materials, urging listeners to "focus on the good things and not the negative things our society has brought upon us."

This evidence directly demonstrates the Friends' role in policy advocacy aligned with library administration positions and against elected governance that would increase community control over library decisions.

The Book Bag Program: A Shared Initiative

The Book Bag program serves as a key operational bridge between the organizations, as extensively documented in "Washing the Spider Out" (HickChristian, January 30, 2025):

1. Fundraising Cooperation: U-Turn has directly promoted fundraising for Sheila Michaels' Book Bag program, helping raise nearly $8,000 for this initiative.

2. Material Flow: The Book Bag program receives books from the Friends of the Library's collection, creating a direct materials pipeline between the organizations.

3. Library Space Usage: The Book Bag program maintains displays in Christian County Library branches (as shown in the Clever Library display), facilitated by the Friends' relationship with library administration.

4. Public Promotion: Both organizations cross-pollinate each other's activities related to the Book Bag program on their respective social media accounts.

As I noted in his January 2025 investigation: "The Book Bag program started by Sheila Michaels isn't about empowering young children with good books but removing, as quickly as possible, under the guise of charity, the best books in our community so they can replace them with books that leave us stunted and twisted goblins. The Book Bag program is a trojan horse for their activism, so most parents aren't aware of what is happening, but they gratefully accept the books, believing their children are being lavished with gifts." In many ways, the Friends of the Library program does this, but on a larger scale. Except, instead of returning money to the library at a reduced value, the Book Bag program just takes money from the taxpayers (with school books) without any return.

Leadership and Personnel Connections

The connections extend to key personnel and leadership, with specific relationships documented in the January 2025 HickChristian investigation:

1. Jeremy Hayes and Sheila Michaels: As U-Turn's Treasurer and the founder of the Book Bag program respectively, this married couple creates a direct leadership bridge between the organizations.

2. Award Recognition Overlap: Both organizations have celebrated the same award recognitions, with Friends of the Library promoting Sheila Michaels' various awards (including the ALA Librarian of the Year) that are also featured prominently in U-Turn's materials.

3. Community Foundation of the Ozarks Connection: Both organizations maintain relationships with the Community Foundation of the Ozarks, which awarded Michaels a $5,000 Humanitarian Award.

My investigation reveals: "In none of her campaign material did I discover any disclosure about her relationship with U-Turn. While U-Turn often acted less like a non-profit and more like a PAC in how they promoted Shiela on Social Media, there was no indication she was directly linked by marriage to the organization."

The investigation further documents social media evidence from U-Turn showcasing a direct post from October 20, 2023, stating "Love our library and Friends of the Library" while sharing photos of a $20,000 check presentation to the Christian County Library. U-Turn started early in 2023 to promote the work of the Friends. This would have been just a year after the questions from Reggie Miller and Mary Hernandez de Carl about sexually explicit material in the children’s section of the library. Already, they have been organized and aligned before I’ve even wrote my first article about libraries.

How did they get so quickly organized, with a polished website and toolkits from the ALA? How did they gain the funds to create and start the 501(c)(3) so quickly?

Shared Financial Support Base

The organizations show patterns of shared financial support, as revealed in the January 2025 HickChristian documentation:

1. Corporate Backing: While U-Turn receives structured donations from Expedia Group through Jeremy Hayes' connections, the Friends of the Library benefits from corporate support programs facilitated through similar channels.

2. Award-Driven Fundraising: Both organizations leverage the award recognition cycle to attract donations, with recognition from one organization often leading to financial support for the other. Getting awards is one way to funnel money to them.

3. Circular Resource Flow: The social media evidence from October 2023 shows the Friends of the Library presenting a $20,000 check to the Christian County Library while U-Turn promotes this transaction—a clear illustration of the circular funding model identified in a previous article published on 3/30/25 on HickChristian.

According to my experience: "In the non-profit world, nothing attracts money like money. Winning awards and recognition will attract more money to your non-profit." The investigation documents multiple awards received by Michaels between 2023-2024, including the ALA Young Adults Librarian of the Year Award and the Community Foundation of the Ozarks Humanitarian Award.

United Under National Umbrella Organizations

Is it possible both organizations have aligned under the same national organizational structure—a pattern Dan Kleinman has documented extensively in his December 2024 article:

1. Direct ALA Toolkit Promotion by U-Turn: U-Turn explicitly promotes the ALA's Unite Against Book Bans campaign on their website, providing direct access to the toolkit that EveryLibrary and the ALA have developed. This toolkit is specifically cited in the April 2024 HickChristian investigation: "U-Turn in Education links to 'Unite Against BookBans.' It's sponsored by the American Library Association. They put out a press release last year in June stating they will distribute $1M to support the fight against 'Book Bans'."

2. Friends of the Library ALA Framework: The Friends of the Library operates as part of a nationally-recognized structure for library support organizations. Their social media presence and public statements align consistently with ALA messaging on challenged materials, though direct evidence of toolkit usage would require additional documentation.

3. Shared Professional Network: Both organizations participate in the same professional associations, including the Missouri Association of School Librarians, which has recognized both entities with awards.

4. Parallel Policy Positions: Both organizations consistently adopt identical positions on challenged materials and library governance, as evidenced by their coordinated appearances at Library Board meetings documented in the HickChristian investigations.

As Kleinman documented in his December 2024 SafeLibraries article: "ALA has worked for about 60 years to take away the rights of parents so that their children are more easily manipulated... ALA has more recently began creating, funding, and empowering local groups to give local boards the appearance that local citizens support this or that when it is really ALA."

The April 2024 investigation specifically notes that the Unite Against Book Bans toolkit is featured prominently on U-Turn's website alongside the First Amendment, creating a direct link to ALA's national campaign while presenting as a local grassroots organization.

Further documentation from Kleinman reveals direct quotes from ALA leaders: "ALA's EveryLibrary's leader John Chrastka is so confident that his 'hardcore activism' is a success that at the School Library Journal's 2024 Summit he provided librarians with 'a playbook for statewide strategies to prioritize and protect school libraries and librarians.'"

Kleinman further documents how EveryLibrary (the ALA's affiliated action organization) explicitly brags about their local organizing tools: "Um, we put to work our value system right now in a couple of key ways that we help, we hope people who who can join us can do. We have a, an a, [00:20:30] uh, a platform called Fight for the First. Uh, fightforthefirst.org is a, uh, it's basically change.org for libraries."

The Book Selection Connection

The organizations demonstrate aligned approaches to book selection and content policies, as documented in Rice's investigations:

1. U-Turn's Controversial Title Promotion: U-Turn explicitly promotes specific controversial titles, as documented in the April 2024 investigation: "Under the Student Tab, they have in the green photo this list of books... Here is their list and their links." The investigation catalogs these titles with their BookLooks ratings, showing explicit content ratings of 4/5 and 5/5 for titles like "Gender Queer" (5/5), "The Bluest Eye" (4/5), and "Looking for Alaska" (4/5).

2. Friends of the Library's Defense of Controversial Content: The February 2024 "Frenemies of the Library" article provides direct evidence of Friends' defense of controversial materials. The article documents that the Friends provided "$20,000 given to the Library when the State threatened to take away money from the Library because of the porn in the library." This financial support was explicitly tied to content controversy over materials in the collection.

3. Award Committee Participation: As documented in the January 2025 HickChristian investigation, Sheila Michaels celebrated her participation in choosing "ALEX Award Winning Books" including titles that align with the types of controversial content that both organizations defend from challenges.

My February 2024 investigation specifically notes the Friends' alignment with library administration on content policy disputes, contrary to community concerns: "The FoL lobbies for what the Library lobbies for and fights against the community." The article further notes that the Library had been "purchasing books from the American Library Association's Rainbow Reading list" while denying "purchase of books about Clarence Thomas and other conservative or Christian viewpoints."

This evidences a coordinated approach to content decisions that aligns both organizations against community concerns about certain materials.

Implications: One Movement, Multiple Fronts

For Christian County taxpayers and library patrons, this coordination reveals that what appears as separate organizations representing different constituencies is actually a unified movement operating on multiple fronts:

1. A strategic division of labor that creates the appearance of broader community support than may actually exist

2. A sophisticated approach to leveraging institutional relationships across multiple organizations

3. A coordinated effort to influence library policies while maintaining the appearance of grassroots, independent advocacy

This operational alignment reminds me of what Dan Kleinman documented in his December 2024 SafeLibraries article, where he quotes ALA President Emily Drabinski: "I met yesterday with a pair of activists in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, to learn more about what was happening on the ground... the organizing work that they were doing, which included the legislative active, ad, you know, advocacy work that we're all familiar with, as well as more direct action on the ground kinds of organizing."

The direct connection between national ALA directives and local library policies in Christian County was recently confirmed in a Springfield Daily Citizen article by Susan Wade who seems to be invisible—almost as if she was anonymous, if I’m using the right word. Maybe I need a thesaurus.

In one of Wade’s last pieces for the SDC before she quit, Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom—the same office that provides toolkits promoted on U-Turn's website—explicitly articulated the ALA's position that shapes library responses nationwide. "We've always promoted the idea that libraries are centers for free inquiry that call for a wide range of opinions and ideas," Caldwell-Stone stated. "It's not the role of the library to limit access."

When discussing the potential labeling of controversial materials in Christian County—a measure meant to entrap was proposed by the liberal library board members concerning the age-inappropriate content—Caldwell-Stone was equally dismissive: "Labeling is stigmatizing. It's a form of silent censorship in a way." These statements from the ALA's leadership reveal how national talking points are injected into the local level, with groups like U-Turn and Friends of the Library serving as the conduits for this influence while maintaining the appearance of community-based advocacy.

As Kleinman concludes: "ALA doesn't have the power to force you to do anything, but if it can get you to think what it thinks, then you'll do what it wants without even realizing it. That's the whole purpose of the 'hardcore activism' and the 'community organizing.'"

If you think Christian County isn’t targeted by the ALA and Chicago, then you are mistaken. They hate our conservative values, our red county and the way we vote, and are working to turn the fastest growing county in the state blue. If we let that happen, it’s not the ALA’s fault. It’s our own because we blinked in this game of library chicken.