Bronson Seeks to 'Liven Up' Library Advisory Board with Four More Appointees

Immediately after assuming office, Mayor David Bronson packed the Anchorage Public Library Advisory Board (LAB) with conservative allies including Dennis Dupras, Doug Weimann, and his wife Deborah. Two other Bronson appointees, Travis Gularte, and teen advisory board member Denali Tshibaka, have since departed the advisory board.

Bronson's efforts to polarize and inject lower 48 culture wars into the public library system are unsurprising (to me at least) given his long history of anti-LGBTQ demagoguery and behind-the-scenes efforts to purge the public library of LGBTQ+ material. These efforts, by the way, have resulted in the resignations of multiple veteran library employees.

After seeing his last batch of appointees rejected by the Assembly, Mayor Bronson has put forth four more individuals to serve on LAB; Aimee Sims, Stacy Lange, Donna Moats, and Windy Perkins—each one of them is a registered Republican. These appointees were up for confirmation last month, but the Assembly took a pass and opted instead to hold a work session so that each applicant could be reviewed. Given the damage Bronson has done to the public library system (you can read about that here), the Assembly doing due diligence seems reasonable.

Come up to the LAB

In her one-page letter sent to the Bronson administration, Aimee Sims promised to represent not just library patrons, but also the taxpayers she says "provide the funding for our facilities and the people who work there." Sims' sentence is alarming as it derives from right-wing organizations that use similar verbiage to call for local officials to defund libraries after they've failed to ban materials they say provide children access to dangerous and P0rNoGrApHiC material—aka, LGBTQ+ books.

That Sims would include such a line in her letter is unsurprising given her longtime association with Mayor Bronson's Save Anchorage turd, as well as having a personal connection to former Anchorage Assemblyperson Jamie Allard who believes there are pornographic books in school libraries.

Sims also belongs to another divisive (now defunct) social media group, Alaskans for Children's Right to Breathe which was initially led by Rep. Allard and sought to sue the Anchorage School District over a mask policy intended to protect public health and safety during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sims also supported Leigh Sloan's failed bid for a seat on the Anchorage Assembly. Sloan, who the Anchorage Assembly recently rejected for a spot on the Library Advisory Board, promoted a Change.org petition that accused the public library of exposing children to graphic sexual content. 🙄

Stacy Lange says she would be a good fit to serve on the Anchorage Library Advisory Board but neglected to mention in her interest letter (whoops) that she had testified against drag queen story hour in 2017. The story hour is endorsed by the American Library Association as an effort to create more inclusive societies but has not been an active program at the public library in roughly half a decade.

In her testimony given alongside other so-called "concerned parents," Lange quoted a conservative advocacy group, saying, “In 2017, the American College of Pediatricians stated that gender ideology harms children.”

The American College of Pediatricians (not to be confused with the American Board of Pediatrics) advocates against rights for gay, queer, and trans people. They also promote the harmful debunked practice of conversion therapy and promote Christian purity culture. They have been accused by some scientists of mischaracterizing or misusing their work to advance a political agenda. Go figure.

Donna Moats was poking around the Blue Alaskan Facebook page this week when perhaps inadvertently, she liked and then quickly unliked a Facebook post I had written when board member Doug Weimann wagged his finger at the library director during a LAB meeting and then skulked off to grouse in spectator row when he learned that the Assembly amended an ordinance to clarify that the library board's role is to advise and thus, lacks the authority to ban or censor library materials.

Moats and her husband Gary are recent transplants, having only moved to Alaska from Tennessee in 2020. Gary is the senior pastor of First Baptist Church Anchorage which encourages Christians to oppose sexual immorality including homosexuality and pornography. It's unclear whether pornography in this context refers to a public library's diverse collection of materials, including LGBTQ+ books.

A cached version of the now-deactivated Twitter account @donnamoats was used to share debunked information and the election fraud lies of former president Donald Trump in the months leading up to the violent and deadly January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Prior to its deactivation, the account had engaged in topics related to public education and dialogued with a family member.

It's probably fine though because Anchorage's deeply embarrassing extremist mayor previously peddled similar election fraud lies of the former guy on his campaign Facebook page.

Windy Perkins' name appears in a 2019 Alaska Watchman blog post that detailed the efforts of a group of Christians to hold their own story hour gatherings in response to the Anchorage Public Library's now-defunct drag queen story hour program.

Perkins was a coordinator for the Good News Club which is a listed ministry of Child Evangelism Fellowship Alaska, a religious non-profit organization that provides programs designed to indoctrinate children with conservative Christianity and "equip the next generation of Alaskans for Christ." There is also a related Anchorage / Mat-Su chapter.

This past April, Perkins provided testimony in opposition to HB 99 which would have banned discrimination in housing, lending, and public accommodations against Alaskans on the grounds of their gender identity or sexual orientation.

In her testimony, Perkins wrote that HB 99 put the public at risk, claiming that Rep. Jennie Armstrong's proposed non-discrimination bill was not in the best interest of all Alaskans—including children, schools, and the government.

It's all so very exhausting

Last year I interviewed library youth services coordinator Linda Klein, a ten-year veteran of the Anchorage Public Library who resigned citing alarming issues caused by Amy Demboski and Judy Eledge who were both intimately involved in library operations at the time. Klein said that the driving force behind her resignation was Demboski and Eledge actively seeking to control the community's free access to information and working to promote a "repressive, right-wing agenda."

I'm convinced that Klein hit the nail on the head, and we're still witnessing that very same effort in action today.

I don't believe that most people, myself included, care much about an appointee’s deeply held personal convictions about politics or religion unless that belief system begins to negatively impact library patrons' ability to access information and make use of the resources provided. Unfortunately, we've already witnessed what happens during LAB meetings when someone's personal beliefs start infringing upon these principles and it rightfully raises concerns about the fair and equal treatment of all library patrons.

Given Mayor Bronson's treatment of the public library as a whole, asking his appointees whether they can separate their political and religious beliefs from the library's mission of connecting all people to education, information, and community—seems entirely reasonable.