Hostile & Unwelcoming: Youth Advisory Commission Member Resigns over LGBT Censorship Project
The Anchorage Youth Advisory Commission (YAC) has worked over the years to promote the voices of youth in municipal government through collaboration, camaraderie, and honesty — but according to one now former member of YAC, the commission, under the oppressive far-right hand of the Bronson Administration, is conducting a behind the scenes crusade in a bid to censor LGBT authors from the Anchorage Public Library.
Anchorage resident Lily Spiroski served as the first Youth Representative for the Anchorage Assembly after being appointed in 2018. After serving their term, they then chose to join the YAC.
Over the years, Spiroski was able to secure funding for a youth art initiative that the YAC supported, helped to gather data from Anchorage's youth in support of the plastic bag ban passed in 2018, and introduced and passed the city's first Teen Dating Violence Awareness month.
But Spiroski's time on the commission has ended, writing in a resignation letter today to the Anchorage Assembly and YAC supervisor Brice Wilbanks that the current state of YAC provided too much of a "hostile and unwelcoming environment" for them to participate any further.
Spiroski's resignation from the Youth Commission came a day after The Blue Alaskan documented Anchorage Public Library Deputy Director of Library Services Judy Eledge's attempt to purge LGBT material from the library. Unknown to the broader public, YAC was also quietly hatching a plan to censor LGBT authors from library shelves.
"The recent project from the YAC to limit what books youth are allowed to access is damaging. By starting a project to censor LGBTQIA+ authors in the library, they have made it an unsafe environment for Anchorage's LGBTQIA+ youth," Spiroski wrote in their resignation letter.
According to Spiroski, the YAC-backed LGBT censoring project was brought forward by a commission member who called out "inappropriate" literature in the Anchorage Public Library's young adult and children sections. Spiroski tells me that books like Jack (Not Jackie) were listed as inappropriate because sexuality is not for children.
"From this initial presentation," Spiroski says, "a smaller work group formed to present something to the library."
A screenshot Spiroski says is taken from YAC's censoring project was provided to The Blue Alaskan and, somewhat incredibly, compares sexy and steamy adult romance novels to LGBT books that address issues of gender identity and gender expression.
At the bottom of the screenshot, the project's creator(s) suggested that as a 'solution' to the LGBT books found at the library, parents and older teens could help the library "discern additions to provide community insight before books are shelved."
According to Spiroski, whose details in their resignation letter appear to be backed up by YAC's meeting minutes, the youth commission has also taken it upon themselves not to open the Youth Representative position to all Anchorage youth, instead opting to nominate solely from within.
In response to YAC's unexplained and strange move, Spiroski told the Anchorage Assembly in their resignation letter that they strongly suggested that until Youth Representative applications were again open to all Anchorage youth, they should not approve any youth or alternative representatives from YAC.
It's worth noting, I think, that as Judy Eledge was said to be removing LGBTQ books from the shelves of the Anchorage Public Library for her own "personal review," the Youth Advisory Commission was simultaneously crafting a project with the intended goal of censoring LGBT authors from the library.
Shouldn't libraries be safe spaces where parents and individuals can choose what reading material is best for their families and themselves?
I'm sure this hubbub over LGBTQ books and the Anchorage Public Library is nothing to worry about. Purely coincidental. It's not like we could have seen this coming or anything. If only we had Eledge's opinion about transgender people on video or a well-documented list of her disturbing social media posts.
