Anne Arundel Library Includes Left-Wing Group in Pride Celebration
One Pasadena was specifically invited by one library to participate in official library events
Yet another publicly funded Anne Arundel County entity has gotten into bed with left-wing group One Pasadena.
The Mountain Road Branch of the Anne Arundel County Public Library scheduled multiple events this month with the left-wing group.
Events included a “Chalk the Walk” to “with rainbows, joy, and love!”, a “Park and Pride” parade that encourage people to “decorate your car with pride and take part in the parked parade.”
Much like with the so-called “Unity Day” incident at Chesapeake High School, One Pasadena was specifically invited by the Library to participate in the event despite being a noted left-wing organization promoting radical left-wing Democratic priorities.
I reached out to the Anne Arundel County Public Library system for comment. I did receive a response AACPL Director of Communications and Marketing Christine Feldmann which did confirm the Library partnered with One Pasadena:
Yes, we have partnered with One Pasadena on a number of library programs at our Mountain Road branch. The recent events you are likely referring to are our MasQueerade and yesterday’s Park and Pride event. Both were very well attended I might add.
One Pasadena is an enthusiastic partner in supporting library programs including our LGBTQ+ events. As their mission states they are “dedicated to building a safe and inclusive community.” Note the similarities of our missions.
According to their Facebook page, “One Pasadena is committed to being non-partisan.” They may dispute your assessment of them as a political organization. I’d encourage you to reach out to the organizers if you’d like to have that discussion.
If you’d like to understand how we select the programs we offer, I encourage you to read our Program Selection Policy. The policy states:
The library is an agent for positive change for our community.
The library is committed to the truth and to trustworthy information, fighting all forms of disinformation, censorship, and barriers to free inquiry.
The library is a welcoming, inclusive place for every customer and acts to dismantle exclusionary structures including but not limited to racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia.
The library advances individual and societal goals for equity, inclusion, and social justice to benefit the whole of our community.
One of the great things about the library is that we “affirm and support our customers' freedom and responsibility to choose library programs according to their needs, individual tastes, or family values.”
At the same time, “our customers apply those values to library programming only for themselves and may not restrict nor interfere in any way with other customers' freedom to view or attend programs.”
It should be noted that Feldman is also on the board of Annapolis Pride.
A strict reading of the library Program Selection Policy, which was not adopted until February 17th of this year, puts the Library Board of Trustees practically politically aligned with One Pasadena and other radical, partisan groups.
For example, one of the parameters is that “The library is committed to the truth and to trustworthy information” but continues to promote transgenderism that flies right in the face of biological science.
It is also hard to argue that “The library is a welcoming, inclusive place for every customer” when so much time and effort, particularly at the Mountain Road Branch Library, has been put into promoting programming that goes against the values and religious beliefs of a majority of the customers who use the Mountain Road Branch, myself included.
We’ll closely be following new developments in this story. But if it is open season on working with the Public Library for groups with a political agenda, I can’t wait to see what happens when a conservative group attempts to partner with the Library System in the same way that One Pasadena did.