Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh distributing right wing voter guides
The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh District Services has sent an email to branch heads offering to distribute to interested branches 50 copies of the 2006 Voter Guide from the Pennsylvania Family Institute, which the email calls “a non-profit, non-partisan research and education organization that analyzes public policies and cultural trends for their impact on the family.”
The Pennsylvania Family Institute is in fact not formally affiliated with a political party and is a registered non-profit; however these facts alone don’t amount to a truthful description of the organization, which the sender of the email had to have known. Pennsylvania Family Institute is a political advocacy group focusing on conservative social issues, from a fundamentalist Christian point of view.
It is not possible for me to believe that the person at Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s District Services who sent out this offer to branches is unaware of the Pennsylvania Family Institute’s political nature – it is too obvious.
According to my contact in this library system, offers for other voter guides have not been sent out.
Library systems routinely reject advocacy groups’ efforts to plant election-related materials in libraries. In this case, the library system’s headquarters is actively distributing materials that are designed to affect the outcome of Pennsylvania’s elections.
I acknowledge that there have been people in the library left who believe in using public libraries for political advocacy purposes. That point of view was especially strong in the 1960s and 1970s, and was part of the set of ideas behind the founding of ALA’s Social Responsibilities Round Table. It is not, however, the outlook of most people in SRRT today, who are interested in advancing an awareness of social issues, within the liberal, social-science-grounded tradition, among librarians so that we can contribute to the profession and offer unbiased service in a way that is more inclusive, broader, fairer, and more cognizant of social and political structures. In many cases that can mean advocating for people in the community who are otherwise underserved. It does not mean attempting to change the results of an election, as the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s District Services is, ultimately, attempting to do.
5 comments on “Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh distributing right wing voter guides”
The director does not appear to be a librarian and seems to be connected to the Republican party…see profile:
Dr. Barbara K. Mistick is nationally recognized as an innovator in entrepreneurship education, successful business owner and an advocate for women’s issues…As former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge’s appointee–
http://www.clpgh.org/about/director.html
Hey Rory do you have a cite for this or some other way of verifying that this is the case. I’m not saying I disbelieve your source, I’d just like some sort of verification. Maybe a number to call or a person to email? If you’ve done this, please let me know what you found out. This sounds like very shady behavior.
I have an email forwarded to me from within that system. I can’t reproduce it because it could hurt the person who sent it to me. It simply offers to branch heads 50 copies of the Voter Guide, saying simply that it is from a non-profit, non-partisan research and educational organization. Write me privately and I can put you in contact with my source.
—Dobson said.Attendees were encouraged to “pray, prepare and participate” by, among other things, taking bulk packages of voter guides prepared by the conservative Pennsylvania Family Institute to distribute at their churches and asking pastors to hold voter-registration drives.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2003272976_valuesvote24.html
INCLUDES:Pennsylvania Family Institute
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CREW Files IRS Complaint Against PA Pastors Network for Assisting Sen. Santorum in Re-election Efforts
WASHINGTON – March 22 – Earlier today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) alleging that a get-out-the-vote training session offered by the Pennsylvania Pastors Network (PPN) may have violated IRS rules governing charities.
The PPN is organized by four conservative organizations: Let Freedom Ring, the Pennsylvania Family Institute, the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation, and the Urban Family Council. Let Freedom Ring is a §501(c)(4) organization and the Pro-Life Federation has §501(c)(4) and §501(c)(3) components, but the Pennsylvania Family Institute and the Urban Family Council are both §501(c)(3) organizations. IRS law explicitly prohibits §501(c)(3) organizations from engaging in political activities.
http://www.commondreams.org/news2006/0322-11.htm
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