Freedom to Read Nevada

Freedom to Read Nevada is a coalition of Northern Nevada residents concerned about the rise of censorship attempts in our state. We’re booksellers, librarians, writers, readers, parents, advocates, and everyday folk.

Our efforts are centered in Washoe County, where a small group has hijacked library board meetings in the effort to derail library business. (Read this article from the Reno News and Review to learn more.)

In 2024, we created a PAC to advocate for the passage of WC-1, the local ballot measure to renew the library expansion fund. The PAC continues to be active so that it can mobilize if needed.

Freedom to Read Nevada is a grassroots coalition dedicated to upholding the freedom to read for all—which means explicitly naming our values as antiracist, decolonial, and queer. All struggles for liberation are intertwined.

We acknowledge that Indigenous peoples in Turtle Island and abroad are the rightful stewards of the land, including those on whose ancestral homelands we reside: the People who inhabited the Great Basin area: the Numa/Numu (Northern Paiute), the Washeshu (Washoe), the Newe (Shoshone), and the Nuwuvi (Southern Paiute) peoples. The Numa, Washeshu, and Newe peoples organizationally operate in Reno, NV, and surrounding areas as the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony.

We stand in solidarity with those groups undergoing active genocide around the world, especially those as a result of colonial enterprises, including Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, the people of Sudan, and the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and with those groups undergoing state-sponsored violence in Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, China, and others who face oppression in their homelands and abroad.

We stand in solidarity with all who strive to be free from capitalism and the oppression necessitated by it. We believe that through Beloved Community alone we can take care of each other as we heal ourselves and each other and work to build a better world for our children and their children.

For the Steering Committee:

• Facilitating communications between library trustees and library staff
• Working and coordinating with local and national advocacy groups and unaffiliated individuals who care about the freedom to read
• Working with library staff, local booksellers, educators, and others to ensure our work aligns with their missions
• Holding meetings for members to strengthen the community of library advocates and mobilize supporters to take action
• Sending out reading recommendations for members and guiding discussion at our monthly meeting
• Staying informed of and connected to national and local conversations related to the freedom to read

Attempts to limit access to school and/or public libraries and materials are censorship, whether directly or through:

• Book banning, challenging, reshelving, misclassifying, age rating or restricting, or purging
• Cutting library funding, hours, branches, and accessibility to the public (including children)
• Firing, harassing, doxxing, criminalizing, suing, fining, jailing, and/or threatening librarians and educators
• Limiting events and uninviting or not including marginalized authors whose books have been challenged
• Legislating dog-whistle terms (such as “sexually explicit,” “sexually inappropriate,” or “pornographic”) to redefine obscenity outside of the Miller Test
• Prioritizing the imagined threats of “transgenderism,” “gender ideology,” “discriminatory equality ideology” and other bogus claims by Christian nationalists
• Using unprofessional reader-created book review sites instead of trade industry publications to make collection and policy decisions

All of these are fascist moves to control narratives around marginalized people and identities. An informed populace is dangerous to those in power. Fear is often rooted in ignorance; while we as a group are not focused on education, we believe that everyone should have access to a wide range of perspectives—which libraries give us.

We trust our teachers and librarians, who have training and education in literature and youth development, to curate collections for our community, especially for our children. No one has the right to take away anyone else’s freedom to read.