Keizer City Councilor Soraida Cross Fails in Book Banning Effort

Familiar fascist maneuver fails to ensnare Keizer City Manager

You know that movie “Footloose?” The 1984 musical drama where Kevin Bacon moves to the overly-religious town where no one’s allowed to listen to rock music or dance because the devil might haunt your knickers?

It’s starting to seem like Keizer is headed in that direction - except instead of dancing, the devil lives in books. And reading them will apparently haunt your brain with ideas that some find offensive based on their fragile political ideology & private religious superstition.

In November 2023, Keizer City Councilor Soraida Cross emailed City Manager Adam Brown with a list of concerns about what she called an “employee library” - a pair of bookshelves outside a human resources office at Keizer City Hall. In her November 10, 2023 email Cross seemed concerned about the books themselves; the cost associated with maintaining two bookshelves of about 100 books; and whether the topics addressed might be designed to indoctrinate city staff.

Who will save the delicate, thin-skinned folk of Keizer from these two evil bookshelves?

Cross even warned that some of the titles might conflict with the religious beliefs of some in Keizer. 

“These topics in the library could be considered propaganda by some,” Cross wrote in her email to Keizer City Manager Adam Brown. “Also, these conflict with a portion of residents religious beliefs.”

So, like…this has to be some wild collection of books, right? For a City Councilor to pursue an issue like this for months and levy such contentious allegations, you’d expect a city-curated collection of the lowest smut & filth.

Let's play a fun game! Which titles do you think Keizer City Councilor Soraida Cross finds so deeply offensive?

Eh, not really. This is a fairly vanilla blend of self-help, nutrition & health, and professional development titles. Which ones do you think Councilor Cross views as propaganda? Which ones conflict with religious beliefs of Keizer residents?

Turns out, it doesn’t matter what Cross thinks. Because it happens to be none of her fucking business, according to Keizer City Manager Adam Brown.

Brown’s response to the City Councilor’s email did not suggest as dire a situation as Cross describes (emphasis added):

We don’t force anyone to read anything. Most of the books are ordered by request of employees. We encourage professional development and the library is a way of supporting our employees in learning and growing. Not everyone is going to agree with every book. I don’t agree with every book, but I’m not afraid of a book either. 

“I don’t agree with every book, but I’m not afraid of a book either.” Love that line. I also really liked, “Most of the books are ordered by request of employees.”

Brown went on to politely show Cross the proverbial door, closing his brief reply with, “This is a matter of administration of the city staff and not a policy question.”

This insidious creep of faith-fueled fascism is not terribly new for Keizer’s culture war-fueled elected officials.

Keizer’s extremism problem crested most recently in 2022 when city staff, including Keizer Police, and elected officials, including Mayor Cathy Clark, welcomed Reawaken America - a christofascist celebration of disinformation and conspiracy theories - to city-owned property.

For Cross, who is widely believed to have her sights set on State Senator Kim Thatcher’s 13th District seat (who is ineligible to run again because she couldn’t manage to show up for work), this frivolous, misguided book banning effort could be a preview to what she would offer at the state level. Which, honestly, would be about as useless as Thatcher’s service to Keizer - almost impotent and imperceptible to constituents. 

Just like her failed shot at attacking a couple of bookshelves in City Hall!

Cross’s failed effort to interfere with the Keizer City Hall staff library is a familiar play from the extremist right-wing handbook.

So often do conservatives in Oregon try to ban books because the book is about race or gender, the State Legislature fielded legislation in the 2024 short session in the form of a resolution to ban book banning. 

From Julia Shumway in The Oregon Capitol Chronicle this past February:

“The bill passed the Senate on a 17-12 party line vote on Tuesday after a heated hour-long debate that included one Republican accusing his Democratic colleagues of wanting to encourage pedophilia and another saying racism is “insignificant.” The bill now heads to the House, where Frederick said he expects it will soon pass out of the House Rules Committee and the full House. 

It comes amid a sharp increase in school book bans in Oregon and nationwide. The Oregon Intellectual Freedom Clearinghouse, run by the Oregon State Library, tracked attempts to remove 93 separate titles from schools and libraries between July 2022 and June 2023. Nationally, the free speech advocacy group PEN America reported nearly 3,400 instances of book bans in the 2022-23 school year, up from 2,500 in the 2021-22 school year. 

In Oregon, more than 70% of the challenged titles were about or written by people of color, LGBTQ+ people, women, people with disabilities and other underrepresented groups, according to the state library.”

According to Oregon Public Broadcasting, “The bill passed the Senate on a party-line vote but ended the session stuck in committee on the House side due to Republican delay tactics.”

So, it seems Keizer City Councilor Cross is simply following the national trend of far-right attempts to stifle ideas they are scared by. And while Cross wasn’t specific in which titles in the staff library she was challenging, there’s little reason to believe she is ignoring the Oregon right-wing playbook where “more than 70% of the challenged titles were about or written by people of color, LGBTQ+ people, women, people with disabilities and other underrepresented groups.”