Though the battle over Samuels Public Library is over, skirmishes in the nation’s culture wars continue to erupt in Warren County. Many involved on both sides have signaled their intention to continue fighting, shifting their focus to political organizing and public education.
County meetings and social media were abuzz about the library for months after a conservative group asked the Warren County Board of Supervisors to defund it, replace the staff, and change the library’s operational structure when Samuels refused to remove about 140 LGBTQ-themed books.
After withholding 75 percent of the library’s budget while it worked to address concerns brought about by book challengers, supervisors released the money on Oct. 3, unanimously approving an operational agreement with the library.
Library supporters rejoiced at the agreement – which calls for continued funding, minor changes to the library’s board of trustees, and bi-annual reports to supervisors about the library’s finances.
Kelsey Lawrence, head of Save Samuels, a group that advocated for the library’s policies, said she is thrilled with the agreement, calling it a “testament to the strength of democracy.”
Saying that Save Samuels is “more than a movement; it’s a tight-knit community, even a family,” Lawrence said that the effort represented a first foray into politics for many of its members.
“For most of us, including myself, this journey into local politics has been enlightening, highlighting the importance of holding our local government accountable,” she said, noting that the group may broaden its mission “to protect more vital institutions” in the future.
Library critics were furious about the agreement.
In an Oct. 5 email with the subject line “Et tu, Brute?”, Clean Up Samuels, the group that opposed the library’s book collection, structure, and funding, called the new agreement a betrayal of parents and taxpayers and a “dagger in the back.”
The email explains that the group finds the agreement unacceptable because it “ties the hands” of future supervisors for two years, guarantees future-level funding for the library, and prevents supervisors from appointing trustees to the library’s board. In September, Clean Up Samuels supporters demanded that supervisors appoint seven trustees to the library board, as was outlined in an early draft of the operational agreement.
Using language and imagery from Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” wherein the protagonist is betrayed by trusted allies, the email states the group is “especially distraught by the fact that [supervisors] Delores Oates, Vicky Cook, and Jay Butler all signed this treacherous document. These are politicians who had previously pledged to defend children and fight for parent’s rights.”
It goes on to say that while Clean Up Samuels is not affiliated with the Republican Party, if it were, members would “do everything we could to make sure that these backstabbing politicians never won another election in their lives.”
The email urges for the removal of Robert Hupman as chair of the Warren County Republican Committee in response to a Sept. 16 statement he made urging supervisors to come to terms with the library. And it lays blame at the feet of a group of local Catholics who submitted a letter to supervisors last month saying they believed that Samuels had responded appropriately to parent concerns and should be fully funded. In July, the library created a New Adult section to house books for readers 16 and up and instituted two new library card options that allow parents to restrict the sections from which their children can check out books.
Vowing to continue the fight to help communities across the country “achieve political goals that reflect their community consensus,” the email introduced a new group – Americans For Integrity (AFI).
Paperwork for the new non-stock corporation, which seeks to “decolonize rural America by bringing democracy to bureaucracies” through organization, education, and empowerment was filed with the state in June by five Clean Up Samuels supporters, including Thomas Hinnant, a former consultant to Oates’ state delegate campaign.
The AFI website states that public institutions at the federal, state, and local levels have been “captured by pseudo elites” who “operate our institutions with a self serving mentality that disregards the voice of the tax payer [sic] who foots their bills.”
It continues “these mis-educated, over-credentialed, un-elected [sic] bureaucrats have run our public institutions into the ground, and they have forced un popular [sic] ideologies on tax paying citizens for over 50 years.”
AFI did not respond to a request for additional information about its objectives.
The disagreement by members of the opposing library groups shifted to the School Board, with members of each speaking at a pair of meetings in early October.
Hinnant criticized Warren County Public School administrators for their handling of an assault at Skyline Middle School at an Oct. 4 meeting.
He accused the School Board and Superintendent Chris Ballenger of mishandling and downplaying the incident – in which a child sustained significant injuries to his mouth and jaw – and accused two other speakers at that meeting (both of whom are part of the Save Samuels group) of anti-Catholic, anti-homeschool bigotry and bringing politics into the schools.
“This partisan political hackery that’s using a smoke screen to cover up the legitimate bullying issues that are going on in this school system is absolutely ridiculous,” Hinnant said. “We need to get this political garbage out, clean the bullying up, stop the woke garbage, get the kids into shop classes, and fix this stuff. So stop being crazy and attacking people.”
Wearing a pro-library T-shirt, Lauren Wood responded to Hinnant’s comments.
“My child has been bullied and I did not appreciate the way that the school handled it, but I believe that this board is trying to take action in order to eliminate that or make it better,” she said. “I’m sorry for every single child that has been hurt. To stand up here and say that we are anti-Catholic, anti-homeschool, this is absolutely not the truth.”
At the same meeting, Stevi Hubbard, another library supporter, told the board that she wants members to “believe in the system that they’re governing” and who act in good faith to support that institution.
“And so if there’s one of us that is always suspicious of the other, that’s not really good faith, right?” Hubbard said. “So we want people to care enough about our children to put their personal differences aside and to work together as a whole unit to provide the most excellent experience our children can possibly have in our public school system.”
Lawrence said that many members of the Save Samuels group are closely watching the upcoming local elections.
“The impending School Board elections concern many of us, as some candidates were involved in the library takeover attempt,” Lawrence said after the meeting.
School Board candidates Thomas McFadden Jr. and Leslie Mathews supported the efforts of Clean Up Samuels.
She said that some members of the group created a “Save Samuels sample ballot” for the upcoming local election and have had a presence at the county registrar’s office throughout early voting.
A day after that School Board meeting, several members of the Save Samuels attended a Red Wine & Blue Virginia event in Front Royal where topics included education and the upcoming elections.
The event was the second stop in the “Parents, Not Politics” tour, launched in response to Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s “Parent’s Matter” tour that started this summer.
Lara Bury, the state’s deputy program director for Red Wine & Blue Virginia, said the organization is geared toward channeling the power of suburban women, a voting bloc commonly sought after by both political parties.
Noting that the “entire state” has taken notice of Save Samuels’ efforts on behalf of the library, Bury asked those in attendance to begin – or continue – “relational” outreach, talking to family, friends, and acquaintances about issues important to them and encouraging them to vote this November.
“That’s what wins elections,” she said.
