Lafayette Citizens Against Censorship

August 2025 Banned Book Club
2025-08-21 18:00 - 19:00 (America/Chicago) | Cavalier House Books, 302 A Jefferson St, Lafayette, LA, 70501, United States
Join us each month for thought-provoking discussions in the Banned Book Club, where we will explore the powerful stories and ideas that have been silenced by book bans across America. Every month, we’ll dive into either a book currently banned or one that examines the culture of censorship and its impact on society. Together, we’ll challenge the limits of free expression, reflect on the importance of diverse voices, and discuss why certain books are under attack. Whether you’re reading for pleasure or actively seeking ideas outside your comfort zone, each meeting offers a space for open dialogue, critical thinking, and a deeper understanding of the books that shape our world. Come ready to read, reflect, and resist!
Our August book is Crank by Ellen Hopkins. Order your copy from Cavalier House Books Lafayette today!
Kristina Georgia Snow is the perfect daughter, gifted high school junior, quiet, never any trouble. But on a trip to visit her absentee father, Kristina disappears and Bree takes her place. Bree is the exact opposite of Kristina. Through a boy, Bree meets the monster: crank. And what begins as a wild ecstatic ride turns into a struggle through hell for her mind, her soul – her life. (Fiction, Young Adult)
Check out Unite Against Book Bans’ Resumé for Crank.

August 2025 LPL Board of Control Regular Meeting
2025-08-04 17:00 - 18:00 | Lafayette Public Library – Main, 301 W. Congress St, Lafayette, LA, 70501, United States
The regular monthly meeting of the Lafayette Public Library Board of Control. Agenda below.

July 2025 Banned Book Club
2025-07-24 18:00 - 19:00 | Cavalier House Books, 302 A Jefferson St, Lafayette, LA, 70501, United States
Join us each month for thought-provoking discussions in the Banned Book Club, where we will explore the powerful stories and ideas that have been silenced by book bans across America. Every month, we’ll dive into either a book currently banned or one that examines the culture of censorship and its impact on society. Together, we’ll challenge the limits of free expression, reflect on the importance of diverse voices, and discuss why certain books are under attack. Whether you’re reading for pleasure or actively seeking ideas outside your comfort zone, each meeting offers a space for open dialogue, critical thinking, and a deeper understanding of the books that shape our world. Come ready to read, reflect, and resist!
Our July book is The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison! Buy your copy from Cavalier House Books today!
Eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove, an African-American girl in an America whose love for blonde, blue-eyed children can devastate all others, prays for her eyes to turn blue, so that she will be beautiful, people will notice her, and her world will be different. The story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove, the tragic heroine of Toni Morrison’s haunting first novel, grew out of her memory of a girlhood friend who wanted blue eyes. Shunned by the town’s prosperous black families, as well as its white families, Pecola lives with her alcoholic father and embittered, overworked mother in a shabby two-room storefront that reeks of the hopeless destitution that overwhelms their lives. In awe of her clean well-groomed schoolmates, and certain of her own intense ugliness, Pecola tries to make herself disappear as she wishes fervently, desperately for the blue eyes of a white girl. In her afterward to this novel, Morrison writes of the little girl she once knew: “Beauty was not simply something to behold, it was something one could do. The Bluest Eye was my effort to say something about that; to say something about why she had not, or possibly never would have, the experience of what she possessed and also why she prayed for so radical an alteration. Implicit in her desire was racial self-loathing. And twenty-years later I was still wondering about how one learns that. Who told her? Who made her feel that it was better to be a freak that what she was? Who had looked at her and found her so wanting, so small a weight on the beauty scale? The novel pecks away at the gaze that condemned her.
Check out Unite Against Book Bans’ Resumé for The Bluest Eye.

June 2025 LPL Board of Control Regular Monthly Meeting
2025-06-23 18:00 - 20:00 | Lafayette Public Library – Main, 301 W. Congress St, Lafayette, LA, 70501, United States
Regular monthly meeting of the board. Agenda can be found here.
You can find our analysis of agenda items on our Monthly Discussion Page.

June 2025 Banned Book Club
2025-06-19 18:00 - 19:00 | Cavalier House Books, 302 A Jefferson St, Lafayette, LA, 70501, United States
Join us each month for thought-provoking discussions in the Banned Book Club, where we will explore the powerful stories and ideas that have been silenced by book bans across America. Every month, we’ll dive into either a book currently banned or one that examines the culture of censorship and its impact on society. Together, we’ll challenge the limits of free expression, reflect on the importance of diverse voices, and discuss why certain books are under attack. Whether you’re reading for pleasure or actively seeking ideas outside your comfort zone, each meeting offers a space for open dialogue, critical thinking, and a deeper understanding of the books that shape our world. Come ready to read, reflect, and resist!
Our June book is All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson! Buy your copy from Cavalier House Books today!
In a series of personal essays, prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue explores his childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia. From the memories of getting his teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to flea marketing with his loving grandmother, to his first sexual relationships, this young-adult memoir weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer boys. Both a primer for teens eager to be allies as well as a reassuring testimony for young queer men of color, All Boys Aren’t Blue covers topics such as gender identity, toxic masculinity, brotherhood, family, structural marginalization, consent, and Black joy. Johnson’s emotionally frank style of writing will appeal directly to young adults.
Check out Unite Against Book Bans’ Resumé for All Boys Aren’t Blue.

Move the Mindset's 2025 Juneteenth Commemoration
2025-06-18 17:30 - 20:00 | Downtown Convention Center, 124 S. Buchanan St., Lafayette, LA, 70501, United States
LCAC will be tabling at this event!
Details:
Join us for our annually free event, our Juneteenth commemoration program. This year’s program will feature community organizations, a film screening with panel discussion, a poetry reading, live musical performances, and refreshments. Please plan to join us by meeting community organizations when our doors open at 5:30pm and our program will begin at 6:00pm. All ages and backgrounds are invited.

May 2025 LPL Board of Control Regular Monthly Meeting (Budget Meeting)
2025-05-19 18:00 - 20:00 | Lafayette Public Library – Main, 301 W. Congress St, Lafayette, LA, 70501, United States
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Regular monthly meeting of the board.
Agenda Here
You can find our analysis of the agenda items on our monthly discussion page.

May 2025 Banned Book Club
2025-05-15 18:00 - 19:00 | Cavalier House Books, 302 A Jefferson St, Lafayette, LA, 70501, United States
Join us each month for thought-provoking discussions in the Banned Book Club, where we will explore the powerful stories and ideas that have been silenced by book bans across America. Every month, we’ll dive into either a book currently banned or one that examines the culture of censorship and its impact on society. Together, we’ll challenge the limits of free expression, reflect on the importance of diverse voices, and discuss why certain books are under attack. Whether you’re reading for pleasure or actively seeking ideas outside your comfort zone, each meeting offers a space for open dialogue, critical thinking, and a deeper understanding of the books that shape our world. Come ready to read, reflect, and resist!
Our May book is The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini! Buy your copy from Cavalier House Books today!
The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons—their love, their sacrifices, their lies.
A sweeping story of family, love, and friendship told against the devastating backdrop of the history of Afghanistan over the last thirty years, The Kite Runner is an unusual and powerful novel that has become a beloved, one-of-a-kind classic.
Check out Unite Against Book Bans’ Resumé for The Kite Runner.

**CANCELED** May NE Library Committee Meeting
2025-05-15 18:00 - 19:00 | Lafayette Public Library – Main, 301 W. Congress St, Lafayette, LA, 70501, United States
This meeting has been canceled.

April 2025 LPL Board of Control Regular Monthly Meeting
2025-04-21 18:00 - 19:30 | Lafayette Public Library – Main, 301 W. Congress St, Lafayette, LA, 70501, United States
Regular monthly meeting of the board. Agenda can be found HERE.

*CANCELLED* April NE Library Committee Meeting
2025-04-17 18:00 - 19:00 | Lafayette Public Library – Main, 301 W. Congress St, Lafayette, LA, 70501, United States
This meeting has been canceled, per the library website.

April 2025 Banned Book Club
2025-04-17 18:00 - 19:00 | Cavalier House Books, 302 A Jefferson St, Lafayette, LA, 70501, United States
Join us each month for thought-provoking discussions in the Banned Book Club, where we will explore the powerful stories and ideas that have been silenced by book bans across America. Every month, we’ll dive into either a book currently banned or one that examines the culture of censorship and its impact on society. Together, we’ll challenge the limits of free expression, reflect on the importance of diverse voices, and discuss why certain books are under attack. Whether you’re reading for pleasure or actively seeking ideas outside your comfort zone, each meeting offers a space for open dialogue, critical thinking, and a deeper understanding of the books that shape our world. Come ready to read, reflect, and resist!
Our April book is Sold by Patricia McCormick! Buy your copy from Cavalier House Books today!
The powerful, poignant, bestselling National Book Award finalist gives voice to a young girl robbed of her childhood yet determined to find the strength to triumph.
Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut on a mountain in Nepal. Though she is desperately poor, her life is full of simple pleasures, like playing hopscotch with her best friend from school, and having her mother brush her hair by the light of an oil lamp. But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the family’s crops, Lakshmi’s stepfather says she must leave home and take a job to support her family.
He introduces her to a glamorous stranger who tells her she will find her a job as a maid in the city. Glad to be able to help, Lakshmi journeys to India and arrives at “Happiness House” full of hope. But she soon learns the unthinkable truth: she has been sold into prostitution.
An old woman named Mumtaz rules the brothel with cruelty and cunning. She tells Lakshmi that she is trapped there until she can pay off her family’s debt-then cheats Lakshmi of her meager earnings so that she can never leave.
Lakshmi’s life becomes a nightmare from which she cannot escape. Still, she lives by her mother’s words—Simply to endure is to triumph—and gradually, she forms friendships with the other girls that enable her to survive in this terrifying new world. Then the day comes when she must make a decision-will she risk everything for a chance to reclaim her life?
Written in spare and evocative vignettes by the co-author of I Am Malala (Young Readers Edition), this powerful novel renders a world that is as unimaginable as it is real, and a girl who not only survives but triumphs.

Book Bans in Louisiana: A Panel Discussion on Censorship
2025-04-08 18:00 - 19:00 | ULL Student Union – Shadows Room, 620 McKinley St, Lafayette, LA, 70503, United States
Presented in partnership with the UL College Dems, we invite you to join us for an insightful panel discussion on book bans in Louisiana public and school libraries. Moderated by UL’s own Dr. Frank Crocco, this event brings together experts and advocates to explore the impact of book bans on education, freedom of expression, and the future of library access in the state. Don’t miss the chance to engage with thought-provoking perspectives on this critical issue and learn how it affects communities, students, and educators.
Amanda Jones is a 24 year teacher-librarian and grassroots organizer in Louisiana on the frontlines fighting against censorship in libraries. She is the 2021 Librarian of the Year as presented by School Library Journal , a 2021 Library Journal Mover and Shaker, and the 2020 Louisiana School Librarian of the Year. She is the Louisiana Chapter Councilor to ALA and on both the ALA and LLA Intellectual Freedom Committees. Amanda has won numerous intellectual freedom awards, is a founding member of Louisiana Citizens Against Censorship, and is the author of “That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America.” As an added bonus, Cavalier Books will have copies of That Librarian for sale, and Amanda will be available for a book signing after the panel!
Kristen Luchsinger is a founding member and current board member of the St. Tammany Parish Library Alliance, recognized as one of the leading organizations in our state fighting against censorship and promoting diversity in library collections. She spends much of her free time campaigning for candidates at the community, parish, and state levels, and stays active in her efforts to hold her local government officials accountable to their constituents, as well as contributing to the creation, discussion and adoption of new policies and resolutions that affect both her own and surrounding districts. Kristen is also an active supporter of women’s rights organizations, a member of the Covington NAACP, and one of Queer Northshore’s fiercest allies. As a local activist, Kristen has focused her efforts to stand up for and amplify the voices of marginalized communities, and fight for diversity, equity, and inclusion in St. Tammany Parish and beyond, and was recognized as “Organizer of the Month” by Lynda Woolard from Louisiana Lefty. Alongside her activism, Kristen is pursuing a degree in Criminal Justice at Southeastern Louisiana University, furthering her passion and dedication to promoting fairness and equity within her community.
Lynette Mejia is a co-founding member and Executive Director of Louisiana Citizens Against Censorship and Lafayette Citizens Against Censorship, grassroots organizations dedicated to defending access to diverse books in Louisiana libraries. She is the 2023 inaugural recipient of the LASL Citizen Social Impact Award, the 2024 Alex Allain LLA Intellectual Freedom Award, and is a 2024 Undercurrent Wavemaker honoree. In addition to her advocacy work she is a writer, speaker, and poet. Her chapbook, There Is No Why: New Fairy Tales, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press.
Dr. Francesco Crocco received his Ph.D. in English from the CUNY Graduate Center and has more than 20 years of experience in higher education teaching and administration. He is currently the instructional support manager for the Office of Distance Learning at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette. Previously, he directed the award-winning Excelsior Online Writing Lab (OWL) and was an assistant professor of English at the Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of New York (CUNY).

March 2025 Banned Book Club
2025-03-20 18:00 - 19:00 | Cavalier House Books, 302 A Jefferson St, Lafayette, LA, 70501, United States
Join us each month for thought-provoking discussions in the Banned Book Club, where we will explore the powerful stories and ideas that have been silenced by book bans across America. Every month, we’ll dive into either a book currently banned or one that examines the culture of censorship and its impact on society. Together, we’ll challenge the limits of free expression, reflect on the importance of diverse voices, and discuss why certain books are under attack. Whether you’re reading for pleasure or actively seeking ideas outside your comfort zone, each meeting offers a space for open dialogue, critical thinking, and a deeper understanding of the books that shape our world. Come ready to read, reflect, and resist!
Our March Selection is That Librarian by Amanda Jones!
Part memoir, part manifesto, the inspiring story of a Louisiana librarian advocating for inclusivity on the front lines of our vicious culture wars.
One of the things small town librarian Amanda Jones values most about books is how they can affirm a young person’s sense of self. So in 2022, when she caught wind of a local public hearing that would discuss “book content,” she knew what was at stake. Schools and libraries nationwide have been bombarded by demands for books with LGTBQ+ references, discussions of racism, and more to be purged from the shelves. Amanda would be damned if her community were to ban stories representing minority groups. She spoke out that night at the meeting. Days later, she woke up to a nightmare that is still ongoing.
Amanda Jones has been called a groomer, a pedo, and a porn-pusher; she has faced death threats and attacks from strangers and friends alike. Her decision to support a collection of books with diverse perspectives made her a target for extremists using book banning campaigns-funded by dark money organizations and advanced by hard right politicians-in a crusade to make America more white, straight, and “Christian.” But Amanda Jones wouldn’t give up without a fight: she sued her harassers for defamation and urged others to join her in the resistance.
Mapping the book banning crisis occurring all across the nation, That Librarian draws the battle lines in the war against equity and inclusion, calling book lovers everywhere to rise in defense of our readers.

An Evening with Dr. Robert Mann
2025-03-19 18:00 - 19:00 | ULL Student Union – Bayou Bijou Room, 620 McKinley St, Lafayette, LA, 70503, United States
Join us for a thought-provoking evening as former LSU professor Dr. Robert Mann engages in an insightful conversation with UL’s own Dr. Philip Auter. Together, they will explore the vital role of libraries, intellectual freedom, and the power of diverse discourse in enriching our communities. This conversation will delve into the challenges and opportunities in ensuring access to knowledge, fostering open dialogue, and protecting the freedom of thought. Whether you’re passionate about education, community engagement, or the future of information access, this discussion promises to inspire and ignite new perspectives on the value of these essential pillars of society. Don’t miss this opportunity to be part of an important conversation about the heart of intellectual growth and freedom.
Robert Mann is the author of ten books on U.S. and Louisiana political history. He was a senior aide to US senators Russell Long and John Breaux and Louisiana governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco. He served on the faculty of LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communication for eighteen years before retiring in 2024. He lives in Baton Rouge.
Dr. Philip J. Auter holds the Hubert Bourgeois Endowed Professorship in Communication, and is the graduate coordinator for the UL Department of Communication. He currently serves as the UL Lafayette Faculty Senate President, and is an active member of the Association of Louisiana Faculty Senates as well as the American Association of University Professors Louisiana Conference executive committee. He is past executive director of the American Communication Association.

March 2025 LPL Board of Control Regular Monthly Meeting
2025-03-17 18:00 - 19:30 | Lafayette Public Library – Main, 301 W. Congress St, Lafayette, LA, 70501, United States
Regular monthly meeting of the board. Agenda HERE.

**Cancelled** March NE Library Committee Meeting
2025-03-13 18:00 - 20:00 | Lafayette Public Library – Main, 301 W. Congress St, Lafayette, LA, 70501, United States
Monthly meeting of the NE Library Citizens Committee. Agenda will be posted when released.

February 2025 LPL Board of Control Regular Monthly Meeting
2025-02-17 18:00 - 19:30 | Lafayette Public Library – Main, 301 W. Congress St, Lafayette, LA, 70501, United States

February NE Library Committee Meeting
2025-02-13 18:00 - 19:00 | Lafayette Public Library – Main, 301 W. Congress St, Lafayette, LA, 70501, United States
Committee will hear a presentation from the architect at 720 design about different options for the size and scope of the project, including various options for amenities.
Agenda HERE.
Proposal HERE.
Demographic Study HERE.

January 2025 LPL Board of Control Regular Monthly Meeting
2025-01-13 12:00 - 13:30 | Lafayette Public Library – Main, 301 W. Congress St, Lafayette, LA, 70501, United States
Regular monthly meeting of the board. Will update with agenda when available.

January NE Library Committee Meeting
2025-01-09 12:00 - 14:00 | Lafayette Public Library – Main, 301 W. Congress St, Lafayette, LA, 70501, United States
