Video captures vandal removing $1,000 in LGBTQ books from roadside library
Video taken at night caught footage of a “person of interest” allegedly vandalizing the Little Queer Library, a rainbow-colored roadside book box maintained by a female couple in Waltham, Massachusetts. The incident marks the fourth time that the library has been vandalized in the last three months.
The May 11 footage showed a person removing all of the library’s books and placing them into bags. After doing this for about 10 minutes, the person then walked away with the books, removing nearly $1,000 worth of materials, library curators Krysta Petrie and Katie Cohen told WCVB.
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Cohen and her wife, Petrie, established the Little Queer Library during the pandemic. It offers informative LGBTQ books for children and young adult readers. The couple said they wanted the library to be a community resource for people who might feel fearful about checking out queer content from schools or local public libraries.
“We want to be a place where people are accepted and seen and celebrate who they are,” Cohen said. “[The recent vandalism] really feels a lot like censorship.”
Petrie added, “There’s really only a couple of reasons why [such vandalism] could happen: One is straight-up hate, LGBT hate. They just don’t want to see the community or something.”