Montgomery County’s Friends of the Library (FOLMC) seems to think $50-$75 in additional tabling fees are “unaffordable” for “BIPOC” vendors at its upcoming “MoComCon” convention in Germantown, MD.
First brought to our attention by this piece at The Washington Times entitled “White vendors pay more: MoCo libraries use race-based pricing for comic book convention”, the executive director of the FOLMC (a private non-profit that’s main mission is to be a ‘fundraising branch’ of the MoCo Public / taxpayer supported libraries) is directly quoted in the piece supporting discrimination on the basis of race:
“MoComCon’s chief sponsor — Friends of the Library, Montgomery County — said the disparate vendor rates are in line with its mission to support the libraries.
“The vendor pricing reflects our joint commitment to promote inclusivity in library programming and expand opportunities for groups who have been underrepresented in this industry,” Ari Z. Brooks, executive director of Friends of the Library — Montgomery County said in a statement to the Washington Times.”
In addition to the discriminatory pricing for a vendor table, which FOLMC insanely seems to think is justified (there has never been a cash-starved “white” comic or graphic novel start-up biz or author of course), the MoComCon event sure seems to have a clear-cut agenda:
So, what the heck is going on? Why is this somehow acceptable to the staff running FOLMC?
Looking into the “core staff” of the non-profit… it is easy to see how this discrimination became acceptable in their eyes. Here is the listed Deputy Director of FOLMC, Lysette House:
“Additional certification in DEI”. Ah yes. Also, here are some recent re-posts on Twitter / X by someone named Lysette House, and who appears to be in Montgomery County, MD (and appears very mad at Scholastic books, the omnipresent children’s book publisher, for simply organizing titles and book content as they see fit)…
On and on it goes, if you’d like to read more of the radical lefty re-posts on X from this individual, now assisting with exclusionary comic con events in MoCo. And interestingly, in October, FOLMC’s Executive Director was on a panel about “Free Speech” put on, ironically, by tax-payer supported “news” outlet MyMCM:
Oh, to be a bug on the wall for that “event” and panel discussion.
More to come.
