BEACHWOOD, Ohio — In Beachwood, the community is rallying together after a man reportedly burned 100 books from the local library — and filmed himself doing it.
For Kate Anderson Foley, books are more than just words on a page.
“These are our words, these are our lived experiences,” said Foley.
As the author of a children's book about a young girl named Ida finding her voice in a world filled with hate, Foley has experienced that power firsthand.
“She comes to the realization there are many people like her, like us, that are gathered here to be able to say, let's stand up and speak out,” said Foley.
What angers her most is when those pages are destroyed.
“It's hurtful, no doubt about it," said Foley.
On Monday, members of an Interfaith Group Against Hate (IGAH) gathered outside Fairmount Presbyterian Church to stand united against hate. This comes after reports that a man checked out 100 books related to race, religion, and LGBTQ+ topics from the Cuyahoga County Public Library in Beachwood — then burned them in a video posted to social media.
On April 22, the man checked out 50 books from the library relating to those topics and posted a photo of a car trunk full of books with a caption relating to "cleansing" the libraries, Beachwood Police said.
The books in the trunk of the car in the photo appeared to match the topics of books checked out by the man and had Cuyahoga County Public Library stickers on them.
The library was tipped off to the photo, and when he returned to pick up 50 more books, he said his son was a part of the LGBTQ+ community and he was trying to learn more, police said.
When a video of the man burning the books surfaced on social media, the library was tipped off once again. In the video, the books appeared to match the theme and titles of the books listed above. The video shows one book with a Cuyahoga County Public Library sticker on it, and matches one of the specific books checked out by the man.
“It was a man's voice and image and foreboding tones describing the need to cleanse the community of the library of the books that he was setting a fire,” said Robert Nosanchuk, the Senior Rabbi at Congregation Mishkan Or.
News 5 has not seen the video. Nosanchuk said they intentionally avoided distributing it.
“When you share a video like this, all you do is encourage the haters to grow their actions, to grow their message,” said Nosanchuk
Instead, their response is clear: these acts won’t be tolerated.
“Whoever perpetuated the idea that you can burn us out of Cleveland, deport out of Cleveland deny our ideas oppress us and frighten us picked the wrong community,” said Nosanchuk
And that community will continue to respond with love.
“Let's use this moment to instead of stand in fear, to stand against this oppressive act deepen our convictions to learn each other's faith, culture, values,” said Nosanchuk.
For Foley, the incident has only inspired her to continue her work.
“This is my phrase. I'm going to go down swinging as others too. If I think that this is important and the words that I write are important, then I’m going to speak up and stand up,” said Foley.
Beachwood police are investigating the incident and released this statement:
“The Beachwood Police Department is actively investigating this incident. Our department stands against antisemitism and all acts of bias-motivated crimes. We are committed to vigorously investigating and prosecuting any hate-motivated incidents within the City of Beachwood. Our priority is to maintain a community that can thrive without the fear of threats of intimidation or violence.”
The Cuyahoga County Public Library also released a statement, saying they are working on replacing the books:
“Cuyahoga County Public Library is not commenting on this ongoing investigation. However, we have taken steps to protect our staff, customers, and property. This customer has been restricted from all Cuyahoga County Public Library properties and their borrowing privileges have been revoked. We are in the process of replacing the books in question.”
According to Beachwood Police, once the books are overdue, the man will be sent a bill for them; if the bill is not paid, it will be sent to collections.
IGAH says that for each book that was burned, they are donating 10 books related to race, religion, and LGBTQ+ topics to libraries across the community.
For more information, click here.
