Update: Thanks again to driftglass for including this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. Please check out the rest of the blog, and celebrate National Library Week (April 8-13) at your local public library!
The Conservative Far Right wingnuts are going after librarians, again. Look at this happening in Louisiana (via Kelly Jensen at Book Riot):
Despite the fact that librarians are among the most trusted professionals, per data acquired in several studies of parents on the perceptions of the profession, lawmakers across the country continue to infantilize and criminalize library workers. The 2024 legislative session has been particularly eager to capitalize on the rhetoric from the far right on libraries, as seen through several bills aimed at not only limiting the types of books allowed in school and public libraries but also in how the profession itself may operate...
Louisiana continues these efforts in an ongoing move by politicians in the state to damage public libraries with House Bill 777. HB 777 was introduced March 25 by Representative Kellee Dickerson, who helped fund the Louisiana Freedom Caucus. The bill would criminalize library workers and libraries for joining the American Library Association.
The American Library Association (ALA) is the largest and oldest professional organization for library workers in the nation...
By creating a villain of the biggest professional organization for library workers, book banners pound away at the institutions that establish and uphold librarianship as a profession. Librarians lose their place as experts in their field, with the skills, knowledge, and passion for helping connect people to vetted, accurate, verifiable information. To real facts and not those crafted by so-called “alternative” library organizations developed by long-time library antagonists and sympathizers who themselves have worked hard to dismantle these democratic institutions...
You can picture the next round of state legislative or even US Congressional hearings by the Far Right demagogues chasing after the information professionals: "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Awards Committee for the Reference and User Services Association?"
My profession has become the next Red Scare.
Library associations matter, in that they encourage and promote reading literacy and information learning skills. In the time I've been with the various associations out there - the ALA, the Florida Library Association - I've worked on committees that promoted scholarships for new students, and promoted Intellectual Freedom as a human right. With FLA, I worked on a Standards committee that set guidelines on the objectives and purposes that public libraries serve to our communities.
Libraries matter, because we serve a public trust: Access to information, be in online or in print or on DVD or CD, be it entertainment like movies and music and fiction or be it informational like works on natural sciences, history, the arts, philosophy, religion, true crime, cookbooks, business management, and self-help tutorials.
And yet to the Far Right wingnuts, we librarians are criminals. It's not because we threaten their "purity" by providing young adult books about romance, it's because we threaten their need to control everyone else's "purity" through their judgment and punishment of us.
We give access to differing thoughts, religious beliefs, world-views, that are poison to their rigid dogma. We provide access to resource and online tools to the poor and impoverished that could be used to improve their lives, whereas the Far Right would rather keep them ignorant, ill-informed, and poor.
It's been a struggle for decades - especially in Republican-controlled states - to fight for meaningful state and county funding just to keep libraries functioning. We still endure because of incredible advocacy through the local communities, who rise up either to vote in favor of local tax hikes to fund public libraries or through their petitioning the legislatures to keep libraries open (there are more than one tale of a committee chair's mother calling their son that libraries are where they take the grandkids for activities when they babysit, and they damn well better not close down where mom's knitting club meets every Monday).
Now the struggle is getting more blunt, more personal. The wingnuts are no longer trying to close libraries, they are now actively criminalizing them and the knowledge our community hubs provide.
Welcome to the Wingnut Republican War on Everybody, America.
Support your local libraries. Before the wingnuts put us ALL in jail for our freedom to read and think for ourselves.
2 comments:
If people are free to educate themselves, who will be left to vote for Republicans? And you're right, it's all about control. Nobody ever said "I must ban this book because I might read it and be harmed by it", and as for the children, um, THE INTERNET.
So most of it is performative, but in the damn performance they are trying to hurt real people doing real jobs.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
I always make a point when checking out materials from my library to thank the librarians for being on the front line of preserving our democracy. They almost always smile and nod back in approval.
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