It’s National Library Week, so I’ve been thinking a lot about knowledge and the idea that knowledge should be readily available – for all. An informed populace is crucial to the health of the nation and a bulwark of democracy. The ability to think, to reason, to avoid being fooled, all these notions are tied to reading and easy access to the wisdom of the ages.
And this is exactly why libraries – and their contents – are under siege these days.
HuffPost’s Jennifer Bendery recently told readers:
“Librarians are living in constant fear. They have become the targets
of Republican politicians and far-right groups like Moms for Liberty
Liberty that are hellbent on burning books about LGBTQ+ people,
people of color and racism. Some librarians are quitting their jobs
because of constant harassment; others are getting fired for
refusing to clear shelves of books that conservatives don’t like.”
If that’s not bad enough – and it is – Bendery informs us there’s another evil twist in the tale: “The GOP’s censorship campaign has shifted from book bans to legislation threatening librarians with jail time.” Idaho’s tried several times to enact such legislation; this February, West Virginia passed a bill “making librarians criminally liable if a minor comes across content that some might consider obscene.” Idaho, Iowa, Alabama, and Georgia are also considering various means of keeping books they don’t like off the shelves...and they’re not alone.
The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom shared some frightening statistics: “The number of titles targeted for censorship at public libraries increased by 92% over the previous year, accounting for about 46% of all book challenges in 2023; school libraries saw an 11% increase over 2022 numbers.”
Given these ever-more-frequent, ever-more-strident attacks, what can a concerned reader do to stem the tide of book-banning?
PEN America, an organization whose mission “is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible,” offers a number of ways to make one’s voice heard. Whether you’re a student, a parent, an author, or a librarian, PEN America provides advice, assistance, and resources to keep you informed and ready to push back.
The need to support the nation’s libraries is more urgent than ever. In Bendery’s HuffPost piece, American Library Association President Emily Drabinski draws a chilling conclusion: “What gets lost in conversations about book banning is that it’s really about eliminating the institution of the library, period. It’s not about the books. Well, it is about the books, but the books are the way in to gut one of the last public institutions that serves everyone.”
“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture,” Ray Bradbury once said. “Just get people to stop reading them.”
Bradbury was one of the 20th century’s finest fabulists, the author of The Martian Chronicles, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and the worldwide blockbuster Fahrenheit 451. Published in 1952, the novel Fahrenheit 451 is set in a future where books are illegal and firemen don’t put out fires – they start them. Printed matter is what they burn.
Bradbury was writing in the tense, paranoid early years of the McCarthy era. But he might as well have penned those words last Thursday.
Support your local library. Speak up for the voices the hate-mongers would shut down. Before – as history’s proven again and again – they try to shut down yours.
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Students fight a book ban by giving away free banned bookswww.youtube.com
The New York Public Library has also weighed in on the matter, you can find its suggestions here.
Our Oceans are Full of Trash: How to Clean Up the Mess We've Made
What can we do to fix it?
As we thrust forward, full-throttle into a modern era defined by convenience and consumption, it's easy to blind ourselves to the effects our everyday lives have on the environment around us. Whether it's the choking yellow clouds that pour from our smokestacks or the heaps of refuse we leave behind us every trash day, one thing is clear: we're living with the garbage we create. We've only mapped about five percent of our oceans, but our garbage has reached seemingly every corner. 19 billion pounds of trash, a large portion of which is plastic, is dumped into the sea every year. This number is set to double by 2025.
Most trash that ends up in the ocean lands somewhere in five "patches," located in our oceans' various doldrums. The largest of these is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a debris-ridden swath of ocean that's thousands of miles wide. Currently, it is estimated that the combined weight of the world's garbage patches is somewhere near 200 millions tons. To make matters worse, fish have begun consuming microplastics, creating a health crisis not just for marine life, but for the people who rely on the ocean for food. So, what's the solution?
Trash, trash, and more trash.
Unsurprisingly, it's pretty difficult to scoop up and remove millions of tons of plastic from our oceans. While nets are partially effective, they have a tendency of picking up fish and by extension, inadvertently destroying the ecosystems they (the nets) are trying to protect. Boyan Slat, a Dutch Inventor, famously came up with another solution in which he places gigantic trash capturing barriers in the ocean. According to his site, the plan is to launch a set of these barriers into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch later this year. Slat's own estimates assure investors that his company (The Ocean Cleanup) can reduce the amount of trash in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch by 50% within five years. Still, there are detractors. Many scientists insist that focusing on collecting trash with this method is a waste of time. According to a report by marine biologist Jan van Franeker, the negative effects of plastic in the water tend to dissipate after laws governing plastic use are put into place. It's "something that disappears in 10 to 20 years, if you stop the input," says van Franeker. The concern among scientists is that Slat's flashy invention could possibly move the spotlight off of more tenable solutions, such as legislation to prevent plastic dumping and the use of plastic bags.
The Ocean Clean Up project in action
Considering the fact that 80% of ocean pollution comes from land-based garbage, reduction of input is the definitely the more clear-cut way to fix this problem. One step would be the enactment of a federal container deposit law. Essentially, a deposit law forces consumers to pay a small fee (typically between 2 and 15 cents) for each bottle or can at purchase. This fee can later be refunded when the recycling is brought back to an eligible return center, such as a supermarket.
Presently, only ten states have programs in place to buy used plastic and aluminum containers, despite the fact that about 50% of Americans have access to curbside recycling. In states where bills regarding container deposits have been passed, the amount of aluminum and plastic beverage containers has dropped by as much as 84%. In many ways, these programs seem like a no-brainer but, unfortunately, many lawmakers conflate (purposely or otherwise) container deposit laws with their larger ineffective cousin, the litter tax. A litter tax is imposed on manufactures and retailers of recyclable goods and is used to fund various anti-littering campaigns. These taxes haven't proven to be effective. A deposit law actively incentivizes consumers to recycle, because they lose money if they don't. The problem is, beverage manufacturers don't want these laws, as they raise the in-store price of everything from beer to bottled water. For obvious reasons, this translates to lower sales.
In order to correct our current course, Americans will need to adopt new attitudes and policies around how we produce and deal with our trash. Putting the health of our planet above our desire for profit may be a good place to start.