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.
The Grey Wolf Makes a Triumphant Return to Southern France
After years of living wolf-free, sheep herders are being forced to deal with their old enemy once again.
The battle between wolves and farmers has been going on since the beginning of time, and has been largely uninterrupted over the course of American history. Unlike the U.S., Western Europe, over the course of the twentieth century, has hunted these predators to the point of near-extinction. In the past few years however, grey wolves have started mounting a comeback, particularly in the Aveyron region of France where shepherds have had to start dealing with the problem of wolves attacking their flocks once again. There are now estimated to be about 360 wolves in France spread over 42 different packs, up by about 20% since last year. Today's packs have reportedly crossed through the Italian Alps, but why the sudden migration?
In the ninth century, France created an organization of wolf hunters called the Luparii to help protect its farming community from grey wolves. The group finished its work in the 1930s, hunting the wolf to extinction. The prevailing belief is that the current lupine advance is due to rapid urbanization and that large scale movement out of rural areas has allowed southern France's forests to expand. There's also been a nearly 50% decline in hunting since the mid-twentieth century, giving wolves the ability to spread out into patches of land that once thundered with sound of hunting rifles.
This reemergence has sparked a minor political battle in France between ecologists, who believe the introduction of wolves to the region is good for the environment, and farmers whose sheep are being attacked. In response to the issue, Emmanuel Macron's government has decided to allow the wolf population to grow by 40% over the next five years, much to the chagrin of the sheep herders in the Pyrenees and the Alps. In order to curtail a massive jump in the wolf population however, hunters will be allowed to kill up to 10% of the wolf population every year (12% if attacks persist).
This may seem like a diplomatic solution on paper, but many farmers feel it to be a decidedly pro-wolf decision, voted for by city-dwellers who don't understand the full ramifications of allowing grey wolves to prowl around France's farmlands. Considering close to 10,000 sheep were killed over the course of 2016, these concerns seem to be legitimate. That said, farmers haven't taken this slight lying down, and have organized protests to demonstrate how damaging wolves are to their livelihoods. One such protest occurred in Lyon last year, when farmers took to the street with thousands of animals, each animal representing one that was killed by a wolf in 2017.
As it is, these farmers still have cause to be upset, as a small amount of culling authorities have permitted hasn't been enough to stem the tide of wolf attacks. In fact, certain local government officials have even suggested that children shouldn't walk outside alone because of the danger. It's tough to disagree with the farmers on principle–especially when one considers their farms, financial stability, and personal safety are all at risk–but there have been isolated incidents in which they've let their ire get the best of them. Manoel Atman, an activist who supports the reintroduction of wolves has had "rifles fired near his house" and has been "threatened with having [his] legs broken."
Unfortunately, getting the numbers right regarding just how many wolves to cull isn't exactly a science. Environmentalists in France are often mortified by the thought of controlled hunting while farmers would rather see the grey wolf completely eradicated. Though they've gone too far in certain cases, France's livestock raisers haven't been presented with many tenable solutions to this growing issue. Despite the French government giving financial aid to farmers so they can purchase sheep herding dogs and electric fences, attacks persist. Farmers have derided the idea of purchasing fences. As one sheep herder named Hugues Fanouillère put it, "Farming is not like running a wildlife park; we cannot keep our animals caged up like you might in a house or a zoo." Still, with the government committed to rehabilitating France's wolf population, it's unlikely that farmers will be presented with another option.
While the United States does have thousands of grey wolves, most of them live in Alaska and a few northern states, such as Minnesota and Michigan. Because of this, the problem of wolves being dangerous to the livestock business, while not unheard of in the U.S., is a uniquely European issue. Due to the United States' relative size, most of our livestock production occurs in states where there are little-to-no grey wolves. States like Minnesota cull their wolf populations on a need-to basis, but when one considers that France is only about the size of Texas, it becomes easier to see why authorities and farmers alike see the introduction of grey wolves into the French ecosystem as a hot button issue.