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.
New York City Welcomes Teen Climate Activist Greta Thunberg
The 16-year-old will take to Foley Square to spearhead a global strike on September 20.
Teen activist Greta Thunberg touched down on the shores of New York today after a two-week journey at sea, but her real journey has just begun.
The Swedish teenager rose to prominence last year with her "School Strikes for Climate," which have since sparked a worldwide movement. She's since become one of the leading faces in climate activism, representing young people's refusal to tolerate the ignorance of their elders.
Sixteen-year-old Thunberg has spent the past two weeks traveling to New York City via solar-powered yacht, which was chosen in order to avoid a carbon-heavy airplane flight. The journey—which was obsessively followed by activists and European media and much-maligned by critics—culminated with a landing on the shores of Coney Island, Brooklyn, and her final destination was a port off Lower Manhattan. She was welcomed by excited crowds of activists and fans.
Day 12. We are getting closer to the North American mainland. Rough conditions, but downwind sailing. https://t.co/n9huwHUSGI— Greta Thunberg (@Greta Thunberg) 1566746954.0
We have anchored off Coney Island - clearing customs and immigration. We will come ashore at North Cove Marina earl… https://t.co/SItklEhQeK— Greta Thunberg (@Greta Thunberg) 1566997753.0
Thunberg has a packed itinerary, which includes high-profile meetings with some of the world's most powerful officials. On Friday, September 20, she'll be leading a worldwide Climate Strike, and millions of people will be taking to the streets to call for aggressive global action on climate change. Find your local strike (or start your own) using this website.
Thunberg will be attending New York City's strike, which begins with a march in Foley Square and ends with a rally in Battery Park, where speakers, performers, and Thunberg herself will take the stage. If you want to be more involved in this event, NYC is having an art build on August 30 and 31, and the group Fridays for Future will be organizing other logistical actions in preparation for the strike. Also for NYC folks: Ethical Culture is hosting strike planning meetings every Wednesday from 6-8pm, and Greta herself will be striking each Friday, starting with a strike on Friday, 8/30 at Ralph Bunche Park outside of the United Nations from 11-2pm.
Participants hope that mass action will influence several important upcoming climate meetings, which will be attended by Thunberg. The first will be the Youth Climate Summit at the United Nations in Manhattan on September 23rd. The next is the COP25 summit in Santiago, Chile, which takes place in December.
The young activist recently announced that she's taking a year-long sabbatical from school to focus on her activism. Her actions manifest the emotions and thoughts of many students who are asking, "What's the point in going to school and working towards our future if there is no future?"
As Thunberg put it in 2018, "We cannot solve the crisis without treating it as a crisis. You say you love your children above all else, and yet you're stealing their future in front of their very eyes."
Yet she's also resolutely hopeful. "It is still not too late to act," she reminded the European Parliament in a recent speech. "It will take a far-reaching vision, it will take courage, it will take fierce, fierce determination to act now, to lay the foundations where we may not know all the details about how to shape the ceiling. In other words, it will take cathedral thinking. I ask you to please wake up and make changes required possible."
Thunberg was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for her work. She has mobilized millions of strikers around the world, and she's given hope and a sense of urgency to countless others. She also has been heavily criticized, mostly by conservative outlets and European nationalists. One British businessman even went as far as to Tweet, "Freak yachting accidents do happen in August…" She was also described as a "teenage puppet" by a member of Trump's transition team and a "prophetess in shorts" by a conservative French politician.
Freak yachting accidents do happen in August ... https://t.co/6CPePHYLtu— Arron Banks (@Arron Banks) 1565817064.0
Many of these criticisms have taken on a misogynistic undertone, resembling those lobbed at another young, powerful female activist—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This may not be incidental, since the kind of global structural overhaul that human survival requires necessitates a revamp of many patriarchal and conservative ideas based in traditional ways of doing things. "For climate skeptics … it was not the environment that was threatened, it was a certain kind of modern industrial society built and dominated by their form of masculinity," proposed one study that linked misogynistic comments about Thunberg and Ocasio-Cortez to toxic masculinity.
Thunberg, however, is not advocating for any particular shift in gender dynamics, nor any politician's agenda. Instead, she's all about ensuring human survival by adjusting our actions based on scientific fact.
As the Malitzia II sailed towards the New York City skyline, a banner reading "Unite Behind the Science" waved proudly above it. Unfortunately, the scientific consensus about the dire consequences of climate change hasn't been enough to mobilize humanity into acting. That has required one particularly outspoken teen activist, and New York City is lucky to have her here.
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