From last spring — This fellow from ILA is amazing:
Everybody needs to check out @lancemcgrath, President of the Idaho Library Association, testifying against HB 139. Wait for the absolute clap back he gave Rep. Ehardt, at the end. pic.twitter.com/4g64ZeREwe
— Socialistlyawkward (@socialistlyakwd) March 1, 2023
I lived in a small town in Idaho for 3 years while getting my bachelor’s, and my children experienced the most racism and bullying of any place we’ve ever lived. The local library was the most inclusive and welcoming place for my family and I wish more people in that town would have learned something from it. (For reference, the elementary school my children attended didn’t teach about Black History Month and was considered the most “diverse” school in the district with 87% of the students being White.)
@erikabn so sorry you had to deal with that.
@erikabn That must have been so hard to support your children through. It hurts my heart when things happen to my kids that I can’t fix. Thank goodness the library was a refuge–yaay for libraries like that!
Libraries need great advocates like this one!
@erikabn, I am glad to hear you found a safe space for your family in a library.
I am so perplexed by people being concerned about their kids being alone in the library. I would think that’s a great place to be (I was thinking of the movie MATILDA when she discovers her local library). I sometimes think if the word “public” is in front of anything, some people will just dismiss it as being too radical. Case in point, my daughter, a videojournalist, had pieces that appeared in PBS, and there were always some comments disparaging PBS (and it was clear that they hadn’t even watched the video). @erikabn I am sorry your kids had to deal with that, but glad that the library was a refuge for you all. I always found the library to be my “safe” space too.
I can weigh in on that one. (I always feel like I’m the voice of the conservative nutjobs, having grown up with those parents.) If kids can go to the library without a parent breathing down their neck, and the library has books the kids aren’t allowed to read, the kids can then read those books in the library or sneak them home with the parents being none the wiser. (In California, I can’t do anything with my kids’ accounts. They’re entirely private.) So, the bigger issue is this: Kids will either tow the line when their parents aren’t around, or they won’t. The obedient ones aren’t the problem, but if the disobedient ones can just walk into a public library and pick up a book about topics of which the parents don’t approve, then clearly the books need to be removed from their kids sphere, NOT that the parents need to have real conversations with their kids about the topics that are “forbidden.” ESPECIALLY with the lib librarians touting how safe a space this is, because once the kids realize the librarians aren’t going to rat them out, there’s just no stopping them.
And yes, I’m being fecetious, but this is the mindset.
@jeanna Lol, I get the mindset, but if the kids are disobedient, they can easily find access to much more explicit and potentially harmful content on the internet and parents can’t monitor those 24/7.
So funny. Worried about reading!