I was born, raised, and currently live in Los Angeles. Over the last week, parents in my local community and school district have banded together to protect families who may be targets of ICE raids. It’s been extremely difficult to face the fact that some parents were too scared to attend their kids’ graduations—and wholly uplifting to be part of a community where parents made it a priority to protect others by offering to escort people or stand watch on street corners. As you can imagine, “community” is something I’ve spoken about often in recent days.
My community and my kids’ school would not be what it is without all of the immigrant families who call this place home, and while many of the readings this week resonated with me, the one that impacted me the most was Libraries Resist: A Round-Up of Tolerance, Social Justice, & Resistance in US Libraries by Kelly Jensen.
This quote especially resonated with me: “By inviting all in a community to be in a shared space, libraries embrace the idea of encouraging education, encouraging acceptance and tolerance, and on a much smaller scale, they create policies that ensure these very things happen in their spaces. No act in the library is too small to foster tolerance and acceptance.”
I appreciate that the writer challenged the belief that libraries are not political, even going a step further to say that it’s actually “impossible to be a neutral space with the goal of reaching a community, be it the public or the academic or the special population the library serves.”
“It’s impossible to be a neutral space with the goal of reaching a community, be it the public or the academic or the special population the library serves.”
Especially in today’s political environment, it is more important than ever for libraries (and other public institutions) to serve their communities as a whole and to make its stance clear: that everyone is welcome, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, immigration status, age, etc. I’m proud that my local library, where I volunteer once a week, has taken similar actions to those mentioned in the article, including creating displays for Pride, Native American heritage, and Black female inventors, to name a few recent ones. The library also demonstrates its commitment to diverse populations by having inclusive signage and providing tax and other important forms in a variety of languages.
In the article, I noticed that the majority of the actions taken were done by children or teen librarians and aimed at those two age groups. These examples of “speaking up and out about social justice, tolerance, or resistance” are inspiring and I hope they continue and multiply as children and teens need to hear and see these messages from a young age. Though this could very well be a reflection of the librarians who chose to submit, it does make me question if adult librarians feel more constraints around what they are able to do (and I plan to ask my supervisor for her thoughts the next time I volunteer!).
The article also made me wonder how these decisions to make a stand get made. Did the librarians who wrote in unilaterally have the power to take action or were there approval processes? What happens if other patrons have a negative reaction?
I’m still unsure what librarianship path I plan to pursue, but I do know that wherever I end up, it will be my duty to help make all patrons feel welcome and to create an environment that makes this feeling clear through its signage, displays, events, and collections. It is my goal to work for an organization that champions community and participatory service so that the needs of marginalized groups are not ignored.
References
Jensen, K. (2017, February 10). Libraries resist: A round-up of tolerance, social justice, & resistance in US libraries. Book Riot. https://bookriot.com/libraries-resist-round-tolerance-social-justice-resistance-us-libraries/