Anyone who has read this blog for more than a week knows that I am not only unafraid to get political but I believe it is necessary for us to survive. Somehow libraries have decided that if we keep quiet when the world is attacking us, people will stick up for us without us fighting back. We WRONGLY think that fighting for ourselves is political. Just because we are tax payer funded does not mean we get to be the punching bags of our patrons and our government.
As I have said many times on the blog and in public-- we are 100% responsible for the political and censorship mess we find ourselves in. 100%. You can blame T*ump all you want but that is wrong. When the attacks started to come for us we put our heads in the sand and claimed that we could not fight back because libraries are not allowed to be political.
Sticking up for ourselves, countering false narratives, and sharing the truth is NOT POLITICAL. It is actually what we claim to do every day in our profession, for others. And yet, when it comes to ourselves we won't do it. Think about that for a minute. It is okay for us to inform others on how to fight for their rights but when it comes to ourselves......crickets.
Others like my friend and colleague Kelly Jensen have been screaming this far and wide for over 6 years now. And all everyone does is try to vilify her or tell me that I don't understand since I am an independent librarian. But both of us are entrenched in committees for our state library associations, both of us understand the law, both of us are fighting this from within the library profession as well, and both of us refuse to be quiet. No one has thrown us off these official committees and in fact, I know I have been told privately (too many times to count) how much people admire me for speaking out. But when I tell them to join me.....again.....crickets.
One of the only supporters librarians have to actively fight for us is EveryLibrary. They do many things to support libraries. One of my favorite things they do through the EveryLibrary Institute is their peer reviewed, open source, Academic Journal the Political Librarian. About The Political Librarian:
The Political Librarian is dedicated to expanding the discussion of, promoting research on, and helping to re-envision locally focused advocacy, policy, and funding issues for libraries.We want to bring in a variety of perspectives to the journal and do not limit our contributors to just those working in the field of library and information science. We seek submissions from researchers, practitioners, community members, or others dedicated to furthering the discussion, promoting research, and helping to re-envision tax policy and public policy on the extremely local level.
Today, I am directing you to their latest issue which just published. You can access that and all back issues here. Read what they have. Understand that being political as a librarian is not only allowed, it is necessary. I understand that it will be hard for some of you to argue that with yourselves or your places of work, but having a peer reviewed resource is only going to help. You can point to academic articles to make your own arguments.
Make reading The Political Librarian part of your personal professional development. Use the articles there to inspire yourself to act first, and to then gain the knowledge and courage to gather others to help you. Again they are free and open sourced.
Stop making excuses. It is past time to be political. Not being political put us where we are today and it keeps getting worse. Not acting, not pushing back, making excuses for why you are not allowed to fight.....all of this makes you complicit in what is happening. Yes, you are complicit until you act. I need you to sit with that. You may think you are fighting the good fight, but I am here with the tough love to tell you YOU ARE NOT. YOU ARE COMPLICIT. YOU ARE MAKING IT WORSE.
You will not be fired over fighting for the library. My goodness, you know how hard it is to fire people at most libraries. It takes years of paperwork to fire the worst employees. Stop using that as an excuse.
No more excuses. I am giving you the resource you need to stop being complicit and start doing something.
And if you are out there fighting the good fight, contact me and I can feature your work on the blog.
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