You Down With WPP?
They're coming for the libraries. You down with that?
“The public library is the most dangerous place in town” John Ciardi
If recent years have taught me anything, it is that I lack imagination. Like, I definitely did not foresee anything approaching the chaotic Donald Trump/Covid-19/New- land-war-in-Europe hat trick through which we are still mucking our way.
If I had any sense at all, I should probably feel as though nothing will surprise me, and YET, I still find myself shocked that a significant portion of the population is now attacking, threatening, and defunding public libraries.
Libraries?
Has there been a more wholesome common good than the public library? What could be more democratic, more egalitarian, more virtuous than a little building dedicated to free knowledge for all? Perhaps the notion of such a facility feels a little anachronistic in the so-called (and dubiously named) Information Age. Yet libraries persist because people treasure them.
A 2016 study by the Pew Research Group found that overwhelming majorities of people “say that if their local public libraries were closed it would have a major impact on their communities as a whole.”
There are good debates to be had about the effectiveness of libraries in keeping up with changing technologies, and the ways in which modern libraries can best service their communities. But I never imagined that the conservatives would begin moving to destroy the institutions themselves.
A January 20, 2023 article in Publisher’s Weekly noted that “Eight states so far have new bills… seeking to expose librarians and educators to criminal prosecution for obscenity violations.” And, of course, their definition of “obscenity” is being reduced ever downwards. Further, the Every Library Initiative has started a tracker entitled “Monitoring State Legislation that Criminalizes Libraries, Schools, and Museums 2023.”
Needless to say, the list is long.
Why is this happening? The same reason so much of the idiocy that currently passes as American governance keeps happening. White People Panic. WPP is the essential, driving force of the so-called “conservative movement,” as it has been since the first overseer cracked a whip. The new crackers are taking aim at libraries because libraries house materials that challenge their power: books about race, sexual orientation and gender, differing social and political philosophies, even history. In other words, they want to destroy libraries because these institutions are doing exactly what they are designed to do: expose the public to ideas.
For a movement that claims to treasure freedom above all else, why are they clamping down on the most valuable freedom of all: the right to make up one’s own mind? My imagination never extended far enough to believe that Americans would choose to self-lobotomize. Why am I so dumb? Maybe I didn’t spend enough time at the library.
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2016/09/09/americans-attitudes-toward-public-libraries/
Every Library Tracker https://www.everylibraryinstitute.org/new_policy_brief_state_obscenity_laws_libraries_ed_2023
I thought the "Me" in "Don't Tread on Me" meant everybody? New slogan idea: "Only Tread on They/Them," or "Don't Read on Me." I dunno, I'm dumb too.