Banned Books Week Amidst A Censorship Wave

I have a milestone achievement in how long I've been working at my current employer this month, which is mostly coincidental to the reason why I'm writing this, but it feels odd not to mention it , since I'll be talking a little bit about history and my history. The world of libraries and librarians seems like there's at least a little bit of progress towards being an institution that is part of and responsive to its communities, rather than trying to hold itself apart from them as something above them, more perfected and rarefied than the people that use them. It's worth noting that this idea is illusory and always has been, because a lot of the things that the library believed it was above, like politics, were only that way because the society around them believed they could ignore significant swaths of their own community without consequences.

US audiences, I hope, have been following the extreme uptick in state-level actions intended to prevent free discourse and instruction in educational institutions and state-level actions intended to remove books from school libraries that talk about the experience of people who aren't evangelical cisgender white heterosexual men. Those efforts have expanded, as well, to efforts to try and get books banned from sale in states in general.

( Censorship attempts near you, and how was need to rethink Banned Books Week in light of that )

Celebrate the freedom to read in your area by crushing the fascists beneath your feet and enjoying the lamentations of their co-conspirators.