Because the library card and its application required a signature, I remember having to learn to sign my name before I was able to apply for my first. Well I practiced and I practiced and I practiced for this reason alone. Look at me! Have I ever been as proud as I was on that day?
From the Occupy Wall Street Library’s Website: The Tucson Unified School District has dismantled its Mexican-American Studies program and removed the books used in that program from the classrooms of the district. Teachers and students have vehemently protested this move, including a student-led walkout and an Ethnic Studies School, arranged on the symbolically important 100th day of school. The day when the state counts heads to determine funding.
The books removed include:
Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Rodolfo Acuna’s Occupied America: A History of Chicanos
Bill Bigelow’s Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years
Richard Delgado’s Critical Race Theory
Rodolfo Gonzales’s Message to AZTLAN
Elizabeth Martinez’s (ed) 500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures
Arturo Rosales’s Chicano! The History of the Mexican Civil Rights Movement
Acting in solidarity with OccupyTucson and the students, parents, and teachers of the Tucson Unified School District, the Occupy Wall Street Library is sending copies of the recently banned texts to Tucson for distribution. Lots of copies. As many copies as they can find and buy. Out of respect for the rights of authors and publishers, all copies will be completely legally purchased though an independent bookseller or directly from the publisher. Funds to do so will be collected here and donations of the these texts are, of course, welcomed.
American Indians in Children’s Literature (AICL) provides critical perspectives and analysis of indigenous peoples in children’s and young adult books, the school curriculum, popular culture, and society. I am linking here to AICL’s comprehensive coverage of the Arizona law that led to the shut down of the Mexican American Studies Program in Arizona and the subsequent banning of books used in the program.
My father, Robert Frederick Bernstein (1950-1993) lived and worked as an artist and architect in Los Angeles, California. He died when I was 13 years old. Recently I have developed an online catalog of his known works using the Web-based content management system called Omeka. It is my hope to gather as many materials as I can representing the artistic and architectural work that my father produced in his lifetime.
Images of my father’s work have been preserved for close to 20 years now in my mother’s garage or else generously donated to me by his former clients, co-workers and associates. It has really been a wonderful experience for me getting in touch with so many of these people. I am learning more and more about Robert with each phone call, email, and letter I receive. Thank you 1,000 times over to all of you who helped me make this collection come to life.
“click me”
On May 16, 1971 the new Troy Public Library opened its doors for the first time to the public. Marguerite Hart became the first children’s librarian at the Troy Library. Hart possessed a passion for libraries and their role in communities and was determined to provide children with proper library services. She once said:
The public library has a choice of roles to play in a community. It may be a vital, telling force, a source to which its patrons turn first, or it may be a passive entity, doing its work as a background for community activity. I believe that like the City of Troy, to which it belongs and which it represents, our new library must take a prominent place. Before children are able to read independently, a librarian helps them to know the library as the place they may explore when they do read. She helps them discover reading as a pleasurable experience, the quality of which derives from the attitudes within the library and that of the community it serves.
In early 1971, Hart wrote to dozens of actors, authors, artists, musicians, playwrights, librarians, and politicians of the day. She asked them to write a letter to the children of Troy about the importance of libraries, and their memories of reading and of books. Hart received 97 letters addressed to Troy’s young people from individuals who spanned the arts, sciences, and politics across the 50 states, Canada, the United Kingdom, India, the Mariana Islands, and American Samoa. Those writing included First Lady Pat Nixon; Michigan Governor William Milliken; then-Secretary to the Pope; Michigan State University President Clifton Wharton, Jr., the first African-American president of a major U.S. university; Neil Armstrong; Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown; authors Isaac Asimov, Hardie Gramatky, Dr. Seuss, Dr. Ben Spock, and E.B. White; and actors Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Vincent Price, and Dan Rowan and Dick Martin.
The collection of letters is available for viewing on the Troy Public Library’s website: Our History: Letters to the Children of Troy, May 1971.
Last night the NYPD loaded 5,554 books from the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) People’s Library into dump trucks as they evicted the New York City camp. Tonight at 6pm a group of ReOccupy Writers supporters will bring books back to the former OWS library site.
Occupy Wall Street librarians tweeted the eviction all night: “NYPD destroying american cultural history, they’re destroying the documents, the books, the artwork of an event in our nation’s history … Right now, the NYPD are throwing over 5,000 books from our library into a dumpster. Will they burn them?”
Since then, the Mayor’s Offices released some welcome news: “Property from #Zuccotti, incl #OWS library, safely stored @ 57th St Sanit Garage; can be picked up Weds” and it appears that some of the archival materials, including the OWS POETRY ANTHOLOGY, have been salvaged (see librarian Stephen Boyer’s account of last night’s eviction).
Tonight writers and readers from across New York City will gather in Liberty Plaza to reoccupy the space and rebuild the People’s Library. Come in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street and the 99%!
New York City and Boston aren’t the only US cities to have established libraries at their respective Occupy sites (hey Los Angeles! hey Portland!) So why does the Occupy Wall Street Movement have libraries? Read on…
Caitlin is a queer, a Jew, and a librarian (sometimes even a queer Jewish librarian) living and working in Brooklyn, NY. She wears different clothes and uses props while dutifully playing her role as each. Sometimes she forgets to change costumes which can be confusing for both herself and others. 
