Transgender or Devoutly Christian?

"Transgender or devoutly Christian? An Iowa teen refuses to choose." by Casey Parks Washington Post, December 23, 2022.

Theirs was a God steeped in love and acceptance, and in the months after they left church, Sid decided he wanted to help others find the same safe space he had at home. That June, he helped organize his town’s first-ever Pride celebration.

He was 15, so he planned what he considered a family-friendly event. He booked the library for a few hours late morning, and he arranged to have face-painting and button-making booths. He invited two speakers: a state lawmaker to give the opening address, and a drag queen to read a princess book to kids.

Comment

Elsewhere in the article it mentions that Sid volunteers at the library.  After the event, people in the community called the library to complain and threatened to boycott the library.  About 100 people attended the event, and a few stood outside to protest.

Freedom Made Visable

 Kolbie Peterson, "Freedom Made Visable." Salt Lake Tribune August 29, 2021, p. E1-2. 

On a Saturday morning in August, volunteers at the Glendale library are arranging pairs of shoes, folding jeans neatly on long tables, and hanging  tops and dresses on racks.  At one end of the large meeting room is a table of new binders (which flatten the breasts to create a more masculine-looking chest) and packages of underwear, sorted by size for easy browsing.

Organized by Salt Lake Community Mutual Aid, the community group's first gener-affirming clothing closet was tailored specifically to teenage and homeless transgender people, although anyone in need was welcome.

... 

 The decision to hold the Aug. 7 pop-up clothing closet at a library was a deliberate way to ensure a welcoming environment, said organizer  Cameraon (who uses they/the pronouns and requested to be identified only by their first name).   "Libraries tend to be a very accessible place, they tend to be places where a lot of people com, they tend to be a place where people feel safe," they said.

Glendale library staff worked with the team to set up two private changing areas, so people could try on a variety of items and "see what connects best with them," Cameron said. 

COMMENT

Library safe space provides a way of finding identity throught fashion. 

Can Marriage Counseling Save America?

Andrew Furgesun, "Can Marriage Counseling Save America?" Atlantic, December (2019), https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/better-angels-can-this-union-be-saved/600775/

     Yet there I was one bright summer Sunday, wreathed in skepticism, gathered with a dozen others in the community room of a suburban public library in Northern Virginia to test whether this nation, or any nation so fragmented and so polarized, can be united and saved by a workshop.
     This was not just any workshop, of course. I was at a “skills workshop” put on by a grassroots citizens’ group called Better Angels. The group got its start in the shell-shocked weeks right after the 2016 election, and it takes its name from Abraham Lincoln’s famous plea, in his first inaugural address, that his divided countrymen heed the “better angels of our nature.” (They didn’t.)
     Paid-up membership in Better Angels stands at a little over 8,000, but the group creates a commotion bigger than that of organizations many times its size. On any given day somebody somewhere in the United States is hosting an event like the one I attended. There are an average of eight to 10 such events a week. The mission everywhere is the same, explained by the inspirational mottoes on the posters the organizers had hung in the library. “Let’s depolarize America!” “Start a conversation, not a fight.”

COMMENT

     Librarians don't always need to re-invent the wheel.  Here is a citizen group dedicated to civic dialog that is using library space to host events.  The idea is simply to get conservative and liberal voters to talk to one another.

   This may or may not work. One problem is that for all they gripe bout civility, Republican voters seldom show up to such meetings. As the author puts it, "Now, there are two kinds of people in the world: those who will join hands and sway gently back and forth while singing “We Shall Overcome” with Peter Yarrow, and Republicans." This same problem occurred with respect to the transportation open houses mentioned in Better Busses, Better Cities--- the people who show up to such meetings are self-selecting and not representative of the whole community.

   

Better Buses Better Cities

Steven Higashide, Better Buses Better Cities: How to Plan, Run, and Win the Fight for Effective Transit (2019).

Agencies have to do better than "open houses" that draw eight people at the library and instead think seriously about how to get public input that equitably represents bus riders and activates allies throughout the planning process. They have to discard ponderous project development  processes that result in 5-year timelines for bus lane projects and try tactical approaches that change streets overnight instead.

COMMENT

Library open houses are portrayed here as an ineffective way to gather citizen input for transit improvements.  Many transit riders can't come either because such meetings conflict with work, of the bus stops running at night.   In order to get stakeholder input, it's essential to try to get a representative sample, not just respond to a few people who manage to show up in person. 

SLC Airport Wants Public Input On It's New Master Plan

SLC Airport Wants Public Input On Its New Master Plan (Local Briefs), Salt Lake Tribune, July 6, 2019, p. A10.

The new $3.6 billion re-build of Salt Lake City International Airport was envisioned 20 years ago in the Airport's current master plan.  Now, the city wants to know what residents think the airport should look like 20 years from now.
..
It invites all interested parties to share ideas at a meeting July 17 from 6 pm. to 7:30 pm at the Salt Lake City Public Library.

COMMENT

Refreshments, parking validation and live streaming on Facebook encourage the public to weigh in on community planning.  The public library provides space for the meeting.  The notice of the meeting is published in a local newspaper, and presumably (I didn't check) listed in library events.  In any case, it's hard to know how citizens would discover this opportunity for public comment without the newspaper and the library.

Fighting for Life on Death Row

Lauren Gill, "Fighting for Life on Death Row," The Nation, April 22, 2019, pp.22-26.

     A couple of month after he arrived on death row at theWilliam C. Holman Correctional Facility, Drinkard met Darrell Grayson, who offered him coffee, cigarettes, and an invitation. Each Wednesday, Grayson and a group of other death-row inmates would meet in the prison's law library and work on a plan to raise awareness about  inequity in the criminal justice system.  Dubbed Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty, it was -- and remains -- the nations's only anti-death-penalty organization run by death-row prisoners.

COMMENT

     This library serves some essential function of libraries, but in extremely constrained circumstances. The inmates are in the prison library hoping to become knowledgeable enough about the law in order to avoid getting executed. It's hard to imagine library research with higher stakes, Particularly since the men in Project Hope are trying to make up for the inadequate legal representation that landed them on death row in the first place. The article says that people rich enough to hire a lawyer were never sentenced to death no matter what crimes they were charged with;  impoverished  defendants with court-appointed lawyers were sentenced to death even though some of them were innocent.

     The prison library also serves as a meeting space.  The article says that the group, which has existed for 30 years, is allowed to meet so long as they do not discuss prison conditions.  There is a law class for Project Hope and members share information in a quarterly newsletter written on typewriters and printed by an outside board member who distributes 1,300 copies to subscribers.  Since the library has no digital networking or news databases, the board members also have to gather and share articles about the death penalty.

   

   

   

He's Caught On With Voters

Trip Gabriel, "He's Caught On With Voters, However They Say His Name," New York Times, March 29, 2019, p. A1.

"This was supposed to be a little meet-and-greet Q. and A.," he told hundreds of people in a college gym in Rock Hill, after his event was bumped from the library to accommodate a wave of RSVPs. 

COMMENT

     Pete Buttigieg who is the mayor of South Bend, Indiana is running for president. He scheduled a small meeting room at the library to launch his campaign, but an unexpectedly enthusiastic response meant he had to change the venue.  Nonetheless, the library offered space for citizens to meet a candidate in person.  This kind of space is essential for the democratic process, especially for state and local politics where there is not a lot of money. 

Mythical Dangers of Democratic Socialism

Tom Huckin, "Mythical Dangers of Democratic Socialism," Salt Lake Tribune, February 26, 2019, p,. A11.

     Sometimes we go to the downtown library to enjoy an art exhibit, hear a public lecture, borrow books and videos, etc. Oddly enough, the only thing we pay for is parking.
     I belong to a civic group called Move to Amend that aims to get Big Money out of our corrupt political system and thereby have real democracy in this country.  Guess where we hold our monthly meetings. Yep, in that same (socialist) library!

COMMENT

   Huckin is not quite accurate when he writes that he doesn't pay for the library.  I use the same public library system he does and there is a line item in my property taxes,  It costs me less than $100/year.  Still, Huckin makes his point that all the services he gets from the library are a terrific bargain.

     One of those services is a meeting room.  There is nice symmetry in the fact that the tax-supported library in turn supports civic engagement and a democratic system.   Huckin's description of library use is exactly the kind of social infrastructure that sociologist Eric Klinenberg writes about in Palaces for the People (2018), which are essential to the civic life and resilience of communities.  Nonetheless, politicians often look upon libraries as luxuries.  Klinenberg asks,

Why have so many public officials and civic leaders failed to recognize the value of libraries and their role in our social infrastructure?  Perhaps it's because the founding principle behind the library -- that all people deserve free, open access to our shared culture and heritage, which they can use to any end they see fit -- is out of sync with the market logic that dominates our time. (If, today, the library didn't already exist, it's hard to imagine our society's leaders inventing it).  [p.37]

     Indeed, on the same op-ed page as Huckin's editorial, Congressman Chris Stewart (R-UT-2) announces that he has organized an Anti-Socialist Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives.  Stewart's editorial is pure nonsense, making an utterly absurd claim that offering a few government services to citizens will inevitably end in mass graves, mass emigration and starvation (Pay no attention to those socialist Nordic countries).
 
    But Stewart's nonsense shows that Klinenberg is probably right.  If libraries did not exist, dogmatic anti-tax zealots like Stewart would never allow them to exit.  No doubt they would gripe about the unfairness of  being forced to buy books, and support art and meeting spaces that harm "individual liberty" for people who choose not to read, look at art, educate themselves or vote. It's hard to say, though, what kind of freedom is actually represented by social, cultural and political isolation. As Huckin points out, the republic that Stewart claims to admire can't hold together without supporting the public infrastructure that Stewart claims to despise.

   

All Natural

 Sophia Hollander, "All Natural, The New Yorker. 94.33 (Oct. 22, 2018): p24.

Last week, as female activists swarmed Capitol Hill to denounce the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, another group of women gathered at a law library in Chelsea to push back against a more local threat: the imminent closure of the Mount Sinai West Birthing Center, one of the last remaining natural-birth strongholds in the city which also offers full access to a hospital.

COMMENT

The organizer put out a call on Facebook to organize a protest; the library provides a space for the activists to meet in person.

Women's health is a political football.  As a woman myself, formerly of reproductive age, I can attest that when you yourself become the target of a patronizing person who wants to make your medical decisions for you  the attack feels very, very personal.  Anyone who has given birth in a U.S. hospital has probably experienced the invasive tactics of medical people who think that their training gives them the right to bully women in labor.  Even this mostly sympathetic article comes off as condescending towards women who want a respectful, calm birth experience that isn't framed as a medical emergency waiting to happen.

The U.S. is one of the most dangerous places in the developed world to give birth.  I'm pretty sure I know the reason.  When I had my baby in a hospital, I was unnecessarily injured.  When I complained about it, a medical person actually yelled at me for being selfish. She said, (and I quote) "The baby is the patient. Not you." (Although the injury did in fact make me into a patient).  In a nutshell, that attitude is the reason that birthing centers should be the norm, not the exception.

Also,  Brett Kavanaugh's crying jag over his own sense of entitlement showed the he does not have the temperament to sit on the Supreme Court.

Baby Center

Jennifer Case, “Baby Center: An Essay on Place,” Orion, 35 (4&5), 2016.

BabyCenter was easy to participate in: all I had to do was log in. In-person gatherings were harder to devise. And yet I craved those, too, which is why I attended the local La Leche League meeting.  Some nights I hardly said anything at all. I just sat there in the basement of the library, nodding, nursing my daughter, comforted by the presence of others, other women with children, who talked about what they struggled with, what they loved, what they feared about having more children— if the tongue tie would cause latch issues again or if they’d ever sleep through the night. 

...

I haven't been on BabyCenter much lately. I've spent entire afternoons reading academic research about social networking sites and motherhood, yet I haven't returned to those sites.  

COMMENT

The author describes compulsively logging into an online discussion board to read about pregnancy, babies and motherhood. Despite this obsession, she never admits to using a library to find books with information about these topics. Rather, she craves to learn directly from other women who are going through similar experiences. In a transitory American college town, she lacks a real-life community of moms and the La Leche League is one of the few organizations around that invites honest discussion about the experience of becoming a mother.

While the author claims that social networking was emotionally supportive, it is clear that it also made her feel isolated and sort of crazy.  Once she makes some real friends she quits using the website.  She also doing actual library research, this time not to find out about babies and parenting but trying to understand her own uncharacteristic behavior. 

The essay contrasts social interaction in physical and virtual space. Meeting strangers at the library is a not-quite-adequate substitute for sisters, aunts, grandmothers and neighbors.  However, it's clear that a virtual library with just access to information would not not have done the trick. The library meeting room works as a stopgap until the real thing comes along.