Attacked by a 'Superspreader' of Online Smears

Kashmir Hill, "Attacked by a 'Superspreader' of Online Smears," New York Times, January 31,  2021 p. A1 -.

     The next year, Mr. Caplan hired a private investigator to trail Ms. Atas, because she refused to say where she lived or how she accessed the internet.  Mr. Caplan wanted that information in order to obtain evidence for his lawsuit.
    One evening in June 2018, the investigator followed Ms. Atas as she left court got on a subway and then boarded a bus.  

     At 7:30p.m., Ms, Atas entered a pubic library at the University of Toronto.  she spent the next few hours at a computer, according to the investigator's written report and photos that he took surreptitiously  Then she rode a bus to a homeless shelter.  (Ms. Atas denied that she stayed in the shelter.)
     In response to subpoenas, Pinterest, Facebook and WordPress, the blogging site, had provided Mr. Caplan with metadata about the abusive posts.  Some had originated from computer at the University of Toronto. Suddenly that made sense.

COMMENT

In this story a disgruntled ex employee uses public library computers to harass people online.  The story describes the difficulty of tracking and stopping internet trolls.  The attacker was using anonymous public computers to cover her tracks and was only caught by a private investigator.

Best American Poetry 2020

 David Lehman, "Foreword" in The Best American Poetry, 2020. 2020. p xiii,

Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are the two nineteenth-century poets who continue to exert the greatest influence on contemporary poetry.  In 2019, the bicentennial of Whitman's birth was celebrated with exhibitions devoted to the poet at the New York Public Library the Morgan Library, and the Grolier Club in New York City. 

COMMENT

      Libraries host many kinds of displays, but particularly celebrating writers.

America Needs its Girls

 Samantha Hunt, "America Needs it's Girls".  New York Times.  24, 20201, p. SR8.

In our flag I will look fo the national parks, the public libraries, the artists and innovaters, the land where my dead beloveds are buried, the tiny but tremendous mutual aid society my town put together in the pandemic, my daughers' underpaid teachers and coaches, the trees and rivers and children.  I will not forget the genocide greed, hatred, and tremendous inequality in our flag.  I won't be blind to my nation's faults.

 COMMENT

     The public library makes the list of good things promised by the American Flag, along with public lands, and opportunities for education.  The opposite of these public goods is inequlity,  self-interest and prejudice.  The article describes a new  appreciation for American values that the flag represents after the expulsion of Trump from office. This vision is contrasted with the flag waving fake "patriotism" of the political right, specifically associated in the article with belligerant young men in pickup trucks who deliberately tailgate and intimidate other drivers.  After Biden won the election, the daughter declares "Mom, we can hang the flag again!"

Inequality was Never so Visible as in 2020

Emily Badger. Inequality was Never so Visible as in 2020.  What did we Learn? New York Times, December 29, 2020. B3.

Americans also stopped broadly sharing libraries, movie theaters, train stations and public school classrooms, the spaces that sill created common experience in increasingly unequal communities. Even the D.M.S., with its cross-section of life in a single room, wasn't that any more. 

 COMMENT

     Libraries are a place where people from different socio-economic classes can mingle on an equal basis. The article describes how COVID has shut down such interactions so that some people are in a privileged bubble while others are doing low-paid, insecure work to deliver goods and services to the privileged.

More SLC Secondary School Students are Flunking Classes

 Heather May. "More SLC Secondary School Students are Flunking Classes. Salt Lake Tribune. December 6, 2020. pp. A1; 8,9.

In addition about 50 students now come to the school for their classes.  They log on while working in the school library so they can get help learning how to use the technology and develop habits for online learning, she said. 

 COMMENT

COVID-19 has caused a natural experiment with a sudden, widespread shift to online education.  As I would have predicted, it's a massive flop.  The article describes that even privileged kids with new computers and private spaces at home are failing to turn in assignments and failing classes.  Kids who aren't adept with computers don't even stand a chance.  One major barrier to online learning has always been that you have to learn to use the technology before you can even begin to learn anything.  Instead of spending class time on the subject matter, students are forced to spend time learning to use obscure software that has no uses or applications outside of a school setting. 

The Anti-Coup

 Andrew Morantz. The Anti-Coup. New Yorker, November 23, 2020, pp. 36-45.

     In 2011, at the Occupy Wall Street encampment, in New York, activists set up a community kitchen, a library, and a media hub to disseminate live steams generated by the movement-- all examples of what Sharp called "alternative social institutions."  If protests are expressions of what a movement is against,  then alternative institutions can be manifestations of what a movement is for, a glimpse of how the world might look one it has been transformed.

COMMENT

 A library is  part of a utopian community,  as is a functioning media system.  

Wisconsin Suburb Misjudged Housing Complex

 John Eligon. Wisconsin Suburb Misjudged Housing Complex: Affordable Unites Challenge Basis of Trump Pitch. New York Times, November 5, 2020, p. A13.

     The story of the fight over affordable housing in New Berlin, a deeply conservative suburb about 15 miles southwest of Milwaukee, challenges a key pitch made by President Trump to voters in the suburbs -- that "low-income" housing invites crime and hurts property values.

     The reality in New Berlin is that the mixed-income development, surrounded by a pond, a farmers' market and a library, is "really rather attractive" said Mayor Dave Ament, who is white and staunchly opposed the project as a alderman a decade ago. 

COMMENT

   Trump voters in a white suburb were terrified that "those people" would move into their neighborhood.  They believed that they had  "worked hard" to live in a segregated neighborhood and didn't want to offer a "handout" to Black people.  In reality, the new housing development was affordable for low-income working people, and it offered new amenities that improved the neighborhood including a library.  In fact, libraries contribute to education and economic opportunity for people who grow up near them.  Whether they know it or not, the proximity of a new library almost certainly improved future earnings for the children of the people who didn't want it built.