5 Ways to Organize in Support of Your Local Library
Free and easy strategies for helping your library obtain funding and fight book bans
Now, more than ever, we need to fight against book bans and the right to keep our libraries free. With the recent surge of legislative pressure to ban certain books from schools and public libraries, many children risk losing essential educational materials about race, gender, and sexuality.
So, how can we fight against these proposed legislative changes and support our local libraries? Here are five ways you can directly support your local library and enact change:
1. Use Library Resources
Making use of library resources is one of the most basic ways anyone can support their local library. This means signing up for a library card, checking out books, using the library’s wifi and printing services, and spending time at the library in general.
For people looking to host a class, presentation, or community event, libraries offer plenty of free space for event hosting. This counts as using resources too!
2. Participate in Book Drives and Donation Events
Another way you can directly support your library is by participating in book drives, book sales, and other library events. Libraries rely on government funding and lots of donations, so supporting your library with a cash donation is good too! Libraries will also drum up funding through old book drives, where they’ll sell used books at discounted prices. Why not purchase a book there?
3. Volunteer
Since libraries don’t have much in terms of funding, volunteering at the library is a fantastic way to show support and help take some weight off your librarians’ shoulders. Reading to children, helping with library programs, and assisting people to find what they’re looking for are all essential tasks that libraries could certainly use help with!
4. Vote!
One of the best ways to enact social change is by voting on local and state levels. While national elections are important, many people overlook local elections, leaving room for lawmakers looking to ban books with plenty of votes to win. Prove them wrong — vote in your local school board, town, and county elections to ensure that your local libraries receive direct support from the government.
5. Protest
If you’re too young to vote or are unable to for other reasons, protesting is another fantastic way to push for social change and fight against book bans in support of your library. Protesting via picketing or posting online to speak out against book bans are excellent ways to get started. You can also create and spread petitions, write to elected officials, and call local government offices to protest.
Don’t Do It Alone
One of the most difficult parts of forming a protest is its organization. While social media has made it much easier for people to organize, working with few resources and no idea how to start is incredibly difficult. If you’re new to the activism scene, library protest organizations like the Unite Against Book Bans initiative and our protest organization Fight for the First are good places to start.
What Is Fight for the First?
Fight for the First is our resource for supporting local protests, petitions, and initiatives against book banning. If the government bans or regulates what we read, it directly violates the First Amendment. Use our site to create a local protest group and organize to defend our libraries!
Visit www.everylibrary.org to learn more about our work on behalf of libraries.
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