The last three years, I have found myself deeply engaged in the Intellectual Freedom fight in ways I never imagined.  We started the Texas FREadom Fighters almost three years ago thinking it was a short term grassroots opportunity to support librarians, authors, teachers & students in a moment of crisis.  But almost three years later, we find ourselves deep in the midst of still trying to spread the word about the good work of librarians, support improved policies, fending off intellectual freedom attacks, and trying to support librarians facing harassment and pressure.

I’ve been silent on my blog during all of it, channeling it into podcasts, articles, and speaking up wherever I or we could to highlight the work librarians do , wanting to make sure this moment in history gets recorded.  It IS a moment in history and researchers will look back through the historical record to try to understand the forces that led us here, so the more we can document, the better the history of it can be unraveled.

As I’ve gone through this experience, it’s become clearer to me that librarians found themselves unintentionally at the fulcrum of societal movements that came crashing upon their doorstep. Perhaps its unsurprising when you consider that libraries represent the ideas of the society at large, and that suppressing those ideas is a tactic used to fight their spread.  In any case, fights that have been going on for decades all landed on the library doorstep: the civil rights movement, the LGBTQ rights movement and Christian nationalist movements met like opposing waves crashing against the bulwark of the library, and libraries, surprised, found they were at the center.  And though we feel exhausted after fighting this for three years, I remind myself of the long history of the movement to obtain basic civil rights, and that we are really novices in the most heated parts of that fight, for the most part. We wouldn’t be having these conversations if not for the work for so many who came before.

Personally, my life went from figuring out my retirement to being in the midst of the censorship fight, learning on the ground and also using professional skills and connections I had learned in my career, building trust, learning to talk to the media, building vast networks of librarians, library supporters and finding myself (and our group) in unlikely venues, experiences, and places.  Someday I will write or share more about all of it.

What I’ve also learned is the power of a few determined people. (That’s true on both sides of this fight, by the way).  And that there are so many small acts of courage that we don’t even know about.  Of course not everyone feels safe speaking up right now in this heated environment. But every day, I see educators/librarians using their professional wisdom to do their best in a tricky and sensitive situation.  I see librarians willing to keep learning how to do their jobs better.  I see librarians educating students and providing them opportunities.  I see librarians supporting the freedom to read in ways large and small.  We can never doubt that each of us makes a difference, one person at a time.  And that quiet courage has built more understanding, more knowledge, more best practices and more empathy.  We know, without a doubt, that we will land on the right side of history.  That gives me hope when moments are hard or dark or seem hard to believe that we are in them.  We are the ones supporting our democratic values, and supporting the rights of our students and the needs of our teenage readers to access stories about their own lives.  We are letting them know in ways large and small that their lives and stories matter.  So all of that keeps me(and us) in this struggle for what our country is all about.

You can find more about our work and tools on Texas FReadom Fighters.  Hope you can find your own small acts of courage.