Librarians Are My Heroes
On October 8th, in the middle of Banned Book Week, I had the privilege of seeing the documentary film, The Librarians, and then moderating a panel discussion with the filmmaker Kim A. Snyder and two remarkable women, Courtney Gore and Becky Calzada who are featured in the film.
The film tells the stories of book bans in school libraries in several U.S. states, how these bans were effected and how the communities responded. Interspersed with interviews and film clips from such movies as Fahrenheit 451, The Librarians is a profoundly moving study of the growing threat of censorship today.
Because the stories come from such states as Texas and Florida where gun ownership and carrying is more the rule than the exception, it is no exaggeration to say that people fighting book bans are courageous, and perhaps even fearless. One scene shows a school board meeting where a board member who opposes a ban is threatened by a man who says he has a gun, and he knows where she lives. School librarians are called pedophiles for making books available to kids who tell them that these books have saved their lives.
Sadly, none of this is new, and also sadly this phenomenon is not relegated to the U.S. While book banning is likely as old as books themselves, we in Canada need to remember and continue to act to protect our freedom of expression here. In 1987, the Canadian government attempted to “protect citizens” by passing a bill (C-54) that would have subjected librarians to imprisonment for distributing books that contained virtually any sexual content. This absurdly overbroad and vague legislation brought together writers, artists, musicians, civil libertarians, and yes, librarians to protest in ways that succeeded in embarrassing the government into dropping the whole bill.
Some people harboured an image of librarians as something out of It’s a Wonderful Life. The version of George’s wife Mary, where George, the film’s hero, sees his town as it would have been without him. Instead of an active participant in her community, Mary is a librarian, a stereotypical mousey woman with no life, who is afraid of her own shadow. Not the librarians I know! While many people were surprised to see the Toronto libraries shut down in a mass demonstration in protest against Bill C-54, shut down they did for a one-day rally, replete with well-known speakers and performers. This and other action worked. Bill C-54 died on the order paper.
Perhaps one of the most moving scenes in The Librarians follows a young man whose mother is one of the loudest speakers accusing librarians of grooming children for pedophiles. She believes that she knows how to raise children the correct way. She knows what is good for everyone’s children. After all, she has eight of her own. But the son who is estranged from his family, is no longer permitted to attend family functions, is gay. He and his siblings never attended public schools. His mother read them from the Bible every day and when he came out to her, she banned him from the family. He speaks at a school board meeting, pleading with those in attendance to stop listening to his mother. His courage and his sadness are iconic. This is what the battle for freedom to read looks like.
This man, like the kids in the U.S. and in Alberta who have started banned book clubs, like the brave souls wearing frog and chicken costumes who are standing quietly in front of ICE detention centres in Portland, Oregon, like the people standing up to rail against book bans in their school and library board meetings in Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Edmonton and other places where people think banning books is a solution to a problem, each of them is a hero.
The Librarians will not be shown on a regular American streaming service because none of those streaming services is courageous enough to broadcast the film. But it will be shown on PBS in December, and it has been and will continue to be shown at film festivals and select theatres around the world. Like libraries, streaming services, theatres and film festivals are curated. Someone is responsible for deciding what will be carried and what will not be there. Who informs these decisions? Will it be a political appointee or will it be decided by a democratically elected board? Will it be the voices of the people who use the libraries and attend the film festivals that are heard? Will it be professional librarians? Or will it be the politicians who decide that they know which books and films are the most dangerous - for every child?
Like the film itself, I want to end this blog with some hope. Yes, the voices of those who want to ban books are loud. But communities of independent people on school boards, on library boards, and on the streets are the sound of courage and hope. Let us keep up the hard work to ensure that everyone has access to the books and films that make a difference - and that we need in this very difficult time.
