What activism might look like now
Being on the library board isn’t as exciting as marching on Washington, but maybe it’s what we need
I’ve been on our local library board for over four years now. I got on it because I’d said to a friend who was on the board, “I’d like to do that if a spot ever opens.” A spot opened. I got appointed. Sometimes in a small town, things are just that easy.
Being on the library board isn’t very exciting. I’m not sure if I thought it would be more exciting? It was an impulse and I won’t lie, there have been moments when I’ve wanted to get the fuck off the library board. We meet once a month. It’s not at all taxing. It’s just also…not very exciting.
Don’t get me wrong. The people on the board are lovely. The library staff—the director and assistant director and the library employee who manages the very complicated budget—are all amazing. I am the youngest person on the board—perhaps the only person who isn’t retired—and that’s okay.
The board don’t always agree on everything, which is how it should be. I am the person who always wants to give everyone the biggest raise possible because, why not? The people who work there are the people who make the library what it is and we have good people. Give them all the money we can.
The accomplishment I’m most proud of in my time on the board was suggesting we get rid of a rule which prohibited employees from wearing certain kinds of piercings or having visible tattoos. Obviously, I have some tattoos myself. Librarians are hip people. They also have some piercings and tattoos themselves. We ditched that rule and I feel happy about it every time I walk into the library and see one of the employees sporting their nose or eyebrow ring.
My board is rock solid when it comes to the issue of banning books (as in, we will not tolerate that shit on our watch) and for that, I’m willing to endure all of the not-very-exciting meetings. When I think about getting off the board, I remember that. Board members are appointed by various entities in the county (the city council, the county council, the school board for the two school systems in our county, etc.) and so far that process has not become politicized.
If one of us resigned, who knows what might happen with the appointment process? By staying on the board, I feel like I’m helping to hold the line against book banning in my small corner of the world. I’m doing my very tiny and fairly boring part in making the world a better place.
Since November’s election I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how to live through the next four years. Well, honestly, I was doing a lot of thinking about that even before election day. I made a list. It’s a good list. I’m sticking to it.
I’ve seen a lot of people online also trying to wrestle with these questions and especially now that the reality of this Republican administration is hitting home and hitting hard. What do we do? Do we pay attention? Do we look away? Do we take to the streets? Do we stay home?
I’ve been thinking for a long time about the connections between the death of community and the rise of authoritarianism. I think it is only possible to trick people in the way they are being tricked right now (i.e. tricked into believing that if we annihilate trans people, then groceries and gas will magically cost less and we’ll be able to afford to go to the doctor? Seriously?) if they are deeply disconnected from the people around them.
Only one in two Americans know their neighbors’ names. Their first names, mind you, not their last names. And not the names of all their neighbors. But just, do you know the names of any of your neighbors? And half of all people in the U.S. do not. I find this statistic terrifying. How do you live next to people whose names you do not even know?
I don’t find this statistic particularly surprising. Since about the second World War, various forces (mostly capitalism) have been systematically destroying and dismantling community in the United States. We’ve been building places (the suburbs) that make community harder. We’ve created technologies that pull us out of our neighborhoods and into our screens. We’ve leaned so hard into narratives of individualism and self-sufficiency that we’ve erased a basic truth about ourselves as a species—we’re social. We need each other. We always have. We always will.
It's not hard to figure out why corporations and millionaires are invested in the destruction of community. Without community, we are bereft and looking for a away to fill the gaping holes in our lives. We fill those holes with stuff. We try to buy our way out of our loneliness and despair. It doesn’t work, but it feels a lot easier than trying to create community in a world that makes that increasingly difficult.
Without community, we are more easily duped into believing crazy things. We lose the steady grounding of conversations with other human beings, not all of who are exactly like us. We begin to think of certain groups as less and less human…less and less like us. When we are not in conversation with the people around us, we are more easily made to fear. The lack of community turns us into, you know, sheep. Lemmings. Marks for one of history’s greatest cons.
But let’s be honest—trying to buy our way out of our despair or doubling down on the next conspiracy theory circulating online is still so much easier and more exciting than getting my butt out of the house and down the street to the library board meeting. Interacting with people is hard. Buying stuff online or sharing the latest outrage meme is easy.
Doom scrolling is destructive and horrible, but, also, fairly easy. It’s pretty easy to sit on your couch and fill yourself to the brim with the very worst things the world has to offer. Then it’s relatively easy to share that horrible thing. To pass it along to the next person’s feed. It feels like action. I don’t think it is.
Going to the library board meeting is hard and this is for me, a Gen X person who has actual memories of a life before the internet and social media. I grew up actually hanging out with people in-person. I was socialized into that world and I still would, all-in-all, often just rather not do it.
But I do. At least most of the time. I walk to the library and I sit in a room and nothing very exciting happens. Except that when someone in the community threatens to begin challenging books, we all show up, ready to go to the mats for free speech and the right for people to read whatever the hell they want to read.
It’s tiny, but imagine thousands of people across the country doing the same, not-very-exciting thing. I do not, after all, live in Washington, DC. I live right here in Madison, Indiana. And the amount of control I can have over what happens here in my town is infinitely greater than the control I have over what happens in DC.
In this moment, we need to own the places we live in a way we maybe have never done before. We need to claim them and make them ours and work hard to ensure they are places that are safe for the most vulnerable among us. Even when it’s boring. Even when it’s hard. Even when it feels so much easier and safer to just keep on scrolling or buying.
What does it look like to show up in the places that we live? Here are just a few ideas I’ve been thinking about or have heard from other folks. I’m sure other people can add to this list.
- Yes, you can serve on your local library board or the equivalent. Library board meetings are public, so if someone does challenge a book, you can show up to support the librarians who are on the front line. You can show your town or city that the book banners are always in the minority, even if they are loud as fuck.
- You can volunteer for other boards and organizations in the place you live. They don’t have to be all social justice-y. Even if the board or organization is about something as seemingly innocuous as street design, you can be the person asking questions about access for disabled persons. If you’re on the board organizing the local music festival, you can be the one asking about including women musicians and musicians of color and queer musicians.
- You can offer your own expertise and skills for free to those who need them. My friend who is a massage and cranio-sacral therapist is looking into offering her services for free to LGBTQ+ folks in town who might, in this moment, need a little nervous system relief. A massage might not seem like a big deal, but it could be that small thing that keeps someone from tipping over into despair. What acts of care-taking can you share?
- I was in Louisville this weekend and saw a sign inside the bathroom of a certain establishment that said, “Need Plan B? Ask our staff.” I’ve seen some people talking about how posts about abortion and reproductive health online are being suppressed. Maybe it’s time to go analog in our communities.
- There’s a group in my town who regularly show up at a major intersection with Black Lives Matter or End Genocide in Palestine signs. It’s often a pretty small group. Do their signs really make a difference? But one day someone driving through town saw them and their signs and realized, yeah, this is the kind of place I want to live. And now they do live here. That’s another small thing that adds up over time. A gradual accrual of people who think it’s a good thing to show up with signs on a street corner. A ripple effect that reshapes they type of place in which we all live.
- When you see people who are already doing these things in the community, support them. Thank them. Ask them how you can help. Tell them that you see what they’re doing and you appreciate it. Especially in small towns like mine, it can feel like you’re the only one who cares. It can feel like you’re the lone weirdo. Let people know they are not the lone weirdo.
- I also love this list from
at of underrated ways to change the world.
- And this list from
.
- And this list of do’s and don’t’s for creating a mutual aid society.
- Also check out
at and this online event on advocacy next Monday, Jan. 27 from 8:15 - 9:45.What other ideas do folks have for what our activism should look like now, especially in our own communities?
Thank you new subscribers and the lovely Jarrett Boyd, who became a paid subscriber and is an awesome neighbor to have, with an especially great front porch/concert space.
Of course, I immediately started thinking of more items to add to the list. Here are a couple:
Be the connector. You know those people? The ones who are always saying, “Oh, you should know X,” and then they follow through? Those people are awesome and so important because sometimes those connections are everything. Sometimes those connections make big things happen. Sometimes those connections save lives.
Along the same lines, talk to people. Not in a weird way, but maybe we should take our headphones out sometimes and strike up a conversation with the person next to us at the bar. Or that person who’s always at the gym at the same time as you. Or the parent sitting beside you at the marching band competition. This is what community looks like. People who decide to talk to each other.
I want to be on the library board! Seriously!