Impressions

You know, maybe we need to do more than just march on Washington. We need to KEEP marching on Washington, of course, and we need to VOTE OMG VOTE in November.

But maybe it’s also time to march on the people getting rich by keeping the rest of us poor & destroying the planet. Billionaires. CEOs. The people living in ivory towers while they allow their companies to dump waste into drinking water supplies. The people shooting cars into space and funding space travel because “they don’t know what else to do with their billions” while their employees work for slave wages and can’t unionize. The people getting massive tax cuts that will be paid for via money WE’VE been paying all our lives.

Do the rich have a right to do what they want with their money? Sure. But none of them got that rich on their own, and even if by some miracle they did, at some point, there has to be some responsibility to at the very least not make things WORSE for those less well off. I’m tired of being expected to swoon over a philanthropist billionaire who generously gives a little bit of pocket change to help a handful of people when he has the means to actually CHANGE things. I’m tired of billionaires being applauded for donating little morsels of their wealth while their own workers – the people making them rich – can barely eat.

March on THEM. Disrupt THEIR dinners. Make THEIR lives hell until we see change.

DEMAND they pay their workers solid living wages with actual benefits.

DEMAND they pay their fair share of taxes.

DEMAND they require their companies to be sustainable and environmentally sound.

I know, I know, that makes me a bleeding heart commie liberal who thinks people should have their money taken away and given to those who refuse to work. Except…. that’s not the case. When you have people who’ve gotten astronomically wealthy on the backs of their workforce and community, but then only give those workers a pittance and their community a few handfuls of cash now and then, I have an enormous problem with that.

Libraries have always been magical places for me, and over my past ten years as a kindergarten and first grade teacher, I’ve always viewed the school library as a sacred place. When the chance to work as a librarian (at the elementary school that has housed me for almost a decade!) arose, I uncharacteristically let administration know that I would do anything to get the spot. With a little luck and a lot of library magic, the job became mine. Now I have the strange privilege of working with former students and longtime colleagues, most of whom know about my love of books and all things literary, and I’m often asked how I’m handling the change. Is it the dream I hoped for? Is it even what I expected?

Mostly, yes. Building a collection, inviting in speakers, and introducing students to books and research skills is the most amazing way to spend my days. I often pinch myself when I get the rush that comes with finding the perfect series that makes a student’s eyes light up. It’s hard but rewarding work. If anything, I just wish that people would use me more. I get that a lot of reluctance comes from wanting to seem capable, or perhaps even an aversion to burdening the librarian, but helping people is literally what we’re here for!

In honor of National Library Week, I want to share some ways you can love on your local librarian. A good deal of these suggestions require you to take advantage of us, and even though I’m writing from the perspective of the school library, I think many of these would apply to your community institutions, as well. The library is one of the last places around where you can get something for free, and the more you use us, the better shape we’re in!