It’s okay to let people go.

It’s okay to let people go.

i hope that you start with yourself first ♥️

If you can, buy physical books.

I work in publishing and I'm scared about what the election results are going to mean for the future of books by and about marginalized people, especially books for children. There are a lot of things you can do by trying to get involved locally, especially to mobilize against book bans and laws targeting libraries and schools. Voting with your wallet is still an extremely important tactic, because we're going to be hit with economic issues re: diverse books before we get hit with legal ones. But my immediate concern is what might happen with e-books.

It's already a known problem that if you "buy" a book on Kindle or another e-reader, that you're essentially renting it from that retailer, and if that retailer decides to remove that book, they can wipe it from your device. We also know that servers can be shut down. Content policies can change. It could get very difficult to find a copy of the files to pirate, much less to purchase.

But you can't delete a physical book from the world.

Physical books are about to become very important repositories. Collect them, if you can. Go to library sales. Go to thrift stores. Go to your local bookstore -- and bonus point here: independent bookstores are and will be great hubs for organizing in the coming days. Hell, I'd even encourage you to go through Amazon to send a message that these books are still financially viable. Lord knows the latter doesn't want to advertise them to you.

I know (I know) that physical books are expensive and getting more so. I know space is at a premium in a world where we're being pushed to live in smaller and smaller apartments with more and more roommates. But if there's a book that was important to you, and if it's a book you think a bigot wouldn't want to exist in the world, I urge you to get your hands on a physical copy of that book. If nothing else, to preserve it for the next generation.

ALL of us can be librarians. ALL of us can be archivists. ALL of us can work together to preserve marginalized voices, and to ensure that they are heard.

That doesn't mean they're faking their disability.

If someone can do physical exercise for an hour on a good day, that doesn't mean they can do it on command for eight hours straight then do it again the next day and the next and the next and the next.