The Librarians
As part of the fascist war on “woke”, tens of thousands of books have been pulled from the shelves of libraries around the country over the past few years. On the front line are the nation’s librarians, “first responders in the fight for democracy and our First Amendment rights”. The Librarians is a documentary film about this latest wave of censorship & persecution of librarians; here’s the trailer:
From a review on RogerEbert.com:
“The Librarians” is a documentary about the hysterical, unfounded, personal, and sometimes violent attacks on librarians. It is also about their unwavering commitment to making facts, literature, and inspiration available to anyone.
And:
The film has some indelibly searing moments, linking these efforts to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare, to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels’ burning books by Jewish authors, and to the Twilight Zone episode “The Obsolete Man,” with Burgess Meredith as a librarian sentenced to death. There is a quote from President Eisenhower: “Don’t think you’re going to conceal faults by concealing evidence they ever existed. Read every book.”
The Librarians is out in theaters now but not very widely, so you’ll have to check the list of screenings on their web site.
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I bought tickets to the one showing near me, and had to give them away. Very excited for a release of this.
This is on the BBC iPlayer, for those in the UK. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002kkmj/storyville-the-librarians
The company I help lead for has offices all over the world, and I will always remember how the local librarian was attacked during BLM:
https://www.rgj.com/story/news/2021/07/14/nevada-librarian-who-drafted-blm-letter-support-resigns-minden-douglas/7973186002/
A letter that was ultimately lifted from another Sheriff, but still doing a tremendous amount of damage:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/29/us/nevada-douglas-county-library-sheriff-trnd
Saw this a couple weeks back. Highly, highly recommend. Fair warning: it’s pretty infuriating to watch at times, and I’m not sure it left me with a lot of hope.
I suspect that should this latest wave of fascism in the United States (and elsewhere) not exceed the critical tipping point, the next one may be tidal in its scale if nothing extremely serious is done to stem the sources of its cancerous (re)growth.
And that many of these small, previously unheralded checks in our complex societal web will not succeed the way that they have this time.
There are some perverse incentives in our current social, political, and financial systems that too many are not only willing to exploit for their own benefit, but aggresively leverage for the advancement of their twisted desires.
Unfortunately, just missed the last showing here in Chicagoland. Hopefully it becomes available to stream in the near future?
I saw this a few weeks ago, at the urging of a teacher friend. We went together and walked out inspired by the librarians and deeply depressed by those fighting them. So many heroes in this movie. Well worth everyone's time.
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