One Step Against Fascism: Organizing to Protect and Defend Our Libraries

Dear ROPnet,

You might remember Suzanne Pharr from when she joined one of our recent “Meeting the Moment” virtual gatherings. Suzanne is a long-time organizer and nationally renowned strategic movement thinker from the South who lived in Oregon for several years in the 90s and helped start ROP! Suzanne recently shared this piece with us about one meaningful way to defend democracy at the local level. Check out her piece below, and click here to register for one of our upcoming Meeting the Moment gatherings with new guest speakers. 

Warmly,

Sam and the ROP team

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Our small farm was six miles from town and twice a month a razor thin woman named Hazel drove a bookmobile up the dirt road and stopped at our mailbox. I flew down the hill to jump into that bookmobile where she allowed me to choose as many books as I wanted with no restrictions. That’s how at eight years old I got to read The Diary of Anne Frank, a life-changer that helped bring me to where I am today.

Access to these stories and books shaped my life by expanding my imagination and understanding of a world larger than the small piece I occupied and making me always eager to learn, explore, act.

And now those books and the libraries that contain them are under attack through a carefully organized effort to suppress information and limit intellectual freedom.

We are witnessing a plan that took the Right decades to build. It was prepared and made public in Project 2025, the election was secured, and now fascism will move fast. We have to get ahead of it as fast as we can. 

Why this topic? In this time in which our new government leadership attempts to control our bodies and minds, we will have to work smart and hard to maintain the freedoms we have gained and to build on them. The attack on libraries is just at stage one—we can organize now to save them.

It is through libraries that we know the history of the fascists burning books and why they did it. And by the way, it is important to know that it was students who burned the books at 34 universities. That’s how deep the influence of fascist leaders goes. It speaks to a need to build a youth front—and that could start in engaging in the work to save libraries.

Across all generations, we will have to learn to organize across divisions to build community connections and strength. Libraries are an excellent place to start because the love of them and the books they hold is held by people who also hold political differences on other issues—but we share a desire to protect our libraries. It cuts across class, race, gender and age. Protecting and supporting libraries is a strong place to start, to build a broad base of people connected to each other, to experience success, and be prepared to work together to take on other issues of concern. It offers the promise of bridging the gap. 

Libraries have been around for 14 centuries preserving our history and culture and providing the great span of information that produces critical thinking. From the American Library Association: Intellectual freedom is the right to seek, receive, and share ideas without restriction. It’s a core value of libraries and is guaranteed by the First Amendment. To lose this freedom is to lose the right to grow ideas and understanding of our world. I think of it as intellectual imprisonment.

Libraries are a critical piece of the social infrastructure. They are common to most communities (131,848 libraries in the US). They are much loved, they are representative of our shared history and future, and they are everywhere, including rural places. We don’t have to travel to take major steps against fascism—we can do it right where we live. In a divided country, it is important that our organizing base is spread wide, doesn’t focus on just shared identity or rigid politics, and is constantly opening the door wider to invite folks in who want to take part in creating a just world.

Protecting libraries is a good place to start anti-fascist work because they have something that is needed and appeals to almost everyone and people of all ages are affected. These people when working together can destroy the fascist strategy of deliberate tactics to divide and conquer communities. When divided and in conflict with each other people play right into the fascist playbook. To lose this source of intellectual freedom and information and pleasure would be disastrous and the opposition knows it. Remember–if public education is erased, then libraries are our commons where we all are welcome and can gain understanding of our world.

Organizing to save and protect libraries can be both serious and great fun.  They offer us an opportunity to develop  nonviolent language and strategies that are necessary to move away from the culture of war and violence.

Here are some steps to consider:

1. Collect a group of very diverse people to discuss the problem and collectively discuss ways to confront it. When inviting people and during this discussion, don’t forget that libraries don’t just provide books and research possibilities–people will come to the meeting with different needs and interests. For example, here is a list of diverse services other than books that our Little Rock library system offers: 
   • A community hub where people can gather
   • Meeting spaces
   • Migrant legal clinic
   • Monthly repair clinic
   • Genealogy and ancestry
   • Photo reproduction
   • Video & podcast recording studios
   • Jobs skills training
   • Tools check out
   • Classes and access to internet & computers
   • Book discussions
   • Teaching kitchens
   • Research & archives
   • Food for unsheltered & youth
   • Speaker series
   • Computers & copiers

(Remember these services when you are identifying people to invite. The invitation is not based on political positions but on the person’s love of libraries and what they offer.)

2. Once you have had a discussion of the threat, the need for organizing, and ideas for what people would like to do, begin developing a goal and a strategy
   • Example: the goal is to prevent the banning of books and reduction of library services that leads to library closures. The strategy is to use multiple ways of bonding people in their love of libraries by using diverse tactics that build their commitment to protect, defend, and build. 
3. Determine where the power is held and how to engage it. Libraries are supported by staff, organized groups, board members, elected officials, city, corporate and private funders. How to relate to them? How to gain position within the network of those who care? Those who oppose? How to follow the money that is provided by taxes, government, and private donors. How to become a board member?
4. Gather your people in a way that continually grows the group through collective participation in tactics that meet their interest and concern. . Design a plan for a slow build, not whirlwind on social media, that will grow a strong, long term group for organizing a strong, resilient community.Be sure that every person is considered essential and has an active role to play, no matter how large or small. Emphasize working in teams and having fun when possible. You want to grow community love for libraries by making sure in multiple ways people recognize how valuable they are—so valuable that the community refuses to let them be reduced in services or destroyed.

Here is a collection of ideas of actions the group could take:

• Get to know librarians. Support them in every way you can.  Find out what their concerns and needs are. Volunteer—and get a sense of who visits libraries and who would want to protect them.
• Set up a system of constant requests for books that are controversial or banned. Hold readings and discussions in the library or in groups in homes. The Banned Book Clubs?
• Hold book events that are multi-purposed—food, music, readings, discussion for information, connection, base-building, etc. Story hours for kids, teenager-only story hours, adult debates about the meaning of novels such as The Color Purple.
• Rent library rooms for meetings of all kinds. Art, music, games, birthdays, poetry readings, political discussions, organizing. Take pictures and place them on social media.
• Support and develop a campaign for a great candidate for the library board. Organize people to make sure the library board is attended at all times by someone on this team.
• Create bumper stickers, t-shirts, etc. to raise awareness of what’s up with libraries. Enhance their specialness and usefulness. Lead people to think they are missing out on a good thing if they aren’t engaged with their library.
• If the library is under attack, create a mass scene of people carrying a book and circling the library.

And so much more.  Always keep in mind that the path to community safety and resilience is through building a broad base of people who are willing to act on behalf of the community as a whole. Starting with love of libraries or with fear of the safety and resilience of another part of the social infrastructure, we understand we can build through commitment to community, collectivity, cooperation, and coordination. That commitment and practice is the way we will defeat the growth of fascism.

Warmly,
Suzanne Pharr