Do you have a public library card? Have you recently used it?
Create to Liberate Idea No. 23
Last month, I experienced something I had not experienced since my teens.
I got carded.
No, not carded as in “you-don’t look twenty-one years-old.”
But carded as in “I would like to get a public library card, please.”
For Create to Liberate on Saturday, April 19:
- Get your public library card if you do not have one.
- Use your public library card.
- Join a public library support organization.
My late mother was a voracious reader. I’m confident she had checked out and read every mystery or science fiction tome they had in the stacks at the public library in her small town.
When I was a boy, we lived in a larger city and would make weekly trips to one of the city’s libraries or visited the library system’s bookmobiles, as they called them.
Somewhere along the way, however, I lost the plot. Literally.
That is, until America’s new right-wing regime began making its intent clear when it comes to free speech, writers, education, booksellers and libraries.
- “Librarians have always defended First Amendment rights, which include the freedom to read,” shares an opinion piece in the March 25, 2025 edition of The Dallas Morning News. However, if Texas legislators approve laws proposed for their current legislative session, librarians “could be arrested for certain passages in books that a parent or citizen believes are ‘obscene.'”
- The advocacy group EveryLibrary states that “the opening section of The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 report is filled with allegations of criminal conduct by librarians, publishers, authors, and educators and argues in favor of criminal charges and incarceration.”
- In its Library Bill of Rights, the American Library Association spells it out clearly: “Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.”
It’s stunning to realize that, in grim times for freedom, democracy and the rule of law, an act of resistance can be as simple as:
- receiving a library card.
- checking out a book.
- standing up for libraries and librarians.
But here we are.
Go ahead. Get carded on Saturday, April 19 for Create to Liberate.
Getting and reading a book that violates the sensibilities of The right-wing Heritage Foundation is very smart art activism.
“The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.”
Albert Einstein
We invite individual visual and performing artists, writers, bookstores, book clubs, brave non-profit or government organizations and other individuals or groups across the USA to independently “flood the zone” with creativity, for Create to Liberate, Saturday, April 19, 2025.
Think of the idea above as a pilot light for the creative fire within you (if yours needs to be lit.)
Follow Abbetuck on these social media platforms as well as on Substack.
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