advocacy
We seek to radically reshape and remake the institution in more equitable ways. True solidarity cannot pay lip service to feminist, de-colonial, anti-racist projects while maintaining individual investments in a system that works for only the most privileged bodies. Marginalized individuals cannot but participate in the oppression of other marginalized people if they are invested in academia’s current structure. Increased “representation” merely reifies the system rather than expands the possibilities for solidarity, for change.
“I Have A Cultural Studies Degree” Is the New “I Have Black Friends” — The Archipelago — Medium.
“Your degree, your reading list, your completion of a single course at a university can’t automatically make you my ally. Allyhood requires action and understanding. Tell me you’re my ally, and I’ll ask you how you work to end racism and sexism in your everyday life. You can’t dismantle systems of oppression by reciting Angela Davis quotes.”
IDIC via Photobucket
This past Monday, June 30, 2014, The ALA Special Presidential Task Force on Equity, Diversity & Inclusion had its first, albeit informal, gathering. The Task Force (TF) was convened as one means of responding to BCALA’s statement denouncing the American Library Association’s decision to hold the 2016 Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida.
The meeting consisted mainly of each member of the TF getting to know the others in a casual, self-directed atmosphere, creating a safe space for talking about differences and the issues we are meant to address, and figuring out what our immediate first steps are supposed to be. This approach goes a long way toward building consensus, which we will definitely need later on.
I personally find the issue before us very daunting. I shrink before it. The decision of the TF co-chairs to establish our first meeting as a conversation, intent on honoring and acknowledging each member’s humanness and good intentions, made my anxiety subside some. The charge, “we will change the world,” became exciting and not so scary. I feel I can trust the process, my co-members, or, at least, the co-chairs of the TF.
When we parted, one of the co-chairs mentioned that the hotel where we had our meeting–the Las Vegas Hotel, formerly known as the Las Vegas Hilton–was home to Star Trek: The Experience for the entire 10 years it existed. How appropriate. IDIC should be our TF motto.
Fast forward to this past Friday, July 4, 2014. The birthday of the United States of America. I have complicated feelings about this holiday, the American patriotism and nationalism on display, and my living in this nation. When I became a naturalized citizen over 10 years ago, I swore to defend the Constitution of the United States, its laws, and defend its existence as a nation, “without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion.”
What wasn’t part of that oath is what people like me are getting in return for our allegiance. There are still moments when I feel like I am not so loved or wanted by my adopted nation. Even though I am obliged to defend it with everything I hold dear, including my life, I feel I can not, should not, expect anything more in return. It’s enough that I got this nifty plastic-and-polyester flag, an ornate certificate, and a passport that will pretty much grant me entry into a lot of ports. Right?
I’m with Uncle George. The things I got during the Naturalization Ceremony are mere tokens. The true prize is the responsibility of being an American citizen.
American democracy is vitally dependent on good people who cherish the ideals of our system and actively engage in the process of making our democracy work.
I say the same goes for the work we need to do within ALA. As I became, and remain, a librarian because of the ideals of the profession, I am vitally concerned about its living up to its founding ideals. Let’s work together to make this so. Live long and prosper.
The revolution WILL BE LIVE. ~ Gil Scott-Heron
Recent events have caused me quite a bit of dismay. But as Gil Scott-Heron says, the revolution will put us in the driver’s seat. So, where do we want to go?
Do not allow white critics to assert their privilege and demand that you shift the conversation to smoother terrain, one which allows them to ignore their own complicity in the systems that continue to oppress people of color. Allow no one tell you that your work is not important. Write, research, and teach with revolutionary rage, as if the very future of this country depends on it. Because it does.
via How Race-Studies Scholars Can Respond to Their Haters | Vitae.
I’ve also encountered people of color who are complicit in this white-supremacist narrative. Are they included in this? I think so.
Knowledge + Alliance Initiative: Essential Information Workshop – Los Angeles
On Friday and Saturday, May 30-May 31, 2014, I will be traveling to Loyola Marymount University to co-host the two-day Essential Information Workshop-Los Angeles (EIW-LA). For the past couple of months, I have been working as the Curriculum Coordinator and conducting collaborative work with Gwendolyn Prellwitz, Assistant Director of the American Library Association’s Office for Diversity, and Jennifer Masunaga, Loyola Marymount University Reference and Instruction Librarian and EIW-LA Logistics Coordinator.
The work we have been doing to develop the EIW-LA event has been the most rewarding, most exhilarating part of my career as a librarian to-date.
Connected to this is a poster proposal that I am working on with Isabel Gonzalez-Smith, Coordinator for EIW-Chicago, to participate in the Library Research Seminar VI at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I hope our proposal gets accepted!
After the EIW-LA events, I will be looking ahead to attending ALA Annual 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Knowledge Alliance Initiative will figure prominently in my plans and attendance at this year’s ALA Annual Conference, though I still need to finalize all the specific events I am obliged to attend. And the ones that I prefer to attend on a just-because-I-want-to basis. Of course, hanging out with people I love are high on the priority list! As are hearing Dr. Jane McGonigal, Stan Lee, Lois Lowry and Jeff Bridges, B.J. Novak and Azar Nafisi. In Conferences past, I had prioritized work and obligations over networking, socializing, and my own personal knowledge and learning. This time, I am hoping I will be able to see all the speakers I intend to see.
Because my dear spouse and our youngest child will be coming along, and we will be staying till the morning of 4th of July, I will be making a point of enjoying time and sun with them. OT: Our oldest child will be going with her theater group to Ashland, Oregon for the annual Oregon Shakespeare Festival. We’ll do something fun and with her when we get back from the conference.
Twitter Responds To Santa Barbara Shootings With #YesAllWomen Hashtag.
Because my daughters will grow up to be women #YesAllWomen
“Barbara Jones, director of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom, said she has received requests from many younger ALA members over recent years who want to understand what happened in 1977 and want to revisit the controversy with a 21st-century perspective. “I remember my first term paper at Columbia University’s School of Library Service (1977) was about ‘The Speaker’ controversy. It is an issue still with us today when it comes to speech that most of us hate to protect or endorse. We plan to give ALA membership ample opportunity to express their opinions about this issue before, during, and after the conference, because it is complex and important.”
“The debate over the limits of free speech has always been incendiary,” said Judith Platt, director of free expression advocacy for the Association of American Publishers. “For those of us in the book community it is crucial to understand the history and context within which that debate has taken place. This program on ‘The Speaker’ and it’s attendant controversy will provide an excellent forum to deepen our understanding.””
ALA members to discuss controversial film ‘The Speaker’ at Annual Conference | News & Press Center.
Kindness. Image from Feb. 19, 2007 article in The Age. Illustration by Michael Leunig.
“Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” Ephesians 4:31-32, NRSVCE.
We generally equate niceties with kindness. As common pleasantries are the easiest, most readily observed manifestations of kindness, it’s easy to think of niceness and kindness as synonymous, if not one and the same.
I offer that niceness and kindness (and civility, for that matter) are not one and the same. They have some areas in common, sure. These are aspects that overlap, but don’t indicate sameness.
Reading up on the differences between niceness, kindness, and civility, a pattern focused on intentions emerges. The problem I have with this is that people don’t really wear their intentions like a visible sign on their heads (or anywhere else that we can examine, touch, and point at). Especially during brief, nano-seconds encounters, we won’t catch a glimpse of the other person’s intent. How then can I know if they are just “being nice” vs. “being kind”?
A friend whom I greatly admire and love is one such person I think of when as the embodiment of kindness and niceness. However, you’re only lucky to catch a glimpse of such qualities after you have gotten to know her better. To unknown elements she is the embodiment of civility. She is still pleasant, a bit detached, but polite and respectful. Once you get to know her a bit more, and she gets to know you, she is both kind and nice.
Which brings me to the commonly held stereotype of kindness and niceness–that such a pleasant, compassionate demeanor is equivalent to weakness. Taking my friend again as an example–I would not call her weak. Her approachable persona, her helpfulness and cooperativeness, and her slightly irreverent and biting sense of humor and wit seemingly belie her strength of character and will. She’s fun to be around and a great, wonderful person to have your back when the going gets tough, but she is equally principled, determined, and has a high standard of work and behavior.
She inspires me to be a better person. Ultimately, the ability to inspire others to be their better selves through positive means is, I think, the essence of kindness. To be able to do this, however, involves the ability and willingness to listen to and put another person and their concerns ahead of one’s own. Niceness is the behavioral manifestation of kindness. I think this is why we often equate both. They are linked, but not the same. A person can be nice without being kind. Conversely, a person can be kind without being nice, at least not all the time.
Sometimes we justify tough-love actions as kindness. I hear “you have to be cruel to be kind” quite a bit. I don’t buy it. Sure, there are times when a person needs to deliver some unpleasantness for the sake of a larger goal. As a parent, this is something I know very intimately. However, being kind also means acknowledging the effects of the unpleasantness one needs to deliver. I don’t mean putting on a sad face and body language, either. There are consequences for not being nice that affect others to such an extent that the course of their lives are altered. Being truly kind doesn’t mean one shouldn’t deliver unpleasant news at all. It means understanding that how one personally feels is a distant second to how the other person feels.
What does this, kindness vs. niceness, have to do with advocacy? I see kindness and compassion as foundational values of advocacy. In advocating for information literacy, community, diversity, inclusion, education, and privacy, I see kindness as an underlying ethic that states “people first.” Civility, in my estimation, is the baseline of decorous dialogue we need to live and act in a multicultural, multiethnic democratic society. We need to be able to talk to each other, find ways to demonstrate and connect to each other in ways that demonstrate our feelings and value for human kindness. As far as I am concerned, to be kind is to be human…and to recognize others as human, too.
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