Jennifer Bendery is a senior politics reporter for HuffPost. She has covered Congress and the White House for HuffPost since April 2011. She previously reported on Congress for four years for Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, and spent four years covering the Texas Legislature for GalleryWatch in Austin, TX.
It’s that time of year again: National Library Week! A time to celebrate the endless adventures that children can experience in books that are free and accessible to all, and the safe spaces that libraries provide for learning and creating a sense of community.
For example, I was just in South Carolina. For librarians here, having me come and visit is even challenging. The weaponization of libraries that we’ve seen since 2021 – when I’ve really seen this starting, then the attacks on ALA and now me personally ― is a bludgeon that’s scaring people everywhere. I hear that everywhere I go. It gets in the way of doing a job that everyone feels is important. People should agree: Kids should be able to read.
In Texas, a library board in effect lost their effort to ban books. So a county decided to limit funding for the library overall. There was a lawsuit and now it’s running. But when they can’t control a handful of books, they want to close the library altogether. Or run it completely in their image.. People would follow librarians home from work with guys standing outside their houses. Public libraries are having difficulty getting insurance.
It’s especially challenging in Montana. They were the first state to withdraw from ALA because they said it was against the Constitution of the United States to be affiliated with a Marxist organization. I don’t want this moment to be about fights over libraries. Instead, we can celebrate. More people are talking about libraries than they have in my entire career. There are so many more stories about what libraries do to bring together the community. A tiny minority of people have taken control of the narrative about libraries and what they do.from being spent on any ALA services. That bill moved out of the Senate and will be considered by the House.
You read it and it’s such a beautiful book. You think about how much effort is being put into stamping it out. It is just devastating. I was recently on vacation with my family in Tahoe. I was late to turning in my grades, so I went to the library to use Wi-Fi. I uploaded them; it was free to use. Then you could check out the library’s snowshoes. You could use them on the trails by the entrance to the library. Amazing.Libraries are hyperlocal institutions that meet the needs of your community. I could tell you millions of stories about what libraries do. We all want this.
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