Lowrider Librarian

Libraries and the Fight Against Terrorism Libraries can and should be an important weapon against terrorism.  "Librarians are soldiers in the war against ignorance!"  Racism is fundamentally ignorance which leads to hate.  This is a call out to all librarians to help end the ongoing terrorism against people of color in the US. People of color in the US live under a state of domestic terrorism.  This terrorism is conducted via many official channels.  The education system, law enforcement, healthcare, judicial system and other aspects of the state have been and are used against people of color in the US. The terrorism we experience on a daily basis meets ALL the criteria below:  "Domestic terrorism" means activities with the following three characteristics: Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law; Appear intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by ...

As a library worker who is a person of color, I have experienced discrimination in libraries.  From receiving such edifying duties as "sorting the mail," to being judged harshly in comparison to my colleagues who are not people of color, to being bullied so hard and often that I became shaky about myself and my own skills.  I escaped that situation, and landed a job in IT.  It is illustrative of how much I was being bullied and discriminated against at my library job, by the fact that once I was in the IT department, I was valued, told I was doing a great job, told that the feedback on my work was ALWAYS great and other accolades.  I couldn't believe it at first, because I had been so bullied and told that I " was incompentent," and other such disheartening, and in the end, downright mean, insults and other abuses based on my "weak performance."  I have not had a bad review since leaving the library job I once had.  I have continued to teach for that l...