AnarchoNinaWrites
Last RT...
see, folks think this book banning stuff is a gender issue, or a race issue, but the reality I can speak to because I lived it is that for cracker kids in fascist families, the library is pretty much the easiest path out. It was for me. My parents didn't teach me how to be a good person, or to resist fascism - I got that shit from books these nazis want to ban; books I even had to hide when I brought them back home.
AnarchoNinaWrites
And like those books HAD to be there, physically, in the library. You can say "well you can't really BAN a book; people who want to read it will find it someplace else" but growing up in a reactionary household those books didn't exist at home, and more to the point there was no guide to discover which books I WANTED to read. I'm pretty sure I started with the Autobiography of Malcom X, because anyone crackers hated that much had to be a badass. But it had to BE there, for me to start that trip
AnarchoNinaWrites
Everything I know about socialism, multiculturalism, internationalism, anti-fascism, anti-racism, anti-capitalism, all of it, started in my school and Detroit public libraries. It sure as shit wasn't taught in class. And if the nazis have their way, folks like me will never get that lifeline, that map for how to escape the fascist worldview. Chomsky, Baldwin, Marx, Davis, Fanon, DuBois; absolutely none of those thinkers make it on my radar, without libraries because there IS no roadmap to escape
AnarchoNinaWrites
And like, I can't speak to everyone, but me personally? I had to read that in books. I had to see it printed on a page, to justify all those ideas in my head as valid. No activist, or concerned citizen was going to convince me because growing up again, IN a fascist household, had already convinced me that "people" will say any old shit and are not to be trusted. Reading ideas that matched how I felt, validated those feelings and ideas for me.
AnarchoNinaWrites
Without the library, and specifically libraries NOT curated by fascists, I'm probably something the world doesn't need at all - another clever nazi. This is not a hypothetical; I have a sibling who wasn't much of a reader who ended up taking the opposite path and is, in my estimation, a very dangerous person.
AnarchoNinaWrites
@justafrog My house had:
The works of JRR Tolkien
Cult shit like Chariot of the Gods
A bible
A book about the Dead Sea Scrolls
A book about Rommel
A book about mobster Joe Bonnano
A copy of The Fountainhead
Some Time Life "James Bond" library stuff
A Time Life series about ancient cultures that was mostly focused on artifacts and weapons
And that's about it.
JustAFrog
@AnarchoNinaWrites I've seen a lot of the factional literature which people in specific christian denominations fill their homes with.
It's words on pages, but it's drivel.
If you've never been able to read outside that bubble, though, it seems fine.
For most kids, the only escape from that silo is a public library. Because they can just walk in, grab a book and read it.
It's absolutely vital that this service exists.
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