Nat Hentoff asks some pertinent questions about the leadership of the American Library Association (ALA). As noted here earlier, they have plenty of energy to attack John Ashcroft and the Bush administration over provisions of the USA Patriot Act, but still have refused to condemn Cuban repression of independent librarians and other human rights activists.
Now ALA has another chance coming up -- will they do the right thing? I expect not, since speaking out against genuine tyranny has never been a key virtue for them.
Yet, here is the ALA with its rallying cry, "Free People Read Freely," abandoning these extraordinarily courageous Cuban librarians, who, under a dictatorship, advocate, to their own great peril, the same right to read freely that we Americans enjoy. The ALA's membership booklet proclaims "the public's right to explore in their libraries many points of view on all questions and issues facing them."Posted by Alan at December 8, 2003 11:49 AMIn our American libraries, we can borrow George Orwell's "1984" and a copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but those, and many other publications, were only available in Cuba in the homes of the independent librarians who dared to offer them to their fellow citizens.
The ALA will have its next Midwinter Meeting from Jan. 9 to Jan. 14 in San Diego. Those in attendance — ALA officials, including officers of libraries around the country and rank-and-file members — will have a chance to rescind the shameful silence of the ALA.
Mr. Ashcroft has put none of the delegates to San Diego in prison; and it takes no courage — only self-respect — for them to insist on the freedom of those librarians in Cuba who may not be "professional" librarians. But they certainly are the very exemplars of the ALA's purported dedication to everyone's freedom to read — and freedom of conscience.
The next time you go to a public library, ask the librarians if they stand with their colleagues in Mr. Castro's prisons.
via the Washington Times