The People’s Library has a special place in my heart. Â Seeing it at Liberty Square during the Occupation was always uplifting. Even today, in it’s more mobile incarnation, it’s a joy to see people’s faces light up as they realize they have free access to the entire collection of books, magazines, newspapers, and zines. Knowledge truly is power. And no working group in Occupy Wall Street epitomizes that like the People’s Library. Their latest campaign, Operation Book Bomb Tuscon, highlights this:
Our current campaign is called Operation Book Bomb Tucson! As librarians and educators we like many millions of others around the world were appalled at the decision of the Tuscon Unified School District to end the Mexican-American Studies Program and to ban seven important text books from the school curriculum. In response to these actions we are calling on our many supporters and allies throughout the country to donate copies of these texts as well as other Spanish language, history, and education books to our storage center in New York City. We then plan to ship them en masse to our allies at Occupy Tucson and UNIDOS to distribute to the children and educators of Tucson. Any donations made here will go directly to the purchase, collection and shipment of books to the children and teens of Tucson, Arizona.
If you’d like to donate to this worthy cause, click here. I was told today that the People’s Library is actually getting a 50% discount on some of these books from the publishers so your donation money will go even further to make sure that the Tuscon Unified School District doesn’t erase Mexican-American history.