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In associations and institutions that put a premium on niceness or even civility, you should probably never stop looking over your shoulder. [...] "People in power" are apt to be the enemies, not the friends of free speech. Who [...] suppresses dissent-people without power?-Wendy Kaminer, Worst Instincts: Cowardice, Conformity, and the ACLU.
In almost all the 45 libraries studied here, and probably hundreds and hundreds more across the country, we have failed our professional duty to seek out diverse political views. [...] These books are not expensive. Their absence from our libraries makes a mockery of ALA's vaunted "freedom to read." But we do not even notice that we are censoring our collections. Complacently, we watch our new automated systems stuffthe shelves with Henry Kissinger's memoirs.-Charles Willett, Founding Editor, Counterpoise, and retired librarian [remarks presented at the Fifth National Conference of the Association of College and Research Libraries]
Over the years, I have tried mostly in vain to get libraries to subscribe to the 501(c)(3) nonprofit journal I have been publishing on literature, democracy, and dissidence since 1998. To date, I've managed to obtain 15 institutional subscriptions. Compare that to the well over 500 obtained by Agni and Poetry magazine. As a result of one attempt, Watertown Free Public Library ended up issuing a three-month trespass order without warning or due process. That was the only time I have ever been to that library. One would suspect I must have had done something terrible like issue violent threats, swear belligerently, or make sexual jokes. But none of that occurred. Hard to believe? Perhaps not.
More recently, on June 19, 2012, I was sitting in Sturgis Library (Barnstable, MA), described by former library trustee Kurt Vonnegut as a "clapboard tomb." There I was in a corner alone in a room quietly working on my laptop, something I had been doing there about five times per week for a year and a half. The director and no less than three police officers suddenly entered. When I asked what I had done, the director said: "You've been critical of me, you don't like it here, so now you can't come here anymore." Actually, I did like the library, though I did not like the director's egregious violation...