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Introduction
In late spring 2020, a critical moment was reached in movements for Black lives. The murder of George Floyd by police spurred a series of uprisings as a response to centuries-long forms of state-sanctioned violence and murder of Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC). The engagement of the people of the USA was vast, with participation in all 50 states and with 500 actions taking place nationally (Bourne, 2020). With so much involvement by the American people in the uprisings of spring and summer 2020, we began to see a national discourse around police, the concept of policing, reform, and police and prison abolition. As this discourse entered our collective conversations nationally, many institutions began taking part in these conversations, considering what reform or abolition could mean for their institutions and what it could mean to challenge the notion of a policed society. Libraries entered the conversation and sought to reflect on their relationships with the police and police structures. Collectives of library workers working toward abolition such as the Abolitionist Library Association created space for education, discourse and action (Abolitionist Library Association, 2021). On June 11, 2020, the American Library Association (ALA) released a statement condemning violence against BIPOC, protestors and journalists. In this statement, the ALA called upon its members to “support initiatives to end police violence against Black people, to combat the systemic racism that infects our society, and to speak out against all attempts to restrict first amendment rights” (American Library Association, 2020). As a result, library workers and libraries started to evaluate their ties to police and security guards.
Op-ed pieces illuminated the ways in which library workers may need to reconsider their reliance on police as it can endanger the lives of Black and other minoritized populations (Dapier and Knox, 2020). To that end, the Los Angeles Public Library investigated how much money the library was investing in the Los Angeles Police Department, and administrators were shocked to discover that the security budget had increased to 5% of the total library’s budget; the Denver Public Library had also allocated 5% of its budget to local police, with the Austin Public Library not far behind at 3.2%. The movement to eliminate police presence in libraries continued in cities...