The ALA and our profession in general have been giving the Occupy Library folks great press and encouragement so far. However, talk was cheap until now. Now that the chips are really on the table, how will they respond? I’ve grown more and more discouraged with the white-upper-middle-class, conflict-averse, duck-and-cover mentality of this profession the more I’ve learned about it. Prove me wrong this time, please. Stand up for your colleagues,  your patrons, and your society.

Stand up for a society that would value libraries and other public goods instead of placing them under constant threat, whether via the budget line item or jackboots and truncheons. The end result is the same, and we’re only delaying the inevitable by continuing to acquiesce to a process that will end in the dissolution of the public sphere. It’s time to start taking sides, and I don’t think we want to be on the side of people who throw libraries into dumpsters.