Thoughts on Banned Books Week

Sunday, September 25 marks the beginning of Banned Books Week. BBW is an annual event sponsored by the American Library Association, a week-long warning of the dangers posed by the evils of censorship. This is, of course, entirely justifiable and appropriate. So, why am I unhappy about BBW?

The problem I have is not with BBW or the ideas it represents, since I agree with them for the most part. I would be more than happy to support ALA in its commitment to intellectual freeedom if I thought they actually meant it. Unfortunately, BBW, as worthy an endeavor as it is, has come to symbolize the hypocrisy of the association and its leadership.

While ALA devotes the next week to the dangers posed by the ignorant yokels who want to have the Harry Potter books removed from their local school library, it continues to ignore and even condone the brutal suppression of intellectual freedom that is taking place just 90 miles from the tip of Florida.

Today in Cuba, the network of totalitarian control exercised by the Castro regime is being challenged by a grassroots network of independent libraries that seek to provide the Cuban people access to the books that Fidel doesn't want them to read. To quote the Friends of Cuban Libraries Web site:

In response to a public statement by President Fidel Castro that "There are no prohibited books in Cuba, only a lack of money to purchase them," Cuba's first independent library, named in honor of Felix Varela, was opened in 1998 in the city of Las Tunas. The Felix Varela Library was established in the apartment of Berta Mexidor, an economist, and her husband, Ramon Colas, a psychologist. Approximately 100 independent libraries, located in the homes of volunteers, now flourish in Cuba despite an unprecedented campaign of harassment, threats, intimidation, police raids, arrests, physical assaults, evictions and confiscations. Most of the libraries are affiliated with the project begun by Ramon Colas and Berta Mexidor, while others have been established by groups of teachers, journalists, religious denominations, etc. In addition to offering public access to uncensored books, Cuba's independent librarians also sponsor uncensored debates, seminars, public meetings, art exhibits, literary contests and children's programs, all free of government control.

The Cuban independent librarians stand for every ideal that ALA claims to uphold. They defend intellectual freedom against a brutal police state, and many of them have paid a fearsome price. In 2003 19 of the independent librarians were arrested and sentenced to long prison terms in Castro's gulag (one of the 19, who was in severe ill health, has since been released). Noted freedom fighters such as Vaclav Havel and Yelena Bonner have expressed their support. Even the French have stated their solidarity with the independent librarians. Surely the American Library Association, vaunted defender of intellectual freedom, stands with them as well?

Unfortunately, the answer is no. A proposed resolution brought before the ALA Council at the January 2004 Midwinter meeting calling for the release of the imprisoned librarians was voted down almost unanimously. Renowned civil libertarian Nat Hentoff was so disgusted by the vote that he immediately renounced the Immroth Award for Intellectual Freedom that he had received from ALA in 1983.

The vote, of course, is symptomatic of the left wing orthodoxy that dominates the top levels of the association. The hard left, in spite of their disproportionate influence in ALA Council, is not the problem. It is a given that the Chomskyite/Stalinist wing of ALA will be open in its adoration of Fidel and willingness to engage in their typical grovelling apologetics for his thuggishness. Intellectual freedom for them is not a principle, just a tool to undermine the "evil capitalist system" and replace it with their so called Utopia. The problem is with the liberals and moderate leftists who profess to support intellectual freedom, but refuse to stand up to the hard left in defense of this belief. Sadly, it seems that the majority of ALA's leadership would rather remain silent when a totalitarian gangster burns books and imprisons people than be on the same side of an issue as the Bush Administration and Cuban exile community. Many of the same people who fantasize about being the only thing preventing John Ashcroft and his jackbooted minions from ransacking the libraries and subpoening the library records of anyone who ever read a Chomsky book, are content to stand idly by when a totalitarian police state really does ban books and crush intellectual freedom.

While it ignores the beleaguered independent libraries ALA has continued to maintain a good working relationship with the state-run Cuban library system, whose commitment to intellectual freedom rivals those of the libraries in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. The pretext often given by ALA is that the independent libraries are not "real libraries". It's true that the independent librarians are not professionally trained. Surely that's reason enough to ignore them. After all, what does standing up for intellectual freedom against a police state matter compared to being able to properly catalog your collection using AACR2? It's good to see ALA has its priorities in order.

When ALA begins to take its own principles seriously, I will be happy to as well.

For more on independent libraries in Cuba, visit the following sites:

Friends of Cuban Libraries

Freadom.info