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Libraries, Prisons, and Abolition

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Libraries, Prisons, and Abolition Libraries, Prisons, and Abolition 2020 Liv Graham, MLIS The following is a three part series I have written on prisons, libraries, and abolition in conclusion of my coursework. Each Tuesday for three weeks, a new piece will be published on the DLIS blog. The first piece is a guide for library workers who have limited experiences with the prison-industrial complex, providing an overview of prisons, jails, and detention centers in the U.S.; examining the intent and effects of increased incarceration rates; and defining some core tenets of/broad approaches to abolitionist thinking. The second piece focuses on the library as an institution that, produced under the forces of moralistic reformatory thinking, inevitably influenced the operations and procedures of the institution maneuvered under american racial capitalism. It aims to expand our creative thinking on repair work by looking towards how we can disrupt these systematic processes, such as smashing the professional tenet of neutrality and restructuring LIS pedagogy to be led by the most oppressed, as well as what decolonization and anti-violence strategies could look like for caring, sustainable futures of information institutions. The third piece will focus on practical applications of abolitionist, expansive initiatives you can undertake as someone trained in library work, both as an individual outside your job and as a worker within an institution, in order to work in coordination with incarcerated people in autonomous building and movement by facilitating access to information. It will examine the current pressing information crises specifically inside Indiana prisons exacerbated by the Digital Divide; offering programming and outreach ideas; and elaborating on or critiquing contemporary offered solutions/reforms in LIS like employing social workers in the library or divesting from police partnerships inside your library. I currently work as a part-time web services and reference librarian at a community college; because my work experience is primarily in public and academic libraries, these are the institutions which I will mainly focus on in the following pieces. I want to preface these writings by saying that my viewpoint is based on my embodied experiences and as a result is axiomatically siloed. I am a nonbinary transgender person (they/them pronouns, I appreciate you asking) who has undoubtedly experienced the carceral connections between healthcare mistreatment and anti-queer bigotry among everyday social antagonisms. However, I have never been incarcerated or detained against my will. I am a euro- american/white person—a young, mostly-able-bodied adult raised with access to more financial, physical, educational resources than many americans and most of the globe. I do not wish to This work was first posted on September 4, 2020 as an essay series for the IUPUI Department of Library and Information Science blog. Available from: https://blogs.iu.edu/dlis/2020/09/04/mlis-grad-liv-graham-presents-weekly- essay-series-on-libraries-prisons-and-abolition/ Copyright 2020, Liv Graham. Licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 1 speak from the vantage point of Black, Indigenous, & People of Color (BIPOC), who are targeted by the State by the very intent of its hostile design, nor to the experiences of those outside the U.S. who are undoubtedly targeted by this declining regime. I do not wish to contribute to a saturated commentary culture of white ogling at exhibitions of white supremacist violence against and murders of Black/New Afrikan peoples, nor to espouse my prison abolitionist vantage point as the One True Only Way Forward. I do not wish to weaponize my thinking as another way to torture and violate Black folks with white & educated abolitionist “empathic identification”, thereby further perpetuating “the circulation of dead and tortured black people produces in nonblack people not disgust or raised consciousness, but pleasure” (Boko, 2020). From where I am positioned, inside LIS and in other social-spatial surroundings, I wish to demystify key functionings of the carceral state, in order to: introduce the field of LIS and other cultural institution/GLAM workers to the abundance of pressing information needs of the many people impacted and disappeared by the expansive prison-industrial complex; and to illustrate that we who manage information can and must play valuable roles in fighting for open access and information liberation, namely through an abolitionist, radical, generative framework of thinking, being, working, and interacting with one another. Joshua Briond (2020) writes, the project of social categorization is a colonial, hierarchical one, one that renders us divided into binaries existing in antagonization. Through rigorous study of race, whiteness, movement, and liberation, we can make daily choices that “get to the root of the power, betray them, and build from there” (Briond, 2020). LIS is a glaringly white, predominantly gender-conforming field; after decades of institutional austerity and begging for funding scraps, the continued crises of professionalism implore library workers to not challenge the market-oriented wills of bosses and boards. As I speak to in the second piece, libraries repeat DEI verbiage while refusing to change an aggressive workplace culture, for example. This contributes to what Ervin describes as sustaining a Progressive Plantation, which fuels burnout for BIPOC library workers and library workers at the margins who are expected to push the field forward while carrying more than their fair share. Those of us who would be able to open up many more doors through our presence in these institutions cannot sustain this work without the ability to shape and change our organizations to prioritize care. This starts with, and is not limited to, guaranteeing all library workers living wages and healthcare, among other salient and overdue needs. White hegemony in LIS is reinforced through LIS education, which by and large in pedagogy does not examine meaning in difference, just instructs a professional culture of non-critique against ALA and DEI initiatives outdated demands from library workers of the 1960s and 1970s, as I speak to in my subsequent writings. Information workers can be uniquely educated and empowered to think outside the box (ie Institution) to build open systems of access to information about, for, and by us, working towards an attainable vision of collective information literacy, empowerment through access. Through intra/interpersonal reflection; studying the past and the speculative; relying on one another; and committing to and sustaining projects that build, rather than shrink, our worlds. We can undertake these approaches to critical librarianship through collective support, foundational to transformative justice. Assessing our strengths, that are afforded to us through birth, class, presentation, choices, we can then work together for the 2 care needed after committing to the challenging answers found from asking: “how can this condition be redressed?” (Boko, 2020). Mia Mingus (2016) writes, “community” is a word that we use all the time, but “many people don’t know what it is or feel they have never experienced it” (Mingus, 2020). Sustainable community endeavors require solid relationships between people maintained through trust. Building and growing connections between people where they already exist or can exist can lay the groundwork for the conditions required to support people without these connections, those who are violently targeted by the state and moralistic charity and nonprofit initiatives. In our everyday lives, the nourishing choices we make, like to care for one another or commit to reflection and growth together, can expand the number of people who can “recognize, talk about, prevent and respond to violence” so that people “in need of support will find it in their daily lives” (Mingus, 2016). These small steps towards a larger transformation will “help us gradually move away from the structures that keep people isolated… [which is] not only useful for ourselves and the people in our immediate circles, but has the potential to… support anyone experiencing violence” (Mingus, 2016). I believe, like nina de jesus advocated for, that libraries are one of the few state institutions that offers some capacity for emancipatory potential. As information gatekeepers, we hold an immense power that any ALA pep speech can never address the nefarious, material underbelly of. Each one of our individual struggles is bound up in the larger fight for collective liberation from the forces of white patriarchal supremacy that plague this state, the U.S. at large, and fortify racial capitalism. This is not the mainstream approach in our field, yet critical librarianship continues opening up the doors for library workers and users alike. When ALA named Seattle Public Library as the recipient of the 2020 Library of the Year award this summer, trans library workers and advocates for us critiqued ALA for valorizing a library that continues allowing violent transphobes to take up meeting room space on the basis of being “taxpayers”. Far too often, the safety, health, and continued wellbeing of library workers from the margins are ridiculed and neglected under the threat of white supremacist hegemony embedded deep within our workplaces. This is not new to the american public library, which, in its most basic form, is the raison d'être for the imperialist
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