Advocacy

As ICE raids continue in Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN (MSP), the school day is anything but normal. Parents are standing guard and acting as escorts for immigrants and all nonwhite students at drop-off and pickup, recess has often been moved inside while ICE agents stand just outside campuses, schools are facilitating online learning to accommodate children whose families are too scared to let them leave the house, and students are staging walkouts in protest.

The 17 goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development were released in 2015, with the aim of addressing planetary ills such as poverty, violence, and human rights violations over the following 15 years. The simple but far-reaching items overlap, on a smaller scale, with library values—so much so that the American Library Association (ALA) created a Task Force on the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals in 2021. The task force’s mission is still going strong, and this year ALA sent a delegation to New York City during the UN’s High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development in mid-July.

Alan Inouye has led advocacy and public policy for the American Library Association (ALA) since 2007, where he’s touched everything from E-Rate to copyright to ebook access, securing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for libraries. His retirement from ALA this month marks a crucial moment for the association, which has weathered significant challenges in recent years and cannot afford to lose ground with relationships in Washington, DC, and across the broader library landscape.

For the past four years, EveryLibrary has been working to fight the book-banning movement. A large part of that fight is developing effective messaging against book bans, as well as conducting extensive message testing, surveys, and focus groups to understand the impact of messaging and determine which messages perform best.

Josselyn Atahualpa oversees adult education courses in literacy, English as a Second Language, and GED preparation. When she noticed a wave of asylum seekers coming to the library in early 2022, Atahaulpa alerted library leadership and pushed QPL to prioritize training on best practices for serving the community.

From her podcast, Allie the Librarian Booktalks, to her leadership with the Texas Library Association, Alexandra Cornejo demonstrates her unwavering commitment to intellectual freedom and promoting diverse voices in literature.

Meredith Crawford, Community Engagement Librarian with the Cedar Rapids Public Library, launched the Be Heard program at a local youth detention center with the goal of reducing recidivism by engaging students with literature and art.

As an American Library Association Emerging Leader, Nicollette Davis is always looking for ways to improve the library field. Through the We Here organization, she helps BIPOC library and information science professionals support each other in a welcoming space.

LaShawn Myles had not worked specifically with the disability community when she joined the Maryland State Library for the Blind and Print Disabled in 2018. Her work as an educator led her to libraries, where she quickly became a champion for visually impaired patrons, advocating for resources and finding ways to make materials more accessible.