For many who haven’t spent time in the Twin Cities area, one of the more persistent images of Minneapolis has long been one of hope and exuberance: Mary Tyler Moore tossing her beret in the air in the opening credits of her 1970s sitcom. (The city is proud of it as well, boasting an eight-foot statue celebrating that iconic moment.)

In recent months, however, images of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection’s Operation Metro Surge in action, as well as the murder of two civilians by federal agents, have flooded our news feeds. Heading into the 2026 Public Library Association (PLA) conference, held at the Minneapolis Convention Center April 1–3, attendees wondered: Would they be safe? Were people still afraid? And what would the overall mood be?

Photo by Kevin Henegan

The answers: Yes, conferencegoers remained safe—the cold, rainy weather that discouraged foot traffic, coupled with an active DoorDash economy and surprisingly good exhibit floor food (and plenty of coffee) no doubt helped keep the wagons circled. Among the 4,165 in-person registrants, 286 exhibitors, and 1,555 exhibits staff (another 404 public librarians signed up for the virtual conference), there were no incidents. Yes, people are still afraid—while the most visible ICE operations have diminished, federal agents remain in the area, immigrant communities are still vulnerable, and the trauma persists for everyone. Yet the mood was, overall, positive. Speakers, sessions, and conversations consistently centered the belief that change is both necessary and possible, that library values still take precedence, and that hope is an effective muscle.

CONCERNS IN THE LIBRARY

Photo by Kevin Henegan

Despite the conference’s upbeat mood, library staff are anxious about protecting their patrons and themselves; concerns about safety and preparedness were on the minds of many. Panelists in the session “Responding to ICE at the Library: Real World Approaches” advised that, while immigration agent actions are different from those of local officers, library policies on law enforcement are a good place to start. Have strategies in place for chains of communication, and designate who’s authorized to respond—scenario training is useful. Post signage for public and non-public spaces within the library, and keep the doors to non-public areas closed. The ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom fact sheet on Libraries and Immigration Enforcement has helpful resources.

What has made federal agents’ tactics different, noted Jocelyne Sansing, director of Middleton Public Library, WI, is the disregard for due process, which causes stress for everyone. Many libraries have stopped offering English as a Second Language (ESL) programs in person, as participants are afraid to attend. Instead, they have begun distributing Wi-Fi hotspots so people can attend remotely, as well as allowing school-age children to attend virtual classes.

Minnesota’s Hennepin County has seen ongoing trauma—the murders of George Floyd, Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Renee Nicole Good, Alex Pretti, and students at the Church of the Annunciation Catholic School, in which 28 other people, 24 of them children, were injured. Hennepin County Library (HCL) Director Scott Duimstra has found ICE agents in library buildings and parking lots.

Duimstra realized early on that he needed to increase employee communication. He initiated virtual all-staff meetings to hear concerns and find out who needed to work from home, who needed mental health support, and how they envisioned helping residents feel safer. The library reached out to families in the community, noting the long-term impacts on education and economic well-being. How do you help students who have missed two or three months of school, or breadwinners who haven’t felt safe going to work? HCL created at-home kits for students linked to school and library resources—with some recreation built in as well.

And Duimstra worked with staff so they could march in protests, setting aside space with coffee, banana bread, and meeting rooms for making signs or putting on extra layers to handle the -11˚F weather. All he asked, he said, was that marchers let their managers know in advance so their positions could be covered.

Other sessions looked at serving the sudden influx of new Americans, such as the panel of New York City librarians discussing “Serving Migrants at Ground Zero,” or meeting local safety challenges through a model of holistic support—including bathroom redesign—in “Creating Library Safety Through Partnerships, Planning, and Training.” The takeaway everywhere: trauma is different for each member of the library’s community, staff, and leadership, so conversations need to be honest and ongoing.

And hope is critical as well, noted Sansing. “It’s important to remember that it won’t always be like this.”

SPEAKERS FOR CHANGE

Conference keynoters were well chosen; each amplified the call for systemic change and ways to reframe thinking.

Opening session speaker Bryan Stevenson warmly welcomed the crowd by declaring “I love librarians!” before moving into a passionate keynote about justice, truth, and the hope for a better world. Sharing personal anecdotes about his journey to Harvard Law School, experiences providing legal assistance to death row inmates and vulnerable populations, and work with communities to document the atrocities of slavery and lynching, Stevenson managed to bring both laughter and tears to the full auditorium.

In calling for a “new era of truth and justice in America,” Stevenson laid out four areas where he believes libraries are well-suited to support the creation of “infrastructure that celebrates knowledge and learning”: 1) understand the power of proximity; 2) challenge the narratives the fuel hatred; 3) stay hopeful (“hopelessness is the enemy of justice”); and 4) do uncomfortable and inconvenient things. A skilled orator, Stevenson noted that “public libraries are key to solutions” before reminding the audience that “we deny ourselves the beauty of justice when we refuse to tell the truth.”

Stevenson, the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative as well as the Legacy Sites in Montgomery, AL, won the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction for his book, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption.

While AI may still dominate much of the conversation in libraries, Ruha Benjamin, who took the Big Ideas stage Thursday morning, had a different take on the pervasive call to innovate. Benjamin, the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, as well as author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (2019) and Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want (2022), talked of “cognitive sovereignty”—who gets to frame the information world we live in. From the anti-literacy laws in the pre–Civil War United States to the marketing of AI technology by those who profit from it, she said, it’s the work of educators and librarians to question assumptions of what constitutes intelligence, and whose lives are valuable.

These include the conflation of intelligence as smartness, innovation as social progress, imagination as superfluous, and human nature as essentially selfish, among other truisms. Benjamin pointed to the recent mutual aid efforts in Minneapolis as evidence that “what we’ve been taught about scarcity and self-interest is just cultural code.” Quoting the Civics of Technology Project, she noted that technology is never neutral, and when libraries “begin to chase innovation for its own sake,” she said, “we fall into same trap as Silicon Valley startups.” The key, rather than blindly choosing innovative tech such as AI over the people it affects, is to build consensual technology, and consider the alternatives to the world we’re driving toward now. “’Who owns the future?’ is the wrong question to ask,” she added—it implies the future can be owned. People want to transform physical reality, but not social reality; we need to reimagine what counts as innovation and who counts as innovators.

Chef Sean Sherman, a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, also examined social change—in this instance, through food. Sherman, who opened Minnesota’s first Indigenous restaurant, Owamni by the Sioux Chef, in 2021, has made it his mission to support and promote Indigenous food systems and Native food sovereignty. He offered a brisk lesson on Indigenous colonization in the United States, explaining how that extended to natural knowledge and what we eat; as a young chef he wondered, “Why was French food the center of the culinary world?” People didn’t know what pre-reservation, precolonial foods were, and he set out to change that.

Owamni not only creates awareness through its menu, he explained, but creates a market for Indigenous food products that extends to schools and hospitals. He is the founder of North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NĀTIFS), a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and preserving Indigenous food systems. What do we pass down to others, Sherman asked the auditorium of library workers; “How can we swing the pendulum toward humanity?”

Harris County Public Library (HCPL), TX, received LJ and the Gerald M. Kline Family Foundation's Jerry Kline Community Impact Prize. (l.-r.) Jerry Kline; HCPL Director Edward Melton; HCPL Division Director of Programs, Partnerships, & Outreach Linda Stevens; and HCPL Collection Development Librarian Laura Smith Photo by Kevin Henegan

SUSTAINABILITY WITH HEART

The general trajectory of PLA 2026 was summed up well in the title of the session “From Anxiety to Action: Building Stronger Communities and Libraries,” which took a deep, compassionate dive into sustainability—not only climate mitigation, but the idea of sustaining communities and individuals. The issue at stake is what the former U.S. Surgeon General’s 2023 report termed an epidemic of loneliness and isolation, which are proving to be as hazardous to health as chronic conditions such as smoking or addiction.

While the two definitions of sustainability might seem different, said presenter Jennifer Ferris, assistant director of the Saratoga Springs Public Library, NY,, they are closely connected. More social connection means increased levels of civic engagement, a better ability to prepare for and respond to natural hazards, higher levels of economic prosperity, and lower levels of community violence, among other benefits. Building that culture of connection is where libraries excel, said Lisa Kropp, director of the Lindenhurst Memorial Library, NY. But because many have no extra budget dollars for civic engagement, or are not receptive to programming along those lines, library workers often need to start small. “We have to start looking at connection as a spectrum,” she said. “What is your library doing?”

The response was encouraging and inspiring as audience members lined up to describe their efforts. One library offers programs for adults with intellectual disabilities, led by community volunteers. Neighbor care programs help older residents clear dead wood from their property—“We’re looking for chainsaws.” Tech tutoring pairs teen volunteers with older adults. A monthly Dungeons & Dragon gets everyone from college students in their 20s to retirees to married couples. A librarian from Racine, WI, talked about hosting the state’s first participatory defense hub, a community support space for anyone facing legal charges or advocating for someone facing a case. A library in Vancouver held a speed-friending event, with about 30 people participating. One librarian who didn’t get administrative buy-in for a program made Bingo cards for Good Neighbor Day: Take some fruit to your neighbor, learn the name of their dogs—“Anyone can do it.”

“All of this that you’re doing is actual climate strategy work,” said Rebekkah Smith Aldrich, president of the Sustainable Libraries Initiative. More direct climate strategy in the library might look like doing an energy audit, switching to renewable energy sources, planting trees for shade or native species, purchasing from local businesses, or using ethical carbon offsets for conference travel. Climate justice happens when resources are deployed to address potential crisis in a way that protects vulnerable communities, she noted—a concern for libraries everywhere.

A sustainable library, said Ferriss, lives its values out loud and is a catalyst for civic participation and social cohesion in communities. Added Hazel Onsrud of Curtis Memorial Library, ME, “We can’t do it all, but we can all do something. And if we all do something we can do an awful lot.”