TESTIMONY
Anthony W. Marx, President of New York Public Library on Defending Democracy and Liberty Through Diverse Information Accessibility
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6 min
Anthony W. Marx, President of the New York Public Library, delivers testimony about the crucial role libraries play in promoting democracy, liberty, and diverse information accessibility.
He highlights the efforts to ban and criminalize the teaching of race, gender, and LGBTQ+ identities and addressed how such bans target marginalized communities, including LGBTQ+ Americans and people of color.
Marx emphasizes the library's initiatives to combat book banning, like the 'Books for All' campaign, which includes banned book clubs, a writing contest, and providing access to banned books online and in print to anyone in the country. He also mentions partnerships with the American Library Association and the 826 national writing organization to further these efforts.
Anthony W. Marx
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That ensure freedom and liberty.
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And that is what we are here to defend and what we do in our daily work We need to make sure that a wide range of information and viewpoints is available to all.
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It is bedrock to democracy.
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One of the most alarming aspects, as Linda has already said so eloquently, is how much these bands are targeting, those folks who can least be targeted, who are marginalized already, particularly LGBTQ plus Americans and people of colors.
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In large in in the larger context, these efforts explicitly ban or even criminalize the teaching of such topics as race, gender, and identities of GPTQ people.
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They are targeted at eliminating these perspectives, these voices, and we know from history I say this as a son of descendants of German Jews who fled Nazi Germany and someone who worked, lived in South Africa, the 19 eighties that those kinds of efforts follow shortly with efforts to eliminate these people fully.
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We cannot see this proceed, and we are here to fight against it.
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We need to ensure that these folks, ourselves, see ourselves, see themselves, in our country's liberate litter and culture.
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And we all need to be able to read these books so that we can learn about others and about ourselves and develop the empathy that is again core to democracy.
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We have to make sure that the effort that we do not deprive everyone of the opportunity to learn and empathize And this goes against everything that libraries stand for.
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In October 2023 during banned books week, we called Books for all and launched a national initiative, where we provide regular banned book clubs and a writing contest and offer copies online and in in print, but online to anyone in the country, especially those in the states that have seen the lead of these bookannings.
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We offer bimonthly access through the book clubs to titles that have included Jason Reynolds, who will hear from shortly and Brendan Kylie in their book, all America and boys.
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We we are continuing with this again by monthly because we need to ensure the freedom to read, to learn, and to empathize.
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In addition to the book clubs, we're having a prize winning, our our prize offering, competition for essays, the finalist of which, the winner of which will be published in teen vogue and so many others in our own NYPL's Teen Voice Magazine.
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The books for all campaign, again, provides downloadable not only the books, but all So tool kits that provide flyers, images, hashtags, campaign slogans, everything that everyone needs across the country to mobilize against these book bands.
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We're proud to have partnered with the American Library Association, and you'll hear from them again shortly.
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To make sure that this is an effort not just for New Yorkers so that we can join in the efforts, but for all Americans.
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We've also partnered with the 826 national, the national writing organization to spread the word about our writing contest.
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All of these efforts are part of a long standing tradition that ensure that the titles and perspectives of marginalized communities of all communities are available.
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When the Black Lives Matter protest exploded in the summer of 2020, we expanded our digital collections on black heritage, drawing on the great collections of the Schaumburg in Harlem.
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We we we saw within just weeks, that reading list had 35,000 checkouts.
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In addition, we've always observed pride women's history and black history 3 month.
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Our commitments to the read freedom to read are ongoing.
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Proudly displayed and banner on our land on our iconic building at 42nd 5th, proclaiming the stand against book banning.
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While we look forward to continuing our essential work in this campaign, the city's libraries cannot escape at the same time.
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The impact of record potential cuts.
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The fiscal year, we see cuts in the neighborhood of 58,300,000 dollars, a devastating level of cuts, if implemented.
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Already, the 5% mid year peg to LIBOR's current budgets amounting to $23,600,000, have seen us forced to reduce library programs and materials, the elimination of Sunday services at all the branches that we're offering it.
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The $583,000,000 cuts, we need to see those restored for FY 25.
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The current cuts to library collections already, NYPL will purchase 20,000 fewer ebooks, 6000 fewer downloadable audibles, audiobooks, 40,000 fewer books in English, and 6000 fewer world language books so essential to our immigrant communities and our asylum seekers to all the the descendants of immigrants as almost all of us are here in New York.
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Wanna close my testimony with a popular refrain.
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Libraries are for everyone.
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They are the most visited, the most trusted, the most essential civic institution in this town and throughout this country, and that means we need to stand up as we are, as you are.
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At this moment of challenge, we are grateful to the Council for its partnership over these years.
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We thank you again for the opportunity to testify and look forward to ongoing discussions and even more importantly, our ongoing work.