TESTIMONY
Lauren Camito, Executive Director of Urban Libraries Unites on Challenges and Perseverance of Library Workers Amid Book Bans
1:46:06
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3 min
Lauren Camito, Executive Director of Urban Librarians Unite, shares insights on supporting library workers through stress, trauma, and the culture war against book bans. Highlighting initiatives like the urban library study, drag story hour safety planning, and support networks, Camito addresses the underlying motives of book bans and the resilience of library workers against harassment and budget cuts. She emphasizes the core values of inclusion and acceptance in NYC libraries, calling for restored access amidst proposed budget threats.
Lauren Camito
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My name is Lauren Camito.
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I'm a librarian here in New York City and the executive director of Urban Librarian's unite, 501 3 professional organization based in Brooklyn that focuses on supporting library workers in urban areas across the US.
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One of our main focuses at Urban Library And tonight right now, particularly, is helping library workers deal with stress and trauma of their work.
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From ramifications, from library budget cuts to contending with workplace harassment or protests where people scream at you.
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The work we do that's most relevant to today's topic is our 2022 urban library and try a study, which I have a copy of, and our drag story hour safety planning guide, and our library worker support network.
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Which will be a series of peer led support groups around trauma and urban public library or urban library work in general.
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Book bands are not about the books at all.
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Books are just containers for the stories of humanity.
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They're how we share and communicate the human experience across different life experiences.
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The people who want to ban and limit books aren't It's not about the paper.
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It's about the that denying that shared humanity of the groups that they don't want you to read about.
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They don't think that those people's stories deserve to be heard or recorded.
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Because if it's not what it's about, then why did these book ban lists not have all of the Bridgerton novels, and I've read all of them like three times.
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They are absolutely the same sorts of things that are in the books that are on the band lists.
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It's just that they're super white and romance novels and by a white lady.
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They're not about gay people.
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So that's fine.
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That kind of sex in a book in the library is fine.
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It's when people see something they don't understand or think is IKE, that they want it out of their lives.
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And out of the lives of their neighbors.
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Because this is about denying the humanity of our neighbors.
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This is a moral panic.
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It's akin to the red scare or when we all thought that Dungeons And Dragons was going to turn all of our kids into demon summoning satanists.
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Like, my dad wouldn't let me play d and d.
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Which is absolutely absurd.
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My daughter plays every Sunday.
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Libraries and library workers are collateral damage in this culture war.
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Were being targeted, sometimes personally targeted, and accused of things like child abuse or worse.
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And if anybody expects that this abuse will make library workers back down, they are wrong.
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We will not.
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We will organize and support each other so that we can continue to support our neighbors as they access information freely in all of our public libraries.
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New York City is a place where people come to find themselves and be themselves.
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Our values are those of acceptance and inclusion.
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There's more than one way to ban a book, as my friend Emily says, so eloquently.
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If a community can't enter the library because it's closed due to budget cuts, they can't read the stories of their neighbors.
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The proposed cuts will have a chilling effect on the right to read because when you don't have the staff time to take the time to really recommend a book for an individual person because you're too busy trying to make sure that all the books get shelved because we haven't been able to hire and we don't have enough staff, then that's also limiting access to the books that are the shelves.
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I'm deeply grateful for the support of this committee for calling this hearing and listening to the dangers book bands posed to frontline library workers.
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We look forward to working with you this spring to address the cuts and restore full access to libraries for everyone.