Library Research Notes #43

Voting season is (finally) here

Library Research Notes is a product of hippiegrrl media. At hippiegrrl media we believe that Black Lives Matter, Climate Change is real, Treaties need to be honored, Women have autonomy, Love is love, No human is illegal, Science=Truth, Unions are essential, the United States needs gun reform immediately, and the time for Trans Liberation is now! We value your readership. If you enjoy the Library Research Notes newsletter, please share it with a friend.

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Welcome back

We are 27 days out from the midterm elections and for many of us, the deadline for registration has now passed. Please check vote.gov to see if you are registered and if not, if you can still register prior to the midterm election. And then, on November 8th, PLEASE be sure to vote. It does not matter if you are in a “Red”, “Blue”, or “Purple” state - this election could be a deal breaker for democracy if we don’t come out to the polls in great numbers. I know I sound like a broken record, but I’m not going to stop talking about this until November 9th. And then, in 2023, I’ll be talking about it again as we move into the new campaign cycle for 2024.

With election day looming, my work with reproductive justice, through Tennessee Advocates for Planned Parenthood and Ruth’s Army, and voting rights, through The Working Families Party are going to be ramping up. Having said that, I will be taking a short break from the newsletter until mid-November.

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Historical Memory

In the last two newsletters, I discussed Immigration and Collective Forgetting (#42) and Historical Memory and Colonization (#41). This time around, I will be taking a break from talking about this topic and sharing some of the current events that have shaped our consciousness over the past few weeks.

Since we last came together in this space, many things have occurred in the United States and around the world. Here are just a few of those stories and links to learn more.

Hurricane Ian

In my last post, we discussed Hurricane Fiona ripping through Puerto Rico and the Caribbean Islands. This week we look back on Hurricane Ian, which made landfall in Florida, as a category 4 storm, on 27 September knocking out power and causing storm surges as high as 18 feet in some areas. At last count, at least 119 people died in the storm and many are wondering what could have been done to prevent or, at the very least, limit the amount of casualties from the storm. Here is an important takeaway from this npr story:

The National Hurricane Center routinely warns officials and the public not to focus solely on the storm's track and cone because the graphic doesn't show the areas that will be impacted or the size of the storm. And Ian was huge, almost 500 miles wide.

Iran

As I discussed in the last newsletter, there is a revolution happening in Iran. More and more women are being attacked and, in some cases, killed for pushing back on the morality policies of the Islamic Republic. In the last three weeks, several more women have gone missing, including two teenage girls, Nika Shakarami and Sarina Esmailzadeh, who were kidnapped by the police and beaten to death. The protests and disappearances continue in Iran and we need to continue raising awareness whenever we can. The media has finally started reporting on this situation, but every share on social media helps. Until everyone is free, none of us are free.

Walk for our lives

On September 26th, Francie Hunt, the Executive Director of Tennessee Advocates for Planned Parenthood (TAPP) began a walk across Tennessee, beginning in Memphis, which will culminate in Johnson City in November. Her goal is to speak one on one to Tennessee residents about their stories and open hearts and minds to the state of reproductive justice in Tennessee and across the nation. Nashville Scene did a wonderful piece on Francie and the walk here: Planned Parenthood Advocate Walks Across the State as ‘Protest and Pilgrimage’, where Francie discusses her ‘deep canvassing’ approach to reproductive justice work.

“It is not about trying to persuade people to think the way we think, but really helping them properly articulate their own values,” Hunt says. “What we find is usually when they do that, they’re more aligned with what [those at Tennessee Advocates for Planned Parenthood] believe.” 

I have a personal connection to the walk, beyond living in Tennessee, as I’ve been working with Francie on a media corps project for TAPP. We are hopeful that the deep canvassing approach, along with get-out-the-vote efforts by the various Planned Parenthood actions councils in Tennessee, will open some eyes and get people to the polls to vote in our best interests. Interacting on a personal level allows voters to see that they aren’t alone in their grief over the rights that have been and are being eroded, but that we all have a small part to play in our democracy, through our vote. We have power and if we use it collectively, for the good of all, we will win in the end.

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Bring back RSS (or just make it fun again)

This week I acquired a few new subscribers. Substack has a great feature that allows writers to recommend other newsletters and I believe that the majority of my subscribers over the past few months have come in from other writers recs. I am grateful for these connections.

Having said that - one of my newest subscribers, Jordan, makes a really great point in their profile: “I'm just here because this is like google reader again, pretty neat!” Agreed, Jordan! I particularly miss DIGG, which allowed you to follow blogs in a categorized fashion. I never really got into google reader, but I used to have blogrolls on the hippiegrrl site for others to sample ‘similar’ writers.

Both DIGG and Google reader were built on RSS (Really simple syndication) and that tech still exists today. Wired had a great primer on RSS back in 2018, that I believe is still relevant today: It's Time for an RSS Revival.

Librarians Rock!

Why University of Washington librarians went on strike for the day (seattletimes.com)

Librarians want to help combat Indiana’s declining literacy rate (wfyi.org)

‘We’ve moved backwards’: US librarians face unprecedented attacks amid rightwing book bans (theguardian.com)

How to beat a book ban: students, parents, and librarians fight back (theguardian.org)

Which side are you on?

Billy Bragg visited Buffalo this week to stand with the striking Starbucks workers at the Elmwood location and WNY Media captured it on video here:

Buffalo has always been a union town and these workers are continuing the struggle. Meanwhile, in Tennessee, we have an amendment (1) on the ballot that could enshrine “right to work” into the state constitution, which would “make it harder for working people to form unions and collectively bargain for better wages, benefits and working conditions” (aflcio.org). Right-to-work laws are garbage and there are currently 28 states with a form of this law on the books. We need to fight against union busting at work and at the ballot box! Again - and I cannot stress this enough - VOTE!

Thank you for hanging in there this week and I’ll see you again after the elections.

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Thank you for reading the Library Research Notes Newsletter! Now it’s YOUR turn. Please share your thoughts along with any other questions or suggestions for future research, in the comments. I look forward to lively discourse.