Speaking Up in the Community
I sent a letter to our county public library with an emphasis on making the environment inside libraries welcome to all rather than assuming that every person entering their doors was a fan of Twilight, vampires, witches and soft porn.
Increasingly I have found the local libraries (and we've lived coast to coast and seen the same trend) displaying books with the aforementioned subject matter and it is getting to the point I don't want to take my kids in with me when we pick up materials, much less browse!
Browsing the library used to turn up interesting finds on books we never might have thought existed but it's becoming nearly impossible without wading through extremely offensive magazine covers and book jackets all staring us in the face - most of them at children's eye level, which I don't think is coincidental - all over the place. I've never seen so many displays in a library before - they are literally everywhere!
Ok, well I finally wrote to them and told them of all my concerns and I just realized the other day while I was there that I didn't see all the offensive, blood dripping from the mouth, vampire-y books everywhere. I am hoping that maybe someone read my letter and actually passed it on to my local branch.
So my point is that we all need to let our voices be heard. If I see any more covers start creeping up, I think that the next time I will speak with a library worker in person, possibly even walking them over to the offensive material.
This kind of thing is also happening in the big box stores with their tv section. Every time we are in a store and they are playing movies with PG-13 ratings, my husband searches out the manager and asks him when they started prohibiting people younger than 13 years old to enter their store? This has always led to the movies being changed to something neutral. But they will keep trying so we ALL need to let our voices be heard about these things. Costco actually tried giving us the line that they "have to" play the newer released movies or they wouldn't sell. Realizing that is just a line, we pressed the matter until they could see the impudence of playing material that was offensive to many families who were paying members to their store!
This all reminds me of the movies It's a Wonderful life and Back to the Future II when they showed the horribly corrupted "future" of what could happen when good people didn't do anything to thwart and stop the evil agendas all around them.
You may not realize how important your voice is, but I strongly suspect that the 'bad guys' DO. So speak up!
Increasingly I have found the local libraries (and we've lived coast to coast and seen the same trend) displaying books with the aforementioned subject matter and it is getting to the point I don't want to take my kids in with me when we pick up materials, much less browse!
Browsing the library used to turn up interesting finds on books we never might have thought existed but it's becoming nearly impossible without wading through extremely offensive magazine covers and book jackets all staring us in the face - most of them at children's eye level, which I don't think is coincidental - all over the place. I've never seen so many displays in a library before - they are literally everywhere!
Ok, well I finally wrote to them and told them of all my concerns and I just realized the other day while I was there that I didn't see all the offensive, blood dripping from the mouth, vampire-y books everywhere. I am hoping that maybe someone read my letter and actually passed it on to my local branch.
So my point is that we all need to let our voices be heard. If I see any more covers start creeping up, I think that the next time I will speak with a library worker in person, possibly even walking them over to the offensive material.
This kind of thing is also happening in the big box stores with their tv section. Every time we are in a store and they are playing movies with PG-13 ratings, my husband searches out the manager and asks him when they started prohibiting people younger than 13 years old to enter their store? This has always led to the movies being changed to something neutral. But they will keep trying so we ALL need to let our voices be heard about these things. Costco actually tried giving us the line that they "have to" play the newer released movies or they wouldn't sell. Realizing that is just a line, we pressed the matter until they could see the impudence of playing material that was offensive to many families who were paying members to their store!
This all reminds me of the movies It's a Wonderful life and Back to the Future II when they showed the horribly corrupted "future" of what could happen when good people didn't do anything to thwart and stop the evil agendas all around them.
You may not realize how important your voice is, but I strongly suspect that the 'bad guys' DO. So speak up!
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