What is the American Library Association Thinking?

The Miami Herald has an on-target editorial about the perverse behavior of the American Library Association and their antipathy towards the independent librarians in Cuba:

The 64,000-member American Library Association has refused a request for solidarity with Cuba's independent librarians. Worse, it stifled debate on the issue at its recent conference in Toronto.

In other words, ALA won't advocate for Cubans the intellectual freedoms that it stands for and demands for Americans in this country.

[edit]

''It is the right of every person to read what they wish,'' says Ramón Humberto Colás, a founder of Cuba's independent-library movement. But that's not what happens in Cuba. Mr. Colás and Berta Mexidor, his wife, were inspired to create Cuba's first such library in their Las Tunas home after hearing Fidel Castro say, ``In Cuba, there are no forbidden books, just no money to buy them.''

That was in 1998. After Mr. Colas was detained more than 20 times for lending books and his children were constantly harassed in school, the family arrived in Miami with political asylum in December 2001.

Mr. Colás notes that his home library had some 2,000 books, from the politically incorrect (in Cuba) Animal Farm and 1984 to noncontroversial books by Gabriel García Márquez and Che Guevara. Unlike the Cuban regime, Mr. Colás didn't discriminate in his offerings. And unlike the five regime librarians invited to participate in an ALA conference panel, he was willing to freely debate the state of access to information in Cuba.

He didn't get the chance. ALA abruptly canceled the debate. Never mind that during its April crackdown on democrats and dissenters, Cuba's police state sacked 22 independent libraries and threw 14 librarians in prison for terms up to 26 years.

Yet ALA let the five ''official'' Cuban panelists yammer on for five hours about the virtues of the regime's disinformation system. Moreover, it didn't respond to a letter -- brought by Mr. Colás -- from Gisela Delgado Sablón, head of the Independent Libraries of Cuba Project that includes some 100 unofficial libraries still in operation. Writing to Michael Dowling, ALA international-relations office director, Delgado Sablón asked the group to petition for the release of the librarians and to ``show solidarity with our project.''

There's no definitive evidence of books being banned or librarians harassed in Cuba, Mr. Dowling told The New York Times. Thus, ALA tabled making any statement on Cuba until its meeting in January.

I find this to be so perverse and frankly, inexplicable. Last week on the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC a discussion of this issue took place between Ann Sparanese, a council member of the ALA and Robert Kent, co-chair of the Friends of Cuban Libraries. You can listen to it in Real Audio here and draw your own conclusions.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have objected to what the Cuban government has done and is doing. It's a very scary time when the American Library Association seeks to dismiss these human rights abuses and doesn't seem to be concerned about the fact that people have been arrested in Cuba for the non-violent expression of their political beliefs and for providing a way for books to be disseminated. They claim that these people are not librarians and do not run libraries. This is rank hair-splitting. Perhaps they should turn to this recent account of the jail conditions of the dissidents in Cuba:

In a dog-eared diary smuggled out of prison, journalist Manuel Vázquez, 51, said he sleeps on ''an old, dirty, hard-stuffed mattress'' in a jail infested with rats, scorpions and other creatures.

''The food is hard to describe,'' he writes. Meals include soy meal, roasted corn meal and sugar water, and a white paste made from wheat flour and ``other, unrecognizable substances.''

Other inmates complain of beatings, solitary confinement and poor medical care. Conditions are ''harsh and life threatening,'' a U.S. human rights report said in March.

It's clear to see who the ALA has sided with :

Cuban officials reject claims there are prisoners of conscience on the island. They say the dissidents are actually U.S.-paid ''mercenaries'' who are trying to help Washington topple the socialist government.

That is essentially what Ms. Sparanese said on the radio the other day. Sounds to me like she has Castro's talking points down to a tee.

Comments

[akaky]

randy, they are not thinking, that's the problem. ala does a lot of good things for american libraries, but sometimes the organization's propensity for finding the most left wing position available and clinging to it no matter what the circumstances is annoying at best and hurtful in the long run. i think the problem with ala is that it lives on the members' dues [mine are $100 a year and this year i'm not paying because of this cuban thing]and this shelters them from the realities people like me have to deal with. where i work the library budget is voted on directly by the electorate; in other public libraries the amount alloted is fixed by politicians after everyone else has gotten their piece of the fiscal pie. in both cases we have to take the sentiments of the public we serve into account. the ala doesnt, and i wish i knew how many people at ala hq in chicago have worked in a public library as opposed to an academic, special, or corporate library, or if they have worked in a public setting, when was the last time they actually dealt with the public; the leadership's constant leftist bias smacks, to me, of people who've never had to justify themselves or what they do to anyone. it's nice work if you can get it, but sometimes, as with the cuba issue, the view from the ivory tower lets the people in it overlook those things they do not really want to see. i'm sorry, i'm venting now, arent i? this new blog looks good, randy, and regards to you and la senhora

[Randy Paul]

As someone who leans decidedly left, it also makes me angry to hear Ms. Sparanase's tortured rationalizations for equivocating on this issue.

It's despicable.

[Randy Paul]

Akaky,

I hate to be pedantic, but the definite feminine article in Portuguese is simply "a" (the masculine is "o"), so it should be "a Senhora." Thanks for the kind words in any case.

[akaky]

o....sorry. i didnt know that. (puts on best Andy Rooney voice) "Have you ever noticed that people who start a conversation by saying 'I hate to be pedantic' inevitably are? ;-)
in any case, i read lisa english's comments about the ala and frankly i dont know why the right is not jumping all over this; it's tailormade for us. one gets to bash a large liberal organization and fidel all at the same time; these two for the price of one deals dont come around everyday. i suspect its because most people dont know how liberal the ala is on most issues and because if someone does complains about it we'll go "shhhhhhhh!" librarians are good at that. anyway, (this time i will do it right) regards to you and a senhora....that a just doesnt look right. it looks like i'm saying regards to you and a married woman to be named later.

[Randy Paul]

Akaky,

Maybe it's just the cognitive dissonance of knowing a lefty beat them to it :-)

The definite article in Portuguese is always a bit of a headache, especially for Spanish speakers. The plural is os (masculine) and as (feminine). Their is a contraction for de and os that is dos, meaning "of the." Accordingly, a lot of Spanish speakers thought that the name of the Portuguese-American novelist, John dos Passos meant John Two-Steps, when in fact it meant John of the Steps.