The Justice League met on Wednesday morning to come up with a plan to address the Hate Graffiti found at the high school. We decided to focus on the library as a space, that brings people together and is a gathering place of peace.
Our first steps were to change the sliders on the website, social media and the Brightsign monitors to have human rights quotes and Libraries are for Everyone images on them. If anyone asks about these images and quotes, please let them know they are in direct response to the hate graffiti found at the high school.
We will also be creating social media posts with thoughtful, inspirational quotes and if possible, include Evergreen links to books or the book by the author of the quotes. Feel free to post ideas on this google sheet: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_s1D-c7lGw9dzLmmt8nKXhwqq4MPYKXFRPxkyBd_OyQ/edit?ts=5bd9ebcf
We will also brainstorm and post random acts of kindness stories and other inspirational stories as we see them. This will begin sometime in the near future.
There is a display of books near the magazines about the holocaust, we will be adding titles to this display over the next few days.
The Teen room has 2 book displays–“Books to Inspire Social Change” and “Libraries are For Everyone.” Plus our bulletin board Question of the Month will be updated with a question for teens to respond to along the lines of Are You a Change Maker? drawing inspiration from the ISFR recent conference. We are also working to bring in author Sara Farizan who’s new book release Here to Stay focuses on bullying, hate, and phobia.
The Children’s Room is going to have some more displays and will possibly run another Kindness Rocks program.
Unfortunately, as you know, the library has not been immune to this type of hate speech/graffiti. Be alert and aware and let Amy or the librarian in charge know of any suspicious activity.
Peace.