I would love it if ALA was holding a session called "Advocacy for Library Workers During a Crisis." https://twitter.com/ALALibrary/status/1248631082003714048

ALA has been talking about growing membership. Now is the time to do that. Now is the time for ALA to be paying labor lawyers to be challenging local governments that are laying off their workers. Now is the time for ALA to prove that they're a "professional organization."

But I'm not holding my breath. I left ALA after I realized that their stakeholders are the local administrations who fund libraries, the vendors who sell to libraries, and the members of congress who get money for IMLS. This organization is not concerned with its members.

After this is over, there will be a lot of people wondering what the hell ALA did for library workers while they were being laid off by the thousands. It's been a couple of weeks and they're still highlighting resilience narratives and deferring to local governments.

We need a national response on behalf of the people who do the work, not the books or the buildings or the computers. The PEOPLE WHO DO THE WORK NEED HELP. Get in the game! This is why people pay their dues! This is why you have a cadre of lobbyists! Don't shirk this!

Telling individual librarians that they need to work on their elevator speeches and collect data to demonstrate value is not just inept, it's insulting.