A small group of us wrote an op-ed for the paper about the library issue. The library director and the library media relations rep emailed the day it appeared and said they appreciated our passion but that one sentence in the piece contained inaccuracies that they felt must be corrected. They followed up with a conference call with the director and the media rep, which I conducted to the best of my ability while my children periodically bellowed in the background.
I felt many emotions: embarrassment about the inaccuracy (which, though minor in the grand scheme of the issue, was preventable and foreseeable); anger at the library for only responding to us when they wanted to publicly correct us and not responding to our larger concerns; fear that we might have done more harm than good and shot our group's credibility by making a mistake.
There's a reason they say you can't fight city hall. It's not easy for citizen activists to pull an effective effort together on short notice and on our own time. This doesn't mean I'm giving up. It just means I'm feeling pretty bruised.
It remains to be seen what's going to happen. It's been four days and the library still hasn't published any kind of correction or counterpoint op-ed. They did email back and say that our city councilmember, the deputy mayor, and the library director have a meeting set to start hammering out a community process for determining the library's future. So that's progress, though the effort to get that going was happening before our op-ed appeared.
I'd like to write more about how I felt about making a public mistake when the stakes feel so high. Not tonight, but later--either here, or in an essay, or both.
Since the whole thing broke, I've been spending way too much time up late stewing about it all, reading about other library closure issues in other cities (Philadelphia's facing 11 library closures in their system of 57, for instance, and the strategies and justifications the mayor there is using are remarkably like the ones our mayor is using). I am beginning to see a pattern in my own city and cities across the country--the current lousy economy is being used as an excuse to steal our public commons from us, the places like rec centers and libraries where we connect as neighbors and citizens. These are places that have been with us through generations of troubles--why can't our leaders find the will to keep them open now? The library I'm fighting for opened during the Great Depression, for God's sake.
Today I was feeling so hopeless and down, so out of energy for the kids. I called another mama friend of mine and just asked straight-out for support and encouragement. I know that like me, she struggles with being the kind of mother she wants to be.
She reminded me of the obvious stuff that's so easy to overlook--that getting enough sleep and exercise and maybe an hour a week to go sit in a coffee shop and write in my journal would probably make a remarkable difference. We laughed. We commiserated. I walked away feeling ready to try again with my kids. And for that I am so grateful.
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