Friends of Cuban Libraries
(http://www.friendsofcubanlibraries.org)
NOTE: Here are excerpts from Nat Hentoff's most recent column (and note the
theme of the next one, in which Nat will suggest ways for ALA members to
challenge the pro-dictator faction, aided and abetted by the larger number of
well-intentioned ALA Councilors who decline to study the facts):
Civil war among U.S. librarians
Nat Hentoff - Syndicated Columnist
http://www.aspendailynews.com/archive_20611
July 12, 2007
...Among other suffering prisoners in Cuban cells who would have added
further dimension to "Sicko" are independent librarians, put away for more than
20-year sentences for the crime of giving Cubans access to books and other
publications forbidden in state libraries. Dr. Jose Luis Garcia Paneque, for example,
director of a Las Tunas library, is not being treated meaningfully for
intestinal problems, hypertension and other ailments.
The caged independent librarians were, however, at the center of a protest at
an American Library Association conference in Washington in June. These
protesters are themselves long-term members of the ALA and call themselves
Freadomistas, in contrast with Fidelistas (Castro admirers) on the ALA's governing
council....
Bearing such signs as "Book Burning Is NOT a Solution to Cuba's Energy
Problems" and "Ray Bradbury (author of 'Fahrenheit 451') Says: 'Free The Jailed
Librarians,'" the Freadomistas also handed out flyers that quoted the core ALA
policy: "The American Library Association believes that freedom of expression is
an inalienable human right ... vital to the resistance of oppression ... and
the principles of freedom of expression should be applied by libraries and
librarians throughout the world." Another ALA policy cited on the flyers "deplores
the destruction of libraries, library collections and property."
Yet, as I have reported previously, the ALA ignores that Cuban court
documents (validated by Amnesty International and the Organization of American States)
reveal that the entire collections of at least six independent libraries were
ordered destroyed....
Despite these facts, the delegates to the June ALA conference were told in
the flyer that the American Library Association, on its Web site article "Book
Burning in the 21st Century," repeatedly refuses to post the lists of books
Castro burned after the Independent Libraries were started in 1998....
And the ALA council -- in defiance of a Jan. 25, 2006 poll in the official
American Libraries e-mail newsletter, AL Direct, in which 76 percent of the
rank-and-file membership urged emancipation -- continues its refusal to call for
the release of what some ALA leaders deride as "so-called librarians...."
At the ALA conference, a Freadomista flyer ended with a reminder from Martin
Luther King Jr., whose biography was burned by Castro judges: "In the end, we
will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends."
The next time you visit your local library, you might express your support
for the extraordinarily courageous independent librarians whose devotion to
Cubans' right to read have put them in these gulags.
Next week: How those American librarians who believe in everyone's right to
read can confront their leadership and bring hope to Cuba's caged librarians.
Nat Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendment and the
Bill of Rights and author of many books.
