How a Book Burning Party Saved the Library
Chris Meadows at Teleread, writes:
So the library approached ad agency Leo Burnett/Arc Worldwide Detroit and asked what they could do with a $3,500 budget. The company produced a guerilla and social marketing campaign (PDF) in which they pretended to be a clandestine group urging people to vote to close the library so they could hold a book-burning party afterward. The campaign ultimately revealed that the book burning party campaign was a hoax and that their intention was to send a message: "A vote against the library, is like a vote to burn books."
There is much to learn from this amusing and heartening victory. And there are certainly implications for other issues, and perhaps even for broad agendas. But one comes immediately to mind for me. For many years the principal strategy of the antiabortion movement in all of its factions -- including the Religious Right -- has been to find ways to reduce the number of abortions performed by restricting access. This has been the unambiguous intention in the Obama era as well. The extraordinary escalation of the number of abortion restricting bills introduced in state legislatures is a logical outcome. It is completely consistent with movement thinking for a generation, and since they have the power to act in many legislatures thanks in part to gains in 2010, they are acting on their beliefs. "We have opportunities before us which if properly exploited," declared militant strategist Mark Crutcher, of Life Dynamics in 1992, "could result in an America where abortion may be perfectly legal, but no one can get one." The right to abortion, like any other right also means having access to that right. You may have the right to read, but not have access to books if there are no libraries. You may have the right to vote, but may not be able to do so if you are a victim of what we euphemistically call voter suppression tactics. The takeaway lesson for me is that we need to do better, much better, at building a culture of democracy, that includes not taking vital institutions like public education and libraries, or basic civil and human rights for granted. The library issue in Troy, MI should have been a no brainer -- that it wasn't, and voter turn-out was expected to be only 19%, underscores how chronic, long term lack of participation in the basics of democracy are threatening vital institutions and basic human rights. That an imaginative and provocative guerrilla campaign intervention saved the library is a heartening tale. But that the situation required one is sobering.
How a Book Burning Party Saved the Library | 1 comment (1 topical, 0 hidden)
How a Book Burning Party Saved the Library | 1 comment (1 topical, 0 hidden)
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